Jan. 6, 2026
KILLER: Ana Maria Cardona Part 02 | Miami, Florida 1990
Part 2 of 2: In our conclusion to the Baby Lollipops case, we examine the final months of three-year-old Lazaro Figueroa's life, the investigation that followed his discovery, and the decades-long pursuit of justice that saw his mother convicted three separate times.
VICTIM PROFILE:
Lazaro Figueroa never had a chance at a normal childhood. Born in September 1987, just weeks after his father, drug dealer Fidel Figueroa, was murdered in Miami, Lazaro became the target of his mother's resentment as her lavish lifestyle collapsed. At three years old, he weighed only eighteen pounds, half what a healthy child his age should weigh. His left arm had been broken so many times that muscle tissue calcified into bone, freezing the limb at a permanent ninety-degree angle. Despite the relentless abuse, witnesses recalled him running across streets alone, a tiny figure navigating a hostile world without protection.
THE CRIME:
On the morning of November 2, 1990, Florida Power and Light employees discovered Lazaro's body hidden beneath bushes outside a Miami Beach mansion. His emaciated frame bore forty-three documented injuries: cigarette burns, defensive wounds on his small hands, a fractured skull, and two front teeth knocked out months apart. Brown packing tape secured a soiled diaper to his wasted body. Medical examiner Dr. Bruce Hyma determined Lazaro had endured eighteen months of systematic torture, including being bound, gagged, locked in closets, and left in bathtubs with scalding or freezing water. The cause of death was blunt force trauma from a baseball bat, compounded by starvation and extensive bodily trauma. Most devastating: Lazaro may have survived up to three days after being abandoned, lying alone and helpless before death finally came.
THE INVESTIGATION:
Police initially could not identify the child and dubbed him Baby Lollipops after the cartoon candy pattern on his T-shirt. The nickname stuck as investigators canvassed Miami Beach with flyers. On November 6, Martha Fleitas recognized the photograph on television and identified Lazaro. The investigation led to his mother, Ana Maria Cardona, and her partner Olivia Gonzalez Mendoza, who had fled to St. Cloud, Florida, stopping at Disney World after disposing of the body. Neighbor Mercedes Estrada reported hearing screams on Halloween night followed by a heavy thump against her wall, then silence. Her report to social services went unanswered.
CURRENT STATUS:
Ana Maria Cardona's path through the courts spanned nearly three decades. She was sentenced to death in 1992, but the conviction was overturned in 2002 due to a Brady violation. Convicted and sentenced to death again in 2011, that conviction was overturned in 2016 for prosecutorial misconduct. In 2017, prosecutors waived the death penalty, and Cardona was found guilty a third time, receiving life without parole. Judge Miguel de la O told her that wild beasts show more empathy for their offspring. Olivia Gonzalez Mendoza served fourteen years after pleading guilty to second-degree murder. Cardona's eldest son, Juan Puente, died in prison in 2018 at age thirty-seven. The only publicly available photograph of Lazaro Figueroa shows him in death.
RESOURCES:
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WEBVTT
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[SPEAKER_01]: Listener, we return to a narrative that resists closure, not because it lacks an ending, but because its consequences do not end where the body was found.
00:13.671 --> 00:19.918
[SPEAKER_01]: This story is not about a single violent act, isolated in time, and it's about erosion.
00:20.459 --> 00:27.928
[SPEAKER_01]: It is about how harm accumulates slowly, quietly, with terrifying efficiency when no one intervenes.
00:27.908 --> 00:39.894
[SPEAKER_01]: Consider the slow grinding down of stone by relentless water, the way flesh yields to persistent pressure, the way a child's trust dissolves under repeated betrayal, until only terror remains.
00:40.435 --> 00:43.842
[SPEAKER_01]: It is about a child whose world narrowed, inch by inch,
00:43.822 --> 00:48.288
[SPEAKER_01]: until nothing remained but fear, confinement, hunger, and pain.
00:48.828 --> 00:52.353
[SPEAKER_01]: Imagine the gradual constriction of light in a closing room.
00:52.753 --> 01:00.443
[SPEAKER_01]: The air growing thicker with unspoken dread, the small breaths becoming shallower, as hope is starved alongside the body.
01:00.843 --> 01:13.339
[SPEAKER_01]: It is also about the adult who inflicted that pain deliberately, repeatedly, without interruption, and about the systems that looked away long enough for a small body to be destroyed in stages.
01:13.319 --> 01:29.826
[SPEAKER_01]: Those systems, vast and impersonal, absorb reports like sand absorbs blood, leaving no trace, no urgency, no reckoning until the evidence lies cold and irrefutable beneath indifferent bushes, and the previous installment.
01:29.806 --> 01:32.869
[SPEAKER_01]: We outlined the early life of Anna Maria Cardona.
01:33.270 --> 01:41.018
[SPEAKER_01]: That history matters not because it excuses what followed, but because it explains the architecture of damage that shaped her choices.
01:41.499 --> 01:46.444
[SPEAKER_01]: It reveals how wounds left untreated, calcifying the weapons turned outward.
01:46.865 --> 01:51.830
[SPEAKER_01]: How the victim learns the precise geometry of cruelty, from those who first applied it.
01:52.231 --> 01:54.413
[SPEAKER_01]: She was born in Cuba and do abandonment.
01:54.393 --> 02:04.766
[SPEAKER_01]: her father left the day she entered the world, her mother drank heavily, and told her from early childhood that she was unwanted, stained, and responsible for the misery around her.
02:05.206 --> 02:09.672
[SPEAKER_01]: These were not passing insults, listener, spoken in anger and forgotten.
02:10.112 --> 02:14.758
[SPEAKER_01]: They were repeated messages, delivered often enough to become internal law.
02:15.179 --> 02:17.802
[SPEAKER_01]: Each utterance etched deeper into the psyche.
02:17.782 --> 02:26.951
[SPEAKER_01]: Forming convictions as unyielding as bone, teaching a child that love is conditional upon perfection in that imperfection invites contempt.
02:27.351 --> 02:43.587
[SPEAKER_01]: They taught her how to see herself and how to see others to view vulnerability as provocation, dependence as accusation, a child's cry as an intolerable demand upon a fractured self as she grew older, sexual violence entered her life.
02:43.567 --> 03:02.655
[SPEAKER_01]: rape was dismissed, harassment was normalized, suicide attempts brought no sustained help, no consistent care, no protection, trauma accumulated without relief, there was no intervention to interrupt the pattern, pain did not resolve, it hardened, it became something portable,
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[SPEAKER_01]: A dark inheritance carried across oceans, festering in silence on a global scale, waiting for the moment when power shifted, and the wounded could wound in return.
03:13.393 --> 03:16.838
[SPEAKER_01]: When Cardona left Cuba, she crossed water but not memory.
03:17.099 --> 03:20.584
[SPEAKER_01]: Miami in the late 1980s offered no gentler structure.
03:21.045 --> 03:22.588
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a city of extremes.
03:23.028 --> 03:27.816
[SPEAKER_01]: Torres drank rum on her clean skies while cocaine money reshaped skylines.
03:27.796 --> 03:34.064
[SPEAKER_01]: Immigrants crowded into small apartment efficiencies, drugs flowed freely, violence was common.
03:34.605 --> 03:37.268
[SPEAKER_01]: Social services were overwhelmed or indifferent.
03:37.549 --> 03:47.382
[SPEAKER_01]: In this environment, survival demanded hardness, a hardness spread in isolation, where cries for help echoed unanswered amid the roar of excessive despair.
03:47.862 --> 03:50.766
[SPEAKER_01]: Cardona attached herself to Fidel Figaroa.
03:50.746 --> 03:58.458
[SPEAKER_01]: A drug distributor whose money briefly provided insulation from consequence, that insulation vanished when Figaroa was murdered.
03:58.879 --> 04:01.503
[SPEAKER_01]: He left behind and estate estimated at $100,000.
04:02.865 --> 04:06.631
[SPEAKER_01]: It was large enough to feel endless and small enough to disappear quickly.
04:07.072 --> 04:11.699
[SPEAKER_01]: The money funded cocaine, excess and distraction, it did not funds stability.
04:12.060 --> 04:15.285
[SPEAKER_01]: When it was gone, resentment replaced relief.
04:15.265 --> 04:20.791
[SPEAKER_01]: Responsibility became unbearable, children became burdens rather than dependence.
04:21.231 --> 04:28.239
[SPEAKER_01]: Of all her children, the youngest carried the greatest weight of that resentment, he became the focal point for every loss.
04:28.619 --> 04:35.006
[SPEAKER_01]: Every deprivation, every echo of her own early rejection, his name was Lazaro Figueroa.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome, listener.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm glad you're here.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Take a seat.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Next to the fire.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to Obscura, where we shine a light on the dark.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Missouri was born into a household already fractured by addiction, instability, unresolved rage.
05:22.225 --> 05:40.808
[SPEAKER_01]: From infancy, he was treated differently, he was left with strangers for extended periods, he was hidden when inconvenient, he was not nurtured, he was controlled, as months passed, that control escalated into violence, the abuse did not erupt suddenly, listener, he developed the repetition.
