Reduced to Ash

Luz Cuevas was living in a rowhouse in the Feltonville section of North Philadelphia when a fire broke out on December 15, 1997. Her daughter Delimar was ten days old. Firefighters found no trace of her in the gutted front bedroom, and the baby was recorded as having died in the blaze.

Cuevas kept saying the crib had been empty before the fire started. She was a young Spanish-speaking mother in shock, and nobody with authority took her seriously. More than six years later, in January 2004, she went to a family birthday party thrown by her sister-in-law and saw a six-year-old girl with her family’s dimples. The child was being raised as Aaliyah Hernandez by Carolyn Correa, a relative by marriage of Delimar’s father. Cuevas told the girl she had gum in her hair and pulled five strands free. The hair had no roots and gave no DNA, so investigators took saliva swabs instead.

The swabs confirmed the child was Delimar, and in March 2004 a New Jersey judge sent her home to her parents. Correa, who had faked a pregnancy in 1997, pleaded no contest to kidnapping, interference with custody, and conspiracy, and was sentenced in September 2005 to nine to thirty years. She was paroled in March 2013. Delimar Vera has since spoken publicly about growing up under a stranger’s name.