CARLINA WHITE - 3 Weeks (1987) - NYC NY

An infant kidnapped 24 years ago from a city hospital improbably
resurfaced this month to reunite with her family, resolving one of the NYPD's most perplexing cold cases.
Carlina White
- last seen by her biological parents as a feverish 3-week-old infant -
met her mother, father and other now-ecstatic relatives over the
weekend.
"We ate and talked and got to know each other ... I feel great," said her mother, Joy White, who also met her granddaughter for the first time.
"I can sleep! I can definitely sleep now because this has been on my mind for so many years."
A DNA match revealed the connection between the adult woman living in Georgia under a different name and her New York relatives.
The girl's kidnapper - a drug-user who once beat Carlina with a shoe -
remained the target of a police search, according to Joy White.
"She didn't really raise her," the irate mother said. "She neglected her and let other people raise her."
The family's anger toward the missing suspect was overwhelmed by their elation about the discovery of the now 23-year-old woman.
"Carlina came home!" said her grandmother, Elizabeth White, 71, of Manhattan. "She came up from Atlanta and we were all here. Oh, what a beautiful girl."
Carlina White - raised in Bridgeport, Conn., under an alias, Nejdra Nance - suspected since her 16th birthday that her "family" wasn't flesh and blood, according to Joy White.
"To take somebody else's baby and neglect it and and not take care of
it - you have to be a sick person," Joy White said. "(Carlina) told me
she never said someone to say 'I love you,' or hug her."
Carlina contacted an organization for missing and exploited children to follow up on her suspicions.
The girl's mother learned her daughter was still alive Jan. 4, when
she received photos of the missing girl. A DNA match last night
confirmed their ties, she said.
"I was screaming, I was so excited," said Joy White. "As soon as I
saw those pictures I said, 'That's my daughter.' I saw myself in her."
Nejdra is the mother of a 5-year-old daughter, Samani, who came north with her.
"She's so beautiful," said Joy White. "She was like, 'I love you grandma.' Everything is grandma, grandma!"
Dad Carl Tyson said he didn't need any tests to know the young woman was his child.
"I already knew in my heart that this was my daughter," said Tyson,
who was 22 when the girl disappeared. "All I could do is shed tears."
When a detective told Tyson the test results were a match, Tyson said he cried more tears of joy.
The grandmother and mom said they never gave up hope.
Five years ago, a weepy Joy White told the Daily News that she still
prayed daily for the return of her daughter - and believed Carlina would
one day return.
It was August 1987 when the little girl's abduction - the only known
hospital kidnapping in New York history - stunned the city. It stumped
investigators for more than two decades.
The three-week-old girl, just 21 inches long and weighing eight pounds, was rushed to Harlem Hospital by her parents with a 104-degree temperature.
A woman dressed as a nurse approached 16-year-old Joy White in the
emergency room, offering soothing words to the worried mother.
"Don't cry," she said. "Everything's going to be all right."
But everything instead went wrong. The compassion was actually a
cover-up, and the woman brazenly snatched the infant before
disappearing.
Authorities said the white-clad woman was hanging around the hospital for several weeks before the kidnapping.
Police managed to track one suspect to Baltimore, but were never able to bring charges in what became one of the NYPD's coldest cases.
White and father Carl Tyson received a $750,000 settlement from the
city after filing a lawsuit. The couple split up about a year after
their daughter's disappearance.
Both went on to raise separate families while wondering about the fate of their first born.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2011/01/19/2011-01-19_cold_case_over_carlina_white_kidnapped_as_infant_from_hospital_24_years_ago_reui.html#ixzz1BXvLQpLh

Elizabeth White was afraid to leave her Harlem home for years after her
baby granddaughter was kidnapped from a hospital there in 1987.

She was afraid somebody would knock on her door and say, "Carlina is
here. We found your baby," she said in a phone interview Thursday.

"It was just miserable," White said.

But now her granddaughter, who grew up in Bridgeport, Conn., with a woman who pretended to be her mother, has been found.

Carlina White surfaced 23 years after her abduction — in effect solving
her own missing child case. White was 19 days old when she was snatched
from her crib in the emergency room of a New York hospital.

Nagging doubts about her background prompted the woman to call the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. DNA tests proved she was the biological daughter of Carl Tyson and Joy White, Elizabeth White's daughter.

Now a mother herself, Carlina was reunited with her family over the
weekend. She blended in so well, it was as if she never left, said her
grandmother. She wants to be called Carlina, Elizabeth White said, even
though she grew up as Nejdra Nance.

"She wasn't no stranger," she said. "It seemed like she was raised up around us."

