Zephany Nurse

 

This story comes from Capetown, South Africa. Zephany Nurse was abducted from her mother’s hospital room when she was two days old in the spring of 1997. Her birth mom had fallen asleep because she was asleep, and the baby was gone when she woke up. The hospital was searched, and a pillow normally used to fake a pregnancy was found in a tunnel leading to and from the maternity ward. 

17 years later, the second born daughter of Zephany’s natural parents was a freshman in high school, when she met a senior named Nichè that she felt an instant bond with. The two of them often said that they felt like sisters, and many people commented on how much they looked alike, too. When her parents found out about this, they immediately suspected it was Zephany and asked their younger daughter to take a selfie with her. 

Finally, caseworkers confronted Nichè at school, but it didn’t seem possible that the couple whom she considered her parents would ever lie to her about anything. However, DNA confirmed that she was in fact Zephany. Her captor had been faking a pregnancy, and the captor’s husband claims to not have known anything about the kidnapping. 

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