SURVIVED: Baby Found 17 Years Later

you are such a genuine gym thank you for clicking on my video i'm brooke mckenna but today's case is a taken baby found 17 years later in a selfie now this is a survival story that is much different than those we have covered previously this was a baby who was kidnapped but found when she was practically an adult the way in which she was identified is something that is close to a miracle the years went by but the distance between them did not and before i tell you the whole story in this summary i'll stop there and let you ponder what this really means before i explain everything by the way i post so much content like this it is my absolute passion to tell these stories and i mean no harm or disrespect when i do so so if you would like to support me in doing so all you have to do is make sure you are subscribed with the post notification bell on give this video a thumbs up and leave a nice comment down below i also want to thank today's sponsor which is june's journey and we have worked with them here before on this channel and i'm really excited to be working with them again because i truly do love this game jude's journey is a free murder mystery game on iphone and android where you are really solving murders of course fictional murders now i absolutely love this because it encompasses everything that i enjoy it's vintage it's crime and it makes you feel like you are in a murder mystery film except it's interactive too so you are actually getting to solve it as you go you go through this game feeling like a top detective and it's all within your own hands now this game has kept my mind occupied and sane during these times of quarantine and if you want to try it out for yourself there will be a link down below in the description that you can click and it is completely free like i said the only reason that there is a link is so they can track how many of you actually wanted to play the game because of me and it really helps to just support this channel and make sure we can have more sponsors in the future and continue working with wonderful sponsors like jun's journey so yeah if you would like to try it out please make sure you click the link down below and thank you june's journey for sponsoring this portion of the video now let's get back to the story [Music] so it was 1997 in south africa and mourinho and celeste nurse lived in cape town they were a small family of two but they were expecting their first child now this was a little baby girl the family was so excited and filled with love they were trying to become a bigger family and it was something that they were both so passionate about and they really couldn't wait until the baby girl was in their arms and then in april it was time celeste went to the grouchor hospital and on april 30th she gave birth to a little healthy baby girl they ended up naming this baby zephanie now because celeste had a c-section of course more recovery time so she was still at the hospital three days later and they would be bonding and then that is when the worst thing possible that could happen to a mother occurred that day celeste put zephany in her little cop which was right next to her bed and she ended up falling asleep because stephanie was asleep and when she woke up there was a nurse in her bedroom asking her over and over again where this baby was she you know woke up flustered saying she's in the cot she's right next to me and the nurse proceeded to tell her that she was not the only thing in this cart was a baby's nest and that's when the hospital called the police and the search began and the hospital was canvassed from top to bottom looking for stephanie as her mother became even more distraught now the searchers didn't come up empty-handed they actually did find several things around this hospital that led them to believe that this was connected to the disappearance of zephany now this was zephany's baby garment as well as a handbag that was found inside the hospital the handbag had no identification there was nothing really of importance or to show who this person was that is when a tunnel was searched and this tunnel in this hospital was meant for women who were going into labor to have direct access from the outside of the hospital to the maternity ward in case you know they were in dire need of getting a doctor to help them while they were in labor you know going into labor is sometimes a sporadic thing and you can't really plan for it and so this was just made to make sure that it was the easiest way possible for these women to get to their doctor but this also meant that if they could get in easily they could get out easily and this led right to the outside where this person could have disappeared with stephanie in seconds it also meant that there was no sign of zephany anywhere and it was in 1997 so there weren't any security cameras in or around this hospital when investigators talked to celeste she did tell them that she remembered another nurse coming in right before she fell asleep this nurse was comforting her telling her you know she needed to get some rest kind of soothing her while also taking care of zephany and so she felt really comfortable to go to sleep but now she didn't see this nurse anywhere the other staff said that the woman she was describing was someone they had never seen before but it was someone the patients had seen the other patients in the maternity ward you see another woman said she saw this nurse come in and she was wearing maroon pants and an oatmeal colored top and she talked to her and this was all that that woman could say but there was another woman who had a very concerning story and this was that she actually walked in to her bedroom to see this exact nurse holding her baby and she kind of asked her what are you doing and the nurse said oh your baby was just crying so i was comforting her and you know just helping you out but this woman got a really eerie feeling and the nurse left the baby and left the room as the search for zephany continued the family began to believe that she had been kidnapped by a woman who had a perfect plan to get away unnoticed investigators had found something in this tunnel there was a pillow in there and this pillow was thought to be what this nurse nurse the person posing as a nurse used under her shirt to make it appear as though she looked pregnant another just facade that she could hide behind in a ward full of pregnant women no one would ask her what she was doing there if she looked