By Editor,Laura Parnaby

Copyright dailymail

On July 10, 2018, one of the most audacious child abductions in US history unfolded in the maternity wing of a Florida hospital, when a woman dressed in nurse uniform plucked a newborn baby from her mother’s arms.

Kamiyah Mobley was just eight hours old when Gloria Williams, who had recently miscarried, whisked her away from her mom.

She grew up as Alexis Kelli Manigo in rural South Carolina with her ‘mommy’, and it wasn’t until January 17, 2017, that she finally learned the truth.

She was 18 when she was reunited with her birth parents, Craig Aiken and Shanara Mobley, who never gave up hope trying to find her.

At the time of her abduction, Aiken was behind bars on marijuana-related offenses, and Shanara was just 16.

Now, almost a decade later, he has opened up about going from being treated as a suspect for 20 years, to sharing a ‘beautiful’ and close relationship with her today.

In a long and candid interview with the Daily Mail, Aiken revealed Kamiyah, who now works for a loan company in Duval County, still has a soft spot for her kidnapper – but her birth parents live in fear of the day she’s released.

The 50-year-old Florida native described how their family copes with complex circumstance, including by addressing the kidnapping by joking about it.

‘Kamiyah is a strong young lady. She is very positive,’ Aiken said from his home in Jacksonville, where he lives with his partner Shannon.

‘We joke about this situation, that’s how we deal with it. If Kamiyah is acting out, I’ll say, ‘don’t make me call that lady to come kidnap you again’.’

Aiken said that despite the pain of the last few decades, he enjoys a close relationship with Kamiyah, who lives nearby and gets on well with her seven siblings on her father’s side.

‘It’s beautiful. We have fun,’ Aiken told the Daily Mail. ‘When I first looked at her, I knew she was my child.

‘When she started hanging around with the family, I definitely knew she was one of my kids. They act alike.’

However, Kamiyah’s relationship with her birth mother, Shanara Mobley, isn’t as easy.

In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail in 2018, Shanara called for Williams to face the death penalty, and Aiken said she never forgave her daughter for refusing to cut ties with her kidnapper.

Speaking about the mother-daughter rift, he said: ‘It’s never going to be totally healed. They just have to deal with it.

‘We know Shanara doesn’t like Gloria, and we know Kamiyah likes Gloria.’

‘Shanara feels I’m too soft on Kamiyah, especially after she said she still has feelings for the kidnapper,’ Aiken added.

‘That was years ago, but Shanara still carries grudges like that.

‘To me, I felt like we were just going through things and she didn’t know anybody but the kidnapper, so that’s why she was saying things like that.

‘I feel the mother’s side and I feel Kamiyah’s side, but sometimes as a parent we have to let things go.’

Aiken, who works as a photographer, also expands on this in his book, Self Therapy, which he said he wrote to ‘reclaim’ the narrative about Kamiyah’s disappearance after he was treated as a suspect, and ‘as a crucial outlet for healing and education’.

He also created and starred in a music video of the same name with Kamiyah and rapper Tommy Go Krazy, where he re-enacted parts of the kidnapping including the times he was detained by police.

The father’s memoir recalled how Kamiyah initially visited Gloria in prison and even saved Duval County Jail as ‘Mommy’ in her phone.

‘This continuous contact between Kamiyah and Williams became unbearable for Shanara, as it felt like a constant reminder of her past trauma,’ he wrote.

‘She felt her own pain was overlooked and disregarded by others, and every interaction between Kamiyah and Williams served as a fresh wound, reigniting the agony she endured all those years ago.’

Aiken said that when Shanara discovered that Kamiyah saved the jailhouse as ‘Mommy’ on her phone, this intensified her ‘feelings of rejection and being replaced by the very person who caused their separation’ to breaking point.

At this point, Aiken said Shanara blocked her own daughter’s number and cut ties ‘to protect herself from further anguish’.

He said that Shanara and Kamiyah are back in contact now, as they gradually move towards healing the rift that tore them apart.

Aiken said he knows that Kamiyah still likes Gloria – but they don’t discuss whether she still visits her in jail.

He said she ‘sometimes’ talks about her upbringing in South Carolina, but keeps most of her thoughts about it to herself.

‘She doesn’t really talk about what went on at the house,’ Aiken told the Daily Mail.

‘She really doesn’t go into details. We’re building a future right now, so the past is behind us.’

However, for Aiken and Shanara, Williams’ eventual release from her 18-year jail sentence, scheduled for 2036, is likely to reignite their trauma.

‘As a victim, you worry about when the kidnapper comes out,’ the father-of-eight said.

‘Shanara never wanted her to be free, period. I’m in the middle, trying to keep both sides happy.

‘I don’t care about Gloria, she’s not affecting me being in prison right now. I’m trying to understand what both of them are going through.’

Aiken also revealed that he was treated as a suspect in his daughter’s kidnapping. He said police never apologized for this error.

