Metro

‘Kidnap mom’ takes plea deal, says swiping newborn was ‘wrong’

Carlina White was an infant when she was snatched from her parents.

Carlina White was an infant when she was snatched from her parents. (Tamara Beckwith)

The “kidnap mom” charged with abducting a newborn from Harlem Hospital in 1987 and raising the girl as her own for more than 20 years pleaded guilty this afternoon to kidnapping, admitting “it was wrong” to swipe the infant.

Ann Pettway, 51, pleaded guilty to a single count of kidnapping inside a Manhattan federal courtroom after taking a plea deal that could land her behind bars from anywhere between 121 to 151 months, prosecutors said.

Pettway said she was living in Bridgeport, Conn., and decided to take the train to New York.

“I took a child,” she told the judge. “I left and got back on the train.”

Pettway added, “I know it was wrong.”

The baby, Carlina White, whom Pettway had renamed “Nejdra Nance,” was not in court for the hearing.

The girl’s biological mother, Joy White, who attended the hearing, said she was unhappy with the plea bargain and that Pettway should have gotten a harsher sentence.

“I think she should get at least 23 years — just as many as my daughter was missing,” she said.

Pettway had been charged last year with kidnapping after White, who is now 24, grew suspicious about her origins and tracked down her birth parents through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Pettway surrendered to the FBI three days after White’s reunion with her real parents, allegedly confessing that she snatched Carlina because she “had difficulty having children of her own” and “suffered several miscarriages” throughout the 1980s.

Outside the courthouse, White recalled that Pettway was the woman at Harlem Hospital who reassured her the baby would be OK once she’d checked her in.

“She patted me on my shoulder, gave me a hug and said, ‘Everything’s going to be OK.'”