Kidnap victim’s message to her ‘mom’
After 17 years Kamiyah Mobley found out she’d been kidnapped at birth. Now her kidnapper is behind bars – but the teen won’t turn her back on her ‘mom’
GENTLY she lifted the newborn and held her close. The little girl was just eight hours old and Gloria Williams had no doubt she’d love her forever. Cradling the sleeping baby, she carefully placed her in a bag and, her heart pounding, walked out of the hospital. Nobody stopped her or asked her what was in the bag. They had no reason to – she was wearing scrubs just like all the other nurses.
As she left the hospital in Jacksonville in Florida, USA, Gloria thought about the child she’d miscarried a few weeks earli- er. Then she looked at the sleeping baby and knew things were going to get better. The next day she took her to show her parents, introducing the little girl as Alexis Kelli Manigo.
For nearly two decades no one who met Alexis was aware of the dark truth: her name was Kamiyah and she’d been stolen from her real mom.
Shanara Mobley’s heartache was well known though: she’d appeared on national TV in a desperate appeal for the return of her daughter soon after the abduction, and touched hearts across the country. “Please bring my baby back,” she pleaded. “If you were faking a pregnancy or you just can’t have no kids, how do you think I feel?”
But the baby wasn’t returned and for the next 17 years Shanara lived in limbo, refusing to give up hope.
And, in a case that extraordinarily echoes that of South Africa’s own Zephany Nurse, her prayers were finally answered.
Zephany was three days old when she was snatched from her sleeping mother’s bedside at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town in April 1997. She was finally reunited with her biological parents, Morné and Celeste Nurse, when she was 17 after classmates at her and her biological sister’s school commented on the striking resemblance between them.
Zephany’s kidnapper, who’d also suffered a miscarriage, was eventually sentenced in 2016 to 10 years’ imprisonment.
The story of how Kamiyah finally found her biological mother is also remarkable – and equally complicated. A complex set of emotions lies at its heart: the love of two “mothers”, an identity that was ultimately a lie, a “mom” behind bars and a whole new world to get used to.
BABY Kamiyah’s abduction on 10 July 1998 made headlines across the USA for months. Police offered a reward of $250 000 (then about R1,5 million) for information lead-
ing to her return.
Her dad, Craig Aiken, told the media he dreamt about holding his baby. “I wonder what she’d look like,” Craig said in 1999. “The only thing I have to remember her by is her name, Kamiyah.”
Missing person posters went up all over Jacksonville and stayed up for years. The case was featured on the TV show America’s Most Wanted several times, and the search extended to other countries.
At one stage Shanara and Craig were considered suspects by police, their neighbours and even each other.
Kamiyah’s family sued the hospital and eventually settled out of court in 2000 – legal action that would spur hospitals across Florida to tighten security.
Over the years Shanara would celebrate her daughter’s birthday with a cake and wonder what it would be like to see her again, to have witnessed her first steps and have helped her choose her prom dress.
Meanwhile, Kamiyah was growing up as Alexis in Walterboro in the neighbouring state of South Carolina, oblivious to all the pain and drama.
Then, when she turned 17, she needed a birth certificate to apply for a social security card – the American equivalent of an ID – so she could get a driver’s licence and a parttime job.
Without a valid birth certificate, Gloria realised the game was up and told her “daughter” the truth: she was really baby Kamiyah.
Stunned, Kamiyah shared Gloria’s secret with a friend, but loyalty to the woman who’d raised her prevented her from telling police.
Then, with the help of Google, she began piecing together the secret story of her life and tried to pluck up the courage to call her biological mother.
“[For] two years I actually did try to contact her. I kept typing in her name, typing in about my abduction,” Kamiyah told Britain’s Daily Mail.
“Her name linked me to a Jacksonville address book. I called the number but ended up hanging up . . . I got nervous. Hearing her voice was weird.”
IN JANUARY last year the US National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children received an anonymous tip about Kamiyah and authorities were notified. A DNA test confirmed her identity and Gloria was arrested. Shanara and Craig – who’d split up years earlier – “broke down in tears”, Craig recalls, after learning Kamiyah had been found.
They raced to Walterboro to meet their daughter at a police station, and spent 45 minutes with her.
“I told her I was glad to see her and I loved her,” Craig said. “The first meeting was beautiful. It’s a feeling you can’t explain.
“She looks just like her daddy,” he proudly told Associated Press news agency. “She acts like she’s been talking to us all the time. She told us she’d be here soon to see us.”
Yet while Kamiyah understands what Gloria did is wrong, she’s forgiven the woman who raised her and says she’ll never turn her back on her. “We talked about it and I can understand at the time what was going on,” she says. “I sympathise with her. I’m not mad at her.”
Shanara has been less forgiving. Gloria was tried in February this year for kidnapping and pleaded guilty. There were audible gasps in the courtroom during the sentencing hearing when Shanara was asked what sort of sentence her child’s kidnapper should get. “Death,” was her curt reply.
But it’s more likely that Gloria will be jailed – for up to 22 years. Her sentence will be handed down on 8 June.
Kamiyah was upset at the conviction and Craig says it’s difficult to realise his daughter supports the woman who caused them so much heartache.
Gloria told the court she’d not only miscarried shortly before the kidnapping, she’d lost custody of two sons and was in an abusive relationship that had caused her to lose her unborn baby.
Her life was spiralling out of control, she said, and she drove, “as if on autopilot”, from her home in Walterboro to Jacksonville – a three-hour journey. She hadn’t planned to steal a child, she added. Nevertheless, she dressed up as a nurse and made her way to the maternity ward.
“What I remember is I was running, I was walking, and at any time someone could grab my arm and say, ‘What do you have in the bag?’” she recalled.
She apologised to Shanara in court for taking her baby. Then she turned to Kamiyah. “I will always love you, always. But you’re not mine,” she said.
“Your mother and father are sitting right here.”
SOURCES: DAILYMAIL.CO.UK, JACKSONVILLE.COM, FIRSTCOASTNEWS.COM, NYDAILYNEWS.COM, THEROOT.COM, WASHINGTONPOST.COM, WLRN.ORG, AP.ORG