05:40.788 --> 05:47.635
[SPEAKER_01]: Through routine, through punishment and ministered so often that it lost any pretence of discipline became ritual.
05:47.995 --> 05:55.243
[SPEAKER_01]: With each blow, a reinforcement of dominance, each withholding a food, a lesson in powers and difference to suffering.
05:55.563 --> 06:05.513
[SPEAKER_01]: When Lazaro's body was discovered on the morning of November 2nd, 1990, by four to power in light and police in Miami Beach, it was not immediately identifiable.
06:05.493 --> 06:14.569
[SPEAKER_01]: Edwin placed deliberately beneath bushes, partially concealed, positioned between a tree in a garden wall several yards from any front entrance.
06:14.970 --> 06:21.561
[SPEAKER_01]: It was close enough to human activity to be found eventually, afar enough from view to delay discovery.
06:21.541 --> 06:32.545
[SPEAKER_01]: The choice of location suggested intent, not panic, a calculated abandonment, as if the perpetrator understood that time would erode evidence, while distance eroded accountability.
06:32.906 --> 06:40.883
[SPEAKER_01]: The condition of the body made clear that death was only the final event in a much longer process, Lazarus was severely malnourished.
06:40.863 --> 06:44.029
[SPEAKER_01]: At three years old, he weighed approximately 18 pounds.
06:44.309 --> 06:45.932
[SPEAKER_01]: His limbs were thin and wasted.
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[SPEAKER_01]: His abdomen protruded from prolonged starvation.
06:49.299 --> 06:54.168
[SPEAKER_01]: His skin hung loosely over bone, marked by bruises and multiple stages of healing.
06:54.488 --> 06:56.291
[SPEAKER_01]: Some bruises were dark and swollen.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Others had faded into yellow and green.
06:58.996 --> 07:03.124
[SPEAKER_01]: The wearing of color was a collage that hinted at prolonged anguish.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The flesh told a chronicle of unrelenting assault, where new marks overlayed old, purple and yellow, bloomed into flowering of sickly hues before fresh violence renewed the cycle.
07:14.784 --> 07:25.281
[SPEAKER_01]: Dr. Bruce Hyma, associate medical examiner, a waiter testified that was Zaro, had been bound, gagged, beaten, burned, and deprived of food over prolonged periods.
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[SPEAKER_01]: This was not neglect alone.
07:27.304 --> 07:29.087
[SPEAKER_01]: It was deliberate abuse.
07:29.107 --> 07:33.013
[SPEAKER_01]: Photographs shown to the jury depicted a body saturated with trauma.
07:33.494 --> 07:35.016
[SPEAKER_01]: His head and face were buddied.
07:35.417 --> 07:38.181
[SPEAKER_01]: His scalp bore evidence of blunt force injury.
07:38.842 --> 07:41.927
[SPEAKER_01]: One leg appeared larger than the other due to swelling from injury.
07:42.288 --> 07:47.556
[SPEAKER_01]: His diapers were soiled and secured with brown duct tape wrapped tightly around his waist.
07:47.536 --> 07:49.720
[SPEAKER_01]: The tape pressed directly against skin.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It was not loose.
07:51.382 --> 07:52.504
[SPEAKER_01]: It was not temporary.
07:52.825 --> 07:58.374
[SPEAKER_01]: It was applied to prevent removal, to contain excrement, and to eliminate the need for changing him.
07:58.755 --> 08:05.005
[SPEAKER_01]: The adhesive bit in the tender flesh, causing wrong abrasions, were waste festered against wounds.
08:05.386 --> 08:10.354
[SPEAKER_01]: The stench, a constant reminder of degradation, imposed without mercy.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Mazarou, this child, this baby, did not die from a single injury.
08:15.833 --> 08:19.686
[SPEAKER_01]: He was physically abused over months and neglected over months.
08:19.936 --> 08:24.721
[SPEAKER_01]: Now nutrition and anemia, weakened his body to the point where healing was impossible.
08:25.261 --> 08:28.144
[SPEAKER_01]: Injuries accumulated faster than recovery could occur.
08:28.164 --> 08:31.667
[SPEAKER_01]: Dr. Hyma cataloged the injuries with clinical precision.
08:32.088 --> 08:37.533
[SPEAKER_01]: Repeated trauma until his arms left arm, caused the muscle tissue between the elbow and shoulder to ossify.
08:37.853 --> 08:39.175
[SPEAKER_01]: Muscle had turned a bone.
08:39.475 --> 08:43.799
[SPEAKER_01]: The arm became rigid, permanently bent at a 90-degree angle.
08:43.819 --> 08:45.621
[SPEAKER_01]: It could no longer bend or function.
08:45.941 --> 08:47.783
[SPEAKER_01]: This was not a birth defect.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It was the result of repeated injury.
08:50.449 --> 09:01.512
[SPEAKER_01]: Fractures knit wrongly in the absence of care, tissue petrifying and agony, mocking the limb and eternal deformity, as a testament to blows that shattered more than bone.
09:01.953 --> 09:06.683
[SPEAKER_01]: Deep bruises on Lasaro's left hand and palm were consistent with defensive wounds.
09:06.764 --> 09:09.953
[SPEAKER_01]: Even at three years old, he attempted to protect himself.
09:10.394 --> 09:13.843
[SPEAKER_01]: His body was covered in bumps, bruises, and cigarette burns.
09:14.344 --> 09:17.954
[SPEAKER_01]: Some burns were round, consisted with contact from a cigarette tip.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The skin puckered and blistered.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The pain seared through fragile nerves.
09:23.048 --> 09:33.118
[SPEAKER_01]: Each application, a deliberate inflection of fire upon innocence, is skull had fractured, his brain had sustained injury, his left arm was frozen in place.
09:33.578 --> 09:49.714
[SPEAKER_01]: Dr. Hyma described the condition plainly, this was child torture, a systemic dismantling of a human being, a baby, piece by piece, in the privacy of domestic shadows, despite suffering a fractured skull and brain injury,
09:49.694 --> 09:53.380
[SPEAKER_01]: Missouri may have lived for up to three days after being abandoned.
09:53.761 --> 09:59.611
[SPEAKER_01]: Associate medical examiner Haima, determined that the child had been dead less than 24 hours when discovered.
09:59.992 --> 10:05.982
[SPEAKER_01]: This meant that after sustaining catastrophic injury, Missouri alive, helpless.
10:05.962 --> 10:09.666
[SPEAKER_01]: unattended and in pain, before death finally occurred.
10:10.207 --> 10:22.181
[SPEAKER_01]: A lone beneath the bushes, insects crawling over open wounds, the sun beating down, or the night chill seeping in, consciousness flickering amid swelling brain tissue, and unrelenting thirst.
10:22.542 --> 10:32.273
[SPEAKER_01]: The final cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma to the head, inflicted by a baseball bat, compounded by starvation and extensive bodily trauma.
10:32.253 --> 10:38.651
[SPEAKER_01]: trial evidence demonstrated that Lazaro experienced approximately 18 months of sustained abuse won't live.
10:39.172 --> 10:47.275
[SPEAKER_01]: Medical findings documented repeated fractures, including skull fractures accompanied by subdural and subaract noise hematomas, is two
10:47.255 --> 10:54.049
[SPEAKER_01]: upper front teeth had been knocked out, some injuries were hours old, other stays, others weeks are months old.
10:54.470 --> 11:07.035
[SPEAKER_01]: His body functioned as a timeline of suffering, a living ledger of cruelty, where every mark recorded a moment when intervention failed and indifference prevailed for weeks after the discovery.
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[SPEAKER_01]: No one knew who he was, because his remains were unidentified, Mokomedia referred to him simply as Baby Lonly Pops, a nickname derived from the cartoon candy pattern on the T-shirt he was wearing.
11:20.006 --> 11:35.740
[SPEAKER_01]: The name stuck, the contrast was obscene, bright colors against dirt, childish imagery, against visible neglect, the whimsical fabric clinging to a frame reduced to skeletal ruin, as if innocence mocked by its own
11:35.720 --> 11:51.181
[SPEAKER_01]: Police appealed to the public using flyers and television broadcast deliberately withholding certain details, including the tape, used on the diaper, on November 6th, Martha Faitis, recognized the photograph on television, and contacted authorities.
11:51.601 --> 11:57.930
[SPEAKER_01]: She identified the child as Lazaro Figueroa, the son of Fidel Figueroa, an animaria cardona.
11:57.910 --> 12:02.939
[SPEAKER_01]: Other witnesses came forward, Betty Walker contacted the police early in the investigation.
12:03.280 --> 12:05.844
[SPEAKER_01]: She recalled Zing Lazaro and North Miami Beach.
12:06.265 --> 12:11.374
[SPEAKER_01]: Mound the wrist, sometimes still wearing diapers, running across streets without supervision.
12:11.735 --> 12:14.399
[SPEAKER_01]: His right arm was held stiffly against his body.
12:14.820 --> 12:19.328
[SPEAKER_01]: As though in a sling, he appeared small for his age, he appeared unattended.
