Kamiyah Mobley’s biological mom Shanara Mobley, 36, has told of the pain of being rejected by her daughter who can’t bear to let go of her kidnapper
Tears of joy streaming down her face, Shanara Mobley hugged her long lost daughter Kamiyah for the first time in 18 years and thought to herself: I finally have my baby back.
Their heartwarming embrace was supposed to herald a new start for the mother and child wrenched apart when kidnapper Gloria Williams snatched Kamiyah from a Florida maternity ward and raised her as her own.
Instead, 19-year-old Kamiyah has stubbornly refused to turn her back on her impostor ‘mom’, even as Williams languishes in prison – plunging Shanara into a fresh despair and leaving their fledgling relationship in tatters.
Today, in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, Shanara, 36, issues a heartbreaking ultimatum to the precious, firstborn daughter she fears losing all over again: ‘I shouldn’t have to compete with a kidnapper – she has to pick one of us.’
And she reveals the pain of being rejected by Kamiyah cuts every bit as deep as when Williams disguised herself as a nurse and stole the baby girl from her 16-year-old mother’s arms in July 1998.
‘It’s like a tug of war between us. Whenever I feel I’m winning her back, boom, the other side pulls me down,’ Shanara revealed, through tears.
‘Nobody acknowledges my pain. I feel like I’m being robbed all over again every time she reaches out to my daughter.
Mother-daughter time: Kamiyah reunited with her real mother in January 2017, after it was revealed she had been kidnapped at birth
Shanara said the two became ‘inseparable’ when they first met, but are no longer on speaking terms after Kamiyah continued to keep in contact with her abductor
‘Every phone call they share, every Mother’s Day card Kamiyah sends her, it just makes the pain worse.
‘I’m being rejected for a kidnapper, how do you think that feels?’
Kamiyah was raised under the false name Alexis Manigo until cops finally solved the riddle of her abduction and arrested Williams in January 2017 on charges of kidnapping and interference with custody.
But while Kamiyah and Shanara aren’t even on speaking terms, the teen has continued to call Williams behind bars – even storing the number for the Duval County Jail in her phone under ‘Mommy’.
Prosecutors admit there’s nothing they can do to stop the two communicating.
Shanara was in court last Friday to see the 52-year-old locked up for the next 18 years but she maintains the only appropriate punishment was the death penalty.
In an interview with ABC News on Monday, Kamiyah revealed she still ‘loves’ the woman who raised her says they continue to speak several times a week on the phone from jail.
‘We actually talked today. I still do call her “Mom,”‘ Mobley told ABC.
Mobley continues to live in Williams’s home in South Carolina and says she looks forward to the day she is released from prison. She says she thinks Williams’s sentence of 18 years in prison was ‘fair,’ despite her biological mom telling DailyMail.com that she hoped the woman would be executed.
As long as Williams is alive, the Jacksonville mother-of-six fears her ‘brainwashed’ daughter will never look upon her as her real mom.
‘When a man rapes a woman he’s never allowed to contact her again, so why can this kidnapper continue to reach out to her victim?’ added Shanara.
‘I don’t feel that she should still be able to contact Kamiyah and I don’t feel that her family should be able to contact my child.
The mother-daughter pair have shared special moments together including the time Shanara drove for three hours just to get a photo of Kimayah starting her first job at Dollar General (pictured)
In an interview with ABC News on Monday, the teen said she still ‘loves’ the woman who raised her and continues to call her ‘mom’
‘The first time round Gloria stole my baby by herself. This time round now you’ve got the legal system helping her to steal her all over again.
‘She can reach out to my daughter every day – my sentence won’t stop until she’s dead.’
Shanara was just 15 when she first became pregnant but insists a termination never crossed her mind.
The girl’s father, Craig Aiken, was in jail when she gave birth to Kamiyah Teresiah Tasha Mobley at 6.55am on July 10, 1998.
Around eight hours later, Shanara remembers a woman wearing blue scrubs and surgical gloves coming into the room at Jacksonville’s University Medical Centre.
Still exhausted and groggy from giving birth, she assumed the kindly figure carrying away her 8lb 2.5oz infant was a nurse.
