Lowcountry woman raised a baby she kidnapped, police say. 20 years later, she’s in court

A Lowcountry woman accused of kidnapping a baby nearly 20 years ago and raising the girl as her daughter was in court on Tuesday for charges related to the incident.

Gloria Williams of Walterboro was arrested last January and is accused of dressing as a nurse and taking newborn Kamiyah Mobley from a Jacksonville, Florida, hospital in July 1998, McClatchy News reported.

Williams has pleaded not guilty.

Defense attorneys, citing heavy media coverage at the time of the kidnapping and last year after Williams’ arrest, are asking a judge to limit the public’s access to about 1,000 pages of documents until a jury is selected, according to Action News Jax television station in Jacksonville.

Jury selection is scheduled for Feb. 12, Count on 2 News reported.

The girl, raised in South Carolina under the name Alexis Manigo, was found safe last year, McClatchy reported.

The 19-year-old told The Post and Courier newspaper that she found out that she had been kidnapped when she was a junior in high school and asked Williams for her Social Security card to apply for a job at a local restaurant.

A tip to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children led investigators to the teen and to Williams’ subsequent arrest, McClatchy reported.

Since then, she has been reunited with her biological parents, Shanara Mobley and Craig Aiken. Still, she said she’s forgiven Williams and speaks to her regularly by phone, the Daily Mail reported.

She told the publication that she splits her time between the Walterboro home where she grew up — where she’s known as Alexis — and the home of her father and stepmother in Florida — where she’s known as Kamiyah.

If convicted, Williams could face life in prison.

“I really didn’t want it to go to trial,” the teen told the Daily Mail. “Maybe we could have just skipped that part. I do want to be there, but I don’t want to be forced to choose sides.”

This story was originally published January 16, 2018 at 3:24 PM with the headline "Lowcountry woman raised a baby she kidnapped, police say. 20 years later, she’s in court."