A woman convicted of stealing a newborn from a Florida hospital decades ago testified Friday that she placed the infant in a bag to get her out of the building, and worried she would be discovered as she left.
Gloria Williams, 52, described the kidnapping Friday during her sentencing hearing in a Jacksonville courtroom. Williams faces up to 22 years in prison for kidnapping and interference of custody.
Williams wore scrubs into a Jacksonville hospital in 1998 and posed as a nurse to get a new mother to hand over her baby. She put the baby, Kamiyah Mobley, in a bag and left.
Gloria Williams, 52, described the kidnapping Friday during her sentencing hearing in a Jacksonville courtroom
‘What I remember is I was running, I was walking and at any time someone could grab my arm and say ‘What do you have in the bag?” Williams said.
Williams testified that she’d had a miscarriage about a month before taking Kamiyah. She said she was in an abusive relationship at the time, had lost custody of two other children and that the abuse led to the loss of her pregnancy.
After her loss, she drove south to Jacksonville from South Carolina, and said she had no plans to kidnap a child.
Williams wore scrubs into a Jacksonville hospital in 1998 and posed as a nurse to get a new mother to hand over her baby. She put the baby, Kamiyah Mobley (pictured), in a bag and left
‘I felt like I was on autopilot. My life was out of control, I lost everything,’ she said.
Williams raised Mobley – who grew up as Alexis Manigo – in South Carolina until her arrest in 2017.
Williams told Kamiyah of her true identity after the girl was unable to get a driver’s license because she didn’t have a valid birth certificate or Social Security card.
‘What I remember is I was running, I was walking and at any time someone could grab my arm and say ‘What do you have in the bag?” Williams said
Williams raised Mobley – who grew up as Alexis Manigo – in South Carolina until her arrest in 2017
Kamiyah eventually told a friend about it, but not police. Eventually, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received an anonymous tip about Kamiyah’s whereabouts, and authorities were alerted.
On Friday, Williams apologized to Shanara Mobley, the birth mother, who a day earlier testified that Williams should receive a death sentence. She told the girl she abducted that she still loved her.
‘I will always love you, always,’ Williams said to Kamiyah, who was also in the courtroom gallery. ‘But you’re not mine. Your mother and father are sitting right here.’
On Friday, Williams apologized to Shanara Mobley, the birth mother, who a day earlier testified that Williams should receive a death sentence. Williams faces up to 22 years in jail for kidnapping and up to another five years in jail on an interference charge
‘I will always love you, always,’ Williams said to Kamiyah, who was also in the courtroom gallery. ‘But you’re not mine. Your mother (pictured) and father are sitting right here’
Shanara Mobley, mother of Kamiyah Mobley, gave an emotional testimony on Thursday, where she described the torment of having her newborn baby stolen just hours after she gave birth.
‘Thinking about suicide every day, people watching me all day every day, no one was leaving me unattended,’ she said of the months following Kamiyah’s abduction, as she wiped away tears.
She said that even now, 20 years later, she still feels the loss of her daughter deeply and even called for the death penalty for kidnapper Gloria Williams.
Shanara Mobley, the biological mom of a girl who was snatched at birth broke down during the hearing of her daughter’s kidnapper, screaming, ‘I am your mother!’ on Thursday
Mobley, mother of Kamiyah Mobley, gave an emotional testimony on Thursday, where she described the torment of having her newborn baby stolen just hours after she gave birth
Mobley wiped away tears during her emotional testimony about her struggle after her daughter was kidnapped
‘I always thought about my baby every day, every day, every day. I would catch myself in my car crying, in bed crying, taking a bath crying, doing something with her siblings and crying,’ said Mobley, who said she suffered from depression since Kamiyah was stolen.
Mobley said she had suffered fresh pain after seeing her daughter refer to her abductor Gloria Williams as mom and seeing Williams’ number in her phone as ‘mommy.’
‘It doesn’t heal now, I am still hurting. When you’re reaching out to my child – I am your mother Kamiyah,’ she shouted into the courtroom. ‘I am your mother!’
Kamiyah was just eight hours old on July 10, 1998, when Williams posed as a nurse and entered Mobley’s hospital room at what is now known as UF Health-Jacksonville, claiming that Kamiyah had a fever and needed to be checked.
