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Kidnaped Baby Found; Britons Rejoice

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

Television viewers rejoiced, nurses cried and the police drew sighs of relief Saturday when an infant girl--abducted four hours after her birth in a Nottingham hospital--was returned safely to her parents.

The agony for the couple, Roger and Karen Humphries, ended after police raided a house in Nottingham less than a mile from the Queen’s Medical Center where the infant, Abbie, was snatched 15 days ago.

About 200 journalists broke into spontaneous applause Saturday as Karen Humphries carried her little girl into a news briefing to thank all who had helped in the “nightmare” search for the kidnaped baby, whose fate had captivated Britain.

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Infant Abbie was taken from her mother at the hospital by a woman wearing a nurse’s uniform and disappeared. But security cameras showed a rear shot of a young woman walking down a corridor, in civilian clothes, with a baby in her arms.

Nottingham police mounted an unprecedented search for little Abbie, calling on residents to report any suspicious circumstances in their neighborhoods involving new babies.

The Humphries family made several appearances on television and in the press appealing to the abductors to return Abbie.

Police said they arrested three people in the home where Abbie was found: Susan Gilbert, her son Leigh, about 20, and his girlfriend, Julie, also about 20. The girlfriend was later charged, and the other two were released.

Officers, however, said they had received a tip from an unidentified woman that led them to the Gilbert house in Nottingham.

One midwife also said she had become suspicious when she was told that the household had a new baby called Lucy but that the couple went out alone without the infant. She checked records but could find no trace of a home birth, she said.

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Karen Humphries said of the moment she was able to hold her baby again: “It was just wonderful, wonderful.” She said she particularly wanted to thank the person who led police to her baby.

Doctors pronounced the infant to be well and unharmed.

The baby’s safe return dispelled the depression that had enveloped the hospital, with nurse Lindsay Thompson saying: “The atmosphere in the hospital is just bubbling. Everyone is thrilled.”

Roger Humphries, speaking of the police, public and media, declared, “Everyone has been brilliant.”

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