Kidnapping of Carlina White

Carlina Renae White was born on July 15, 1987. At 19 days old, her parents brought her to Harlem Hospital Center in New York City on August 4, 1987, after she developed a 104°F fever from an infection acquired during delivery. A woman dressed as a nurse, seen around the hospital for three weeks beforehand but not a hospital employee, had been comforting the parents. The hospital's video surveillance was not working at the time. During an early-morning shift change, between 2:30 a.m. and 3:55 a.m., someone removed the infant's IV line and abducted her; a guard reported seeing a woman matching the suspect's description leave around 3:30 a.m., though no infant was visible. It was the first known infant abduction from a New York City hospital. New York City police later questioned a woman in Baltimore identified by witnesses as resembling the person seen at the hospital, without result.

The missing infant was raised in Bridgeport, Connecticut, about 45 miles from her parents' home, under the name Nejdra “Netty” Nance by the woman who had taken her, Ann Pettway. Pettway repeatedly committed petty crimes during White's upbringing, was placed on probation multiple times in Connecticut, and pleaded guilty to embezzlement after stealing from a retail employer in Raleigh, North Carolina. White graduated from Warren Harding High School in Bridgeport in 2005. She grew suspicious in her teens that Pettway was not her biological mother because Pettway could not produce a birth certificate. In 2005, while pregnant, White asked Pettway for the certificate to obtain health insurance; officials identified the document Pettway supplied as forged. Confronted that evening, Pettway admitted she was not White's biological mother. At 23, White matched childhood photos on a missing-children's website to images of herself and her daughter, contacted the center's hotline, and reached her birth family; DNA testing confirmed in January 2011 that she was Carlina White.

Following the identification, the FBI searched for Ann Pettway; New York's state kidnapping statute of limitations had expired, but no such limit applied under federal law. On January 21, 2011, North Carolina authorities issued a warrant for Pettway's arrest for a probation violation tied to her embezzlement conviction. Pettway turned herself in to the FBI's Bridgeport office on January 23, 2011, after driving from North Carolina to arrange care for her son. She told investigators she had abducted White after enduring several miscarriages and doubting she would ever become a parent. A federal grand jury indicted her on the kidnapping charge on February 17, 2011. On February 10, 2012, Pettway pleaded guilty to federal kidnapping; under a plea agreement, a child-victim sentencing enhancement was dropped and prosecutors recommended 10 to 12.5 years. On July 30, 2012, she was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison; the sentencing judge said she had acted selfishly and inflicted a severe hardship on the family. Pettway apologized at the hearing and was released from federal prison in Alabama on April 14, 2021.

After reuniting with her biological parents, White learned that a hospital settlement and a trust fund, accessible only if she had been found before age 21, had largely been spent before their reunion; her parents later described a falling-out over the funds, which White subsequently called a misunderstanding. In May 2011, a public defender preparing Ann Pettway's defense said White had agreed to testify on Pettway's behalf; by that July, White had become estranged from her biological parents, though she later reconnected with each of them individually. Although “Carlina White” is her legal name, she has said she continues to go by “Netty” publicly, since neither her biological parents nor the woman who raised her chose that name. In 2014, she spoke at the Crimes Against Children Conference, a national training event for law enforcement professionals, and continued to have a relationship with her biological parents.