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KIDNAPPED: Delimar Vera

Mother’s intuition was once again proved true when after being told her 10-day-old baby died in a house fire was found alive, healthy and happy 6 years later.

 


In the winter of 1997, Luz Cuevas awoke to the smell of smoke in her home and began to frantically search for her newborn. When she went into the nursery, Delimar was no longer in her crib and the window was left wide open. Firefighters had to physically remove Luz from her home with burns on her face. The entire time she was screaming that her baby had been stolen.

Investigators later deemed the reaction to be from a bad case of “nerves” and they would tell the world that Delimar had been incinerated in the blaze that destroyed the home.

Luz never gave up hope, fighting to continue searching for her daughter. She was adamant that there had been foul play since she wouldn’t have ever left the window open on a cold, winter’s night and she could clearly remember seeing an empty cot long before the flames reached the baby’s room.

Six years had gone by and Luz was invited to a family birthday party, Carolyn Correa’s daughter Aaliyah was turning six. Carolyn was Luz’s cousin through marriage. Whilst at the party Luz noticed how familiar little Aaliyah looked, noticing that her dimples were strikingly similar to hers. Using a trick from watching crime shows on TV, Luz went to the birthday girl asking to get some bubblegum out of her hair. Luz pocketed a few strands of hair for later testing.

Her gut feeling was right and DNA testing confirmed it.

With DNA test results in hand, Luz went to Philadelphia politician Angel Cruz asking for his help. Cruz helped Luz get access to files that would prove Carolynn was claiming to be Aaliyah’s mom but had no proof of the fact. Together they would go to the police, handing over the first test results. Just to confirm that it wasn’t a trick, the police performed a second DNA test before they took a screaming Aaliyah into foster care and arrested Carolynn.

It was officially confirmed that Aaliyah was actually Delimar.

For unknown reasons, Carolynn had broken into the home, after opening the bedroom window, kidnapping Delimar from her crib before setting the fire to cover her tracks.

Carolynn was charged with kidnapping, arson, assault, concealing the whereabouts of a child and interfering with the custody of a child, and sentenced to 9 to 30 years in jail.

The first time that Delimar officially met her mother, she hid under the dining table, waiting. When Luz walked in, Delimar jumped out from her spot, yelling “surprise!”. In that same meeting, Luz would question if Delimar knew who she was and the little girl would confirm that she knew that Luz was her mother.
Delimar claims to be happy in her “real home”.

 

(originally posted on medium.com/@natasha.leigh)

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Location: Philadelphia, PA, USA

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