Elizabeth White said she didn't know much about her granddaughter's life
in Connecticut. She hasn't talked to her granddaughter in depth about
her upbringing.

Elizabeth White knew a few details, though. The "fake mother," as the
grandmother calls her, was into "all kinds of drugs," she said. The
woman also abused her, she said.

Carlina was "hit in the face with shoes and things," she said.

Carlina White, who moved away from home when she got pregnant
as a teenager, had questions about her identity. Her "mother" wouldn't
give her a copy of her birth certificate, Elizabeth White said.

She spent years scouring the Internet for clues to her identity, said
Robert Lowery, executive director of the missing children's division of
the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. She saw a photo of a baby
named Carlina White on the organization's website, Lowery said.

"She did stop at that," he said. "She told us later that she thought that might have been her."

But she wasn't sure.

Carlina called the center, Lowery said, telling them, "I don't know who I am."

Center staff looked through their records. They called the White family
and the New York City police. The police arranged for DNA tests, and
when the results came in to the center Tuesday, Lowery said, employees
were "ecstatic."

"We were absolutely thrilled," he said. "We are very happy for Carl
Tyson and Joy White," he said, who lived "23 years in emptiness," but
still held out hope their daughter was alive.

Lowery said he couldn't get into details about the status of any police
investigation of Carlina White's abduction, but he said the FBI had been in touch with New York police about the case.

Elizabeth White was more specific about the case. "They're looking for her," she said of the "fake mother."

Elizabeth White said she wanted to wait for the DNA results before she
"really got into believing that it is her," she said. "I wanted
everything to be done."

Her daughter didn't need lab tests, she said.

Her response was, "Oh Mommy, that's my daughter. That's my child."

A Raleigh woman who raised a child
kidnapped from a New York hospital two decades ago surrendered to
Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in Connecticut Sunday.



Suspected
kidnapper Ann Pettway, 44, surrendered Sunday morning at the FBI office
in Bridgeport, Conn., said Pamela Walker, a spokeswoman for the North
Carolina Department of Correction.Pettway was wanted for
questioning in the 1987 abduction of Carlina White, who at age 23,
discovered that she had been kidnapped and tracked down her birth
family.White had been living in Connecticut under the name Nejdra
Nance. Her aunts and uncles live in Bertie County. As years have passed
since White's abduction, they never believed they would see her again."We
could have walked right by her and didn't know her because when you're a
baby, your looks change over the years," said White's biological uncle,
Kermit Wynn.They hope Pettway's arrest will bring them some answers."You can't do bad and get away with it," Wynn said. "It's going to get you back."After several days of looking for Pettway, investigators said she was spotted at a pawnshop in Bridgeport on Saturday."They
were able to obtain some video surveillance from the store," said
Bridgeport Det. Keith Bryant. "Based on what they observed and the
photographs we had of her, they confirmed the fact that it was her."Pettway
was arrested on the basis of a warrant issued Friday by the North
Carolina DOC for a violation of her probation for a 2010 embezzlement
conviction in Wake County.Pettway's neighbors in Raleigh said she told them that she had a daughter in Connecticut but had moved to Raleigh with her son. Neighbor Sonova Smith said Pettway moved into a town home in the Villages about a year ago."She's
very kind. She's very friendly," Smith said. "Her son comes over and
plays with our boys on a regular basis. As far as I know, she's a good
person. I would call her a friend."Pettway is scheduled to appear
in Manhattan Federal Court Monday to face federal kidnapping charges,
said U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara."I commend the swift and
efficient work of the FBI and the NYPD in this important case, and also
extend my thanks to law enforcement authorities in North Carolina and
Bridgeport, Connecticut, for their assistance," Bharara said. Authorities will try to extradite Pettway to North Carolina, according to Walker.

Kidnapping case against Pettway delayed





NEW YORK -- The federal kidnapping case against Ann Pettway was delayed two months Monday, as the prosecution and defense both requested more time to process documents that are still arriving.

Pettway, 49, a former Bridgeport resident, is facing 20 years to life in prison if convicted of snatching 3-week-old infant Carlina White from Harlem Hospital in August 1987. She pleaded not guilty to the charge in March and will next appear in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on July 10. Pettway raised White in Bridgeport under the name of Nejdra Nance. She told authorities she received the infant from a drug addict.

Her attorney, Robert Baum, said Monday he's trying to track down several witnesses whose names have emerged in the hundreds of pages of documents he's already analyzed. Meanwhile, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrea Surratt told U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel that she had just received two more boxes of material last week from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the national clearinghouse for lost children cases, which played a crucial role in discovering the true identity of White in December and January.

