Baby Hope’s distraught mother is “devastated” by revelations that the tragic 4-year-old was tortured by a despicable cousin before he killed her and stashed the child’s body in a cooler in the infamous cold case.

“We are too emotional to talk right now because of everything we are going through,” a crying Margarita Castillo said through the door of her Elmhurst apartment Monday.

“You wouldn’t understand my pain.”

But, she said, “I want to thank the people who prayed for my daughter.”

Castillo, an illegal immigrant, would not answer when asked why she didn’t go to cops when little Angelica Castillo first went missing back in July 1991, setting off the case that baffled cops for decades until new information resulted in Saturday’s arrest of the baby’s uncle, Conrado Juarez, for the heinous crime.

Police sources this weekend told The Post that Angelica had been tied to a table and denied water in the family’s Queens apartment.

“[Juarez’s] intent was to rape her, but it turned into a murder because she screamed,” a law enforcement source said. “Even a grown woman would scream under the circumstances.

“To cover up the scream, he used the pillow to suffocate her to keep her quiet.”

Castillo, who still lives with the four youngest of her 10 children, also would not say if she has spoken to Juarez, who is now sitting in Rikers, charged with second-degree murder.

Asked what she thought would be an appropriate fate for the confessed child killer, Castillo said, “you can’t even describe a punishment.”

“We are just waiting for justice,” she said. “We are never going to have peace.”

The NYPD nabbed Juarez after getting new tips about Baby Hope on the 22nd anniversary of her death.

Margarita Castillo has said she did not know her daughter was murdered, and had long said that the child was spirited off to Mexico by her abusive father, Genaro Ramirez.

Cops were led this year to Margarita Castillo by an informant who recounted that one of Angelica’s siblings had talked to her about a dead sister. In August, detectives showed up at Castillo’s home and used a ruse to get her to lick an envelope which was tested for DNA.

The trail then led to Juarez, who was working as a dishwasher in the West Village.

He confessed during a marathon interrogation to killing little Angelica and stashing her body with the help of his now-dead sister.