Cold Cases · Spotify Studios

This Woman Solved Her Own Kidnapping

May 29, 2023·38 min·1 clip

A hospital nurse wrapped a newborn in her arms and walked away—but she wasn't a nurse, she was a kidnapper.

Carter Roy presents the Cold Cases episode about Nedra Nance (Nettie), who solved her own kidnapping as a young adult. The episode opens with the terrifying scenario: a woman impersonating a nurse takes a newborn from the hospital. The baby miraculously finds her way back. Years later, 17-year-old Nettie needs her birth certificate for prenatal care and discovers her mother Anne can't provide one. Anne reveals she adopted Nettie in secret from a biological mother with substance use disorder. But Anne refuses to answer follow-up questions. Nettie suspects deception. For five years, she searches missing persons databases and birth records looking for dark-skinned babies born in Connecticut around 1987. In 2009, she moves to Atlanta near her aunt Cassandra and finally opens up about her suspicions—beginning the investigation that will solve her own kidnapping.

As heard by us

A hospital kidnapping opens into a daughter's search for the identity hidden inside her family story.

A hospital kidnapping becomes a later identity mystery as Nettie starts to question the family story she was raised with. The episode moves cleanly from the disappearance of a newborn to Cassandra's memory of Ann returning from a train with a baby, then into Nettie's search…

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Why you'd press play

You follow Nettie's search from a secret adoption story to one missing-child photo that stops her cold.

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