Case snapshot
On August 4, 1987, a nineteen-day-old infant disappeared from Harlem Hospital in New York City while being treated for a high fever. The woman who took her walked out dressed as a nurse. For the next twenty-three years, the baby known as Carlina White lived under a different name with no idea she had been stolen from her biological parents.
The disappearance
Joy White and Carl Tyson brought their infant daughter Carlina to Harlem Hospital Center on August 4, 1987. The baby had developed a high fever. After being admitted, Carlina was placed in the pediatric ward for observation and treatment.
At some point during the early morning hours, a woman dressed in hospital scrubs and appearing to be a nurse entered the ward. She told Joy White she was taking the baby for tests. Joy, exhausted and trusting the hospital staff, didn’t question her.
Hours passed. No one returned with Carlina.
When Joy White began asking where her daughter was, hospital staff had no answers. No tests had been ordered. No nurse matching the description had been assigned to that floor. Security footage was limited, and the investigation that followed turned up frustratingly little. A woman had walked into Harlem Hospital, taken a sick infant, and vanished.
The investigation stalls
The New York Police Department launched an immediate search, but leads were scarce. Witnesses described a Black woman in her thirties or forties wearing nurse’s clothing, but descriptions varied. There was no clear image, no name, and no strong suspects.
Investigators considered the possibility of a hospital employee or someone familiar with the layout, but no staff member was ever conclusively tied to the abduction. The case went cold within months, though it was never officially closed.
For Joy White and Carl Tyson, the years that followed were defined by grief and uncertainty. They kept Carlina’s case alive through media appeals, age-progressed photos, and collaboration with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. But as time passed, hope became harder to maintain.
A girl with questions
Hundreds of miles away in Bridgeport, Connecticut, a young woman named Nejdra Nance grew up with a gnawing suspicion that something about her identity was wrong. The woman raising her, Ann Pettway, could never produce a valid birth certificate. School enrollments were complicated. Medical records were incomplete or fabricated.
Nejdra asked questions, but the answers were vague or contradictory. Pettway offered excuses, delays, and shifting stories. The unease festered.
In 2010, at the age of twenty-three, Nejdra began her own investigation. She scoured missing children databases, focusing on cases from the late 1980s in the New York area. She compared her own baby photos to age-progressed images of missing children.
One case stood out: Carlina White, kidnapped from Harlem Hospital in August 1987.
The resemblance was undeniable. Nejdra contacted the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and the case was reopened. DNA testing was arranged through the FBI.
The reunion
In January 2011, DNA results confirmed what Nejdra Nance had suspected. She was Carlina White, the infant stolen from Harlem Hospital twenty-three years earlier. Joy White and Carl Tyson, who had never stopped searching, were finally reunited with their daughter.
The reunion was emotional and complex. Carlina had spent her entire life as someone else. She had memories, relationships, and an identity built on a lie. Reconnecting with her biological family meant confronting decades of loss and recalibrating a sense of self that had been fractured from birth.
Ann Pettway, the woman who raised her, was now a fugitive. She had fled after Carlina began asking questions, sensing that her secret was unraveling.
Arrest and conviction
Ann Pettway surrendered to authorities in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in February 2011. She was charged with kidnapping and later extradited to New York to face federal charges.
During interrogation and subsequent court proceedings, Pettway claimed she had suffered a miscarriage and was desperate for a child. She said she hadn’t planned the abduction in advance but acted impulsively when she saw an opportunity at Harlem Hospital. She expressed remorse, though her explanations did little to mitigate the severity of her crime.
In July 2012, Pettway was sentenced to twelve years in federal prison after pleading guilty to kidnapping. At sentencing, the judge acknowledged the emotional devastation inflicted on both Carlina White and her biological parents. Pettway was released in April 2021 after serving her sentence.
Aftermath
Carlina White’s case brought national attention to hospital security protocols and the vulnerability of newborns in medical settings. Hospitals across the country tightened identification procedures, implemented infant abduction alarms, and increased surveillance in maternity and pediatric wards.
For Carlina, life after the reunion was not simple. She had to navigate relationships with two families, process the trauma of her stolen childhood, and reconcile the person she had been with the person she was meant to be. In interviews, she has spoken about the emotional difficulty of the transition and the lasting impact of living a lie.
Joy White and Carl Tyson, who separated years before the reunion, both remained involved in Carlina’s life. The case, while resolved, left scars that would take years to address.
Where to dive deeper
- Documentary: “Carlina White: Solved” (Investigation Discovery)
- Documentary: “Stolen at Birth” (ABC News 20/20)
- Podcast: “Stolen Baby: The Carlina White Story” (“Crime Junkie”, Audiochuck)
