A DILEMMA BEYOND IMAGINATION
It’s an incredible story. A newborn baby is snatched from her mother — and raised by her alleged kidnapper. 18 years on, she’s been reunited with her birth parents — and the ‘abductor’ she loves faces jail. Now she must decide where her heart lies . . .
Neighbours remember them as mother and daugh-ter who weren’t just family but also best friends — the church-going woman and her impeccably polite teen who would even get their nails done together.
They were ‘always happy, always together’, said a family friend. After finishing high school, 18-year-old Alexis Manigo had been preparing to leave home and move away from Walterboro, a small south Carolina town, and her beloved mother gloria Williams, to attend a technical college.
but instead, this young woman faces an extraordinary dilemma — one that has touched everyone who has heard her story since it broke at the weekend.
in an astonishing conclusion to one of America’s most notorious missing child cases, police have discovered that Alexis was snatched from the arms of her real mother in a Florida hospital in 1998 by a woman posing as a nurse.
And that abductor is allegedly Williams, a 51-year- old social worker who has helped u.s. military veterans and was once head of youth projects at her local church, who has brought Alexis up for the past 18 years.
At the weekend, Alexis — or Kamiyah Mobley as we now know she was born — was reunited (if that is quite the right word for someone who was snatched just eight hours after her birth) — with her biological parents, shanara Mobley and Craig Aiken, who live 200 miles away in Florida.
Mr Aiken described their hour together in a south Carolina detention centre — where her other mother is being held by police — as ‘the best day of my life’.
he said: ‘We laughed, we chatted, we didn’t allow any negative thoughts. We didn’t talk about the kidnapping. it’s going to be hard for her to turn this into a positive. she’s got very mixed emotions about the woman who raised her. but we are going to be there for her, this is just the start of a wonderful future.’
To sAy this teenager may have ‘very mixed emotions’ is clearly no over- statement. Williams — the woman she has called ‘ Mom’ ever since she could talk — awaits kidnap charges that could lead to her being given a life jail sentence.
until what she had done was uncov-ered, family and friends believed Kamiyah was her real daughter.
however, in a development that is not surprising given the history of many other baby- snatchings, investigators believe that she had suffered a miscarriage a week before driving 200 miles to Florida to find a suitable replacement in a hospital maternity ward.
Williams gave birth to two subsequent children while Kami- yah’s devastated birth mother also went on to have further offspring.
The baby-snatch triggered a huge manhunt across America. After years of false leads, investigators say they finally got a breakthrough when they were sent the original Fbi drawings of the suspect which had been produced at the time of the kidnapping along with a photograph of gloria Williams.
inevitably, a huge and heated debate has erupted over how she should be punished if convicted. but it appears that at least one person will be urging leniency — the girl she stole.
‘My mother raised me with every-thing i needed and most of all everything i wanted,’ the teenager wrote defiantly on Facebook. ‘My mom is not a felon.’
Allowed to see Williams at a bail hearing on Friday, in which the suspect waived her rights to resist extradition to Florida, a tearful Kamiyah touched fingers with her abductor through the mesh of the caged window of a security door.
‘i love you, Momma,’ she told her between sobs, adding that she was praying for her, as Williams blew kisses back. A reporter present described it as ‘one of the worst things i’ve ever watched — so much confusion, so much sadness’.
Whereas some child-abduction cases end in abuse or some other tragedy, this one has simply high-lighted the excruciating emotional complexity that ensues when the kidnapping — though criminal and heartless — seems to have resulted in a loving family life.
yet, while Williams has a respecta-ble reputation in her town, records show she was charged with disturb-ing the peace two months after the kidnapping. she also reportedly has convictions for writing fraudulent cheques and welfare fraud.
she bought her modest home in 2012, having been evicted at least six times from a string of local addresses. even so, some observers have pointed out that Kamiyah’s life may have been better than if she had been left with her birth mother — whose life has been marred by other setbacks.
Those who know Kamiyah as the girl called ‘ Lexi’ admit their emotions are torn.
Joseph Jenkins, a friend and neighbour, said: ‘she grew up with