On November 2, 1990, Florida Power and Light workers discovered the emaciated body of a small child hidden in the bushes of a wealthy Miami Beach home. The boy, dressed only in a lollipop-decorated T-shirt and a soiled diaper wrapped in brown packing tape, had been beaten, starved, and systematically tortured. He weighed just eighteen pounds. This is part one of the story of how a mother's resentment turned deadly.

VICTIM PROFILE:

Lazaro Figueroa was born September 18, 1987, into what should have been a life of comfort. His father, Fidel Figueroa, was a well-connected drug dealer who kept his family in a lavish penthouse overlooking Biscayne Bay. But fate intervened before Lazaro ever drew breath. Just two days after his birth, his father was executed in a gangland-style shooting outside a Miami riverfront bar. The murder was never solved. From that moment forward, Lazaro became the target of his mother's displaced rage, blamed for the loss of everything she had.

THE CRIME:

Ana Maria Cardona's abuse of Lazaro began shortly after he was returned to her custody from foster care in late 1988. Over the next eighteen months, she systematically starved, beat, and confined her son in conditions the Dade County Medical Examiner would later call the worst child abuse he had ever witnessed. Lazaro spent weeks locked in closets and tied to beds. His arm was broken and left untreated, eventually becoming fixed at a ninety-degree angle. His two front teeth were knocked out. Cardona wrapped duct tape around his diapers to avoid changing them, leaving his skin raw with bedsores. On October 31, 1990, Cardona beat Lazaro with a baseball bat, fracturing his skull. She then dumped his dying body in the bushes of a Miami Beach mansion and fled the state with her girlfriend, Olivia Gonzalez, stopping at Disney World before their arrest.

THE INVESTIGATION:

Miami Beach police initially could not identify the battered child, dubbing him Baby Lollipops after his T-shirt. Detectives conducted door-to-door interviews in English and Spanish and distributed flyers throughout the community. The break came when a neighbor who had occasionally cared for Lazaro recognized him from police bulletins. The investigation led detectives to Ana Maria Cardona and Olivia Gonzalez, who had fled to central Florida. Both women were arrested within weeks. Gonzalez eventually testified that Cardona had called Lazaro the son of the devil and blamed him for her descent from riches to rags.

CURRENT STATUS:

Ana Maria Cardona has been convicted of first-degree murder three times. Her first two death sentences were overturned by the Florida Supreme Court on procedural grounds. In 2017, she was convicted for the third time and sentenced to life in prison without parole. Olivia Gonzalez served fourteen years for her role in Lazaro's abuse and has since been released.

RESOURCES:

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