Zephany Nurse was only three days old when she was snatched from her mom’s beside at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town. She lived a normal life, growing up in the Mother City, until the day she found out that she did not belong to her family. While her real life story unfolded like something straight out of a movie – Zephany has turned her luck around and is planning to make it one.
The 21-year-old Zephany posted on Facebook that she plans to turn her story into book and a documentary.
In her post she praised the “great team and amazing authors” she was working with and thanked many for their support during long hours of meetings. No further details are available about the book or the documentary.
The Zephany Nurse story is guaranteed to be a page-turner.
On 27 April 1997, Celeste Nurse delivered a baby girl via caesarian section at Groote Schuur Hospital. She saw a person in a nurse’s uniform comforting her baby before falling asleep. She awoke to find an empty crib and no sign of her child. A pillow was discovered in a tunnel that gave women in labour direct access to the ward from the street. At the time, police believed someone pretending to be pregnant had stolen Zephany.
For 17 years Celeste held on to hope that her daughter would be found, several leads ended up in more heartache for her and her husband Morne. The Nurses’s had another daughter, Cassidy, who started a new school and couldn’t shake rumours that she had a doppelgänger.
When she told her father about the girl who closely resembled her, he set up a meeting between the two to see for himself. He watched in disbelief as Zephany arrived, and contacted the investigating officers shortly after. Zephany’s parents could not provide any proof that she belonged to them and DNA results concluded that she was indeed the missing girl.
Following a lengthy trial in Cape Town, the woman, a 52-year-old woman from the Retreat area, was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment on March 2016.
Since then Zephany has also had a child of her own, and says she will always consider the woman who took her as her mother. She has declared her love and respect for the woman. While getting to know her biological parents, she has spoken about how she had to “endure shocking experiences entering into a new relationship” and that “the grass is not as green as you think it is on the other side, trust me on that”.
Picture: Twitter