Within hours Shanara would be in front of national news cameras pleading hysterically for the return of her daughter.
‘When they first handed Kamiyah to me I said “open your eyes so you can see how pretty your mama is.” She smiled right back at me, it was the best feeling ever,’ Shanara recalled.
‘I was groggy, I was a young girl getting my first epidural. Then this lady comes in, nicely spoken, intelligent woman. She befriended me.
‘She seemed to be really nice and so kind but she was evil at the same time. She was a devil dressed up in sheep’s clothing.
Gloria Williams, 52, was sentenced to 18 years in prison after she kidnapped Mobley just hours after she was born in July 1998
Mobley, left, is pictured above with Williams, who raised her as her own in South Carolina
‘I let her hold the baby and now that I look back on that day, she looked at the baby as if she was perfect. She looked at her like, yeah, this is the one.’
It was Aiken’s 67-year-old mother Velma who first realized something was wrong when she caught a glimpse of the ‘nurse’ picking up Shanara’s baby bag on the way out.
Suspicious family members alerted staff who raced around the hospital but couldn’t find any trace of the newborn infant.
Shanara recalls with tears in her eyes how investigators were so baffled by the disappearance they started accusing her of selling her own baby.
‘Before Gloria came into my room she was in another lady’s room but the girl’s parents walked in there and the kidnapper immediately got up and walked out,’ she revealed.
‘She was deliberately targeting women my age maybe because she didn’t think they would believe us.
‘The detective punched my hospital bed and said ‘what did you do with that baby!’ They accused me of selling her or giving her away.
‘They wanted me to confess to something I didn’t do. I think they thought that way right up until the day she was found.
‘People still say to this day that I sold her to Gloria. They would say that woman ain’t gonna go to jail by herself, she’s gonna snitch on Craig and Shanara.
Shanara now has six kids in total, including Kamiyah. L-R: Savannah Mobley, eight, Chrisanna Barnes, 11, , Christopher Barnes, 12, Journye Barnes, three, and Lashawnye Rivera, 15
Shanara said salvation came in the form of her second child, Lashawnye Rivera (pictured as a baby) whom she had with her then-boyfriend Lashawn Rivera, who passed away in 2015
‘That’s what the woman did to me for all these years. Not only did she steal my child, she had people thinking I was a liar.’
As days became months and months became years, Shanara fell into a devastating depression, splitting up with Aiken, and contemplating suicide.
Exacerbating her anguish were the constant rumors and accusations that she had somehow played a part in Kamiyah’s disappearance.
But just as she hit rock bottom at age 21, salvation came in the form of her second child, Lashawnye Rivera, whom she had with her then-boyfriend Lashawn Rivera, who passed away in 2015.
‘I was self-medicating and taking Benadryls just to go to sleep until Benadryl’s weren’t enough no more,’ Shanara revealed.
‘As the years went on I remember a lot of times I could just be driving and I’d think, you know what I should just run off this bridge.
‘I remember taking a whole bottle of Benadryl. I remember several suicide attempts. It was getting harder and harder for me to face and deal with.
‘I guess that God was seeing all those suicide attempts and he just one day said, “I know what will change her and bring her around.” And he blessed me with my 15-year-old.’
Kamiyah, meanwhile, was growing up 200 miles north in Walterboro, South Carolina with Williams and her two sons Antoine and Andre.
By now she was living as Alexis Kelli Manigo – the name she still goes by on Facebook and social media.
Williams had miscarried in secret shortly before the abduction and her family have always insisted they had no reason to doubt the gorgeous baby girl she brought home was hers.
Mobley, center, reunited with her biological parents, Craig Aiken (right) and Shanara Mobley (left), in January after it was revealed she was living a lie
Hard-working and outwardly respectable, Williams worked at the medical records department at Joint Base Charleston and took her family to the local Methodist church every Sunday.
She told Kamiyah her biological father was a car dealership worker called Charles Manigo who had split with Williams before she was born.
Kamiyah considered stepdad Wrenoskie Williams, a 55-year-old truck driver whom Williams married when Kamiyah was in middle school, more of a father figure.
The deception finally began to unravel when Kamiyah applied for a restaurant job two years before Williams was arrested.
