A nearly 20-year mystery is coming to an end as 52-year-old Gloria Williams pleaded guilty Monday to kidnapping newborn Kamiyah Mobley from what was then the University Medical Center in downtown Jacksonville. 
 
 A plea agreement calls for a sentence range of zero to 22 years in prison. Williams could have received a life sentence had she gone to trial and been found guilty of kidnapping and interference with custody charges. 
 
 Williams spent 25 minutes in the courtroom politely answering a long list of questions from Judge Marianne Aho, who wanted to make sure she understood she was giving up her right to a trial. 
 
 “Yes ma’am,” Williams said. 
 
 Williams told the judge she was not coerced to make the decision and that she had been working on a master’s degree prior to her arrest. 
 
 At 9:55 a.m. Aho accepted Williams’ guilty plea. The plea takes off the table the general sentencing range that was in effect nearly 20 years ago when Kamiyah was stolen: four to seven years behind bars. The range limit changed in October 1998 to what it is now, no limit or essentially the possibility of life in prison. The kidnapping happened on July 10, 1998, when the infant was just 8 hours old. 
 
 In the plea, Williams acknowledged that she acted alone when she stole the newborn from her mother’s room at the hospital that is now UF Health Jacksonville. 
 
 Williams brought Kamiyah back to Walterboro, S.C., and raised her by the name Alexis Kelli Manigo. 
 
 Neither Shanara Mobley, the birth mother, nor Craig Aiken, the birth father attended the hearing. Also absent was Manigo. 
 
 All three are expected to take part in the next phase of the court case: the sentencing 
 
 A two-day sentencing hearing has been scheduled for May 3 and 4. 
 
 Now 19, Manigo divides her time between Walterboro and Jacksonville as she continues to develop a relationship with Mobley and Aiken. Aiken has told the Times-Union the father-daughter relationship took hold in an instant. The relationship Manigo has with Mobley has been more tenuous, Aiken told the paper. 
 
 Thirteen months ago both Aiken and Mobley were brought to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office and were told by several officials, including State Attorney Melissa Nelson and Assistant State Attorney Alan Mizrahi, their daughter was alive and living in South Carolina. 
 
 Mizrahi said Monday that the meeting 13 months ago was emotional and that Manigo’s birth parents were eager for a resolution in the case. 
 
 Detectives learned that Manigo may be the infant stolen from Jacksonville after two tips were reported to the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. A DNA specimen came back positive that Manigo was in fact the missing child. 
 
 In the course of their investigation, detectives and the State Attorney’s Office learned that Williams told Manigo what happened a few years ago after the teen asked her why she didn’t have a Social Security card or ID so that she could get a job. 
 
 Manigo and Williams each shared that secret with others and eventually the secret made its way to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. 
 
 Manigo has acknowledged publicly that she understands what Williams did was wrong, but she doesn’t want to see her receive a heavy sentence. The two correspond frequently by phone and in letters to and from a jail in Duval County where Williams has been held since her arrest in January 2017. Letters made public recently show a deep bond between Manigo and Williams. 
 
 By several accounts, Manigo and those who know her and Williams say the girl had a good life in Walterboro. Mizrahi said none of that was taken into account when coming up with a range for a sentence. 
 
 “Not at all,” he said. 
 
 Eileen Kelley: (904) 359-4104 

 (Reuters) - A Florida woman on Monday pleaded guilty to abducting a newborn from a Jacksonville hospital in 1998, and will be sentenced to more than 20 years in prison, according to court proceedings. 
 
 The woman, Gloria Williams, was arrested in January 2017 after Kamiyah Mobley, then 18, was located in Walterboro, South Carolina. Mobley was found, apparently unharmed according to police, after more than 2,500 tips on the case to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. 
 
 Williams, now 52, had raised Mobley as her own child, changing her name to Alexis Manigo, a name the teen has continued to use. DNA analysis matched Manigo with her birth parents. 
 
 Manigo told Jacksonville’s WJXT-TV that she was hoping for Williams to get a sentence of less than 10 years. 
 
 FILE PHOTO: Gloria Williams appears in a police booking photo provided by the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office January 13, 2017. Jacksonville Sheriff's Office/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo 
 
 Williams entered a negotiated plea of guilty to kidnapping and interference with custody in a Jacksonville courtroom. 
 
 The charges against Williams could have brought a life sentence, if she were to be found guilty at a trial. Her plea agreement calls for her to serve up to 22 years on the kidnapping count and five years on a charge of interference of child custody, according to a Florida 4th Circuit Court proceeding viewed live online. Sentencing is set for early May. 
 
 Neither Manigo nor her birth parents were in the Jacksonville court on Monday, the Florida Times-Union newspaper in Jacksonville reported. 
 
 The child was only hours old when a woman, dressed as a nurse in a flowered smock and green hospital pants, abducted her from her mother’s room, according to the 1998 incident report.
– Almost 20 years after she kidnapped a newborn baby girl from a hospital room in Florida, Gloria Williams has confessed to her crime. The 52-year-old pleaded guilty in a Jacksonville courtroom Monday to abducting baby Kamiyah Mobley, now known as Alexis Manigo, the Florida Times-Union reports. Williams, who raised the girl as her own in Walterboro, SC, was arrested early last year after a tip to authorities, and Manigo was matched to her birth parents through DNA analysis. Under a plea deal, Williams will not be covered by the four- to seven-year sentencing range in place at the time of the July 1998 kidnapping, but by the zero-to-life range introduced a few months afterward. Under the deal, Williams, who disguised herself in a nurse's smock to snatch Kamiyah when the baby was just eight hours old, will get between zero and 22 years in prison at a May sentencing hearing. Reuters reports that Manigo—who learned the truth a few years before Williams' arrest and has remained close to her—has said she hopes the woman who raised her gets less than 10 years in prison. Manigo and the birth parents she was reunited with last year weren't present at Monday's hearing, but they're expected to take part in the sentencing phase, which begins May 3. Soon after the arrest, Manigo said Williams, who reportedly kidnapped her after having a stillborn baby, had given her "the best life."