The distraught mother of “Baby Hope” said Tuesday that accused killer Conrado Juarez tried to shake her down for cash before breaking the news that the little girl was dead.
Margarita Castillo said she confronted Conrado Juarez about 12 to 14 years ago at the Queens home where the father of slain Anjelica Castillo and younger sister Maribel had left them with his niece after a bitter break-up with Margarita a decade earlier.
“I went to the house, sat at the table, and asked, ‘Where are my girls?’ and he said, ‘You need to pay for the time we supported them,'” Margarita said during a tearful and rambling Spanish-language interview.
“And I said, ‘I want to see my girls first.'”
Juarez, who is the girls’ cousin on their father’s side, allegedly responded: “When I returned from Mexico there was only one girl, and they told me the other girl was dead.”
“And I said, ‘Where is she buried?’ And I kept calling him and he wouldn’t answer,” Margarita said.
“He just said that she was dead and she didn’t know where she was,” she added.
“He just said he came back and was told she was dead.”
Asked what she would say to her dead daughter — whose naked and bound body was found in a cooler along the Henry Hudson Parkway in 1991 — Margarita said: “I would ask her to forgive me, that I wish I could have stopped him before he could hurt her.
“I would ask her to forgive how I let my children be taken away from me,” she added.
Margarita, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, also said she never reported Anjelica’s disappearance to cops because she only spoke Spanish.
“I was afraid they wouldn’t understand me because I didn’t speak English….This would happen to me when I’d take my girls to the hospital,” she said.
Juarez, 52, was charged with murder Saturday after allegedly confessing that he smothered Anjelica while sodomizing her, and that his since-dead sister, Balvina Juarez-Ramirez — who had been raising the girl — helped him get rid of her body.
Margarita said she initially kept tabs on Anjelica with the help of a neighbor near the Astoria apartment where the tragic tot met her grisly fate at the tender age of 4.
“She would call me and update me about her,” Margarita said.
“I would ask her, ‘How’s my girl doing?’ and she would say, ‘I just saw her. She would say, ‘Yes, I saw her. She’s at the house.'”
Margarita added: “When I tried to return to the house, they had moved. And I didn’t know (where they moved to) until (Juarez-Ramirez) died.”
“Someone called me and told me (she) died and there’s no one to take care of (the girls).”
Margarita then went to the house to pay her condolences and ask about her daughters, but didn’t get any answers.
Later, a woman called and told her to come pick up her daughter, referring only to Maribel, at which point Margarita said she realized something was terribly wrong.
She insisted however, that, “I didn’t believe that she was dead.”
“I thought maybe they gave her to a different family,” she said.
Margarita’s convoluted account differed in some details to the one offered on Monday by Anjelica’s older sister, Laurencita “Lorena” Ramirez.
Ramirez, 27, said she recalled that younger sister Maribel re-joined her family when Ramirez was 11, meaning that it happened 16 years ago.
Margarita, who gave birth to 10 children fathered by three different men, said she “can’t even describe” her reaction to learning that Juarez is Angelica’s alleged killer.
“I don’t want to hate. I don’t want to show my daughters hate,” she said.
“I don’t know what I would do if I would see him again.”
“I probably would ask: Why did you lie to me? Why didn’t you tell me the truth? Why would you do something so horrible to a little child? Why would you cause so much pain to a child who couldn’t defend herself? He’s sick,” she added, breaking down in tears.
Margarita also said she hasn’t spoken with Anjelica’s father about their daughter’s death.
“I don’t know anything about him. I don’t where he is,” she said.
“He hid the girls from me. He would ‘t let me see them.”
Juarez’ defense lawyer didn’t immediately return a request for comment.