Neighbors Recall a Grim Day as a Mother Is Charged With Killing Her Sons

New York Times

3 days ago

Nearly five years have passed, but the memories are still vivid.
Word of an arrest last week in the death of newborn twins jolted neighbors in a Bronx apartment building back to the day the boys' bodies were discovered behind the property.
Washing dishes on that fall afternoon, Gladys Lugo peered out of her first-floor window and noticed the building's superintendent pulling a rumpled bundle of blankets from the trash, she recalled. Another resident, Juan Santana, was walking his dogs down the block when he came across emergency workers, fighting back tears.
No one suspected that Stephanie Castillo, 36, a former building resident who was arraigned Thursday on murder charges in the babies' deaths, had any role in the tragedy, several of her former neighbors said. 'Never in a million years,' said Jessica Ramos, who lived down the hall from Ms. Castillo. No one could recall even knowing that Ms. Castillo was pregnant. Prosecutors said that DNA evidence identified Ms. Castillo as the mother of the children.
'They would have been 5 this November. That's my daughter's age,' Ms. Ramos said of the twins, Zeke and Zane. Those were the names that police officers posthumously gave the boys after their remains were found on Nov. 9, 2020.
'We have a lot of questions,' she said.
What prompted the killings, and why it took nearly five years to charge Ms. Castillo, remains unclear. Ms. Castillo had lived with family members on the fourth floor in the six-story prewar complex on College Avenue near Claremont Park, where many residents have known one another for at least a decade. Mr. Santana said he and his children often exchanged greetings with her when they came across her walking her dog.
Neighbors ran into each other less frequently during the pandemic, when Ms. Castillo would have been carrying the twins. It was during that period of upheaval that investigators recovered the bodies of the boys in an alleyway, according to a criminal complaint that said that the infants died of blunt force trauma.
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