The NYPD is taking a fresh look at the unsolved and heartbreaking case of “Baby Hope,” the murdered infant whose body was found in a picnic cooler off the Henry Hudson Parkway 22 years ago today.
Det. Robert Dewhurst, a Cold Case squad veteran, and other cops handed out flyers and put up poster with composite sketches of the girl, believed to have been 3 to 5 years old, in the Inwood section.
Cops admit they don’t know if the infant, dubbed “Hope,” was from the neighborhood.
But Dewhurst said, “I feel somebody knows who this girl was.”
He said the victim may have “had little girlfriends that are grown now and know something wasn’t right on the block when she was gone.”
“There might be a mother, there may be countless people that may know this girl and that she disappeared and maybe they are afraid to come out,” he added.
The victim, who may have been smothered, was found by a construction worker in a blue and white cooler in a wooded area at the southbound lanes of the Henry Hudson and Dyckman Street.
But no one reported a child missing. The body, which may have been placed in the cooler as much as 10 days earlier, was badly decomposed.
“We don’t know the victim’s name and that’s a large obstacle to get around and her being a child of that age limits us,” Dewhurst said. “There’s no dental records, there’s no medical records, no fingerprints on file. There’s nothing about it, as any kid of her age and that’s what makes it difficult.”
Cops believe a $12,000 reward for the arrest and conviction of the person responsible for Baby Hope’s death will encourage witnesses to step forward from Inwood.
But Dewhurst conceded, “A lot of people moved on that lived in this neighborhood.”
“We don’t even know if she was from this neighborhood. It could have been anywhere in the tri-state area,” he said.