Last December, White, 23, who graduated from Harding High School in 2005 and who was living near Atlanta, phoned the center after seeing a photograph of a baby on TV she thought resembled herself. Within weeks, a DNA test confirmed her suspicions, solving one of the country's longest missing-child cases.

When news of the DNA test broke in mid-January, Pettway fled her North Carolina home. She led federal and local agents on a pursuit up the Eastern Seaboard, finally emerging a few days later in Bridgeport, where she turned herself in to authorities.

That day, she allegedly admitted to an FBI agent that she had kidnapped the baby in August 1987, after having suffered multiple miscarriages in the preceding years and fearing she would never bear a child of her own. In March, however, she pleaded not guilty to the federal kidnapping charge. Baum said he's trying to place someone else as the kidnapper and to show that Pettway had no knowledge when she received White that the baby had been kidnapped.

Outside the courtroom, Baum said he met with White in Georgia about six to eight weeks ago. He also met with Cassandra Johnson, the younger sister of Ann Pettway, who had taken White under her wing over the last several years and who was on the phone with White when she called the missing child center in December. Both White and Johnson, Baum said, would likely speak favorably of Pettway during legal proceedings.

Meanwhile, Pettway, in her third courtroom session since January, appeared more at ease Monday than before. Stepping into the courtroom, she waved energetically to two women who refused to give their names. Then she sat between Baum and his assistant.

About 15 feet behind them, White's biological parents, Carl Tyson and Joy White, who separated about two decades ago, but who remain close, sat side by side, silent, but visibly agitated about the two-month extension.

The three traded comments, smiled and laughed several times

While exiting the courtroom beside two law enforcement officials, Pettway turned to the two women she'd earlier waved to and smiled. Then she blew a kiss and mouthed the words, "I love you."




Read more: http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Kidnapping-case-against-Pettway-delayed-1361831.php#ixzz1LJacGoiP

Gal set to defend her 'kidnapper mom'

May 3, 2011

All is apparently forgiven.

The woman who was snatched from Harlem Hospital as a newborn in 1987 and raised under a phony name -- only to be reunited with her real parents this January -- will back the "fake mom" who reportedly abused her and was charged with her kidnapping, a defense lawyer revealed yesterday. Carlina White has agreed to testify on behalf of Ann Pettway and appeal for leniency if Pettway is convicted, public defender Robert Baum said. Baum said he recently met with White, now 23, in her hometown of Atlanta in preparation for Pettway's potential trial.


NY Post: Tamara Beckwith
MERCY: Carlina White, here with parents Carl and Joy, would testify for Ann Pettway, her alleged kidnapper, says Pettway's lawyer.


"I believe after meeting with her and speaking for a long time, that she will be supportive in every way," Baum said after a brief court conference in the case. Pettway often abused White when she was growing up -- once pummeling her with a shoe so hard thatit left an imprint on her face, The Post reported this January.

White's birth parents, Carl Tyson and Joy White, attended the hearing but left the Manhattan federal courthouse without commenting. They lost her after leaving her at the hospital for treatment of a high fever when she was just 19 days old. Pettway -- who claims she was given the baby by a drug-addicted woman -- raised her under the name Nejdra Nance in Bridgeport, Conn.

But at 16, White got pregnant and asked Pettway for a birth certificate so she could get health care. Pettway could not provide one and admitted she wasn't White's biological mom. White was reunited with her birth parents in January after tracking them down through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

During yesterday's court session, Judge Kevin Castel put off setting a trial date after Baum said he needed more time to review documents turned over by prosecutors last week. Baum also said he needed to locate "potential exculpatory evidence." Outside court, Baum said he was trying to identify a woman who was seen hanging around the hospital in a nurse's outfit at the time White disappeared. He noted that authorities suspected White's kidnapper had medical training because of the way her IV tube had been disconnected, adding that Pettway had no such experience.

A call to Joy White's cellphone afterward was answered by a woman who directed questions to a California TV production company, Blackbird Fly Entertainment, which declined comment.

A spokeswoman for the Manhattan US Attorney's Office declined to comment.

A former Raleigh resident accused of kidnapping a 3-week-old girl from Harlem Hospital in 1987, then raising the child as her own, is expected to plead guilty to charges in New York federal court today.

Ann Pettway is due in Manhattan Federal Court to enter her plea, according to a document filed in her case Thursday.

Pettway was charged with kidnapping last year after Carlina White, 24, accused the woman who raised her of taking her from her parents.