12:19.308 --> 12:25.198
[SPEAKER_01]: A tiny figure navigating danger alone, the world vast and hostile around his diminished form.
12:25.699 --> 12:31.308
[SPEAKER_01]: Mercedes Estrada lives at 8030 Abid Avenue, apartment 2A, on Halloween night.
12:31.709 --> 12:34.013
[SPEAKER_01]: She heard screaming from the neighboring apartment.
12:34.293 --> 12:36.297
[SPEAKER_01]: The cries were high pitched and frantic.
12:36.697 --> 12:38.761
[SPEAKER_01]: They continued long enough to alarm her.
12:39.181 --> 12:43.729
[SPEAKER_01]: Then came a heavy thump against the shared wall, a sound with weight behind it.
12:43.709 --> 12:45.491
[SPEAKER_01]: The screaming stopped abruptly.
12:45.932 --> 12:48.134
[SPEAKER_01]: The silence that followed was absolute.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It strata reported the incident to the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services the following day.
12:54.001 --> 12:55.082
[SPEAKER_01]: No response came.
12:55.462 --> 13:02.330
[SPEAKER_01]: The report disappeared in the machinery of bureaucracy, swallowed by forms and finals, priorities shift in elsewhere.
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[SPEAKER_01]: A child's agony reduced a paper work that gathered dust.
13:06.355 --> 13:14.289
[SPEAKER_01]: Weeks later, Miriam Ramos showed a strata a flyer with photographs of two women, a strata believes she recognized the child.
13:14.610 --> 13:22.744
[SPEAKER_01]: On November 27th, Ramos brought a strata to meet Detective Joseph Matthews at a burger king, Matthews and Detective Trujillo.
13:22.724 --> 13:30.975
[SPEAKER_01]: went to the apartment spoke with 14-year-old Gloria Puy, tape similar to that found him Lazarus diaper, was discovered on the mailbox.
13:31.315 --> 13:34.559
[SPEAKER_01]: Gloria stated she used it to keep the baby diaper in place.
13:34.980 --> 13:44.192
[SPEAKER_01]: She cried, she confessed, she claimed she pushed him that his head struck the wall, that he died, her confession unraveled quickly, listener.
13:44.172 --> 13:48.678
[SPEAKER_01]: She said a woman paid her $50 to babysit an unnamed boy for two weeks.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She admitted to forgetting to feed him sometimes.
13:51.322 --> 13:53.285
[SPEAKER_01]: She described wrapping tape around him.
13:53.605 --> 13:55.368
[SPEAKER_01]: She claimed she was a woman he died.
13:55.768 --> 13:58.592
[SPEAKER_01]: She said her mother and friend helped dispose of the body.
13:58.632 --> 14:01.877
[SPEAKER_01]: Detective Matthews doubted her account almost immediately.
14:01.917 --> 14:07.885
[SPEAKER_01]: None of what she described would explain away all the numerous injuries to the child.
14:07.865 --> 14:15.593
[SPEAKER_01]: Gloria used Lazaro's name later in the conversation, despite investigators withholding it, despite Gloria claiming she didn't know it.
14:15.913 --> 14:25.203
[SPEAKER_01]: She described injuries not present on the body, Matthews thought that she was cognitively slow, frightened, possibly seeking attention or relief from fear.
14:25.683 --> 14:33.151
[SPEAKER_01]: The next morning, Detective Gary Kluger, drove her back, she asked questions about the difference between intentional and accidental actions.
14:33.551 --> 14:34.632
[SPEAKER_01]: Police cleared her.
14:34.612 --> 14:44.650
[SPEAKER_01]: The confession was false, common at this stage of an investigation, a desperate fabrication born of confusion and terror and the shadow of greater culpability.
14:45.472 --> 14:47.376
[SPEAKER_01]: Investigators turned to school records.
14:47.856 --> 14:51.904
[SPEAKER_01]: Juan Penta was enrolled first in South Miami, then in St.
14:51.964 --> 14:55.270
[SPEAKER_01]: Cloud near Orlando, detectives waited at the school.
14:55.250 --> 14:58.596
[SPEAKER_01]: This was pre everyone being online, listener.
14:58.956 --> 15:01.481
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't the easiest thing in the world to find people.
15:01.901 --> 15:06.609
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes, you had to track them down, especially if they didn't want to be found.
15:07.030 --> 15:14.723
[SPEAKER_01]: I know that sounds absurd today when there are cameras everywhere from the sky to lamp posts, but this was a different time.
15:15.064 --> 15:16.887
[SPEAKER_01]: I just wanted to draw attention to that.
15:16.867 --> 15:21.032
[SPEAKER_01]: Anna Cardona and Olivia Gonzalez Mendoza arrived to pick him up.
15:21.392 --> 15:23.695
[SPEAKER_01]: Olivia was aggressive and confrontational.
15:24.055 --> 15:27.359
[SPEAKER_01]: Detective Santiago informed Anna that was always dead.
15:27.719 --> 15:28.260
[SPEAKER_01]: She cried.
15:28.660 --> 15:30.302
[SPEAKER_01]: She said she had left him with a woman.
15:30.562 --> 15:33.305
[SPEAKER_01]: They were arrested and transported to the sheriff's office.
15:33.766 --> 15:38.331
[SPEAKER_01]: Santiago questioned why a mother would leave a three-year-old with a mentally ill teenager.
15:38.771 --> 15:42.375
[SPEAKER_01]: Anna initially described an elegant woman in a restaurant.
15:42.635 --> 15:45.979
[SPEAKER_01]: This did not match the description of
15:45.959 --> 15:51.667
[SPEAKER_01]: Matthews interrogated her with San Diego translating and repeatedly asked about her other children.
15:52.028 --> 15:53.791
[SPEAKER_01]: Matthew left a retriever recorder.
15:54.071 --> 15:57.256
[SPEAKER_01]: When he returned, he was greeted with a strange image.
15:57.837 --> 15:59.058
[SPEAKER_01]: Anna was on her knees.
15:59.679 --> 16:00.581
[SPEAKER_01]: She was crying.
16:01.122 --> 16:03.445
[SPEAKER_01]: Kissing San Diego's feet.
16:03.425 --> 16:07.894
[SPEAKER_01]: Matthews later stated, he did not understand the scope of this case at that moment.
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[SPEAKER_01]: This was a lesson and how bad the job could get.
16:10.920 --> 16:14.788
[SPEAKER_01]: In his formal statement came seven hours after a rest.
16:15.249 --> 16:18.035
[SPEAKER_01]: She claimed Lazaro injured himself jumping off a bed.
16:18.075 --> 16:20.459
[SPEAKER_01]: She said she attempted to revive him.
16:20.840 --> 16:22.243
[SPEAKER_01]: She said Olivia Helm.
16:22.223 --> 16:28.433
[SPEAKER_01]: She said she feared police would take her children, she suggested leaving Lazaro on the door step of a wealthy home.
16:28.893 --> 16:31.798
[SPEAKER_01]: She claimed he was alive when abandoned, they fled to St.
16:31.838 --> 16:42.274
[SPEAKER_01]: Cloud, she denied most injuries, she mentioned a slight limp, she begged not to lose custody, and she never asked about Lazaro or his condition when they found him.
16:42.254 --> 16:46.498
[SPEAKER_01]: Olivia Gonzalez Mendoza provided a different account, Listener.
16:46.939 --> 16:48.380
[SPEAKER_01]: The apartment was filthy.
16:48.741 --> 16:50.483
[SPEAKER_01]: The mattress was soaked with urine.
16:50.863 --> 16:52.685
[SPEAKER_01]: Lasaro was kept in a closet.
16:52.965 --> 16:56.549
[SPEAKER_01]: He was beaten for wedding the bed, despite never being body-trained.
16:56.829 --> 16:58.811
[SPEAKER_01]: Dipers went unchanged for days.
16:59.252 --> 17:02.655
[SPEAKER_01]: The smell overwhelming, hatred, sickly sweet.
17:03.076 --> 17:09.983
[SPEAKER_01]: My asthma of decay that permeated walls and lungs,
17:09.963 --> 17:16.491
[SPEAKER_01]: Anna was known to Yanklizaro's arm violently when she was angry with him, breaks occurred repeatedly.
17:16.872 --> 17:17.993
[SPEAKER_01]: She would punch his face.
17:18.393 --> 17:19.274
[SPEAKER_01]: She pulled his hair.
17:19.715 --> 17:21.297
[SPEAKER_01]: She drag him upstairs by it.
17:21.758 --> 17:24.901
[SPEAKER_01]: On the day of Luzaro's death, Olivia opened the closet.
17:25.322 --> 17:28.185
[SPEAKER_01]: The little boy screamed when he saw his mother behind her.
17:28.606 --> 17:31.870
[SPEAKER_01]: The reaction was immediate and involuntary.
17:31.850 --> 17:44.610
[SPEAKER_01]: He was terrified of Anna, a Pavlovian recoil, the mere sight triggering primal dread, conditioned by months of torment, Olivia threatened him with a baseball bat to silence him, and it took the bat.
