Under a plea agreement, Gloria Williams admits in court she kidnapped infant more than 20 years ago.
A woman who kidnapped an infant from a Florida hospital and raised her as her own child has pleaded guilty to abducting the baby nearly 20 years ago.
Gloria Williams, 52, under the terms of plea agreement, could face as many as 22 years behind bars when she is sentenced in May.
Williams took the newborn from a Jacksonville maternity ward by posing as a hospital worker, authorities said. Williams took the child to South Carolina and raised her there. Now 19, the young woman in now named Alexis Manigo.
Williams was dressed in scrubs when she went into the room of 16-year-old Shanara Mobley in 1998 and told the teenager her hours-old baby was feverish and needed an exam.
Williams walked out the door with the baby, who had been named Kamiyah Mobley by her birth mother.
In August 2016, an anonymous caller tipped the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, which led to the arrest of Williams at her Walterboro home in January 2017.
The victim was in anguish, sobbing at the arrest and in the police station after Williams was questioned, according to local reports.
The case brought out a confusing array of emotions from a teenage girl who was ripped from the only mother she ever knew and confronted with her distraught birth parents, who were total strangers.
Williams, the girl said, had been a good mother and she loved her very much.
Neither the teenager nor her birth parents were in court Monday. The young woman divides her time between Walterboro and Jacksonville as tries to develop a relationship with Shanara Mobley and her father, Craig Aiken. She communicates with Williams via letters and phone calls to a jail in Duval County, the Florida Times-Union reported.
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