One heartbreaking mystery has now come to an end. Twenty years after kidnapping a newborn from a Florida hospital, Gloria Williams admitted she abducted Kamiyah Mobley just hours after she was born and raised the baby as her own.
According to law enforcement, Williams pretended to be a nurse and seized the newborn when her mother, Shanara Mobley, asked Williams to place her daughter in a baby carrier. Instead of putting the newborn down and giving her mother some rest, Williams fled with the baby.
“She had on a nurse’s uniform,” Velma Aiken, the child’s grandmother, recalled. “I thought it was weird she had her pocketbook on her shoulder with the baby in her arms, and she had on gloves.” Aiken asked the woman, “Where are you going with grandmama’s baby? I just got here.”
Williams told Aiken she’d be back in 15 minutes, instead, she vanished.
Authorities say Williams falsified documents and raised the child, which she renamed Alexis Manigo, in South Carolina.
Williams was nabbed after someone gave a tip to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in August 2016. She was arrested and extradited back to Florida in January 2017.
As a result of the deal she struck with prosecutors, Williams is facing 22 years in prison for kidnapping and an additional five years for interference, but the final decision is up to the judge in her case.
Though a DNA test has confirmed Manigo is Kamiyah Mobley, and she was able to meet her biological parents and family members, the young woman is standing by the woman who raised her.
“I still feel the same way about her,” the now 19-year-old said. “My feelings toward my mother will never change.”