like she was pregnant and then once she had a baby in her hands that was zephany it appeared as though she ditched the pillow but no one knew why this woman wanted a baby was it a personal kidnapping was she possibly someone in the family or someone who knew the family was this just a woman who wanted a child or was this possibly child trafficking each one was horrific in their own way and two days of searching led to no more clues than they originally had found so the nurse family who had entered that hospital with all of the hope in the world were leaving empty-handed five days later a part of their family missing they believed that this was just some sort of sick joke and that they would go home and the baby would be there and waiting for them but they arrived home and it was empty and this is how it stayed for months and then years celeste and monet began to have different interviews begging for their daughter back you know saying that people could send in information anonymously and just to let them know where their daughter was you know celeste said her intention was to steal a child she didn't care which child it was which was the new theory in this case that she was just going from room to room this kidnapper and she just was looking for an opportunity to to take a baby it wasn't an attack on zephany herself in fact they believed it could have been the baby that the mother walked in on the nurse holding and she just thankfully caught this woman before she could take her baby and so this woman went on to zephany that didn't make the family feel any better though and as the years went by and zephany wasn't found they continued to celebrate her birthday every single year constantly hoping that she would come home and she never took a back seat in her family's minds that is when investigators finally got a tip and this was from a woman who said that her neighbor suddenly had a baby and she had never seen that this woman was pregnant so she was very confused and this child also looked a lot like stephanie so she was calling the police to see if they could investigate and see if this in fact was the kidnapped girl so the investigators got there and they questioned the mother only to find out that this child was actually a boy so it could not be zephany and they were back to square one to cope with the loss the family like i said did always come together to celebrate her birthday and celeste would talk to families of other kidnapped children just to you know feel that support within one another and to be able to lean on different people and help them in times of crisis and celeste and mornay actually went on to have three more children together and they also would end up divorced and you know this happens a lot in kidnapping cases where you know looking at the spouse of your child that's missing is just too much and so they did end up separating but they would always come back together on april 30th when she had been born and they would celebrate for her regardless of their personal issues twelve long years had gone by and the parents had watched their other three children grow up and they had always known in the back of their mind that zephany was out there somewhere growing up with somebody else they just hoped that she wasn't in too much pain that is when they would receive a call in july of 2009 and there was a woman who whispered on the other side she said i know about your daughter then she proceeded to ask for 500 000 south african rand which is about 70 000 but this was to be dropped off in a pre-arranged place and the family immediately contacted the police to you know have some backup and the police were watching this drop-off area to make sure that nothing horrible happened but this is when they would go to this drop-off site they would have the money but unfortunately no one would ever come to get it that is when the police tracked this phone number to a woman her name was glinda dubelle and when they tracked her address they realized that she lived right next to celeste's mother who knew about this whole kidnapping there were no children inside of her home and it was thought that she had made this call to try to extort money out of the family going through such a traumatic time she was charged with extortion and sentenced to three years house arrest with 600 hours of community service but this meant that zephany was not with her and they still didn't know where she was once again the family was heartbroken and their other children were growing up not knowing who their big sister was and how she acted and how she would have been to them as a big sister they never got to experience having the oldest sibling around them but one of their children actually knew a lot more than she could have ever expected you see it was now 2015 and their second born was a girl named cassidy and she was now 14 years old and going in to zwesky high school as a freshman she began to make friends really quickly and one of which was a high school senior who was 17 year old mache solomon and the two had met in the corridor at school and felt like an instant connection toward each other they felt like they knew each other and didn't understand why they were feeling that way but they instantly connected and began to hang out all the time mache and cassidy got even closer and cassidy believed that mache was like the big sister that she was lacking all of those years it just felt like this was a person who could fill that hole in her heart cassidy even began calling mache a big sis and mache would call her little girl or baby girl and mache would often take her to the bathroom in school give her little makeovers do her hair do her makeup and mache felt like she knew cassidy too she felt very protective over her they were inseparable and that is when people who would see them together started asking if they were sisters now their response was that they didn't know maybe it was in another life that they were siblings but they didn't think much of it because even though people were saying you know you guys do look a lot alike they were saying everybody has doppelgangers we just happened to be in the same school as one of ours and they thought it was really cool but once cassidy's parents heard about this they wanted to know much more that's when they were shown a selfie that cassidy had taken with mache and they were in complete shock these two didn't just look kind of similar they were identical and cassidy had told them that people kept asking mache if she was