Guilty Plea in ’87 Kidnapping May Bring Life Sentence

[The Streets Don't Love You Back]

Guilty Plea in ’87 Kidnapping May Bring Life Sentence

Published: February 10, 2012

A quarter-century ago, Ann Pettway walked into a room in Harlem Hospital, picked up a 3-week-old girl and left. For years, as she presented the girl as her daughter, she hid the story of what she had done on that day in 1987.
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Michael Appleton for The New York Times
Joy White said Friday that Ann Pettway, who abducted her child at a hospital in 1987, ought to “serve at least 23 years.”
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But on Friday, Ms. Pettway, 50, described her actions in the hospital to a judge as she pleaded guilty to kidnapping the girl, Carlina White.

“I went to Harlem Hospital,” she told Judge P. Kevin Castel of Federal District Court in Manhattan. “I took a child. I got back on the train and went home and raised her as my own.”

As some in the gallery wiped their eyes, Ms. Pettway added, “It was wrong.” Among those listening to her were Ms. White’s biological parents.

Under a plea agreement between Ms. Pettway’s lawyers and federal prosecutors, Ms. Pettway pleaded guilty to a single count of kidnapping, with a sentencing guideline range of roughly 10 to 12 1/2 years. Judge Castel, however, emphasized that he was not bound by that agreement and told Ms. Pettway that the maximum sentence for kidnapping is a life sentence. She is scheduled to be sentenced on May 14.

The abduction drew widespread attention in New York City in the weeks after it took place, but Ms. Pettway told her family in Bridgeport, Conn., that the girl was her own. She renamed her Nejdra Nance, according to law enforcement authorities and news reports, and tried to forge a birth certificate in that name. She eventually moved with the girl to Georgia.

But as a teenager, the girl began to suspect that she was not related to Ms. Pettway, because the two did not look like each other. In January 2011, Ms. White, then pregnant, asked Ms. Pettway for a copy of her birth certificate so that she could obtain prenatal care, according to a complaint filed by federal prosecutors. Ms. Pettway explained that there was no birth certificate, prosecutors said, adding that she had received Ms. White as an infant from a woman who used drugs.

Soon after, Ms. White was examining a Web site of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and saw a photograph that she thought resembled pictures of her as an infant. After making in inquiry to the center, she was put in touch with her biological mother, Joy White, who referred the call to the New York police. DNA samples were taken, and Ms. White’s DNA was found to match samples taken from Joy White and the father, Carl Tyson, who had separated years before. A reunion between Ms. White and her parents in the Bronx caused a flurry of news reports and initiated a nationwide search for Ms. Pettway, who turned herself in to the police in Bridgeport.

A lawyer for Ms. Pettway, Robert Baum, said he had been in touch with Carlina White and expected her to be supportive of Ms. Pettway when she was sentenced, either by writing to the court or by speaking on her behalf during the proceeding this spring. Mr. Baum said his client had never harmed Ms. White.

“I think that is what distinguishes this case from every other kidnapping case,” he said by telephone on Friday, adding that Carlina White “remains very close with the Pettway family.”

After the guilty plea, however, Joy White said she thought that Ms. Pettway should receive a sentence that exceeded the agreed-upon range.

“I’ve been suffering and been through pain for 23 years,” she told reporters. “I think that she should serve at least 23 years.”

Ms. White said she had seen Ms. Pettway in Harlem Hospital near the time of the abduction, dressed as a nurse. At one point, she said, Ms. Pettway told her not to worry about Carlina, who had been admitted with a fever.

Mr. Tyson said the abduction had prevented him from having a good relationship with his daughter. “That lady ruined my whole life,” he said of Ms. Pettway. “I have a lot of questions I want to ask her.