A woman has admitted to kidnapping a newborn baby girl from a hospital in 1987 and raising her as a daughter for more than two decades.
Ann Pettway, 51, pleaded guilty in a Manhattan court yesterday, saying she snatched three-week-old Carlina White from a hospital in Harlem after her parents took her to the emergency room, the Daily Mail reports.
But Pettway offered no explanation for her actions.
"I went to the hospital. I took a child. It was wrong," she said.
Prosecutors will recommend Pettway be jailed for between 10 and 12.5 years under a plea bargain, and she is due to be sentenced on May 14.
Carolina's birth mother Joy White cried in the courtroom, telling reporters later Pettway should be jailed for 23 years, one year for every year she was separated from her daughter.
Ms White said she still remembered meeting Pettway at the hospital, dressed as a nurse.
"She came up to me and said to me, 'Don't cry. Your daughter is going to be okay'," Ms White said.
The mystery of Carlina's disappearance baffled police for decades.
Pettway raised her in Bridgeport as Nejdra Nance, admitting she was someone else's daughter but saying she was given up willingly by a drug addict.
Suspicious about her identity, Ms White eventually discovered the truth after browsing an online database for missing children and finding a photo of herself.
She was reunited with her mother in January.
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