Woman sentenced for drowning her child in Twin Cities hotel, leaving body in dumpster

A 21-year-old woman has been sentenced to more than three decades in prison for drowning her child in a hotel bathtub.

Esperanza R. Harding was sentenced in Hennepin County District Court last week to a 32-year term in connection with the death of her 7-month-old son on Feb. 28, 2024.

With credit for time in jail since her arrest, Harding is expected to serve the first 20⅔ years of her term in prison and the balance on supervised release.

Her boyfriend, Edwin Cosmo Trudeau, 19, of Minnetonka pleaded guilty last month to aiding an offender after the fact and is scheduled to be sentenced on May 5.

Despite a painstaking search spread over many days, Bloomington Deputy Police Chief Kim Clauson said Mateo Harding’s remains were never found in the massive Pine Bend landfill in southeastern Inver Grove Heights.

“My thoughts are with Mateo’s family today,” read a post-sentencing statement issued by Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty. “This was a heartbreaking case and while Ms. Harding is being held accountable, it does not return Mateo to his family or offer him the life he should have had the chance to live.”

Police went through the landfill in search of the infant, who prosecutors say was thrown away in a dumpster after his death in a room at the Quality Inn in the 800 block of E. American Boulevard in Bloomington.

Harding, who had no permanent address at the time of the killing, put her son’s body in a backpack and disposed of it in a dumpster outside the hotel, according to the charges. The dumpster’s contents were then hauled to the privately operated landfill.

Police were sent to Children’s Minnesota hospital in Minneapolis a week later regarding a missing child. Harding told them her baby son died of natural causes in the hospital. However, there was no record of the child having been there.

Eventually, Harding admitted to Minneapolis police that she drowned her son in her hotel room bathtub, wrapped up the body, put it in a backpack and threw it in a dumpster. Harding said it was Trudeau’s idea.

Trudeau admitted to police that he went to the hotel room and found Mateo dead.

Harding told Bloomington police that Trudeau did not like her son and wanted her to put him up for adoption as a way to “prove that he was her top priority,” the charges read. Harding said she was mad that the boy was crying and making it difficult for her to enjoy her bath.