adopted and she would laugh it off and tell them not to be crazy so she said you know she wasn't adopted she continues to say that you know that's that's crazy to think that but cassie's parents weren't just going to stop there they didn't believe that it was too crazy of a theory that she had been adopted and meanwhile michelle's family was shown the same selfie and they agreed that the that the girls did look alike and her father michael even said that he had seen cassidy before at her father's electrical shop when he would go in there to buy different things but that is when cassidy's father mornay would ask if he could take them out for some takeaway you know they went to a local mcdonald's and they kind of just met up to talk for a little bit and after this celeste and mornay spoke and then they were very serious when they talked to cassidy next saying she needed to ask mache one very important question a few weeks later mache would be taken out of math class and told to go to the headmaster's office when she got there she had no idea what it was for and she was greeted by two social workers because cassidy had simply asked her that one question and mache had said yeah her birthday was april 30th 1997. was she stalking her facebook how did she know that well cassidy and her family did know that and they knew exactly what that could mean the nurse family had contacted investigators and they had begun to dig into these solomons and who they were and what they found caused two social workers to end up at their school talking to mache solomon now mache was being told about a child named zephany nurse and that she might know the identity of this newborn baby mache was very confused she didn't know the identity she had no idea what they were talking about and they asked her where were you born she said my mom told me it was about 20 minutes away from here retreat hospital she said that there was even proof on a birth certificate that she saw one time but investigators quickly informed her that they had looked into this and there was no records of her being born at this hospital mache said that she would do the dna test that they were offering because she was positive that it would be negative and they would end all of this and go back to their normal lives she began to say that her mother lavona and her father michael would never lie to her especially about who she was and where she came from and mache said that she had a wonderful childhood she lived in lavender hill and cape town this was the same town that the nurse family lived in and her mother called her princess and often take her to the mall into the movies and she said that her mother was always there for her 24 7 and her father she said was her rock her hero he was soft and gentle and her dad she looked up to him so much so at 17 years old she was going in to take a test that could change her life forever but she didn't believe that it would because she knew the truth about her life her parents had told her the truth right well the dna test came back saying that mache solomon was in fact zephany nurse that her biological sister was her best friend cassidy and that she had been kidnapped at birth no one could have believed that a selfie would solve a missing person's case that was nearly two decades old and she had grown up five kilometers away or three miles from her biological family it would often play in a field right across from their home now of course the nurse family were ecstatic and they knew that they had found their babies 17 years later but for mache this was a complete and utter shock she was being taken away from the only family she had ever known social workers took her into custody and she was told she wouldn't be going back home because her mother was being arrested mother meaning the woman who kidnapped her and forced her to believe that she was her mother but mache began to feel this time that her life was out of control she wanted her mother and she wanted to ask her you know what she did if any of this was true and this was the person that she relied on and now everyone was saying that that person was a liar one part of her wanted to run away with lavona and michael but she also wanted to get close to her biological parents so she was torn but between the people who raised her in love and the people who conceived her in love and had yearned to love her for 17 years but the nurse family wanted to you know meet her and really introduce themselves as her parents immediately and they arranged a meeting at the police station and they began to hug and cry mache was taken aback by all this love but celeste and morenae they knew that she was their daughter and they said that they knew from the moment that they saw this girl that she was stephanie but mache didn't know if she should push away or love them back but she decided that the family had been through so much so she hugged them back and even though they were still strangers she was going to try to show some sort of happiness but part of her still wanted to be with the family she had known the family she'd grown up with but mache did quickly get comfortable with this new family especially with cassidy since she was already a big part of her life being her best friend she began to call it celeste and morne mom and dad which is something that they had wanted to hear from her since she was first born and they never got the chance to for me it still feels like i'm living a dream somebody needs to pinch me so i can wake up so it's still a lot to process for me and it's it hurts you know 17 years this woman took stephanie away from us and that's basically the foundation where a mother and a child forms a bond and to meet after 17 years you know it's it hurts you it takes a lot away lavona was still in custody but michael still needed to be questioned because they didn't know whether he had any part in this kidnapping or not you know mache was actually in the room when he would be taken in to be talked to and michael would immediately ask her why are you here what is happening he looked extremely stressed and that's when he told the police that he didn't do anything and that mache was his daughter he wasn't a part of any of this he even asked how she could not be his daughter he began to explain that lavonna had been pregnant and then she came home with a baby and he believed that she had just given birth now he was eventually released and investigators said they didn't believe he knew anything about this kidnapping so just lavona