Abducted: The Carlina White Story Page #8

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and there was two detectives

standing at the door.

I said, "Carlina died?"

He said, "No. "

He says, "Somebody took her

from the hospital. "

So I called Joy,

and I said, "Joy!"

And she came running

up here and I said,

"Somebody done took Carlina,"

and she couldn't believe me.

She was hollerin' out,

"Oh no, not my baby!"

I get this phone call.

Get on the phone, Joy

in the background crying,

"Carl, someone

stole our baby!"

I said, "What are you

talking about?"

I ran to the hospital.

They had detectives

all over the place.

They had helicopters.

They had sniffing dogs.

They had, uh, I mean, it

was everybody out there.

Nobody couldn't tell me

anything at the time.

We had a big conference in...

with the hospital

and everybody that's worked

on that ward that night

sit at the table,

and nobody knew anything.

As they talked about the night,

Joy remembered the woman

in white who had comforted her.

And I was like

"Oh my God!"

You know, "It was that lady!"

She saw me crying.

She knew my baby was

in that treatment room

and she said, "Stop crying. "

It turned out many

people in the hospital

had seen the woman

hanging around,

especially in the

pediatric ward.

Parents thought

she worked there.

Staff members thought

she was a parent,

or a volunteer.

I really thought

she was a nurse.

So... I mean, she dressed

just like a nurse.

But she had no name tag.

Obviously the woman

is some type of a hanger-on

in the hospital.

That's typical behavior,

according to those who

study infant abductors.

They will go to hospitals

and birthing centers.

They will walk the halls.

They'll look at the nursery.

They will identify

particular children

that might be

of interest to them.

Police in Harlem launched

a frantic search,

combing the hospital

and surrounding buildings.

They released pictures

of baby Carlina,

hoping someone

would recognize her.

Time is the enemy

in the search

for a missing child,

and that's particularly true

with an infant or a newborn.

Because you want to respond,

generate visibility

before the abductor gets

to where the abductor's

trying to get.

When the woman in white

left Harlem Hospital,

there were security cameras

in place,

but they weren't working.

That left very little

information to go on.

No one can actually

document that woman

as the one leaving the hospital.

We have no one seeing a woman

fitting that description

leaving the hospital

with a child in tow.

Joy and Carl,

and other witnesses

from the hospital

helped police develop a sketch

of the woman in white.

Then they identified a mug shot

of a woman who looked

like the sketch.

Detectives questioned her

in the week after the abduction,

but she had an alibi

and there were

no other strong leads.

We've received over 50

calls from the public,

and, uh, we are thoroughly

investigating

all of the information

that we have received.

Sometimes they said,

"Oh, we have a lead,"

and then turn around

and it's no lead.

And you'd be like, "Oh, man,

did they forget about us?

"Come on, man,

this is our baby. "

You know, sometimes I wonder

if I had a whole lot of money,

would they find my baby

in a couple of days?

My sense is that N.Y.P.D.

Responded quickly,

took it seriously,

attempted to use the media.

I think this was a failure

on many levels,

not the least of which was

that America's hospitals

hadn't really thought about,

or paid attention

to these kinds of problems

in the 1980's.

The lack of attention allowed

several infant abductions

in the late '80's.

Though they were unrelated,

they all followed

a similar pattern.

Typically, the abductor

was someone

almost always a woman

who would walk

into the hospital,

find a smock

hanging up in a closet,

pick the baby up

out of a bassinet

in the mother's room

or in the nursery,

walk off the floor,

out of the hospital,

out of their lives.

In the days and weeks

that followed

Carlina's abduction,

Joy did everything she could

to keep attention on the case.

I did any interview

that I could possibly do,

you know,

to talk about her.

I want my baby back.

She didn't have to do that

to me.

I had her.

I was carrying her

for nine months.

She didn't have to take her

from me.

The loss was devastating.

It was hard for me,

because I couldn't sleep.

Every night I had

to take, like,

sleeping pills every night,

because I could not sleep.

Police run out of leads,

media spotlight dims,

but these parents

don't forget.

This is a picture

of me with, um,

Carlina's stroller.

Empty stroller.

I was always hoping

that, you know,

one day she

could come back,

and could sit back

in that stroller again.

In August 1987,

a young woman named

Ann Pettway

got off the train

in Bridgeport, Connecticut,

with a baby girl.

She was just 60 miles

northeast of New York City,

where Carlina White

had been abducted

from Harlem Hospital.

Bridgeport was home for Ann,

but she hadn't been

around in a few months.

When she left, her family

believed she was pregnant,

and now she was ready

to show off the baby.

It wasn't a issue,

because she was pregnant,

so it wasn't to say,

"Oh, where did you get a baby?"

You know, she was pregnant,

so you come home

with your child.

Infant abductions

are relatively rare.

There were fewer than 300

from 1983 to 2010.

But experts have been able

to develop

a profile of the perpetrators,

and it seems Ann Pettway

fit that profile to a tee.

Overwhelmingly, the abductor

is a woman... maybe a woman

who has miscarried,

who has lost a baby.

These cases are

more often driven

by a psychological need

to keep a particular man

in a life,

keep a relationship alive,

than it is for the baby,

per se.

So it is... it's a very

manipulative tool

uh, that these women use.

The man Ann was trying

to keep in her life at the time

was Derek Nance,

a local drug dealer.

She would later tell the FBI

that she wanted to have

his baby,

but had suffered

several miscarriages.

She named the new baby Nejdra,

but the family always

called her Netty.

The Pettway family was

a large clan,

spread across

Bridgeport's East Side.

There are so many of us.

You can walk down the street

and see 20 family members.

I remember just growin' up

with a lot of cousins,

havin' a lot of family

events together...

cookouts, parties... and

it was just family-orientated.

She didn't really need

friends because we were there.

We were her friends

and her family.

What's better to have

than family?

In the Pettway family,

Netty became known

as an entertainer.

Every September,

they'll have a family reunion

at the park,

and they'll have dance contests,

and she'll get involved in it.

I was just into the

entertainment...

just growin' up,

believing one day

that I would have been a star.

But there was another

side to her, as well.

She always liked

to be to herself sometimes.

To this day she's still

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