Inconsistencies Raise New Questions About Woman’s Baby Swap Claim

Inconsistencies have arisen in the story of a nursing aide who says that Kimberly Mays and another baby were switched intentionally in a hospital nearly 15 years ago.

Patsy Webb, who worked at Hardee Memorial Hospital in rural Wauchula, Fla., in 1978, previously denied three times in sworn statements knowing anything about a switch of babies born to Barbara and Robert Mays and to Ernest and Regina Twigg.

But she said Tuesday that a doctor at Hardee Memorial Hospital gave the order to switch the couples’ babies, exchanging Kimberly for the Mays’ ailing baby. She said she refused, but when she came in the next day, she found the babies had been switched. She said she is speaking out now because she is dying of emphysema.

But the reason Webb offered for the switch is contradicted by medical records.

“They found she was eat up with cancer,” Webb said of Barbara Mays in a TV interview Wednesday on the “CBS Evening News.” “They wanted her to have the good baby because she didn’t have long to live.”

Barbara Mays did die of ovarian cancer in 1981, but her medical records show that the disease was not diagnosed until June 16, 1980.

There was no way for doctors to have known Barbara Mays was ill at the time of her daughter’s birth, said George Russ, an attorney for Robert and Kimberly Mays.

The baby swap came to light when the child raised by the Twiggs was being treated for heart problems, and blood tests showed she wasn’t their biological daughter. The girl died in 1988.

On NBC-TV’s “Today” show Thursday, Barbara Mays’ obstetrician, Dr. William Black, also said she had no sign of cancer at the time of the birth.