![]() Late last Monday night, Delimar arrived at her new family home. The moment she expected six years ago, she got it."Īmerican social services recommended that the reunification of the family be part of a slow process, but the state governor decided the child should be given back to her real family "as soon as possible". When asked by Cuevas, "Do you know who I am?" the little girl replied, "You are my mother".Ĭruz told ABC television: "She got a hug and kiss her daughter sat in her lap. When she first formally met her real mother, lawyers reported that the child hid under a table and popped up shouting, "Surprise". ![]() According to the assistant district attorney, Leslie Gomez, Correa said, "Goodbye, this is the last time you're going to see Mommy." Delimar was then temporarily placed with a foster family. When she was first separated from Correa, Delimar screamed and wailed. Questions such as how friends and relatives of Correa believed her story for so many years? If she did steal the baby and set the house on fire, who helped her, since the police seem to be in no doubt that she had an accomplice? Why did she call her former husband three days before the fire to say she had given birth to a little girl? Correa was taken into custody on $1m bail, leaving many questions. When Correa arrived to give a second DNA sample, the child was taken away from her. He was sceptical but "something inside" made him think that this bizarre tale could have some foundation in truth.Ĭruz called the police and Correa was given a DNA test that showed that Aaliyah Hernandez was indeed Delimar. State representative Angel Cruz listened to Cuevas's story for an hour and a half, but found it hard to take in. I want to run with her," she told the American media.ĭetermined to prove her case, Cuevas turned to a local politician for help. ![]() "When I see her, I saw that she was my daughter. On January 24, at the children's birthday party, she told her friend that she was sure the little girl was her child, Delimar. Cuevas says she wanted the matter investigated by police at the time, but on learning what lawyers would cost she realised that she could not afford to pursue the matter.ĭespite all that, Cuevas had always held on to the feeling that her daughter had not died. A death certificate was never issued because a body was never found. The hysterical mother screamed at the firemen that she thought her baby had been stolen, but she was told "maybe it was my nerves". Why had the baby's crib been empty when she ran through smoke to get the child out? Why was the bedroom window open when it was a freezing cold night outside? Why were there no remains at all? They said the baby's body had been so consumed by the flames that they could find no remains. Her lawyer says that he is considering an insanity defence.Ĭuevas has said that she never believed firemen when they told her that her daughter had perished in the fire. She called her Aaliyah after the singer, sent her to private school and groomed her to be an actress and beauty-pageant princess.Ĭorrea has since been charged with kidnapping, arson, assault, concealing the whereabouts of a child and interfering with the custody of a child. ![]() Carolyn Correa, 42 - a cousin by marriage of Delimar's father, Pedro Vera, and a regular visitor to the family home - is believed to have taken the baby a few miles across the state line to Willingboro, New Jersey, and pretended to her family that the child was her own. In December 1997, a woman posing as the child's mother is alleged to have stolen her from her bedroom in her family home in the poor Philadelphia suburb of Frankford, and started a fire to cover her tracks. And just as the 31-year-old had always suspected, the baby who was supposed to have died in a fire aged just 10 days, had been alive all this time. Tests proved that her instinct was right, the little girl known as Aaliyah was in fact Delimar Vera. ![]()
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