‘For almost 20 years, I was trying to prove that I had nothing to do with it,’ he said.

‘I felt like if the detectives had have focused more on the real kidnapper they would have found her faster instead of focusing on me.’

‘At one point, they said that I owed some drug dealer some money, and they might have kidnapped the baby,’ he added.

‘At one point they said my mom kidnapped the baby, and at another point that my auntie kidnapped the baby. They just kept coming out with these wild accusations.’

Writing in his book, Aiken also recalled the moment he was first quizzed about his daughter’s disappearance by detectives who were convinced he was the culprit.

‘I had no answers for them,’ he wrote.

‘The last I had heard about the kidnapping was from Kamiyah’s mother, Star (Shanara), when we spoke on the phone while I was still in jail.

‘At that time, she was inconsolable, sobbing and screaming that someone had taken her baby and that it was all my fault for not being there to protect them.

‘I tried to reassure her that I had nothing to do with it and that I did not choose to be in jail, but she did not seem to believe me.’

Aiken said detectives continued to accuse him of kidnapping Kamiyah, telling him that ‘babies don’t just disappear like that’.

In a desperate attempt to eke a confession out of him, police said they had discovered that Shanara was a minor when they conceived Kamiyah, and that they would hit him with a ‘lewd and lascivious charge’ unless he admitted the abduction.

Aiken said he had no idea that Shanara was a minor, because she had told him she was two years older than her actual age.

‘At the time, she claimed to be 18, often mingling with adults and exhibiting a foul mouth that could make even the devil blush,’ Aiken wrote.

‘I was exhausted and sick of the detectives’ dirty tactics,’ he added. ‘I no longer trusted them or believed a word they said.’

Even when he was released from jail and the constant grilling of detectives, Aiken wasn’t free from the speculation.

Aiken said the day he returned home, he sat in his living room with his extended family watching television, only to be confronted by a news segment naming him as a suspect in Kamiyah’s disappearance.

‘From that moment on, I knew that I had to fight to clear my name and find my daughter,’ Aiken wrote.

‘I was not going to let anyone make a scapegoat out of me for a crime I did not commit.

‘I would do whatever it took to prove my innocence and bring my daughter back home.’

Aiken said he ‘never gave up hope’ and followed ‘any leads’ he could find on the street, but it wasn’t an easy task while everyone still suspected that he was the kidnapper.

‘I had to pull myself away from the world,’ the father told the Daily Mail, with sadness in his voice.

‘I was tired of explaining myself.

‘I stopped calling the detectives because every time I did, they would tell me they had information, but then once I get down there (to the police station) they would charge me with marijuana.

‘It was about applying pressure to me. So I stopped communicating with them and hid from everybody. I stayed in my house a lot.’

Daily Mail has reached out to Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office for further comment.

It was Kamiyah’s own suspicions which finally brought Williams down, in January 2017.

Then 18 years old, Kamiyah was months away from graduating Colleton County High School as ‘Alexis Manigo’, after living out her childhood as Williams’ daughter at their home in the sleepy South Carolina town of Walterboro when the truth came to light.

Cracks started to show when ‘Alexis’ wanted to apply for a job, but her alleged mother refused to hand over her birth certificate or Social Security number.

An affidavit would later reveal that the birth documents for ‘Alexis’ had been forged, and her Social Security number was taken from a Virginia man who died in 1983.

The kidnapper’s labyrinth of lies finally came crashing down when Kamiyah grew suspicious of Williams, and she admitted the deception.

Williams was arrested after an anonymous tip to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

The tip reportedly came after Kamiyah told a friend that she suspected she had been kidnapped.

Williams had recently miscarried when she stole Kamiyah from University Medical Center in Jacksonville on July 10, 1998.

Williams had kept the miscarriage secret from her parents and two sons Antoine and Andre, then aged 10 and 11.

When she returned home to Walterboro, South Carolina her family never had any reason to doubt that the adorable new arrival was their own flesh and blood.

Kamiyah grew up believing her father was a car dealership worker called Charles Manigo who had split with her mom before she was born.

She considered stepdad Wrenoskie Williams, a 55-year-old truck driver whom Williams married when Kamiyah was in middle school, more of a father figure.

Aiken said he wants to meet Williams one day to gain a ‘sense of closure’ on the trauma which hung like a dark cloud over his life for so many years.

‘As time passed and wounds began to heal, I felt a growing desire to seek answers from Williams about my daughter’s upbringing – the questions only she could answer,’ Aiken wrote.

Aiken told the Daily Mail that he ‘feels nothing’ towards Williams but he wants to speak with her for his own peace of mind.

‘For me, the most important focus remains the present and the precious time I can now spend with Kamiyah,’ Aiken wrote in his book.

‘After years of separation, we are catching up on the moments we lost, forming a bond that grows stronger with each passing day.

‘I eagerly look forward to creating new memories together, forging a future that holds immeasurable joy and love.