New York City police officers found a woman’s body in a Pennsylvania landfill that is believed to be Monica Lozada-Rivadeneira, the missing mother of a 4-year-old girl who was found abandoned on a Queens street last month.

At about noon yesterday officers unearthed the body from about 18 feet of garbage in a Vintondale, Pa., landfill, the spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, Betsy Mallison, said.

Officers had also looked for the body in Queens and had scoured two Pennsylvania landfills where some of the city’s refuse is hauled. The search centered on landfills because Ms. Lozada-Rivadeneira’s boyfriend is alleged to have killed her and disposed of the body in a trash bag on a Queens street near their home.

Police said a crane was used to sort through the heaps of garbage in Laurel Highland Landfill and the body fell from the machine’s claws. The body was naked but intact, police said.

Because New York City has more resources to perform the autopsy, the body is being transported to New York this morning, the Cambria County coroner, Dennis Kwiatkowski, said.

At the end of last month, Ms. Lozada-Rivadeneira’s boyfriend, Cesar Ascarronz, 32, allegedly choked her to death in their apartment at 111-17 66th Ave., according to a criminal complaint. The suspect then is said to have cut her throat and stuffed the body in a garbage bag. Two days later he allegedly put the bag in the back of his vehicle and drove to 108th Street near 67th Avenue. He left the bag beside others on the sidewalk, the court document says.

On September 25, the suspect woke Ms. Lozada-Rivadeneira’s daughter, Valery Belen Saavedra Lozada, and dropped her off in front of 63-62 76th St. before driving away, the complaint says.

The discovery of the woman’s body came on the same day that the Bolivian mother of Valery’s father – who is in a Bolivian jail – held a press conference at the Bolivian consulate in Midtown to announce her arrival in the city. The Spanish-speaking grandmother, Ana Maria Saavedra, said she had not yet seen her granddaughter and that she hoped she and Valery’s maternal grandmother, Roxana Rivadeneira – who has not yet arrived in America – would be able to secure custody of the girl. Valery has a 3-year-old brother, Juan Carlos Saavedra, who resides in Bolivia with the children’s father’s family.

Mr. Ascarronz was charged by the office of the Queens district attorney, Richard Brown, with two counts of murder, and reckless endangerment, endangering the welfare of a child, and child abandonment with regard to Valery, as well as tampering with physical evidence.