Delimar Vera was kidnapped before her family’s home was set on fire as a distraction (Picture: Wag Entertainment)
There is a striking image from news footage following the 1997 inferno in Frankford, Philadelphia. It shows a sombre fire marshall carefully cradling a tiny bundle of yellow tarpaulin apparently containing the body of 10-day-old baby Delimar Vera.
The burning home belonged to Pedro Vera and Luzaida Cuevas and the blaze was believed to have been caused by a space heater. The fire service arrived at the scene within three minutes, but they were unable to retrieve baby Delimar from the flames.
The couple were beside themselves; they watched helplessly from the street with their three sons as the blaze consumed their newborn’s room. After extinguishing the fire, authorities concluded no-one inside could have survived. Pedro screamed when he received this news and Luzaida collapsed.
Unbeknown to them, baby Delimar was safe and being taken care of nearby, having been kidnapped earlier that evening by Pedro’s step cousin Carolyn Correa who was believed to have started the fire as a decoy. The yellow tarpaulin contained little more than ashes and debris, but the fire marshall cradled it carefully to lessen the blow of the suspected incineration.
Mother-of-three Carolyn , a cousin by marriage to Pedro and a regular visitor to the family home, took Delimar a few miles across the state line to Willingboro, New Jersey, and pretended to all she knew that the child was her own. She named her Aaliyah after the American R&B star, sent her to private school and trained her up for beauty pageants.
Luzaida Cuevas holds a photo of her daughter at a meeting with the press in Philadelphia, March 2004 (Picture: Getty Images)
Luzaida had never believed the firemen when they told her that her daughter had perished. She’d run into the burning house before being repelled by the smoke to find Delimar’s cot empty. She’d seen a bedroom window open despite it being a freezing winter night. And with no human remains found, Delimar was never issued a death certificate. Luzaida believed her baby was still alive somewhere but had neither the money nor the power to pursue the case.
So six years later, she was shocked to spot a pretty little girl whose deep dimples matched her own at a family birthday party. The youngster introduced herself as Aaliyah Hernandez.
Luzaida told the girl she had gum in her hair, snipped a few strands for DNA and went to the police. Investigations found Luzaida’s instincts to be correct; the girl was Delimar and she was returned. It was the beginning of a rollercoaster of emotions for Delimar, whose memories of the day they were reunited are patchy.
She doesn’t remember the setting, but believes they were in some sort of office, with one or two other official people standing by.
‘I hid under the table, because I was being silly. I didn’t realise that would be traumatising for her, because she had been looking for me for six years. I came out and said “Surprise!” And she’s crying, and I’m just like: “Oh, why are you sad? You know, we’re being reunited.” And she told me they were tears of happiness. And I didn’t really know what that meant,’ Delimar tells Metro over Zoom from her home in Philadelphia.
Luzaida Cuevas and Delimar, 6 at the time, wave from the window of their Philadelphia home on March 8, 2004 after they were reunited (Picture: AP Photo/Joseph Kaczmarek)
The pair had an instantaneous connection because they looked so alike, and Delimar was welcomed back into the family where she built relationships with Pedro and her three older brothers. But she didn’t realise she’d be living there for good.
Delimar says: ‘When I first came back to live with my mom, I thought I had two moms and that eventually I would be having a relationship with both of them. Even though I wasn’t treated well when I was living with Carolyn, you still look at that person as your family.’
In Carolyn’s home, Delimar felt unmoored and without a sense of belonging, though she didn’t understand why. ‘I was a bed surfer, sometimes I was in Carolyn’s room and sometimes I was with her daughter on a toddler bed. I just felt like I didn’t fit in and I just remember this sense of unease,’ Delimar, 26, says.
Carolyn was never around when she was little, and her partner scared the little girl. Delimar lived in fear of being punished and – though she had three older brothers and a loving aunt – it was a tough time.
She explains: ‘Carolyn is the person I have least memory of growing up. She worked a lot and was more focused on herself. So I spent a lot of time with my siblings and with [Carolyn’s sister-in-law] Antoinette. They were the only positive times.
Delimar Vera was born in Philadelphia in December 1997 (Picture: Wag Entertainment)
‘Carolyn was funny, outgoing – a big personality. But she also had another side to where she could be pretty mean, and the person that she was married to at the time, Brian, who I’d thought was my biological father, he was not nice. There was this constant state of walking on eggshells. Everything I did was wrong.’
In her new home with Luzaida, Delimar was delighted to have her own room for the first time with a car-shaped bed. ‘That was a big deal. I loved my bed and I loved having a space to call my own. For the first time I didn’t feel lost in my own house.’ she remembers.
