NEW YORK (Reuters) - A woman who raised a child who went missing from a Harlem hospital 23 years ago as her own has confessed to the 1987 kidnapping of the baby, court documents revealed on Monday.
According to the criminal complaint filed in U.S. federal court in Manhattan, Ann Pettway admitted to taking the victim from a Harlem hospital and bringing her to Connecticut when nobody tried to stop her.
Pettway told investigators she had been dealing with the stress of several miscarriages.
"She's pretty upset," said Robert Baum, her attorney. "She understands the gravity of the charges."
Pettway is due to appear in court later on Monday.
Authorities had been looking for Ann Pettway ever since news broke last week that Carlina White, who was raised by Pettway, had been reunited with her biological family in New York. Pettway turned herself in to authorities on Sunday.
Police say that in 1987, Carlina's biological mother Joy White had just given birth and gave the newborn to a woman in the hospital dressed as a nurse. The baby was not seen again.
Unaware of her true identity, White, 23, was raised as Nejdra Nance with the Pettway family in Bridgeport, about 45 miles east of her biological parents' home.
The woman began to suspect she was not the biological offspring of the couple who were raising her when she had trouble getting a birth certificate and a social security number.
(Reporting by Bernd Debusmann Jr.; Editing by Jerry Norton)
Copyright 2011 Reuters Life! Online Report
