Luz Cuevas and Pedro Vera were settling into their new life with their daughter in their home in Philadelphia, USA, when the house caught on fire due to faulty wiring.
This was just 10 days after welcoming baby Delimar Vera into the world. The room that was hit the hardest by the flames was baby Delimar’s nursery.
Delimar was asleep in her nursery as the fire consumed the room. While Luz and Pedro were able to make it out of the house alive, Delimar didn’t.
Tragically, Luz and Pedro were told that their newborn daughter’s body had been “completely consumed by the fire.” No human tissue was found in the ashes, and Luz struggled to come to terms with the fact that her daughter had vanished without a trace.
Luz’s Story
For six years, Luz kept the thought of her daughter in her mind, consumed with grief and confusion that not even a trace of her baby’s body was found in the fire. During these six years, Luz and Pedro separated. One afternoon Luz was invited to a birthday party of a family member in Philadelphia, where she met a little girl named Aliyah.
Aliyah gravitated towards Luz, thinking she was so pretty. Luz was just as fixated on the little girl, who had the same dimples and the same smile as Delimar. Calling the meeting a “blood calling” Luz was convinced that this little girl was her daughter who supposedly died in the fire.
During the party, Luz stole a sample of Aliyah’s hair, so convinced this little girl was her daughter and ordered a DNA test. Her instincts were correct. Aliyah was Delimar, Luz’s daughter.
Within weeks, Delimar was returned to her real mother and father.
Delimar’s Story
For Delimar, the story plays out a little differently. For six years, Delimar thought her name was Aaliyah. She thought her mother was Carolyn, a pharmacy worker. She lived in New Jersey (15 miles away from her real home in Philadelphia), had three older siblings (two in their teens and one in their 30s) and spoke English.
Carolyn’s partner wasn’t very nice, and Aliyah slept in a small toddler bed in her “parents” bedroom.
Aiyah recalls her mum (Carolyn) working long hours and not being home much during her early childhood. She spent a lot of time with her extended family and an aunt named Antoinette and remembered that, while Carolyn was a charming and funny person, she also had a cruel streak.
“She had this belt with little circles on it and when she hit me with it I’d have the imprints of those circles on my body”Delimar tells The Guardian
After meeting the pretty woman at the party, Carolyn told Aliyah, “There’s a bad lady who wants to take you away from us, but you’re not going to let her, right?”
Aliyah promised she would never leave her mother, Carolyn and would tell the “bad lady” to go away. Aliyah, aka, Delimar, had no idea that this “bad lady” was actually her real mother.
Aliyah was returned to Luz and Pedro, and she went back to the name Delimar, which, at first, she hated. She had to restart with new parents, in a new city, at a new school, and even learn a new language.
“For a really long time, I almost thought this new life was temporary. I had one photo of me with my old siblings on a beach and I’d look at it and think, ‘Oh, I’m going to go back and see them again.”
“I tried to pick my ‘new’ family’s mannerisms, to make it seem like I was never kidnapped, but I was also mourning my old family. When I was a child, I felt like I had two moms. It wasn’t until I was 11 or 12 years old that the reality finally set in.”
Delimar eventually got used to her new life with her own room, large family meals and a clean house. She also had three brothers who lived with her and her mum, while Delimar stayed with her father every second weekend. She recalls Luz being the “grown-up” parent while her dad was the “big kid”.
“[Luz] is such a strong Latino woman,”
“She was super-strict – rightfully so. She’d lost me once. She was terrified of me going into the outside world.” By the time I was 12, my mum and I were really butting heads. I’d really begun to process all this – that I was kidnapped, that it really happened. I was a very, very angry person. I had my teenage hormones too. I didn’t feel there was anyone I could talk to.”
Delimar eventually moved in with her dad before moving into a group home at the age of 15. She spent several years on her own, working various jobs and living day-to-day with her abusive boyfriend.
“For a long time, I felt unworthy, undeserving of certain things.”
When Delimar turned 20, something inside her switched.
“Something shifted, and I think I just got sick of myself,” she says. “I was sick of feeling sorry for myself, of being a victim. You really come to realise that not everybody is going to feel as bad for you as you do for yourself. You have to accept that and do better. I became a lot more mature, saved up my money, and one day, when my boyfriend was at work, I grabbed my stuff, got my U-Haul and got out.”
Delimar’s Story Now
These days Delimar works and lives in Philadelphia, is married and has a stepson and still speaks to her mother, Luz, several times a week. Pedro now lives in Puerto Rico but, they still talk often, and, Delimar is really close with her brothers, whom she considers her best friends.
“I spend most of my days working from home with my dog and my cat. Sometimes I forget that all of this happened.”
Why did this happen? This is one of the biggest mysteries surrounding the kidnapping. Why did Carolyn kidnap baby Delimar?
Carolyn’s Story
Rewind to 1977 when Delimar was a newborn. Carolyn Cuevas was a single mother to three children when she snuck into Delimar’s room and kidnapped her at just 10 days old.
The reason why is still unknown but there have been some suggestions that Pedro (Delimar’s father) was part of the scheme. Pedro and Carolyn were distantly related to one another and Pedro never believed the baby was actually his. This is something Pedro continues to deny to this day.
Another theory suggests that Carolyn yearned to be pregnant again and had a history of pretending she was pregnant when she wasn’t.
When the kidnapping occurred, Carolyn was also facing criminal charges for arson after starting a fire at her workplace. It is suggested that Carolyn thought having a newborn may have won her a more lenient sentence and kept her out of prison.
Carolyn eventually did go to prison for the kidnapping of Delimar. She was given a nine to 30- year sentence which she has now served.
Nearly 30 years later no clear answers have emerged as to why she did it. While there have been documentaries about Delimar’s story, Carolyn remains absent in these and Delimar may never know the reason why.
“I’ve accepted that,” say Delimar. “It’s the only way to move forward. I have to focus on my ‘right now’.”
