Metro

Showdown with ‘kidnap mom’ in court

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Baby-snatcher Ann Pettway yesterday was stared down in a Manhattan court by the biological father of the infant she swiped from Harlem Hospital 23 years ago.

“I don’t believe she’s sorry,” seethed Carl Tyson, the dad of stolen baby Carlina White.

Tyson had come to federal court to see Pettway for the first time since news of the family’s startling reunion surfaced in The Post last week.

Before the hearing — and the unveiling of court documents that said Pettway has ‘fessed up to her horrendous crime — Tyson raged that the fake mom needs to pay heavily for her sins.

“She took [Carlina] for 23 years. Let her get the same amount of time,” Carl Tyson said.

To which Tyson’s sister, Regina, added, “I think she should get double!”

Neither Carlina nor her birth mother, Joy White, was in court.

Pettway, 49, who faces life in prison if convicted, said nothing at her appearance.

Outside court, her public defender, Robert Baum, insisted, “Miss Pettway is a good mother, in the past and now.”

After turning herself in to the feds Sunday, the phony mom admitted that she had grabbed tiny, 3-week-old Carlina at the hospital while no one was looking and fled, a criminal complaint says. Then, “[she] took the victim on a train to Bridgeport,” Conn., her hometown.

The heinous kidnapping came after Pettway allegedly suffered several miscarriages. And she was desperate at the time to have a baby with her then-boyfriend, afraid he would ditch her if she didn’t, one of her cousins has said.

Beverly Walker, 22, formerly of Bridgeport, told The Post last night that she is the biological daughter of that former boyfriend, Derrick Nance — and that she was always raised to believe she and Carlina were half-sisters.

She said Carlina — whom she knew only by Nejdra Nance, the name Pettway gave her — was “the Cinderella of the family.”

“Ann was the evil stepmother,” Walker said.

“She was always mean to her, making her do things. It was more of an aggressive, ignorant way, like telling her, ‘Get your ass over there, and clean that s- -t up.’ I’d be like, ‘Geez, why do you have to talk to her like that?’ ”

Walker said Carlina called her when she finally learned the truth about Pettway.

“Not only is Daddy not our dad, but Ann is not my mom,” Walker said Carlina told her.

“I said, ‘I don’t care what’s going on. You’re still my sister,’ ” Walker said. “She said, ‘I know, you’re still mine, too.’ ”

Walker said her father, Nance, “is so shocked” to learn Carlina isn’t his daughter.

Additional reporting by Reuven Fenton and Perry Chiaramonte in Bridgeport and Rebecca Harshbarger and Kate Sheehy in NY

bruce.golding@nypost.com