Mom of Bronx twin babies found dead in trash five years ago is arrested through DNA

Nearly five years after newborn twin boys were discovered beaten to death in the trash behind a Bronx building, authorities have arrested the babies’ mother following a dogged, years-long search, police announced Friday.

The full-term identical baby boys, who detectives named Zeke and Zane, were found in November 2020 by the superintendent of an apartment building on College Ave. near E. 171st St. in Claremont. The city’s chief medical examiner determined they died from blunt-force trauma less than 12 hours before they were found, with injuries indicating they had been beaten to death.

On Friday, police arrested the infants’ mother, Stephanie Castillo, 36. Castillo is charged with six counts of murder and six counts of manslaughter, according to police.

“For the past five years, almost five years, the detectives in this case have stopped at nothing to solve this case,” Assistant Chief Michael Baldassano told the Daily News. “We have been pursuing this case nonstop.”

The newborns were both naked when they were found, and one had a shower loofah wrapped near his neck, authorities said at the time. They weighed just 5 and 6 pounds.

Frustrated detectives tried desperately to find Castillo in the intervening years, upping the reward money from $2,500 to $10,000 and making multiple pleas to the public for any information leading to her arrest. Police scoured area hospitals and questioned the residents of all 42 apartments in the building but no one reported seeing a pregnant woman. Video surveillance came up empty, police said at the time.

In the end, police paid for the babies’ funeral.

“This case here hit home with a lot of the detectives, so much so where they had a funeral and a burial for these children,” Baldassano said. “Every year they had a memorial Bronx detectives attended. So this was really a personal case to them, as is almost every case we investigate. But this one was really, since it was two infants, really hit home.”

Detectives ultimately cracked the case using DNA evidence and improved technology.

“In this case, it took us some time. We used a technique called IGG, investigative genetic genealogy,” Baldassano said, noting the technology has developed rapidly over the past few years.

On Friday police divulged how authorities tracked down Castillo.

In 2020, Castillo lived with her parents in an apartment on the fourth floor of the building where the babies were found, but had hidden the pregnancy from them, according to police. After giving birth, she threw the baby twins out the window in garbage bags, a police source said.

”They never put it together,” said a detective with knowledge of the case. “I feel really terrible for them.”

During the investigation, DNA taken from the newborns showed that they were twins and linked them to the mother, whose blood was also found in the trash bags, although at the time her identity remained a mystery.

After murdering the twins, Castillo went to live in Staten Island and may have spent time in the Dominican Republic, according to the source. The case was finally busted open through familial DNA, after police found a relative of the babies who had at some point been in the criminal justice system and whose DNA police had on file, the source said.

From there police were able to trace the mother’s identity. They went looking for Castillo, saw her and were able to get her DNA from a can she had been drinking from and discarded. Her DNA matched the sample from the twins’ mother, police said.

When police arrested her, she was living in a shelter on Jerome Ave., about a mile north from the crime scene, in Morris Heights.

On Friday night, residents of the College Ave. building said news of the arrest brought a sense of closure and relief.

“I never saw her pregnant,” said Jariela Modelo, 21, who lives across the hall from Castillo’s parents, who still live in the building. “Her parents are really nice people. I was shaken at what happened at the time, and I’m shaking now.”

“After it happened, there was never a trace of her again,” Modelo said.

“We do a vigil every year, and people go down from the building to show their respects,” Modelo said. “Now, no one really wants to talk about it.”

“It’s a relief because it’s been haunting the building,” said neighbor Jordan Garcia, 28, upon learning of Castillo’s arrest. “It was like a curse. I’m glad we solved it because it was like a curse.”

Castillo’s arraignment was pending Friday afternoon.

Police still don’t know the motive.

“You could drop a baby at a firehouse, a hospital, a police precinct,” Baldassano said. “If you feel a need for help, those places are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

Originally Published: July 25, 2025 at 4:12 PM EDT