Popular police shows like Law & Order, CSI, and Bones have conditioned society to not expect a happily ever after; especially when it involves a kidnapping. However, the White family’s unshakable hope has helped them through 23 years of uncertainty, and they have been rewarded with the very daughter they thought was forever lost to them. Perhaps society can expect a happily ever after.
In the summer of 1987, Anne Pettway left her home in North Carolina in a state of depression due to her continuing inability to birth a living child. In a questionable state of mind, she went to a hospital in Harlem dressed as a nurse with the intent of taking what she thought she deserved. Carlina White, only 19 days old at the time, was handed over to a nurse by her parents because she was suffering from an ear infection; they never saw her after that.
Pettway told her friends and family, who never knew that she had suffered another miscarriage, that she had a healthy daughter she had named Nejdra Nance. Later in her life, Nejdra found it very difficult to convince her mother to hand over legal documentation of her birth; after Pettway tried and failed to make a fake birth certificate and the very fact that Nejdra’s family looked nothing like her, Nejdra became very suspicious of her mother and began a search for her biological family. She was flipping through an updated missing child’s list from New York and found that a baby, Carlina White, was taken from the hospital. The NCMEC had published a picture of what Carlina would look like, and Nejdra was shocked, because she looked exactly like the girl in the picture. She contacted her biological family, and the reunion was much publicized.
Police started looking for Pettway very soon after that. Just days later, she turned herself in to the police. In her hearing, she did not try to post bail and went into the process very quietly. She has claimed that she sorry to cause so much pain with her actions. Pettway is also wanted in North Carolina for breaking a two year probation from a 2010 embezzlement charge. Her trial is will take place soon, but she faces up to life in prison.
Meanwhile, Carlina White is finding it difficult to abandon the family in North Carolina that still loves her unconditionally and merge into her biological family in New York. She is happy to put her mother and the rest of her family at ease. Her biological father was present at the hearings for Pettway to face the woman who put his family in so much pain over the years.