17:44.990 --> 17:49.157
[SPEAKER_01]: Olivia believed Anna taped Lazarus' mouth and returned him to the closet.
17:49.437 --> 17:58.431
[SPEAKER_01]: When Olivia returned from bathing, Anna said she had killed him,
17:58.411 --> 18:01.835
[SPEAKER_01]: They attempted revival with alcohol and water, if fail.
18:02.395 --> 18:11.766
[SPEAKER_01]: In a dress, him wrapped him in a bed sheet, and insisted on dumping the body, Olivia suggested taking him to a hospital, and a calder crazy in a snitch.
18:12.166 --> 18:19.074
[SPEAKER_01]: They drove toward Miami Beach, and it removed the child from the car, and left him in the bushes of a wealthy looking estate.
18:19.474 --> 18:25.060
[SPEAKER_01]: Gonzalez Mendoza later pled guilty to second-degree murder and aggravated child abuse.
18:25.040 --> 18:28.463
[SPEAKER_01]: She served nearly 17 years of a 40-year sentence.
18:28.904 --> 18:30.285
[SPEAKER_01]: She was released in 2008.
18:31.046 --> 18:39.674
[SPEAKER_01]: Over 18 months, Anacardona beat, choke, starved, confined, emotionally abused, and systematically torture Blasaro.
18:39.974 --> 18:54.608
[SPEAKER_01]: He was tied to a bed, bound, gagged, left-in bath tubs with extreme water temperatures, unlocked in closets, scalding or freezing liquid searing skin already raw from bindings,
18:54.588 --> 18:58.679
[SPEAKER_01]: Tape wrapped around his diaper to contain waste and avoid changing him.
18:58.960 --> 19:01.407
[SPEAKER_01]: He was beaten with belts, shoes, and hangers.
19:01.507 --> 19:02.189
[SPEAKER_01]: He was bitten.
19:02.570 --> 19:04.095
[SPEAKER_01]: He was thrown against walls.
19:04.616 --> 19:09.610
[SPEAKER_01]: On the day of death, he was beaten with a baseball bat after soiling himself.
19:09.590 --> 19:11.893
[SPEAKER_01]: Arrow did not die from a fall.
19:11.913 --> 19:14.036
[SPEAKER_01]: He died from fear and impact.
19:14.056 --> 19:16.459
[SPEAKER_01]: When Anner returned, he screamed instantly.
19:16.519 --> 19:20.083
[SPEAKER_01]: This, listener, was a condition to response.
19:20.464 --> 19:26.011
[SPEAKER_01]: In a struck him repeatedly, the blows were so hard that they caused diffuse, accidental injury.
19:26.411 --> 19:29.315
[SPEAKER_01]: His right arm fractured as he tried to defend himself.
19:29.635 --> 19:33.560
[SPEAKER_01]: His skull fractured, his teeth were dislodged from his mouth.
19:33.580 --> 19:36.444
[SPEAKER_01]: 43 injuries were documented.
19:36.784 --> 19:39.107
[SPEAKER_01]: His life was defined by pain.
19:39.087 --> 19:45.638
[SPEAKER_01]: Every breath taken in anticipation of the next strike, every moment, a calculation of survival.
19:45.979 --> 20:05.331
[SPEAKER_01]: The case became known nationally as the Baby Lollipop Smurder, after abandoning Lizarro's body, Cardona and Gonzalez fled to Central Florida, stopping at Disney World for a quick vacation, a grotesque juxtaposition of whimsy and horror, laughter echoing amid memories of screams.
20:05.463 --> 20:08.068
[SPEAKER_01]: Anna Cardona was sentenced to death in 1992.
20:08.709 --> 20:13.418
[SPEAKER_01]: The conviction overturned in 2002 due to a Brady violation.
20:13.779 --> 20:15.802
[SPEAKER_01]: She was sentenced to death again in 2011.
20:16.644 --> 20:22.194
[SPEAKER_01]: That conviction was overturned in 2016 due to prosecutorial misconduct.
20:22.495 --> 20:26.222
[SPEAKER_01]: In 2017, prosecutors waved the death penalty.
20:26.202 --> 20:29.766
[SPEAKER_01]: Cardona testified, denied abuse, and blamed Olivia.
20:30.227 --> 20:31.949
[SPEAKER_01]: The jury rejected her account.
20:32.310 --> 20:34.292
[SPEAKER_01]: She was sentenced to life without parole.
20:34.833 --> 20:39.198
[SPEAKER_01]: Judge DS stated that injury followed injury from toes to brain.
20:39.519 --> 20:45.025
[SPEAKER_01]: He said animals show more empathy than this quote-unquote mother into her son.
20:45.486 --> 20:47.569
[SPEAKER_01]: The trial stretched across decades.
20:48.129 --> 20:51.113
[SPEAKER_01]: Trauma was cited, did not absolve.
20:51.093 --> 21:00.607
[SPEAKER_01]: Choices were made daily, each decision a reaffirmation of cruelty over compassion, erosion complete, and it remains in prison to this day.
21:01.048 --> 21:06.956
[SPEAKER_01]: Her children are grown, one point a her first son died in 2018 at age 37.
21:07.817 --> 21:10.261
[SPEAKER_01]: Tahimi has disappeared from public view.
21:10.802 --> 21:19.935
[SPEAKER_01]: Miami changed, the closet empty, the beaches remain bright, the only photograph of
21:19.915 --> 21:21.860
[SPEAKER_01]: We do not know his favorite food.
21:22.341 --> 21:23.825
[SPEAKER_01]: We do not know his favorite song.
21:24.226 --> 21:25.509
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't even know his smile.
21:25.910 --> 21:37.418
[SPEAKER_01]: These ordinary joys denied, erased by the magnitude of suffering imposed, and their place stands only the stark image of Ruin, a small form laid bare under forensic lights.
21:37.398 --> 21:59.743
[SPEAKER_01]: ribs protruding like accusations, skin modeled with the chronology of cruelty, that single captured moment of death has become his eternal portrait circulated across decades, a digital relic that outlives any memory of vitality, no snapshot exists in public view of him totalling unsteadily, no frozen laugh from a birthday song.
21:59.723 --> 22:03.673
[SPEAKER_01]: No candid glimpse of eyes wide with wonder, rather than dread.
22:04.175 --> 22:15.184
[SPEAKER_01]: The word possesses him only in extremity, reduced to evidence, his humanity compressed into the grotesque stillness of autopsy tables and courtroom projections.
22:15.164 --> 22:34.814
[SPEAKER_01]: This absence is itself a final violation, a theft that extends beyond the grave, ensuring that even in remembrance he remains defined by violation, rather than by the simple, irreplaceable spark of a child's unburdened existence, Masaro knew only fear at the sight of his mother, listener.
22:35.355 --> 22:39.822
[SPEAKER_01]: He was only three years old, contemplate that final condition recoil.
22:39.802 --> 22:45.111
[SPEAKER_01]: The involuntary scream that rose unbitten when her shadow fell across the closet door.
22:45.592 --> 22:47.396
[SPEAKER_01]: In those brief years, I wanted to him.
22:47.836 --> 22:55.410
[SPEAKER_01]: The maternal figure, source of solace and any sane order of things, had been transmuted into an architect of terror.
22:55.430 --> 23:03.885
[SPEAKER_01]: Every approach, signal, impending pain, every voice, a prelude to blows, or confinement, or the slow ache of hunger.
23:03.865 --> 23:22.127
[SPEAKER_01]: The bond that nature intends as sanctuary became instead a mechanism of torment, twisting the most fundamental human attachment into a source of unrelenting horror, and an age when other children seek arms for comfort, he learned to associate them with restraint, with bindings that cut into flesh.
23:22.107 --> 23:34.879
[SPEAKER_01]: With the ink of hair, or the swing of improvised weapons, his short life was a prolonged lesson in betrayal, where the person obligated to shield him from the world's harshness, instead embodied its cruelest indifference.
23:35.239 --> 23:42.766
[SPEAKER_01]: This perversion strikes at the root at what we claim to hold sacred, exposing the fragility of protections we assume and need.
23:43.247 --> 23:51.034
[SPEAKER_01]: It reveals how readily the impulse to nurture can invert into destruction, when unchecked by conscience or consequence.
23:51.132 --> 23:55.077
[SPEAKER_01]: leaving a child in having a private hell disguised as home.
23:55.557 --> 24:05.830
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the record, a somber and dimet of what humanity permits in its hidden corners, where small lives are extinguished slowly, and the world proceeds unmoved.
24:06.190 --> 24:08.773
[SPEAKER_01]: Consider the depth of that permission, listener.
24:09.134 --> 24:13.839
[SPEAKER_01]: The vast complacency that allows such erosion to proceed unseen, unhindered.
24:14.380 --> 24:18.405
[SPEAKER_01]: In this lattice of indifference, cruelty found fertile ground,
24:18.385 --> 24:27.100
[SPEAKER_01]: accumulating day by day, bruise upon bruise, deprivation upon deprivation, until a fragile body can bear no more.