Her brothers were put in a room together so Delimar could have her privacy and she started again with new friends in a new school in a different state. She spent the first few weeks in her new life getting to know her new family, but at school she was unsettled and distracted because of everything she had gone through.
Despite this, Delimar missed the family with whom she’d spend the first six years of her life.
‘I had one photo of us on the beach in Florida. I would look at it all the time and think, “Oh, I’m gonna see them again.” But one day that photo disappeared, and with that the hope of seeing them again,’ the senior talent advisor tells Metro.
Luzaida Cuevas gets a hug from her sister while speaking to reporters about her daughter, Delimar Vera, in 2004 (Picture: AP Photo/Joseph Kaczmarek)
‘I think my mom took the photo away. She didn’t do it to be malicious or anything. I think she thought looking at it was unhealthy for me. People think because I was returned to my mum, that we would have a happy ending. That I’m supposed to have a wonderful relationship with my mom and everything would be normal. But unfortunately that was not the case.’
‘We were complete strangers; that initial bond that a mother has with her child during the first years did not exist between her and I,’ Delimar remembers.
And having their baby stolen had taken its toll on Pedro and Luzaida. Not only had the pair split up by the time Delimar was returned, they were both scarred by the incident.
‘My dad is a ball of nerves. He is always nervous and anxious. And my mom has some anxiety and post traumatic stress disorder as well. Even when I was growing up, I wasn’t even allowed to go to the corner store by myself, because she was just so paranoid that something would happen to me. That’s something that we will have to navigate for the rest of our lives,’ she explains.
Delimar grew up to be untrusting and paranoid and it wasn’t until she turned 12 that she properly understood the gravity of what she’d been through. Being kidnapped was a tough fact to swallow at the same time as ‘mourning’ her old family and fitting in with her new life with her biological family.
Delimar was taken from her parents Luzaida Cuevas and Pedro Vera (Picture: Wag Entertainment)
She continues: ‘I started to have more memories about them, about my sister Angelica, who I’d spent a lot of time with, and started to think about them more often. I wasn’t doing well in school at the time. I was going through some other personal issues, and finally I got pretty depressed.
‘By the time I was 14, I wasn’t getting along with my mother and we were butting heads. It was just a lot to deal with. I ended up moving in with my father for a little while, and then eventually the authorities stepped in because I was truant from school,’ she remembers. Delimar spent some time in care before moving back in with Luzaida, and it wasn’t until she was 16 and she started therapy that she was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of all she’d been through.
‘I had flashbacks. I remember this chocolate that had strawberries in it, and just the smell of that chocolate brought me back into Carolyn’s home – I remember being sick off of that chocolate.
‘The therapy really helped me reflect and realise that everything that happened wasn’t my fault. When you have PTSD you think irrationally. I thought it was my fault but my therapist taught that I wasn’t to blame for what happened and he gave me hope and helped me forgive myself. He gave me optimism that I could move forward in life.’
Carolyn was sentenced to nine to 30 years behind bars in 2005 for kidnapping, interference of child custody and conspiracy. Her lawyers argued she suffered from a psychotic condition in which women believe they are pregnant; and she’d come to believe baby Delimar was hers.
Carolyn pleaded no contest to the charges and the same year, Delimar went to visit her in prison. She can’t remember whose idea this was, but Luzaida thought the meeting would bring her daughter some closure.
Delimar is sharing her story in a new television show (Picture: Wag Entertainment)
Delimar remembers: ‘She was behind the glass, and I was a very sassy kid. I asked her: “Why did you take me? You have three other children.” I was very forward with her, and I just remember being so angry. She was playing that card of: “I thought you were my child. You’re my kid.” She just kept telling me that we were going to see each other again, that one day she’ll be out. But she never apologised.’
That was the last time Delimar saw her abductor.
Delimar overcame the difficulties she had with Luzaida and the two are now very close. She also has a good relationship with her father and Antoinette, who was like a mother to her during those first six years, who had no knowledge that Delimar was stolen until the police came knocking.
Delimar may never understand why Carolyn took her that night – her defence lawyers claimed she’d had a psychotic break – but she has now forgiven her. And at last, she has found her happy ending with husband Isaiah, who she married a year ago.
Delimar adds: ‘My experiences have changed the way I see the world. I can be overprotective with my 11-year-old step son. Like, we don’t believe in sleepovers outside the family. That’s just something I am not okay with. There is that fear of having a child and knowing what is out there in the world due to my own circumstances.
‘But overall, it has helped me to relate to people better. When someone is going through hard times, I ask myself why they are acting how they are acting because I know I acted out due to my own trauma. It’s given me more patience and empathy.’
Back from the Dead: Who Kidnapped Me? is available to stream now.
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