Rowan College at Burlington County criminal justice students and fans of the true crime genre will notice a familiar face when they tune into a new television documentary produced out of the United Kingdom. “Back From The Dead: Who Kidnapped Me?” chronicles the complex kidnapping of Delimar Vera and features an interview with Dr. Amber Ciccanti, assistant professor of Criminal Justice.
Ciccanti’s involvement in the case stems from her time as a police officer and detective for the Willingboro Police Department. Although the case opened in Pennsylvania in 1997 with then 10-day-old Delimar being presumed dead after a fire destroyed her Philadelphia home, it extended to New Jersey’s jurisdiction six years later when a woman from Willingboro Township was discovered to have kidnapped Vera to be her daughter, renaming her Aaliyah.
“It was just so bizarre,” Ciccanti said. “It was like, ‘What is going on with this case?’ I was able to obtain a search warrant for her DNA, obtain her medical records, interview “Aaliyah’s” supposed father, and interview a possible witness to the incident. Upon doing all of this, we were able to prove that Aaliyah was in fact the kidnapped child, Delimar Vera. In the end, we returned her to her real parents.”
Ciccanti was filmed at RCBC last December for her parts in the docuseries, which currently can only be streamed in the UK. Students may recognize backdrops of Laurel Hall’s room 320 and her office as she recounts the investigation.
Instead of paying fees for the professor’s time and use of RCBC facilities, Ciccanti negotiated with the docuseries’ production company, Wag Entertainment, to provide two criminal justice scholarships.
Ciccanti’s experience with this case further benefits students as it has stretched to the class curriculum.
“I use this case as a teaching tool in my criminal investigations class,” Ciccanti said. “It’s a good case to teach because it involves so much, like locating physical evidence, eyewitness testimony, interview techniques, interrogation techniques, developing probable cause and search warrant applications, interagency relationships, and crime scene tampering via arson.”
“Students benefit from all those personal and professional experiences,” Ciccanti added. “Being a Career and Technical Education (CTE) program, they get professors that can teach the book knowledge, but also can teach the street knowledge, as we say… Here, our students are getting so much benefit from our professional experience. Employers that we deal with regularly that hire our students have always come back to us and say that our students are the best hires because they’re always prepared.”
Get the full story of Delimar Vera when the docuseries hits US streaming services, which, as of the publication of this story, has no planned date, but will be released with an alternate title, “The Hand That Robbed The Cradle”. Until then, anticipated viewers can watch a teaser on U&W’s Facebook page and read another article about the documentary released by Variety magazine.
