Carlina White Case Highlights the Face of Child Abductors

Jan. 21, 2011— -- As police look for the woman who abducted Carlina White from a Harlem Hospital as a baby 23 years ago, they have a profile that explains the majority of baby-snatching cases: mostly women who have a psychological need to "fill a void" in their lives.

The women have no love for babies, nor are they necessarily the empathetic childless victims who often sway the courts to give them lighter sentences, said Kenneth Lanning, a retired FBI agent who was in charge of the infant abduction research project in the agency's Behavioral Science Unit.

And they are not pedophiles who have a sexual interest in their victims.

"In most of these cases, these women need children, not because they love babies, but because they are trying to preserve a relationship with a man and they need the man for their economic survival," Lanning said.

It is a rare crime; only about 100 to 150 cases a year of the hundreds of thousands of missing children cases, most of which are teenage runaways or custody cases between biological parents, experts say.

Infant abductions differ from the kidnapping of older children, who are sometimes molested by a male sociopath and then quickly murdered.

"When you look at the vast universe of child abductions, the first thing to realize is that on average they [the abductors] are white males, 25 to 35, but when you are talking about infants, that profile is worthless," Lanning said.

"In a few occasions we are wrong but, statistically, it is women who do this."

On Aug. 4, 1987, 19-day-old Carlina was taken from her biological parents, Joy White and Carl Tyson, when they took her to the hospital with a fever. At the time, the parents accused a mystery woman who had been hanging around the hospital.

"Way I feel when I lost my daughter, oh, my God, that was like a big part of my heart just like, just was ripped apart," Tyson told the New York Post.

A $10,000 reward was offered and the parents never gave up hope for their daughter's eventual return.

Carlina was taken to Bridgeport, Conn., and, later to Atlanta, where she was given a new name, Nejdra Nance. She was raised by the woman for 23 years, unaware that her biological family was from New York City.