Esperanza Rae Harding and Edwin Cosmo Trudeau (Mug shots: Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office).
The mother of a slain baby boy learned her fate Thursday. Esperanza Rae Harding, 21, must spend 32 years in prison for one count of second-degree intentional murder.
As Law&Crime previously reported, Harding told cops she drowned 8-month-old Mateo because his crying ruined her bath at a hotel in Bloomington, Minnesota, on Feb. 28, 2024. (Prior reporting had his age as 7 months.) She texted her boyfriend, Edwin Cosmo Trudeau, 19, in the lead-up to the crime, “he doing to much rn, I can’t 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 her, “Ok that’s ok.”
And when she later wrote that Mateo was dead and she was sorry, he replied, “Don’t be.”
Trudeau basically served as her cheerleader, comparing themselves to bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde, and saying, “If you go down, I go down no matter what.” Harding told authorities that her boyfriend did not like the baby and that he wanted her to give up the infant for adoption.
“She stated that Trudeau wanted her to prove that he was her top priority,” they wrote.
According to documents, Trudeau admitted to police he went to the hotel room and found the baby dead in the bathroom.
“The defendant admitted that he didn’t call for help, but rather, had sex with Harding before leaving the hotel room,” authorities wrote.
According to documents, Harding told investigators that Trudeau had unsuccessfully attempted 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 wrote. “The defendant stated that she knew she was going to do time because she killed her own kid.”
Harding and Trudeau pleaded guilty to their respective cases, but it looks like his prison term will pale in comparison to hers. Hennepin County prosecutors have said that as part of his plea deal for aiding an offender — accomplice after the fact, his sentence is capped at seven years and two months. He will learn his fate at a sentencing hearing scheduled for May 5.
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