Williams then disappeared with the child in her arms, not to be seen again for the next 18 years.
The deception began to unravel when Mobley applied for a restaurant job two years before Williams was arrested, according to court documents.
When she demanded her social security number, Williams supposedly broke down and confessed to the abduction.
Kamiyah said she quietly pieced together the majority of her backstory by herself from Google. She once called her biological mother but hung up when she heard her voice.
The teen first met her biological parents when Mobley and Aiken, who had separated after the abduction, raced to see her following Williams’ arrest.
Kamiyah has spent the last 12 months forging new ties with her biological parents, Mobley, 36, and Craig Aiken, 42, as well as getting to know the numerous siblings she never realized she had.
The teen first met her biological parents when Shanara Mobley and Craig Aiken, who had separated after the abduction, raced to see her following Williams’ arrest (above)
She has already formed an ‘incredible bond’ with her biological father and has been staying at his home for weeks at a time. The teen celebrated Christmas with Aiken, his wife Shannon and her eight half-siblings.
But her defense of Williams has made it harder for the teen to rebuild her relationship with her biological mother. Shanara Mobley wrote on Facebook last year: ‘The tears won’t stop. I see my baby girl wanting this lady in her life and not me.’
‘It’s been harder for my mother to cope. We are working on our relationship. I don’t like to define which one is my mother, I like to be respectful of both parties,’ the teen said.
‘I don’t like to take away from either one of their duties or what they did. I don’t want to pick sides.’
During her court testimony on Thursday, Mobley said that she was just 16 when her daughter was born in 1998.
Despite her young age, she says she saw her pregnancy as a blessing – the chance to stop her partying lifestyle and settle down.
‘I’m sorry baby, I love you’: Moment teen was reunited with the woman who ‘kidnapped her as a baby’ for first time since her arrest as they vowed to stand by each other
Gloria Williams and Kamiyah Mobley had an emotional reunion in February, for the first time since her arrest.
‘I’m sorry baby. I love you,’ Williams told the tearful Mobley in video of the meeting, held under the watchful eye of police following her arrest, and obtained by ABC News.
Mobley then spoke of the officers who came to arrest the woman who raised her, saying: ‘They are sending three people like you are some kind of violent person.’
Footage has been released showing the moment Gloria Williams, 52, was reunited with Kamiyah Mobley – the girl she is charged with kidnapping at birth from Florida
Williams responded: ‘They just want to make sure you are okay.’
Mobley told DailyMail.com that she refuses to label Williams a criminal and has already forgiven her for the astonishing deception.
‘Don’t get me wrong, I do feel like it was wrong. But we talked about it and I can understand at the time what was going on,’ she said.
‘I sympathize with her, I’m not mad at her – of course I forgive her.
‘I am certain that she’s going to get time but I’m hoping not very, very long. I think they should be lenient. It’s not like she took me and tortured me my whole life. She took care of me very well.’
The day Kamiyah was born was the happiest – and the saddest – of her life.
‘She was so beautiful. I just couldn’t wait to take her home, to dress her up and show her off,’ she said of her newborn.
But she never got the chance to hold her baby as it was at that point Williams, dressed as a nurse, came into the room and took Kamiyah away, telling the new mom she needed to take her temperature.
Mobley said she never questioned Williams who seemed nice and trustworthy. It wasn’t until she realized that Kamiyah was never supposed to have been removed from the room did she panic.
She said she crawled along the floor, ‘I’m screaming and I’m hollering and cussing.’
‘She preyed on a child because I was young, she preyed on a child and took my child,’ said Mobley.
The years went by slowly for Mobley, who would still mark her daughter’s birthday every year, buying a cake which she would keep in the freezer in case Kamiyah ever came home.
She never gave up hope that her daughter was alive.
After finally being reunited with Kamiyah for the first time last year, Mobley says she is hoping to make up for lost time.
‘I missed the first walk, the first word, graduating, prom, I missed all that, but I always try to look at it like life is a positive to a negative. When she get pregnant, I get to be the grandma, when she graduates college I get to be there. The future has so much to offer us now.’
Williams is due to be sentenced this month and could face up to 22 years in jail.