Disturbing footage shows mother Kristel Candelario, 32, calmly lying to police about finding her 16-month-old baby dead – after leaving her daughter to rot in her playpen while frolicking on Puerto Rico’s beaches for 10 days used to be

Disturbing footage has captured the moment an Ohio mother calmly lied to police about finding her infant daughter dead in her crib – after secretly leaving the child behind to go on a tropical holiday.

Kristel Candelario, 32, was confronted after her 16-month-old daughter Jailyn was found starving in her own filth after being stranded for 10 days.

The mother, sentenced this week to life in prison, was seen on police bodycam footage in which officers said her daughter had been vomiting throughout the week of June 2023.

Candelario was actually frolicking on a Puerto Rican beach.

In the shocking clip, she coldly told officers: “She had no food, she refused.”

While her daughter was starving, Candelario shared vacation photos of her smiling on a beach, with the caption, “The time enjoyed is the time truly lived.”

A medical examiner ruled the child had died of starvation and severe dehydration, and a prosecutor said the sight “will stay with me for many years to come.”

Although she later pleaded guilty to aggravated murder and child endangerment, the new bodycam footage shows that she initially lied to police when they questioned her about her daughter’s sudden death.

While she claimed the toddler was “refusing food” before she died, an officer asks her, “And how was she Wednesday and Thursday?”

“She refused, perhaps because she hadn’t eaten two days earlier,” she replied, before shrugging her shoulders to feign confusion in the chilling clip.

“But that’s why I was scared, because I’m like, oh my God, we have to go to the hospital because she’s not eating anything.”

Candelario, who did not appear angry or emotional about her daughter’s death, said the child looked “small” and was “losing weight,” and continued to make up a story about being home all the time.

“When I woke up this morning, she was asleep,” she said. “She sleeps every day, twelve hours.”

“She sleeps from 9 p.m. to 9 or 10 a.m., 12 hours, so this morning I slept too, she never wakes up.”

An officer interrupted her to ask what happened the night before, to which the killer said, “She cried a lot last night.

“And I see one moment, when I was taking a shower, she screamed like, ‘Aaah,’ I don’t know, she probably got hurt, maybe.”

“I pick her up this morning and she looks really dry,” she continued, before saying a few sentences in Spanish.

At her sentencing this week, a judge condemned her actions in the strongest terms as the mother was sent behind bars for life with no chance of parole.

County Common Pleas Court Judge Brendan Sheehan told Candelario she had committed “the ultimate betrayal” by leaving her daughter alone without food.

“Just as you failed to release Jailyn from her captivity, you should also spend the rest of your life in a cell without freedom,” Judge Sheehan said.

“The only difference will be that at least the prison will feed you and give you fluids that you denied it.”

Candelario, who struggles with depression and related mental health issues, said she has prayed daily for forgiveness.

“I’m in so much pain over the loss of my baby, Jailyn,” she said. ‘I am very hurt by everything that has happened.

“I don’t try to justify my actions, but no one knew how much I suffered and what I went through… God and my daughter have forgiven me.”

Curiously, she made the trips with her eldest daughter, and it is unclear why Candelario asked no one to help her care for her child while she was traveling.

After ten days of sunbathing on the beach and enjoying the local sights, she returned to her home on June 16 to find her daughter not breathing.

Paramedics and Cleveland police tragically pronounced the one-year-old dead at the scene, and prosecutors said the child was discovered “on a liner soiled with urine and feces with soiled blankets.”

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley announced the plea in February, saying, “This case is one of those truly unimaginable cases that will stay with me for many years to come.

“As prosecutors, it is our job to represent the victims and today we spoke on behalf of 16-month-old Jailyn – who is no longer with us – because of the selfish decisions her mother made.”

After news of the gruesome death made headlines, a neighbor also revealed that this wasn’t the first time Candelario left her daughter home alone.

An acquaintance told News5 Cleveland, “We keep telling her not to leave her alone, not just me, my girlfriend across the street, but she always leaves her alone.”

Another female neighbor, who was not identified, told CNN that Jailyn was “always a happy baby” and “always smiling.”

The neighbor’s daughter said there were “plenty of people” around who could have looked at the baby. She said, “She could have knocked on one of our doors and asked us to take care of Jailyn, and we would have.”

“When they told us the condition they found her in, I was just heartbroken,” the teenage neighbor told CNN.