Mum of baby kidnapped in house fire recognised missing daughter at party six years later thanks to one key feature

When Pennsylvania schoolgirl Aaliyah Correa was just six-years-old, she attended a birthday party in her local Philadelphia neighbourhood with her mother, Carolyn.

There, she came face to face with a beautiful woman who was also on the guest list, and who took a suspiciously strong interest in the child almost immediately.

So much so, that just minutes into the soiree, the mystery woman approached the youngster, offering to remove a piece of bubblegum that had supposedly become tangled in Aaliyah's brunette locks.

Several weeks later, the heartbroken girl was removed from her family home amid a harrowing criminal case that would continue hitting headlines decades later.

Until the age of six, Delimar Vera believed her name was Aaliyah Correa (U)

Little did Aaliyah know at the time that the striking party guest in question was her own birth mother, Luz Cuevas - a grieving local woman who had tragically lost her 10-day-old baby girl, Delimar Vera, in a house fire exactly six years earlier.

Cuevas actually hacked off a chunk of her hair and pocketed it at the party, having noticed a stark similarity between Aaliyah and her own family, and believed that Carolyn Correa had stolen her baby from house fire that destroyed her life.

Within a matter of weeks, the DNA test finally confirmed what Luz believed to be the truth - Aaliyah Correa was Delimar Vera.

Now, two decades on from the moment she was reunited with her birth parents - Luz and Pedro Vera - Delimar, now 26, is looking back on her upbringing for the first time as part of a brand new documentary, Back From The Dead: Who Kidnapped Me?

Not only did she immediately form strong bonds with her parents - who split up not long after her supposed 'kidnapping' - but Delimar still credits her mother with having taken it upon herself to bring her daughter home.

Demilar Vera sat down with Tyla to discuss her brand new documentary (U)

"When I got to the party, we were all hanging out downstairs, and that's when I saw my mother for the first time," she recalled the moment Luz set eyes on the child she believed to be dead.

"I just thought, 'Oh, my god, look at this beautiful woman'. I just gravitated towards her, I don't know why. I was just so intrigued," Delimar continued.

"She kept smiling at me, and we kept looking at each other. Of course, I didn't know in that moment that we had any relation to one another.

"But then we went upstairs to colour in with the rest of the kids at the party, and when I was walking out of the room, she came up from behind me and told me I had gum in my hair. That's when she pulled some hair out of my head."

Delimar says Carolyn - who hadn't been 'much of a mother' to her growing up, and had even seen the child subjected to abuse at the hands of her sporadic love interests - had rushed her out of the party as a child, having realised that Luz had noticed a similarity.

Revealing what it was that immediately caught her birth mother's attention, she revealed it was her 'uniquely deep dimples'.

Luz Cuevas noticed that the little girl's dimples were similar to that of her eldest son (U)

"It was the family resemblance. My oldest brother, I look like the woman version of him, and he looks like the male version of myself.

"She thought, 'Oh, that must be my daughter'. The resemblance was eye-catching for her.

"I remember being home with Carolyn and her telling me, 'There's this bad woman that wants to take you away from us', and I told her, 'I'm not going to get let do that'. She never gave me any details about who she was, and that she'd claimed to be my mother."

By this point, Luz had arranged for her birth daughter's hair to be tested.

After being called into the forensic officer's office, however, Carolyn - who had previously been acquainted with the Vera family, which her own sister had married into - attempted to do all she should to disguise Delimar's true identity.

"A couple of times, we went into the bathroom together and that's what she began putting a mysterious spray into my mouth," Delimar told us.

"I later found out this was her own saliva. She would tell me, 'Don't swallow, don't swallow'. But I told the officers what she'd done."

Luz Cuevas was reunited with her missing daughter when Delimar was six (David Livingston/Getty Images)

In the days that followed, Delimar was taken away from the Correa family - which included three other of Carolyn's children who Delimar believed to be her siblings.

"I remember crying," she recalls. "I didn't understand what was going on."

Carolyn - who had a criminal history with arson - was arrested in 2004 before being found guilty of kidnapping, arson, and attempted murder.

She was sentenced a year later to between nine and thirty years in prison, becoming eligible for parole in 2014.

Delimar, meanwhile, travelled temporarily through a foster care home before Luz and Pedro Vera were finally reunited with their missing daughter.

Her three other siblings - Luz and Pedro's other children - assisted in Delimar's transition, being that both of her parents were Puerto Rican and only spoke very broken English.

Delimar, now 26, has married love of her life Isaiah, and is step-mother to his 11-year-old son (Instagram/@delimar_vera)

With their help, Delimar grew up a healthy and happy child, going on to sail through college, marry the love of her life - a husband named Isaiah Robinson - and become stepmother to his 11-year-old son.

"My experience has definitely made me more protective of my family," she admitted. "And I have post-traumatic stress disorder, so meeting my husband, I had to unlearn a lot of things that were actually trauma responses. Navigating that and maintaining a healthy relationship was a learning curve, because you can get triggered.

"But he's been with me through it all."

Now, she and her mother's relationship is stronger now than ever, with Delimar claiming that the duo enjoy an hour-long phone-call to one another at least once week.

"As I've gotten older, I've realised that we have a lot more in common than I would have thought," she revealed. "We have the same exact laugh, the same mannerisms.

Delimar was also reunited with her father, Pedro (U)

"She's a joy to be around. We have a beautiful relationship."

And when it comes to her father, Delimar and Isaiah visit her father - who now resides in Puerto Rico - as and when they can.

"I always felt like my dad was more of a sibling," she confessed. "Not in a bad way - he was just more laid back, so, we speak every now and again. He'll call me every other week or so."

Delimar has only visited Carolyn Correa once since she was jailed, where she claims she asked her captor about the possible involvement of an accomplice.

"I try to put that aspect of the case to bed, but if I could find out, I'd love to, because justice needs to be brought for that. There's somebody still walking around who hasn't paid any consequences for what they did.

"I know that she didn't take me out of that window by herself - there's definitely somebody out there that assisted her."

She added: "But, whoever it was, Carolyn is protecting that person with her life."

Carolyn Correa was jailed in 2005 on multiple charges (U)

Delimar went on to confess what the 'biggest question she had was': "Why? Why did you kidnap me? I did ask that when I saw her. I pointed out that she already had three other children and asked why she took me, but she didn't provide an answer.

"And she's a sociopathic liar, even if she did answer those questions, she'd probably have told another lie."

She also insisted she'd never like to sit down with Carolyn again.

Discussing the process of making the U documentary - a reflection of the events of the last 20 years - Delimar tells us that the experience took 'a lot of preparation, meditating and praying'.

"I know that making this programme could go one of two ways - either I could fall into a deep depression or I could get the closure I've been waiting so long for. Luckily, though, I came out the other side."

Asked what she hopes viewers will take away from the chilling three-part series, she explained: "For those who knew about my story prior to the documentary being released, I'd love for them to have answers as well.

Delimar's story has now been told in a three-part documentary called 'Back From The Dead: Who Kidnapped Me?' (U)

"I'm constantly on Instagram trying to respond to everyone's questions about my life, and now this programme can do that."

Delimar continued: "And to those who are new to my experience, I hope that they feel a sense of perseverance in knowing that, whatever you may have gone through in your life, that doesn't define you.

"You don't have to be a victim for the rest of your life - there is always another side.

Back From The Dead: Who Kidnapped Me? is available to watch as a boxset on U.