The decades-old cold case broke in December 2010, when White, living in Georgia, telephoned the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children about her suspicions.

DNA testing confirmed White was the daughter of Carl Tyson and Joy White.

Then, according to investigator reports, Pettway fled her home in Raleigh, prompting a multi-state manhunt. Pettway surfaced in Bridgeport, Conn., and turned herself in.

Authorities say Pettway confessed to an FBI agent that she had kidnapped White when the baby was only 3 weeks old. But she has not acknowledged as much in court.

News of the plea was contained in a Feb. 8 letter sent by prosecutor Andrea Surratt to Judge Kevin Castel. In the letter, Surratt asked for a time Friday to take Pettway's plea.

http://www.news-record.com/content/2012/02/10/article/former_raleigh_resident_plans_to_plead_guilty_to_kidnapping_girl_in_87#nrcAnc_Middle2_Jump

I think I saw a show about this case on the Investigation ID channel. I will have to look it up.

A woman who snatched a newborn baby from a New York City hospital in 1987, then raised the child as her own for more than two decades, pleaded guilty to a kidnapping charge Friday as the girl's true mother wept in the courtroom.

Ann Pettway, 51, appeared resigned to a life behind bars as she entered the plea at a federal courthouse in Manhattan. Her voice was flat as she briefly recounted how she took a train from her home in Bridgeport, Conn., to Harlem Hospital, where she scooped up Carlina White, a 3-week-old baby who had been brought to the emergency room by her parents.

"I went to the hospital. I took a child," she said. "It was wrong."

Pettway said little else during the hearing, and offered no explanation for why she would do such a thing. As part of her plea bargain, prosecutors agreed to recommend between 10 and 12 years in prison, although the actual term will be set by a judge.

As Pettway admitted her guilt, Carlina's birth mother, Joy White, quietly cried in the courtroom gallery. Afterward, she told reporters that she was outraged at the plea bargain, and felt a decade in prison would be too light a punishment for the woman who had robbed her so cruelly. Justice, she said, would be a term of 23 years, one for every year she was separated from her daughter.

"I've lost 23 years of being with my daughter," she said, adding that those decades were filled with pain and heartache.

White said she still remembers encountering Pettway at the hospital on the day her daughter disappeared. She said the kidnapper was dressed like a nurse. "She came up to me and said to me, `Don't cry. Your daughter is going to be OK."'

A judge set a tentative sentencing date of May 14.

The sensational mystery of the baby's kidnapping was one that had stymied police for decades. In the end, the case was solved by Carlina herself.

As she grew up in Bridgeport under the name Nejdra Nance, White had become increasingly suspicious of her own identity. Pettway ultimately told her a part-truth. She admitted that she was someone else's daughter, but claimed she had been willingly given away by a drug addict.

White eventually took to browsing the website of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children for clues to her identity. After matching a photo of herself with one on the site, she tracked down her true mother. The two reunited in January of 2011. A DNA test later confirmed they were mother and child. Today, they speak every day, Joy White said.


"I love my daughter. She's a beautiful girl," she said, adding that she had kept a picture of her missing baby at her bedside for 23 years. "She told me yesterday, mommy, you're my valentine."

http://www.wcti12.com/news/30434640/detail.html

This is outrageous. This woman stole a baby and ruined many lives. Nothing can bring those years back. This woman should be in prison for a minimum of 25 years.

Ann Pettway gets 12 years for the 1987 kidnapping of Carlina White

July 30, 2012 3:54 PM
By Crimesider Staff

(CBS/AP) NEW YORK - Ann Pettway, a woman who kidnapped a newborn from a New York hospital more than two decades ago and raised the child as her own, has been sentenced to 12 years in prison.

Pettway, of Raleigh, N.C., was sentenced Monday in Manhattan.

Pettway pleaded guilty in February to kidnapping, saying she took a train from her Connecticut home to Harlem Hospital in 1987. While there, she said, she scooped up Carlina White, a 3-week-old who was brought to the emergency room with a fever.

Carlina's birth mother, Joy White, says Pettway robbed her of 23 years with her child.

The case was solved by Carlina herself, who became increasingly suspicious of her own identity and matched a photograph of herself with one on the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children website.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-57482381-504083/ann-pettway-gets-12-years-for-the-1987-kidnapping-of-carlina-white/

12 years. What a travesty. It does sound like Carlina was in favor leniency so she has a much bigger heart than most of us. I don't think that's enough punishment for the baby stealer especially since she wasn't even good to Carlina. It sounds like she was mean and abusive. I hope she gets what she deserves in jail and has to spend all of the 12 years there.