When she demanded her social security number her ‘mom’ broke down and confessed to the abduction.
Kamiyah quietly pieced together the majority of her backstory by herself from Google. She once called her biological mother but hung up when she heard Shanara’s voice.
According to court documents, investigators finally cracked the case based on two tip offs: a friend who said Williams confessed to them and an individual who claimed to have heard it from Kamiyah.
The teen would be introduced to her biological parents for the first time when Shanara and 43-year-old Aiken raced to South Carolina following Williams’ arrest in January 2017.
Shanara, pictured age 16 after her daughter went missing, tells how investigators were so baffled by the disappearance they started accusing her of selling her own baby
A sketch of the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office showed the sketch of Williams after the newborn went missing
Williams, who had recently miscarried, disguised herself as a nurse and stole the baby girl from University Medical Centre in Jacksonville, Florida in July 1998
‘When they came to my house they were so nonchalant. I said ‘have you found my baby?’ They just said can you come to the station,’ Shanara explained.
‘The room was suddenly full of all these people, the detectives, the state attorney. When they said we found Kamiyah I just was stuck. I was shaking.
‘It felt better than a man coming to me and saying “do you want ten million dollars?”
‘I got on the road that same day to see her. We were supposed to meet at the police building but I actually arranged to meet her earlier at a hotel because I was so anxious.
‘We embraced for five to ten minutes. No words can express how I felt.’
As Shanara posed for a heart-melting selfie with the missing daughter whose birthday she had marked each year by leaving out a slice of cake, it seemed her prayers had been answered.
But when DailyMail.com caught up with Kamiyah one year later she admitted in an exclusive interview that she was torn between her true identity and her upbringing as Alexis Manigo.
She went by different names on different occasions, spending weekends and holidays with Aiken but still living at her childhood home in Walterboro and calling Williams each week in jail.
Kamiyah even issued a plea for leniency on her kidnapper’s behalf, telling DailyMail.com: ‘It’s not like she tortured me.’
Shanara now has six kids in total, including Kamiyah, Lashawnye, Christopher Barnes, 12, Chrisanna Barnes, 11, Savannah Mobley, eight, and her adorable three-year-old daughter Journye Barnes.
They live in a comfortable, five-bed home on the outskirts of Jacksonville that she bought in March of last year, setting aside a room in anticipation that Kamiyah would want to come and live with her.
Real parents: Shanara (left) told DailyMail.com she believes her daughter’s kidnapper deserved the death penalty after taking her away from her when Shanara was just 16. The teen’s father Craig Aiken is seen leaving the court on right
Despite the setbacks there have been plenty of special moments: girly nights out, a trip to a music festival and the time Shanara drove for three hours just to get a photo of Kimayah starting her first job at Dollar General.
However the last time they spoke was the night before Mother’s Day when Shanara cut short a visit and drove home after the pair argued.
Tired of being repeatedly ‘disrespected’, Shanara decided to block Kamiyah’s number.
‘When we first met we were inseparable. We talked every day. I felt she would just come on into our lives,’ she said.
‘I didn’t know this kidnapper had such a hold on her. I can see that it’s my child but I can also see traits from the kidnapper in her.
‘She would defend the kidnapper to me. She blames me for everything. I think she blames me that this woman is sitting in jail.
‘She’s blocked now because I don’t want to argue with her. I’m tired of being hurt.
‘I’m not saying there’s not a time that we can get closer but I really should not have to compete with that woman.’
While Shanara insists her door will never be closed to Kamiyah, she has nothing but a deep, enduring hatred for Williams that hardens every time she hears her daughter refer to her as ‘mom’.
Shanara hopes Williams can still access the web behind bars so she will read this interview and finally grasp that Kamiyah Teresiah Tasha Mobley is not hers.
‘I pray to God he changes my heart towards you but I hate you and that hate is very, very, very strong,’ Shanara said, addressing Williams directly.
‘Help me to forgive you. Just let my baby go. Please let my baby go. If you feel any sympathy for me let her go please.
‘I’m not saying that as a bitter angry woman, I’m saying it as a mother who was robbed 20 years ago – and still counting.’