Pettway could not produce a legitimate birth certificate for Carlina because no legitimate one existed for the name she was using. Carlina Renae White had a birth certificate on file in New York — but that certificate recorded a baby who was listed as missing, and the name on it was different from the one Pettway had given her. Nejdra Nance did not exist in any official record because she had never been officially born under that name.
The forgery Pettway produced was apparently detectable by officials — a Connecticut vital records clerk found no corresponding record, which is what triggered the notification to the Department of Children and Families. That notification did not produce an immediate identification. The state agency apparently investigated enough to confirm that Pettway was not the birth mother, and Pettway’s own admission confirmed the same, but the investigation did not extend to determining who Carlina actually was. She remained, for several more years, officially unidentified.
This gap — the period between learning that her official identity was false and learning what her real identity was — is an important part of the case that is sometimes glossed over in accounts that move directly from “baby stolen” to “woman finds herself online.” The years from approximately 2005 to 2011 were years in which Carlina was knowingly living with a false identity, searching for the real one, and operating without official documentation for significant transactions in her adult life.
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## Cassandra Johnson’s Role
One of the less-discussed elements of the Carlina White case is the role played by Annugetta Pettway’s own sister, Cassandra Johnson.