Carlina White, now 23, was last seen by her parents when she was just three weeks old at Harlem Hospital in 1987, where she was lying ill with a 104 degree fever.

Her mother Joy was just 16 years old at the time. When she went to see her baby the next morning, Carlina was gone.

Found: Carlina White, now aged 23, who has been reunited with her mother after she was kidnapped as an infant in 1987

Lost: Carlina as an infant in 1987 before she was snatched from a Harlem hospital

Now mother and daughter have been reunited in a case charged with so much emotion that it will give hope to the parents of other missing children - such as those of missing British girl Madeleine McCann, who disappeared in 2007.

'We ate and talked and got to know each other... I feel great,' Miss White said.

'I can sleep! I can definitely sleep now because this has been on my mind for so many years', she added. 'I never gave up looking for her.

Tears: Carlina's mother Joy, who was just 16 when her daughter was kidnapped, breaks down as she describes the moment they were reunited

Carlina, who was raised as Njedra Nance, had suspicions growing up that she was not biologically related to the family that raised her in Bridgeport, Connecticut. She said she had never been able to find her birth certificate.

The young woman now living in Georgia was confounded enough to look on the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children website where she found a photo of a girl called 'Carlina Renae White'.

She contacted the organisation and on January 4 they contacted Miss White, forwarding her a photograph of Carlina taken when she was still a baby by the family she had been brought up by.

Miss White said she recognised her daughter instantly.

'I was screaming, I was so excited,' she said. 'As soon as I saw those pictures I said, "That's my daughter," I saw myself in her'.

Ms White was tested to see if she was Carlina's biological mother and Carl Tyson was swabbed to see if he was the missing woman's biological father.

DNA test results confirmed yesterday that they are related and have finally found their missing daughter.

Mr Tyson said he did not need a DNA test to prove the young woman he fathered at 22 years old was his child.

'I already knew in my heart that this was my daughter', Mr Tyson said. 'All I could do is shed tears'.

Miss White said a woman dressed as a nurse tried to comfort her as she worried about her sick baby in August 1987.

'Don't cry. Everything's going to be alright', the woman said to the 16-year-old.

But it was actually a ruse and the woman dressed all in white disappeared with the infant.

Although a $10,000 reward was offered and a Baltimore woman was questioned, no arrests were ever made in one of NYPD's most baffling cases.

Authorities said that the woman had been seen loitering around the hospital for several weeks before the kidnapping.

Ms White and Mr Tyson won a lawsuit against Harlem Hospital in 1992 and received a $750,000 settlement.

The couple ended their relationship a year after their daughter disappeared and both went on to raise separate families.

But they never forgot about Carlina.

Although happy to be reunited, Miss White was devastated to find her daughter did not have a happy childhood. Carlina's kidnapper was apparently a drug-user who once beat her with a shoe.

'She didn't really raise her', Miss White said angrily. 'She neglected her and let other people raise her'.

'To take somebody else's baby and neglect it and not take care of it - you have to be a sick person', Miss White said. 'Carlina told me she never had someone to say "I love you" or hug her'.

Charges could still be brought against those who took baby Carlina as there is no statute of limitations for kidnappings of children under the age of 18 as long as the child is still alive.