24:27.741 --> 24:38.419
[SPEAKER_01]: This arrow remains frozen in the single posthumous image, his brief existence distilled into a cautionary specter, haunting databases and documentaries alike.
24:38.399 --> 25:07.461
[SPEAKER_01]: a boy who could have chased waves on that same bright beach, who might have known the taste of simple pleasures, the sound of laughter untouched by fears, instead his world contracted to corners and closets, to the sting of bindings and the null of emptiness, his final hours, perhaps days, spent alone amid foliage, consciousness having amid insects and isolation, the vast indifference of nature mirroring the human failure that deposited him there.
25:07.441 --> 25:11.554
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the Abyss we can front when we peer into such records.
25:12.115 --> 25:17.873
[SPEAKER_01]: Not merely the monstrosity of individual acts, but the monstrous ease with which they are accommodated.
25:17.913 --> 25:21.484
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for listening and keep the fire burning.
00:03.659 --> 00:13.190
[SPEAKER_01]: Listener, we return to a narrative that resists closure, not because it lacks an ending, but because its consequences do not end where the body was found.
00:13.671 --> 00:19.918
[SPEAKER_01]: This story is not about a single violent act, isolated in time, and it's about erosion.
00:20.459 --> 00:27.928
[SPEAKER_01]: It is about how harm accumulates slowly, quietly, with terrifying efficiency when no one intervenes.
00:27.908 --> 00:39.894
[SPEAKER_01]: Consider the slow grinding down of stone by relentless water, the way flesh yields to persistent pressure, the way a child's trust dissolves under repeated betrayal, until only terror remains.
00:40.435 --> 00:43.842
[SPEAKER_01]: It is about a child whose world narrowed, inch by inch,
00:43.822 --> 00:48.288
[SPEAKER_01]: until nothing remained but fear, confinement, hunger, and pain.
00:48.828 --> 00:52.353
[SPEAKER_01]: Imagine the gradual constriction of light in a closing room.
00:52.753 --> 01:00.443
[SPEAKER_01]: The air growing thicker with unspoken dread, the small breaths becoming shallower, as hope is starved alongside the body.
01:00.843 --> 01:13.339
[SPEAKER_01]: It is also about the adult who inflicted that pain deliberately, repeatedly, without interruption, and about the systems that looked away long enough for a small body to be destroyed in stages.
01:13.319 --> 01:29.826
[SPEAKER_01]: Those systems, vast and impersonal, absorb reports like sand absorbs blood, leaving no trace, no urgency, no reckoning until the evidence lies cold and irrefutable beneath indifferent bushes, and the previous installment.
01:29.806 --> 01:32.869
[SPEAKER_01]: We outlined the early life of Anna Maria Cardona.
01:33.270 --> 01:41.018
[SPEAKER_01]: That history matters not because it excuses what followed, but because it explains the architecture of damage that shaped her choices.
01:41.499 --> 01:46.444
[SPEAKER_01]: It reveals how wounds left untreated, calcifying the weapons turned outward.
01:46.865 --> 01:51.830
[SPEAKER_01]: How the victim learns the precise geometry of cruelty, from those who first applied it.
01:52.231 --> 01:54.413
[SPEAKER_01]: She was born in Cuba and do abandonment.
01:54.393 --> 02:04.766
[SPEAKER_01]: her father left the day she entered the world, her mother drank heavily, and told her from early childhood that she was unwanted, stained, and responsible for the misery around her.
02:05.206 --> 02:09.672
[SPEAKER_01]: These were not passing insults, listener, spoken in anger and forgotten.
02:10.112 --> 02:14.758
[SPEAKER_01]: They were repeated messages, delivered often enough to become internal law.
02:15.179 --> 02:17.802
[SPEAKER_01]: Each utterance etched deeper into the psyche.
02:17.782 --> 02:26.951
[SPEAKER_01]: Forming convictions as unyielding as bone, teaching a child that love is conditional upon perfection in that imperfection invites contempt.
02:27.351 --> 02:43.587
[SPEAKER_01]: They taught her how to see herself and how to see others to view vulnerability as provocation, dependence as accusation, a child's cry as an intolerable demand upon a fractured self as she grew older, sexual violence entered her life.
02:43.567 --> 03:02.655
[SPEAKER_01]: rape was dismissed, harassment was normalized, suicide attempts brought no sustained help, no consistent care, no protection, trauma accumulated without relief, there was no intervention to interrupt the pattern, pain did not resolve, it hardened, it became something portable,
03:02.635 --> 03:12.992
[SPEAKER_01]: A dark inheritance carried across oceans, festering in silence on a global scale, waiting for the moment when power shifted, and the wounded could wound in return.
03:13.393 --> 03:16.838
[SPEAKER_01]: When Cardona left Cuba, she crossed water but not memory.
03:17.099 --> 03:20.584
[SPEAKER_01]: Miami in the late 1980s offered no gentler structure.
03:21.045 --> 03:22.588
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a city of extremes.
03:23.028 --> 03:27.816
[SPEAKER_01]: Torres drank rum on her clean skies while cocaine money reshaped skylines.
03:27.796 --> 03:34.064
[SPEAKER_01]: Immigrants crowded into small apartment efficiencies, drugs flowed freely, violence was common.
03:34.605 --> 03:37.268
[SPEAKER_01]: Social services were overwhelmed or indifferent.
03:37.549 --> 03:47.382
[SPEAKER_01]: In this environment, survival demanded hardness, a hardness spread in isolation, where cries for help echoed unanswered amid the roar of excessive despair.
03:47.862 --> 03:50.766
[SPEAKER_01]: Cardona attached herself to Fidel Figaroa.
03:50.746 --> 03:58.458
[SPEAKER_01]: A drug distributor whose money briefly provided insulation from consequence, that insulation vanished when Figaroa was murdered.
03:58.879 --> 04:01.503
[SPEAKER_01]: He left behind and estate estimated at $100,000.
04:02.865 --> 04:06.631
[SPEAKER_01]: It was large enough to feel endless and small enough to disappear quickly.
04:07.072 --> 04:11.699
[SPEAKER_01]: The money funded cocaine, excess and distraction, it did not funds stability.
04:12.060 --> 04:15.285
[SPEAKER_01]: When it was gone, resentment replaced relief.
04:15.265 --> 04:20.791
[SPEAKER_01]: Responsibility became unbearable, children became burdens rather than dependence.
04:21.231 --> 04:28.239
[SPEAKER_01]: Of all her children, the youngest carried the greatest weight of that resentment, he became the focal point for every loss.
04:28.619 --> 04:35.006
[SPEAKER_01]: Every deprivation, every echo of her own early rejection, his name was Lazaro Figueroa.
04:37.969 --> 04:38.750
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome, listener.
04:39.631 --> 04:40.572
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm glad you're here.
04:41.593 --> 04:42.113
[SPEAKER_01]: Take a seat.
04:42.894 --> 04:43.855
[SPEAKER_01]: Next to the fire.
04:47.142 --> 04:54.840
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to Obscura, where we shine a light on the dark.
05:15.577 --> 05:21.805
[SPEAKER_01]: Missouri was born into a household already fractured by addiction, instability, unresolved rage.
05:22.225 --> 05:40.808
[SPEAKER_01]: From infancy, he was treated differently, he was left with strangers for extended periods, he was hidden when inconvenient, he was not nurtured, he was controlled, as months passed, that control escalated into violence, the abuse did not erupt suddenly, listener, he developed the repetition.
05:40.788 --> 05:47.635
[SPEAKER_01]: Through routine, through punishment and ministered so often that it lost any pretence of discipline became ritual.
05:47.995 --> 05:55.243
[SPEAKER_01]: With each blow, a reinforcement of dominance, each withholding a food, a lesson in powers and difference to suffering.
05:55.563 --> 06:05.513
[SPEAKER_01]: When Lazaro's body was discovered on the morning of November 2nd, 1990, by four to power in light and police in Miami Beach, it was not immediately identifiable.
06:05.493 --> 06:14.569
[SPEAKER_01]: Edwin placed deliberately beneath bushes, partially concealed, positioned between a tree in a garden wall several yards from any front entrance.
06:14.970 --> 06:21.561
[SPEAKER_01]: It was close enough to human activity to be found eventually, afar enough from view to delay discovery.
06:21.541 --> 06:32.545
[SPEAKER_01]: The choice of location suggested intent, not panic, a calculated abandonment, as if the perpetrator understood that time would erode evidence, while distance eroded accountability.
06:32.906 --> 06:40.883
[SPEAKER_01]: The condition of the body made clear that death was only the final event in a much longer process, Lazarus was severely malnourished.
06:40.863 --> 06:44.029
[SPEAKER_01]: At three years old, he weighed approximately 18 pounds.
06:44.309 --> 06:45.932
[SPEAKER_01]: His limbs were thin and wasted.
06:46.173 --> 06:48.958
[SPEAKER_01]: His abdomen protruded from prolonged starvation.
06:49.299 --> 06:54.168
[SPEAKER_01]: His skin hung loosely over bone, marked by bruises and multiple stages of healing.