would be taken to trial and at this time she was actually not named due to the fact that they were trying to keep the minor who was you know mache solomon from getting released to the public her name her identity so they kept the mother's name private as well or the the kidnapper's name private as well and investigators believed that lavonna had been pregnant but she had a miscarriage and decided to go and steal a child instead of coming to terms with the fact that she lost her own now in march of 2016 lavona actually pled not guilty for kidnapping fraud and contravening the children's act of south africa now this is for care contact and protection of children and prohibits child abduction but lavona was in this courtroom where she wore a cloth over her face to hide her face from the public and mache and her biological parents as well as michael were all in the courtroom but lavona continued to say that she didn't do anything wrong but she also talked about having trouble conceiving a child that she had missed carriages and was desperate to adopt but what she would say next would shock everyone because lavona said she didn't kidnap this baby from the hospital but somebody else might have for her now lavonna said she was getting a fertility treatment from a woman named sylvia who then offered her a full baby lavona said she was told that the baby's mother didn't want the baby and was giving it up for adoption so of course she said she wanted it now investigators searched for lavona's connection to a woman named sylvia and they couldn't find a thing and you'd think that if she was getting fertility treatment it would have had to been at a center that has some records that at least showed she was there but nothing was found but what they did find was a witness who finally came forward saying that they saw a woman who looked just like lavonna carrying out zephany that day at the hospital and this woman was brought in to the police station to pick out who this was from a lineup she immediately picked lavona you're standing by your story that somebody gave you the baby you didn't you said you didn't kidnap her yes they must not judge me i said in the bible see if they must a nurse know the bible he makes me judge people condemn people and i asked mrnas not to judge me that was in the post is now the future i did those forgivenesses they got the nurses because i never knew she was stumbling you know seeing lavona at trial mache was really distraught she struggled to see the person she believed was her mother in handcuffs and a place for criminals and she didn't know how to process what was being told to her six months later lavona was sentenced to 10 years in prison and in fact the judge even mentioned that she showed no remorse at the trial in fact prosecutors said that she only tried to make herself look like the victim o'shea was heartbroken about this she didn't feel like justice was given to her because everyone else saw this woman as a kidnapper but she saw her as a mother mache said that she still loved her and forgave her and mache went through so much that last year of her high school that she actually had to stop going to school for a while and get some therapy before going back and graduating a few months later mache would actually choose to go see lavona in prison through a window and she told her by knowing i'm not your blood that i actually belong to someone else and that you've robbed them of possibilities and changed my whole destiny hurt me how am i supposed to believe your word when you've lied to me saying that i am your child you broke your trust with me you are going to have to come clean if you want to have a relationship with me mache was also pregnant at this time and was crying uncontrollably at the fact that lavona was in a you know prison uniform and she was just very emotional about the whole thing but the one thing that she demanded was lavona to tell her the truth instead levona started giving her advice about her pregnancy and told her that she would tell her what happened one day but not that day however she still said that she didn't do it now at this time the public only knew what happened to a baby named stephanie nurse they had no idea who mache solomon was and mache wanted to change that she actually applied for the band restricting her name to be lifted and this was in 2019 as soon as this was lifted she released her book under her name called zephany two mothers one daughter an astonishing true story and it was dedicated to both of her mothers now she said that she still goes by mache because she feels like that shows how much she went through and who she was when she didn't know her life was a lie but she also knows that it is a lie and that that is why she also goes by zephany who taught her how to be strong and forced her to find the truth and so she wants to be respectful to both parents who gave her those names and so she goes by mache zephany at first she said she hated the name zephany because it forced her to really change her whole life and she loved her life before and so she kind of said that she blamed her biological parents for making her the mother she knew go to prison and she really had so much hatred but now she has kind of realized that they were just trying to find their daughter and she was deserving of the truth to come out eventually i think it's just even more emotional the fact that this happened when she was 17 years old a teenager that already has trouble processing things and this was thrown on her as well but i really wanted to add in zephany's own thoughts on all of this that happened to her because she is more than willing to talk about her stories so i wanted you guys to hear it from her because i think it's really eye-opening so here's an interview that she did and i hope you enjoy i only get to say what i really been keeping in for so long and just to tell my story why i actually decided to meet them on the day was i felt that i owed it to them you know i felt that my mommy really hurt you guys that that was what's running through my mind and this is the least i can do to say to say sorry for parties to show you how i was raised you know and tell us about your childhood well from what i can remember my childhood was you know it was a stable and it was as any healthy normal childhood i mean my dad we we used to go camping at sudbata and the family would go it and you know christmas times you know my daddy is so traditional and he has made livonia like that he's still like that