US state of Florida
‘I need my mother’: Woman kidnapped as an infant pleads for mercy for her captor
Kidnapped in Florida as an infant: Kamiyah Mobley (l.) Takes a selfie with Gloria Williams, who at the time still believed her to be her birth mother.
© Tampa Bay Times/Picture Alliance
Kamiyah Mobley was 18 when she found out she had been kidnapped in Florida shortly after she was born. Five years later, she still calls her captor “mother” and is fighting for her early release.
Kamiyah Mobley was just a few hours old when she was abducted from a clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, by a woman disguised as a nurse. It was 1999, and for the next 18 years, Mobley grew up as Alexis Kelly Manigo, believing her captor Gloria Williams to be her biological mother.
The truth only came out in 2017. Leads from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children led authorities to the small town of Walterboro, in the neighboring state of South Carolina. There they found a young woman with Mobley’s date of birth but a different name and a fake birth certificate and social security number. A DNA comparison eventually proved Kamiyah’s true identity.
“I want to make it very clear that she is my mother”
Williams was then tried. She pleaded guilty to kidnapping and was sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2018. She was reportedly in an abusive relationship at the time of the kidnapping and had miscarried a week earlier.
But even though Mobley now knows the truth about her origins and has since met her biological parents, she continues to regard Williams as her mother and is fighting to have her captor’s sentence reduced.
“I want to be very clear that she is my mother. She raised me and not only provided for my needs but loved me unconditionally,” Mobley wrote to the court in late September 2021, as reported by US media, citing court documents. She has lived a varied life and is “an independent, educated and deeply spiritual person” because Williams gave her everything. “I am fully aware of how our life became what it is and how my mother became my mother.”
Mobley wrote in her letter that she had met her biological parents and was grateful to have a second family and especially siblings. She knows that none of this in any way justifies the kidnapping, yet she loves her mother and supports her wholeheartedly. “I ask the court for grace and mercy because I need my mother at home”.
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Mobley’s letter became known because Williams asked the court for a reduction in her sentence, and the letter was part of the documents she submitted. In it, the kidnapper asked for her sentence to be commuted to nine years in prison followed by nine years of probation “or whatever the court deems appropriate.” Williams also highlighted her exemplary behavior as an inmate and her participation in various community and faith programs in her application: “I have not received any disciplinary reports and have been given an above-average rating for my work performance by both the State Security and Correctional Services once a month judged,” she argued.
The kidnapper confessed that she understood that this in no way lessened the severity of her crimes. “But I ask for the grace and mercy of the court to change/reduce my sentence to a partial sentence.”
Florida court rejects sentence reduction
But the appeals from Mobley and Williams were unsuccessful. The court refused to change the sentence reported the “Florida Times-Union” on Wednesday. The application to halve the prison time was not made in time.
“The court commends the defendant for her efforts to rehabilitate herself and understands Ms. Mobley’s perspective,” the statement said. “Even if the motion had been filed in a timely manner, the court would find no basis for overturning the judge’s original decision.”
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