06:54.488 --> 06:56.291
[SPEAKER_01]: Some bruises were dark and swollen.
06:56.612 --> 06:58.596
[SPEAKER_01]: Others had faded into yellow and green.
06:58.996 --> 07:03.124
[SPEAKER_01]: The wearing of color was a collage that hinted at prolonged anguish.
07:03.104 --> 07:14.183
[SPEAKER_01]: The flesh told a chronicle of unrelenting assault, where new marks overlayed old, purple and yellow, bloomed into flowering of sickly hues before fresh violence renewed the cycle.
07:14.784 --> 07:25.281
[SPEAKER_01]: Dr. Bruce Hyma, associate medical examiner, a waiter testified that was Zaro, had been bound, gagged, beaten, burned, and deprived of food over prolonged periods.
07:25.261 --> 07:26.823
[SPEAKER_01]: This was not neglect alone.
07:27.304 --> 07:29.087
[SPEAKER_01]: It was deliberate abuse.
07:29.107 --> 07:33.013
[SPEAKER_01]: Photographs shown to the jury depicted a body saturated with trauma.
07:33.494 --> 07:35.016
[SPEAKER_01]: His head and face were buddied.
07:35.417 --> 07:38.181
[SPEAKER_01]: His scalp bore evidence of blunt force injury.
07:38.842 --> 07:41.927
[SPEAKER_01]: One leg appeared larger than the other due to swelling from injury.
07:42.288 --> 07:47.556
[SPEAKER_01]: His diapers were soiled and secured with brown duct tape wrapped tightly around his waist.
07:47.536 --> 07:49.720
[SPEAKER_01]: The tape pressed directly against skin.
07:50.120 --> 07:50.942
[SPEAKER_01]: It was not loose.
07:51.382 --> 07:52.504
[SPEAKER_01]: It was not temporary.
07:52.825 --> 07:58.374
[SPEAKER_01]: It was applied to prevent removal, to contain excrement, and to eliminate the need for changing him.
07:58.755 --> 08:05.005
[SPEAKER_01]: The adhesive bit in the tender flesh, causing wrong abrasions, were waste festered against wounds.
08:05.386 --> 08:10.354
[SPEAKER_01]: The stench, a constant reminder of degradation, imposed without mercy.
08:10.334 --> 08:15.452
[SPEAKER_01]: Mazarou, this child, this baby, did not die from a single injury.
08:15.833 --> 08:19.686
[SPEAKER_01]: He was physically abused over months and neglected over months.
08:19.936 --> 08:24.721
[SPEAKER_01]: Now nutrition and anemia, weakened his body to the point where healing was impossible.
08:25.261 --> 08:28.144
[SPEAKER_01]: Injuries accumulated faster than recovery could occur.
08:28.164 --> 08:31.667
[SPEAKER_01]: Dr. Hyma cataloged the injuries with clinical precision.
08:32.088 --> 08:37.533
[SPEAKER_01]: Repeated trauma until his arms left arm, caused the muscle tissue between the elbow and shoulder to ossify.
08:37.853 --> 08:39.175
[SPEAKER_01]: Muscle had turned a bone.
08:39.475 --> 08:43.799
[SPEAKER_01]: The arm became rigid, permanently bent at a 90-degree angle.
08:43.819 --> 08:45.621
[SPEAKER_01]: It could no longer bend or function.
08:45.941 --> 08:47.783
[SPEAKER_01]: This was not a birth defect.
08:47.763 --> 08:50.048
[SPEAKER_01]: It was the result of repeated injury.
08:50.449 --> 09:01.512
[SPEAKER_01]: Fractures knit wrongly in the absence of care, tissue petrifying and agony, mocking the limb and eternal deformity, as a testament to blows that shattered more than bone.
09:01.953 --> 09:06.683
[SPEAKER_01]: Deep bruises on Lasaro's left hand and palm were consistent with defensive wounds.
09:06.764 --> 09:09.953
[SPEAKER_01]: Even at three years old, he attempted to protect himself.
09:10.394 --> 09:13.843
[SPEAKER_01]: His body was covered in bumps, bruises, and cigarette burns.
09:14.344 --> 09:17.954
[SPEAKER_01]: Some burns were round, consisted with contact from a cigarette tip.
09:18.516 --> 09:20.180
[SPEAKER_01]: The skin puckered and blistered.
09:20.240 --> 09:23.068
[SPEAKER_01]: The pain seared through fragile nerves.
09:23.048 --> 09:33.118
[SPEAKER_01]: Each application, a deliberate inflection of fire upon innocence, is skull had fractured, his brain had sustained injury, his left arm was frozen in place.
09:33.578 --> 09:49.714
[SPEAKER_01]: Dr. Hyma described the condition plainly, this was child torture, a systemic dismantling of a human being, a baby, piece by piece, in the privacy of domestic shadows, despite suffering a fractured skull and brain injury,
09:49.694 --> 09:53.380
[SPEAKER_01]: Missouri may have lived for up to three days after being abandoned.
09:53.761 --> 09:59.611
[SPEAKER_01]: Associate medical examiner Haima, determined that the child had been dead less than 24 hours when discovered.
09:59.992 --> 10:05.982
[SPEAKER_01]: This meant that after sustaining catastrophic injury, Missouri alive, helpless.
10:05.962 --> 10:09.666
[SPEAKER_01]: unattended and in pain, before death finally occurred.
10:10.207 --> 10:22.181
[SPEAKER_01]: A lone beneath the bushes, insects crawling over open wounds, the sun beating down, or the night chill seeping in, consciousness flickering amid swelling brain tissue, and unrelenting thirst.
10:22.542 --> 10:32.273
[SPEAKER_01]: The final cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma to the head, inflicted by a baseball bat, compounded by starvation and extensive bodily trauma.
10:32.253 --> 10:38.651
[SPEAKER_01]: trial evidence demonstrated that Lazaro experienced approximately 18 months of sustained abuse won't live.
10:39.172 --> 10:47.275
[SPEAKER_01]: Medical findings documented repeated fractures, including skull fractures accompanied by subdural and subaract noise hematomas, is two
10:47.255 --> 10:54.049
[SPEAKER_01]: upper front teeth had been knocked out, some injuries were hours old, other stays, others weeks are months old.
10:54.470 --> 11:07.035
[SPEAKER_01]: His body functioned as a timeline of suffering, a living ledger of cruelty, where every mark recorded a moment when intervention failed and indifference prevailed for weeks after the discovery.
11:07.015 --> 11:19.446
[SPEAKER_01]: No one knew who he was, because his remains were unidentified, Mokomedia referred to him simply as Baby Lonly Pops, a nickname derived from the cartoon candy pattern on the T-shirt he was wearing.
11:20.006 --> 11:35.740
[SPEAKER_01]: The name stuck, the contrast was obscene, bright colors against dirt, childish imagery, against visible neglect, the whimsical fabric clinging to a frame reduced to skeletal ruin, as if innocence mocked by its own
11:35.720 --> 11:51.181
[SPEAKER_01]: Police appealed to the public using flyers and television broadcast deliberately withholding certain details, including the tape, used on the diaper, on November 6th, Martha Faitis, recognized the photograph on television, and contacted authorities.
11:51.601 --> 11:57.930
[SPEAKER_01]: She identified the child as Lazaro Figueroa, the son of Fidel Figueroa, an animaria cardona.
11:57.910 --> 12:02.939
[SPEAKER_01]: Other witnesses came forward, Betty Walker contacted the police early in the investigation.
12:03.280 --> 12:05.844
[SPEAKER_01]: She recalled Zing Lazaro and North Miami Beach.
12:06.265 --> 12:11.374
[SPEAKER_01]: Mound the wrist, sometimes still wearing diapers, running across streets without supervision.
12:11.735 --> 12:14.399
[SPEAKER_01]: His right arm was held stiffly against his body.
12:14.820 --> 12:19.328
[SPEAKER_01]: As though in a sling, he appeared small for his age, he appeared unattended.
12:19.308 --> 12:25.198
[SPEAKER_01]: A tiny figure navigating danger alone, the world vast and hostile around his diminished form.
12:25.699 --> 12:31.308
[SPEAKER_01]: Mercedes Estrada lives at 8030 Abid Avenue, apartment 2A, on Halloween night.
12:31.709 --> 12:34.013
[SPEAKER_01]: She heard screaming from the neighboring apartment.
12:34.293 --> 12:36.297
[SPEAKER_01]: The cries were high pitched and frantic.
12:36.697 --> 12:38.761
[SPEAKER_01]: They continued long enough to alarm her.
12:39.181 --> 12:43.729
[SPEAKER_01]: Then came a heavy thump against the shared wall, a sound with weight behind it.
12:43.709 --> 12:45.491
[SPEAKER_01]: The screaming stopped abruptly.
12:45.932 --> 12:48.134
[SPEAKER_01]: The silence that followed was absolute.
12:48.454 --> 12:53.580
[SPEAKER_01]: It strata reported the incident to the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services the following day.
