27 years ago, on July 10th, of 1998, one of the most notorious kidnappings in U.S. history took place.
A new mother named Shanara Mobley had just given birth to a baby girl.
Another woman, Gloria Williams, disguised as hospital staff, walked into the Jacksonville University Medical Center in Jacksonville, Florida, and walked out with Mobley’s baby.
Highlights
- In 1998, Gloria Williams disguised as hospital staff and abducted newborn Kamiyah Mobley just 8 hours after birth in Jacksonville, Florida.
- Kamiyah, now 27, still refers to her kidnapper Gloria Williams as ‘mom’ and uses both her birth and given names on social media.
In 2017, after police solved the case, the victim said she still considered Gloria to be her mother.
Today, the victim goes by two names: Kamiyah Mobley, the one her birthmother gave her, and Alexis Manigo, the one Williams gave her.
Now, as she turns 27, the media and the internet are revisiting the case and all of its twists and turns.
A woman wearing blue hospital scrubs walked into a hospital and stole a newborn baby
Image credits: k.queent.t.me / Instagram
Image credits: k.queent.t.me / Instagram
On July 10th, of 1998, Shanara Mobley, who was 15 or 16 at the time, gave birth to a baby girl, whom she named Shanara.
Eight hours later, a woman named Gloria Williams, wearing blue hospital scrubs paid the mother a visit.
According to media reports at the time, the woman told Shanara that her baby had a fever and needed to be checked. She took the baby out of the room, and never came back.
Image credits: True Crime Trending / Facebook
The kidnapping case became a national story, as the search for the woman who took the baby intensified.
The hospital, now known as UF Health Jacksonville, changed their security protocols, and police followed thousands of tips to try to locate the missing baby.
Eventually, Shanara sued the hospital and was awarded a $1.5 million settlement, according to WJTX TV in Jacksonville, Florida. She had three more children, reports say.
Williams had had a miscarriage and was depressed at the time of the kidnapping
Image credits: Florida State Attorney Offices
The woman who took the child said she never meant to cause any harm.
In a story about Williams' trial in 2018, CBS News reported that she had been in an abusive relationship and had just suffered a miscarriage.
The story says Williams “didn't go to the Jacksonville hospital the day of the abduction intending to kidnap a baby.”
Image credits: True Crime Trending / Facebook
“When Williams arrived at the maternity ward she said she was at first only looking at the babies and thinking about the child she lost,” the story says.
The CBS story quotes Williams as saying she thought the child would make things better in regards to her violent partner, but it didn’t.
Williams ended the relationship and raised the baby, whom she had named Alexis, on her own.
Williams was found guilty and sentenced to 18 years in jail, one year for every year the baby had been away from her birth parents.
“My mother is no felon”: The victim at the center of it all supported Williams
Image credits: First Coast News / YouTube
Image credits: True Crime Trending / Facebook
For Shanara Mobley, the incident represented the absolute worst nightmare a parent could think of.
Even after being reunited with her daughter, Shanara struggled to make amends with her.
Image credits: abcnews
The New York Post says Alexis stood by Williams during her trial, writing that Williams had “raised me with everything I needed and most of all everything I wanted. My mother is no felon. The ignorant ones won’t understand that.’’
Today, Alexis has embraced her birth mother and her birth name, Kamiyah, as she has both names listed on her social media pages, and several photos with Shanara and her birth father, Craig Aiken.
At the time of her birth, Aiken was 19 and in jail because he had gotten a minor, Shanara, pregnant.
“Trapped in a waking nightmare”: Other mothers whose babies were kidnapped tell harrowing tales
Image credits: k.queent.t.me / Instagram
As odd as it sounds, baby-kidnapping cases are not uncommon, with one of the most recent cases happening in New Zealand just last year.
In that instance, Jessie Casson brought her three-day-old daughter, Nadine, to a hospital in Auckland for some tests.
As she showered in her ensuite hospital room, the baby lay in her cot a few feet from her. When she came out of the shower, her baby was gone.
Casson described her initial feelings in an article in The Guardian: “I couldn’t breathe. It felt like ice-cold water had been poured over me.”
Image credits: k.queent.t.me / Instagram
“I felt trapped in a waking nightmare. I’d never felt fear like it. But I didn’t cry until 20 minutes later,” she continued.
Police soon found Casson's baby. She had been abducted by a woman who “was known to the staff – she lived locally and desperately wanted to have a child of her own.”
Image credits: Craig D Aiken / Facebook
After her baby was returned, Casson said of the kidnapper: “I never hated her; I pitied her. She’d wanted a baby, not my baby specifically. But I was glad that a line had been drawn.”
The kidnapper was later tried in court and pleaded guilty, The Guardian reported.
Netizens remember the infamous kidnapping case that gripped the country