and and you know we would have a christmas tree every year and photos were taken and you know i knew even growing up into a teenager you know i always got what i wanted and you know we were never rich but we never lacked anything i always got what i wanted and if mommy and daddy couldn't do it this month i could i understood that okay mommy that he can only do it next month or mom and daddy can only do it now and then but there was also a good level of understanding what did lavona teach you i mean how did she bring you up what kind of mom was she she was the parents in the house she was mommy say you know daddy would say and they i could toast my daddy's fingers and i still do it today but i know not to take advantage of him because he's so supportive he's wonderful yeah he's he's amazing and but mommy you know like we always had that relationship where i could talk to her lavona is still in prison today and mache lives nearby at the family home with her you could say the father that she grew up knowing was her father michael so not her biological father but the one she grew up with and now she has two children that she lives with as well now she said that she chose to live with michael instead of her biological family because both of her parents her biological parents were living with family at the time and she was still learning to bond with them and she figured you know she had the closest bond with michael so she stayed with him because michael's home was her safe place she also said that she now believes that lavona did kidnap her but she also says forgiving brings so much healing into your heart life must go on she knows that i forgive her and she knows that i still love her she says that she has already loved levona through the pain and finding out that she wasn't her mother so she just hopes one day she can hear the full story from lavona but she's still denying the kidnapping to this day mache survived right under the noses of her biological family and her biological father mornay said that he can't forgive and he never will forgive his daughter's abductor for taking her from them and i do think that it would be hard to forgive an abductor even if your child is safe and back with you in a sense because you will never get those years back that you missed and although she appears to have been treated well she's never going to bond the same with her biological parents as she did with lavona and michael because she believed they were her parents since she was a child i think lying in this way like lavonna did to mache is a sign or a way to psychologically manipulate her and i think that that is trauma in itself and so for the biological parents to be angry at her for doing this i think is completely acceptable because just like if a child was kidnapped and harmed or kidnapped and killed those parents aren't just going to forgive that person for what they did but i think it's probably even harder because it really does seem like mache is having a really hard time bonding with celeste and mornay even though they searched for her for 17 years because they're not what she knows she already has parents i mean the most crucial years in a child's life to bond is from a baby to five years old they only saw her for three days that's it but yeah i just think it's absolutely insane that this baby was found after being missing for 17 years with a photograph i feel like that's just something that seems like it would be out of a movie but this actually happened and the fact that her best friend actually was her sister and they were acting like sisters before this all happened it just goes to show that there is something in the universe that you know pulls us towards one another in a way that we could never imagine and so i don't know i just thought it was a really kind of a miracle story to bring to you guys and you know it was a little easier to stomach because she did have a good childhood and she she didn't grow up in a horrible environment but like i said just because she wasn't tortured and i'm really happy she wasn't doesn't mean she wasn't psychologically manipulated doesn't mean she wasn't lied to for her entire life and the fact that she was taken away from people who brought her onto this earth and they did nothing wrong to get her to be taken away from them and it really was just a stroke of bad luck that she chose to take their baby over anyone else's it could have been anyone and the fact that she didn't move away and they they ended up going to the same high school is just incredibly amazing but i don't think that just because mache wasn't harmed that lavona should get a free pass on what she did if that makes sense i'd love to know what you think about that my heart breaks for the nurse family because i know that they are probably struggling right now with knowing that they found their daughter but knowing that it will never be the same as if they raised her i also wanted to say that i found another true crime youtuber while doing this case who i believe is from south africa as well and her name is mufundo nadala i hope i'm saying that right but i will leave her link down below because i love finding new true crime youtubers and supporting them and i think that her videos are really well done so i wanted to shout her out and give her some love and support and hope you guys do go over and support and you know leave some nice comments for her also don't forget to check out june's journey down below if you haven't already because i really do think you guys will like this game as much as i do i seriously play it all the time it's the one time that i give myself freedom to relax because i feel like it's still working my brain because you're actually you know trying to find things trying to remember things like you're an investigator so yeah i really like it and i hope that you do too and please make sure to click my link if you want to download it and don't ever forget to speak up your voice is powerful enough and i love you to absolute pieces okay bye you

Channel: Brooke Makenna

Views: 646,559

Keywords: survived, baby found, found 17 years later, solved, solved cases, true crime, crime, documentary, survival stories, taken baby, kidnapped, kidnapping, kidnapping case solved, solved true crime, survived true crime, Zephany Nurse, survived kidnapping, solved kidnapping, escaped, missing person found, missing child found, solved by a selfie

Id: THM_xDHRjdM

Length: 35min 11sec (2111 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 19 2020