12:54.001 --> 12:55.082
[SPEAKER_01]: No response came.
12:55.462 --> 13:02.330
[SPEAKER_01]: The report disappeared in the machinery of bureaucracy, swallowed by forms and finals, priorities shift in elsewhere.
13:02.751 --> 13:06.375
[SPEAKER_01]: A child's agony reduced a paper work that gathered dust.
13:06.355 --> 13:14.289
[SPEAKER_01]: Weeks later, Miriam Ramos showed a strata a flyer with photographs of two women, a strata believes she recognized the child.
13:14.610 --> 13:22.744
[SPEAKER_01]: On November 27th, Ramos brought a strata to meet Detective Joseph Matthews at a burger king, Matthews and Detective Trujillo.
13:22.724 --> 13:30.975
[SPEAKER_01]: went to the apartment spoke with 14-year-old Gloria Puy, tape similar to that found him Lazarus diaper, was discovered on the mailbox.
13:31.315 --> 13:34.559
[SPEAKER_01]: Gloria stated she used it to keep the baby diaper in place.
13:34.980 --> 13:44.192
[SPEAKER_01]: She cried, she confessed, she claimed she pushed him that his head struck the wall, that he died, her confession unraveled quickly, listener.
13:44.172 --> 13:48.678
[SPEAKER_01]: She said a woman paid her $50 to babysit an unnamed boy for two weeks.
13:49.039 --> 13:51.102
[SPEAKER_01]: She admitted to forgetting to feed him sometimes.
13:51.322 --> 13:53.285
[SPEAKER_01]: She described wrapping tape around him.
13:53.605 --> 13:55.368
[SPEAKER_01]: She claimed she was a woman he died.
13:55.768 --> 13:58.592
[SPEAKER_01]: She said her mother and friend helped dispose of the body.
13:58.632 --> 14:01.877
[SPEAKER_01]: Detective Matthews doubted her account almost immediately.
14:01.917 --> 14:07.885
[SPEAKER_01]: None of what she described would explain away all the numerous injuries to the child.
14:07.865 --> 14:15.593
[SPEAKER_01]: Gloria used Lazaro's name later in the conversation, despite investigators withholding it, despite Gloria claiming she didn't know it.
14:15.913 --> 14:25.203
[SPEAKER_01]: She described injuries not present on the body, Matthews thought that she was cognitively slow, frightened, possibly seeking attention or relief from fear.
14:25.683 --> 14:33.151
[SPEAKER_01]: The next morning, Detective Gary Kluger, drove her back, she asked questions about the difference between intentional and accidental actions.
14:33.551 --> 14:34.632
[SPEAKER_01]: Police cleared her.
14:34.612 --> 14:44.650
[SPEAKER_01]: The confession was false, common at this stage of an investigation, a desperate fabrication born of confusion and terror and the shadow of greater culpability.
14:45.472 --> 14:47.376
[SPEAKER_01]: Investigators turned to school records.
14:47.856 --> 14:51.904
[SPEAKER_01]: Juan Penta was enrolled first in South Miami, then in St.
14:51.964 --> 14:55.270
[SPEAKER_01]: Cloud near Orlando, detectives waited at the school.
14:55.250 --> 14:58.596
[SPEAKER_01]: This was pre everyone being online, listener.
14:58.956 --> 15:01.481
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't the easiest thing in the world to find people.
15:01.901 --> 15:06.609
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes, you had to track them down, especially if they didn't want to be found.
15:07.030 --> 15:14.723
[SPEAKER_01]: I know that sounds absurd today when there are cameras everywhere from the sky to lamp posts, but this was a different time.
15:15.064 --> 15:16.887
[SPEAKER_01]: I just wanted to draw attention to that.
15:16.867 --> 15:21.032
[SPEAKER_01]: Anna Cardona and Olivia Gonzalez Mendoza arrived to pick him up.
15:21.392 --> 15:23.695
[SPEAKER_01]: Olivia was aggressive and confrontational.
15:24.055 --> 15:27.359
[SPEAKER_01]: Detective Santiago informed Anna that was always dead.
15:27.719 --> 15:28.260
[SPEAKER_01]: She cried.
15:28.660 --> 15:30.302
[SPEAKER_01]: She said she had left him with a woman.
15:30.562 --> 15:33.305
[SPEAKER_01]: They were arrested and transported to the sheriff's office.
15:33.766 --> 15:38.331
[SPEAKER_01]: Santiago questioned why a mother would leave a three-year-old with a mentally ill teenager.
15:38.771 --> 15:42.375
[SPEAKER_01]: Anna initially described an elegant woman in a restaurant.
15:42.635 --> 15:45.979
[SPEAKER_01]: This did not match the description of
15:45.959 --> 15:51.667
[SPEAKER_01]: Matthews interrogated her with San Diego translating and repeatedly asked about her other children.
15:52.028 --> 15:53.791
[SPEAKER_01]: Matthew left a retriever recorder.
15:54.071 --> 15:57.256
[SPEAKER_01]: When he returned, he was greeted with a strange image.
15:57.837 --> 15:59.058
[SPEAKER_01]: Anna was on her knees.
15:59.679 --> 16:00.581
[SPEAKER_01]: She was crying.
16:01.122 --> 16:03.445
[SPEAKER_01]: Kissing San Diego's feet.
16:03.425 --> 16:07.894
[SPEAKER_01]: Matthews later stated, he did not understand the scope of this case at that moment.
16:08.335 --> 16:10.900
[SPEAKER_01]: This was a lesson and how bad the job could get.
16:10.920 --> 16:14.788
[SPEAKER_01]: In his formal statement came seven hours after a rest.
16:15.249 --> 16:18.035
[SPEAKER_01]: She claimed Lazaro injured himself jumping off a bed.
16:18.075 --> 16:20.459
[SPEAKER_01]: She said she attempted to revive him.
16:20.840 --> 16:22.243
[SPEAKER_01]: She said Olivia Helm.
16:22.223 --> 16:28.433
[SPEAKER_01]: She said she feared police would take her children, she suggested leaving Lazaro on the door step of a wealthy home.
16:28.893 --> 16:31.798
[SPEAKER_01]: She claimed he was alive when abandoned, they fled to St.
16:31.838 --> 16:42.274
[SPEAKER_01]: Cloud, she denied most injuries, she mentioned a slight limp, she begged not to lose custody, and she never asked about Lazaro or his condition when they found him.
16:42.254 --> 16:46.498
[SPEAKER_01]: Olivia Gonzalez Mendoza provided a different account, Listener.
16:46.939 --> 16:48.380
[SPEAKER_01]: The apartment was filthy.
16:48.741 --> 16:50.483
[SPEAKER_01]: The mattress was soaked with urine.
16:50.863 --> 16:52.685
[SPEAKER_01]: Lasaro was kept in a closet.
16:52.965 --> 16:56.549
[SPEAKER_01]: He was beaten for wedding the bed, despite never being body-trained.
16:56.829 --> 16:58.811
[SPEAKER_01]: Dipers went unchanged for days.
16:59.252 --> 17:02.655
[SPEAKER_01]: The smell overwhelming, hatred, sickly sweet.
17:03.076 --> 17:09.983
[SPEAKER_01]: My asthma of decay that permeated walls and lungs,
17:09.963 --> 17:16.491
[SPEAKER_01]: Anna was known to Yanklizaro's arm violently when she was angry with him, breaks occurred repeatedly.
17:16.872 --> 17:17.993
[SPEAKER_01]: She would punch his face.
17:18.393 --> 17:19.274
[SPEAKER_01]: She pulled his hair.
17:19.715 --> 17:21.297
[SPEAKER_01]: She drag him upstairs by it.
17:21.758 --> 17:24.901
[SPEAKER_01]: On the day of Luzaro's death, Olivia opened the closet.
17:25.322 --> 17:28.185
[SPEAKER_01]: The little boy screamed when he saw his mother behind her.
17:28.606 --> 17:31.870
[SPEAKER_01]: The reaction was immediate and involuntary.
17:31.850 --> 17:44.610
[SPEAKER_01]: He was terrified of Anna, a Pavlovian recoil, the mere sight triggering primal dread, conditioned by months of torment, Olivia threatened him with a baseball bat to silence him, and it took the bat.
17:44.990 --> 17:49.157
[SPEAKER_01]: Olivia believed Anna taped Lazarus' mouth and returned him to the closet.
17:49.437 --> 17:58.431
[SPEAKER_01]: When Olivia returned from bathing, Anna said she had killed him,
17:58.411 --> 18:01.835
[SPEAKER_01]: They attempted revival with alcohol and water, if fail.
18:02.395 --> 18:11.766
[SPEAKER_01]: In a dress, him wrapped him in a bed sheet, and insisted on dumping the body, Olivia suggested taking him to a hospital, and a calder crazy in a snitch.
18:12.166 --> 18:19.074
[SPEAKER_01]: They drove toward Miami Beach, and it removed the child from the car, and left him in the bushes of a wealthy looking estate.
18:19.474 --> 18:25.060
[SPEAKER_01]: Gonzalez Mendoza later pled guilty to second-degree murder and aggravated child abuse.
