Two decades after taking a baby from a hospital and raising the child as her own, woman pleads guilty to kidnapping
Two decades after taking a baby from a hospital and raising the child
as her own, a South Carolina woman pleaded guilty Monday to kidnapping
and interference with custody.
52-year old Gloria Williams, allegedly posed as a hospital nurse and took Kamiyah Mobley only hours after she was born on July 10, 1998, at a Jacksonville, Florida, hospital.
The infant's mother, Shanara Mobley, told
investigators a woman she thought was a nurse entered her room. The new
mother asked the woman to place her daughter in a baby carrier, but the
nurse instead left with the newborn, according to an incident report
filed with the sheriff's office.
Authorities said Williams used fraudulent documents to establish a
new identity for the child and raise her in Walterboro, South Carolina,
northwest of Charleston. That child, now 19, goes by the name Willisams
gave her, Alexis Manigo.
Prosecutors are seeking up to 22 years in prison on the kidnapping
charge and up to five years on the interference charge under the
negotiated plea deal, said David Chapman, a spokesman for the Florida
state's attorney office for the fourth judicial circuit. Sentencing is
set for the first week of May.
Court documents reveal Manigo may have known about her hidden past
for months. Following up on a tip given to the National Center for
Missing & Exploited Children in August 2016, detectives interviewed a
witness who said Manigo claimed she was kidnapped from a Jacksonville
hospital as a baby, according to the affidavit for Williams' arrest.
A DNA test during the investigation revealed that Manigo was the infant.
After her arrest, Williams was extradited to Florida in January 2017
and charged with kidnapping.
Manigo, who has met her biological parents,
told HLN's Ashleigh Banfield last year that she loves the woman and
still considers her mom.
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