The mother of a slain baby boy learnt her fate on Thursday. Esperanza Rae Harding, 21, faces 32 years in prison for one count of second-degree intentional murder.
As previously reported by Law&Crime, Harding told cops that she drowned 7-month-old Mateo on February 28, 2024, because his crying ruined her bath at a hotel in Bloomington, Minnesota.
(His age was previously reported as seven months.) In the lead-up to the crime, she texted her boyfriend, Edwin Cosmo Trudeau, 19, “he doing too much rn, I can not fucking sleep, Im trying tho, Im about to do something bad, Please answer me, He going to no be here much longer.”
Instead of talking her out of it, Trudeau wrote, “Ok, that is fine.”
When she later wrote that Mateo had died and she was sorry, he responded, “Do not be.”
Trudeau essentially acted as her cheerleader, comparing them to bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde and saying, “If you go down, I go down no matter what.” Harding told authorities that her boyfriend disliked the baby and wanted her to give it up for adoption.
“She stated that Trudeau wanted her to prove that he was her top priority,” the writers said.
According to documents, Trudeau told police he went to the hotel room and discovered the baby dead in the bathroom.
“The defendant admitted that he did not call for help, but rather, had sex with Harding before leaving the hotel room,” the police noted.
According to documents, Harding told investigators that Trudeau tried unsuccessfully to perform CPR before they had sex in the other room while the baby lay dead on the bathroom floor.
“According to the defendant, she packed up Victim in a backpack and threw Victim into a dumpster in the hotel parking lot,” they recorded. “The defendant stated that she knew she was going to do time because she killed her own kid.”
Harding and Trudeau both pleaded guilty in their respective cases, but it appears that his prison sentence will be significantly shorter than hers. According to Hennepin County prosecutors, as part of his plea agreement for aiding an offender — accomplice after the fact, his sentence is limited to seven years and two months. He will learn his fate at a sentencing hearing on May 5.