18:25.040 --> 18:28.463
[SPEAKER_01]: She served nearly 17 years of a 40-year sentence.
18:28.904 --> 18:30.285
[SPEAKER_01]: She was released in 2008.
18:31.046 --> 18:39.674
[SPEAKER_01]: Over 18 months, Anacardona beat, choke, starved, confined, emotionally abused, and systematically torture Blasaro.
18:39.974 --> 18:54.608
[SPEAKER_01]: He was tied to a bed, bound, gagged, left-in bath tubs with extreme water temperatures, unlocked in closets, scalding or freezing liquid searing skin already raw from bindings,
18:54.588 --> 18:58.679
[SPEAKER_01]: Tape wrapped around his diaper to contain waste and avoid changing him.
18:58.960 --> 19:01.407
[SPEAKER_01]: He was beaten with belts, shoes, and hangers.
19:01.507 --> 19:02.189
[SPEAKER_01]: He was bitten.
19:02.570 --> 19:04.095
[SPEAKER_01]: He was thrown against walls.
19:04.616 --> 19:09.610
[SPEAKER_01]: On the day of death, he was beaten with a baseball bat after soiling himself.
19:09.590 --> 19:11.893
[SPEAKER_01]: Arrow did not die from a fall.
19:11.913 --> 19:14.036
[SPEAKER_01]: He died from fear and impact.
19:14.056 --> 19:16.459
[SPEAKER_01]: When Anner returned, he screamed instantly.
19:16.519 --> 19:20.083
[SPEAKER_01]: This, listener, was a condition to response.
19:20.464 --> 19:26.011
[SPEAKER_01]: In a struck him repeatedly, the blows were so hard that they caused diffuse, accidental injury.
19:26.411 --> 19:29.315
[SPEAKER_01]: His right arm fractured as he tried to defend himself.
19:29.635 --> 19:33.560
[SPEAKER_01]: His skull fractured, his teeth were dislodged from his mouth.
19:33.580 --> 19:36.444
[SPEAKER_01]: 43 injuries were documented.
19:36.784 --> 19:39.107
[SPEAKER_01]: His life was defined by pain.
19:39.087 --> 19:45.638
[SPEAKER_01]: Every breath taken in anticipation of the next strike, every moment, a calculation of survival.
19:45.979 --> 20:05.331
[SPEAKER_01]: The case became known nationally as the Baby Lollipop Smurder, after abandoning Lizarro's body, Cardona and Gonzalez fled to Central Florida, stopping at Disney World for a quick vacation, a grotesque juxtaposition of whimsy and horror, laughter echoing amid memories of screams.
20:05.463 --> 20:08.068
[SPEAKER_01]: Anna Cardona was sentenced to death in 1992.
20:08.709 --> 20:13.418
[SPEAKER_01]: The conviction overturned in 2002 due to a Brady violation.
20:13.779 --> 20:15.802
[SPEAKER_01]: She was sentenced to death again in 2011.
20:16.644 --> 20:22.194
[SPEAKER_01]: That conviction was overturned in 2016 due to prosecutorial misconduct.
20:22.495 --> 20:26.222
[SPEAKER_01]: In 2017, prosecutors waved the death penalty.
20:26.202 --> 20:29.766
[SPEAKER_01]: Cardona testified, denied abuse, and blamed Olivia.
20:30.227 --> 20:31.949
[SPEAKER_01]: The jury rejected her account.
20:32.310 --> 20:34.292
[SPEAKER_01]: She was sentenced to life without parole.
20:34.833 --> 20:39.198
[SPEAKER_01]: Judge DS stated that injury followed injury from toes to brain.
20:39.519 --> 20:45.025
[SPEAKER_01]: He said animals show more empathy than this quote-unquote mother into her son.
20:45.486 --> 20:47.569
[SPEAKER_01]: The trial stretched across decades.
20:48.129 --> 20:51.113
[SPEAKER_01]: Trauma was cited, did not absolve.
20:51.093 --> 21:00.607
[SPEAKER_01]: Choices were made daily, each decision a reaffirmation of cruelty over compassion, erosion complete, and it remains in prison to this day.
21:01.048 --> 21:06.956
[SPEAKER_01]: Her children are grown, one point a her first son died in 2018 at age 37.
21:07.817 --> 21:10.261
[SPEAKER_01]: Tahimi has disappeared from public view.
21:10.802 --> 21:19.935
[SPEAKER_01]: Miami changed, the closet empty, the beaches remain bright, the only photograph of
21:19.915 --> 21:21.860
[SPEAKER_01]: We do not know his favorite food.
21:22.341 --> 21:23.825
[SPEAKER_01]: We do not know his favorite song.
21:24.226 --> 21:25.509
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't even know his smile.
21:25.910 --> 21:37.418
[SPEAKER_01]: These ordinary joys denied, erased by the magnitude of suffering imposed, and their place stands only the stark image of Ruin, a small form laid bare under forensic lights.
21:37.398 --> 21:59.743
[SPEAKER_01]: ribs protruding like accusations, skin modeled with the chronology of cruelty, that single captured moment of death has become his eternal portrait circulated across decades, a digital relic that outlives any memory of vitality, no snapshot exists in public view of him totalling unsteadily, no frozen laugh from a birthday song.
21:59.723 --> 22:03.673
[SPEAKER_01]: No candid glimpse of eyes wide with wonder, rather than dread.
22:04.175 --> 22:15.184
[SPEAKER_01]: The word possesses him only in extremity, reduced to evidence, his humanity compressed into the grotesque stillness of autopsy tables and courtroom projections.
22:15.164 --> 22:34.814
[SPEAKER_01]: This absence is itself a final violation, a theft that extends beyond the grave, ensuring that even in remembrance he remains defined by violation, rather than by the simple, irreplaceable spark of a child's unburdened existence, Masaro knew only fear at the sight of his mother, listener.
22:35.355 --> 22:39.822
[SPEAKER_01]: He was only three years old, contemplate that final condition recoil.
22:39.802 --> 22:45.111
[SPEAKER_01]: The involuntary scream that rose unbitten when her shadow fell across the closet door.
22:45.592 --> 22:47.396
[SPEAKER_01]: In those brief years, I wanted to him.
22:47.836 --> 22:55.410
[SPEAKER_01]: The maternal figure, source of solace and any sane order of things, had been transmuted into an architect of terror.
22:55.430 --> 23:03.885
[SPEAKER_01]: Every approach, signal, impending pain, every voice, a prelude to blows, or confinement, or the slow ache of hunger.
23:03.865 --> 23:22.127
[SPEAKER_01]: The bond that nature intends as sanctuary became instead a mechanism of torment, twisting the most fundamental human attachment into a source of unrelenting horror, and an age when other children seek arms for comfort, he learned to associate them with restraint, with bindings that cut into flesh.
23:22.107 --> 23:34.879
[SPEAKER_01]: With the ink of hair, or the swing of improvised weapons, his short life was a prolonged lesson in betrayal, where the person obligated to shield him from the world's harshness, instead embodied its cruelest indifference.
23:35.239 --> 23:42.766
[SPEAKER_01]: This perversion strikes at the root at what we claim to hold sacred, exposing the fragility of protections we assume and need.
23:43.247 --> 23:51.034
[SPEAKER_01]: It reveals how readily the impulse to nurture can invert into destruction, when unchecked by conscience or consequence.
23:51.132 --> 23:55.077
[SPEAKER_01]: leaving a child in having a private hell disguised as home.
23:55.557 --> 24:05.830
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the record, a somber and dimet of what humanity permits in its hidden corners, where small lives are extinguished slowly, and the world proceeds unmoved.
24:06.190 --> 24:08.773
[SPEAKER_01]: Consider the depth of that permission, listener.
24:09.134 --> 24:13.839
[SPEAKER_01]: The vast complacency that allows such erosion to proceed unseen, unhindered.
24:14.380 --> 24:18.405
[SPEAKER_01]: In this lattice of indifference, cruelty found fertile ground,
24:18.385 --> 24:27.100
[SPEAKER_01]: accumulating day by day, bruise upon bruise, deprivation upon deprivation, until a fragile body can bear no more.
24:27.741 --> 24:38.419
[SPEAKER_01]: This arrow remains frozen in the single posthumous image, his brief existence distilled into a cautionary specter, haunting databases and documentaries alike.
24:38.399 --> 25:07.461
[SPEAKER_01]: a boy who could have chased waves on that same bright beach, who might have known the taste of simple pleasures, the sound of laughter untouched by fears, instead his world contracted to corners and closets, to the sting of bindings and the null of emptiness, his final hours, perhaps days, spent alone amid foliage, consciousness having amid insects and isolation, the vast indifference of nature mirroring the human failure that deposited him there.
25:07.441 --> 25:11.554
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the Abyss we can front when we peer into such records.
25:12.115 --> 25:17.873
[SPEAKER_01]: Not merely the monstrosity of individual acts, but the monstrous ease with which they are accommodated.
25:17.913 --> 25:21.484
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for listening and keep the fire burning.
