Mom finds kidnapped daughter six years later: Philadelphia officials had ruled infant died in 1997 fire
Tuesday, March 2, 2004 Posted: 0344 GMT (11:44 AM HKT)

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- A fire that authorities six years ago thought killed a 10-day-old girl was a ruse to kidnap the infant, Philadelphia police said Monday.

The baby, Delimar Vera, was sleeping in the upstairs front bedroom when a fire broke out at her family's two-story row house in north Philadelphia on December 15, 1997.

Luz Cuevas, her mother, could not find Delimar when she ran into the room. She eventually ran out of the house, overcome by smoke and burned on her face. Her two other children also survived, police said.

Remains of the infant's body were never found, and police concluded they had been incinerated in the flames.

The official cause of the fire was listed as an overheated extension cord attached to a space heater.

But Cuevas never fully believed her daughter died in the fire.

In January, she attended a birthday party for the child of an acquaintance and was struck by the resemblance of a 6-year-old girl to herself and her other children.

Telling the girl she had bubble gum in her hair, Cuevas was able to take strands of her hair in hopes a DNA test would prove she was right, according to Philadelphia police Lt. Michael Boyle of the special victims unit.

A state legislator helped put Cuevas in touch with police, who launched an investigation and had DNA tests performed that confirmed the girl is her daughter.

Police say Carolyn Correa, 41, a resident of Willingboro, New Jersey, a Philadelphia suburb, started the fire and kidnapped Delimar, whom she passed off as her own daughter.

Before the results of the DNA tests were in, officials placed the child in New Jersey state custody.

When police returned to Correa's home to confront her about the DNA results, she had fled, leaving behind three other children.

She remains a fugitive from multiple arrest warrants on charges that include arson, kidnapping and concealing the whereabouts of a child.

Lt. Thomas McDevitt of the special victims unit said Cuevas told police that Correa was a distant friend of a cousin of the baby's father, from whom she has separated.

Cuevas had met Correa the day before the fire, McDevitt said. Correa returned December 15, saying she had left her purse upstairs, he said.

The fire was discovered shortly after Correa left the house, McDevitt said.

It has not yet been determined when Delimar will be reunited with Cuevas.

Boyle said that when police told Cuevas about the DNA test results Saturday night she was "overwhelmed with joy."

"She sat there and shook and cried and kept saying, 'Thank you, thank you, thank you,'" Boyle said.

Police say they cannot fully explain why Delimar was declared killed.

Officers at the time found bone fragments they thought were the baby's remains, but tests later showed them to be nonhuman, McDevitt said.

When investigators returned to the scene, firemen had already dumped several hundred pounds of debris from the gutted bedroom in the back yard, McDevitt said.

The officers sifted through the debris but found mostly dry wool particles, which they were told resemble human ashes, but only those burned at 1,000 degrees for an hour or longer, McDevitt said.

The fire, which was confined to the bedroom, lasted only about 15 minutes and was nowhere near 1,000 degrees, McDevitt said.

McDevitt admitted this scenario is an explanation only "up to a point." On the other hand, officers had no reason to suspect arson or a kidnapping, he said.

cnn.com

I wonder what effect all this will have on that poor child.

Dont' forget about mom! She'll never want to let her daughter out of her sight again EVER!!! It is a hard to imagine finding her living, after thinking all this time she had parished in the house fire!!! What an emotional rollercoaster!!! She's likely an EXTREMELY protective mom today

The question about the child is how has she been treated for the past 6 years?? I wonder how much she would have picked up on, and if she had a sense of what had happened to her? She likely had some feeling of not being in the right place - of not belonging. I wonder if she would remember the day she was taken, since she was only 10 days old....

It's just nice to see it turn out the best way possible...afterall, she IS alive!!!!

Stories in the news rarely end like this

Another story about it:

Police: Baby Believed Dead Was Kidnapped

Newborn Believed Killed in 1997 Fire Was Really Kidnapped, Police Say; Mother Awaits Reunion

The Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA March 2 — An infant believed to have died in a 1997 fire actually was kidnapped and raised by a woman who set the blaze to cover her path, authorities said. Now, the child's mother who recognized the girl at a party is eagerly awaiting a reunion.

Police issued a warrant for the arrest of Carolyn Correa, 41, of Willingboro, N.J., on charges of arson, kidnapping and conspiracy. She remained at large Tuesday, authorities said.

"This child, now 6 years old, who has been raised by Carolyn Correa as her own, is not her own," police Capt. John Darby said Monday.

The girl's biological mother, Luz Cuevas of Philadelphia, saw the now 6-year-old girl at a birthday party in January and recognized her as her own, Darby said. A subsequent investigation prompted DNA tests that confirmed the mother's suspicion, police said.

The girl, Delimar Vera, was placed in state custody in New Jersey. It was not clear when she would be reunited with her mother, but Cuevas knows how she will greet her daughter.

"I (will) go and give her a kiss and a hug and say, 'I love you, I love you,'" Cuevas said Tuesday on ABC's "Good Morning America."

Delimar was thought to have perished in the Dec. 15, 1997, blaze in her family's home. A body was never found; authorities believed the infant had been consumed by the fast-moving fire.

State Rep. Angel Cruz, who helped the mother contact police after she spotted the little girl, credited "motherly instinct" for connecting mother and child.

Ever since the blaze, Cuevas held on to the belief that her child was somehow alive partly because it didn't make sense that a window of the infant's second-floor room was found to have been open after the blaze, even though it was the middle of December, Cruz said.

Cuevas told WPHL-TV that she recognized the girl at the birthday party from a dimple on her face.

"I said to my sister, `Look, she's my daughter,'" Cuevas said.

It was unclear what brought the child and her mother to the same party, but Correa apparently knew the family through the infant's father, Pedro Vera.

Vera told The Philadelphia Inquirer that Correa stopped in several times after the baby was born, saying she was pregnant. The visits waned after the fire.

Cruz said the girl would be reunited with her real mother after authorities in New Jersey break the news to her about what happened.

"I mean, she's 6 years old," he told "Good Morning America." "It will be devastating to this child."

Fire officials at the time blamed the one-alarm blaze on a home-rigged extension cord connected to a space heater.

abcnews.com

I understand now, for the child, she will likely only remember the abductor as her mother how very sad!!!!!

I can only try to imagine