Woman pleads guilty to stealing newborn baby from arms of mother in hospital and raising her for 23 YEARS

A woman pleaded guilty to kidnapping yesterday after snatching a newborn baby in 1987 and raising the child as her own for more than two decades.



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, Connecticut to Harlem Hospital, where she scooped up Carlina White, a three-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.'



Guilty: Ann Pettway was sentenced to 12 years in prison after admitting she kidnapped a newborn child in 1987

Pettway said little else during the hearing, and offered no explanation for her actions. As part of her plea bargain, prosecutors agreed to recommend between 10 and 12-and-a-half 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. Afterwards, 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.



Reunited: Carlina White, left, managed to track down her birth mother Joy White, right, using a website for missing children



Ms 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, Miss White had become increasingly suspicious of her own identity.



Baby: Carlina was just three weeks old when she was taken by Pettway

Distraught: Carlina's natural parents soon after her disappearance

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.



Miss 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, and a DNA test later confirmed they were mother and child.



Today, they speak every day, Joy White said.

