Woman Solves Her Own Kidnap Case

A 23-year old woman solved her own kidnapping case, reuniting with her birth mother and leading police to the woman who stole her from the hospital and raised her as a daughter.

One night in 1987, Carlina White was taken to a New York City hospital with a fever. While there, the 19-day old infant was stolen from her parents and not seen again.

Now, a grown-up Carlina White, who had been living under the name Nejdra Nance, has solved the case of her own abduction and helped police find the woman who kidnapped her. The woman she had grown up knowing as her mother.

Ann Pettway has reportedly told the FBI that she did kidnap Carlina White all those years ago, because she was having trouble conceiving a child of her own. Police say Ann Pettway raised the baby born as Carlina White in nearby Bridgeport, Connecticut after she kidnapped the child.

Over the years, Carlina White began to have doubts that Ann Pettway was actually her mother. Those doubts grew when Pettway was unable to provide a birth certificate for her daughter.

Eventually, still known only as Nejdra Nance, she contacted the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Through the Center, she found - and matched - pictures of herself as an infant with those of Carlina White, the 1987 kidnap victim.

With the first bits of proof about the doubts she harbored as to her own origins, Nejdra Nance contacted Joy White, the mother of the kidnapped girl. The two women eventually exchanged DNA samples, which turned out to be a match. Then, Carlina White went to New York to be reunited with her real family for the first time in over two decades.

Then the story continued, as Carlina White cooperated with police in their attempts to close the kidnap case, which had remained open through the intervening years. Not long after, Ann Pettway was taken into custody in Bridgeport.

The US Department of Justice reports that, of almost 800,000 children reported missing each year, just over 100 are traditional kidnap cases - where a stranger abducts a child and either seeks a ransom or intends to keep the child. Of those very few cases are solved, and none in memory have actually been solved by the victim themselves.

"This is why we come into work everyday," Jordan Wood of the National Center for Missing and Exploied Children told PEOPLE magazine. "This is what we want for every family we work for. I'm really hoping I get to meet Carlina one day. I'm very proud of her. She's been looking for answers for the past five years and she never gave up. She had some doors shut in her face and she didn't take anything less than the truth for an answer."