Stephanie Layne vividly remembers visiting the home of Andrea Curry-Demus.

It was 1989, and both women were pregnant, carrying their first children. Yet Ms. Curry-Demus had stocked her shelves with enough supplies for two dozen infants -- lotions, powders, pacifiers, sleepers, baby monitors and clothes for boys and girls, even though she told Ms. Layne she was expecting only one child -- a boy.

"I've never seen so much baby stuff, except in a store," Ms. Layne said last week.

She most recently saw Ms. Curry-Demus in July, this time on television, after police accused her of killing 18-year-old Kia Johnson, taking Ms. Johnson's newborn baby to the hospital and falsely claiming to be the mother.

Police found Ms. Johnson in Ms. Curry-Demus' Wilkinsburg apartment, her abdomen and uterus sliced open, her hands and feet bound by duct tape, her head covered in plastic and her body wrapped in a comforter and garbage bags.

Ms. Curry-Demus is now being held in the Allegheny County Jail. Next month, she faces formal arraignment on charges of kidnapping, unlawful restraint, endangering the welfare of a child, conspiracy and homicide.

"Every time I think about it my skin crawls," said Ms. Layne, 37, who lives in the Hill District and works as a custodian at the Carnegie Science Center. "She could fool anybody because she is so sweet, her voice is so soft. But that's how she lures people."

In the weeks since Ms. Curry-Demus' arrest, several former acquaintances, a boyfriend and a victim of the woman have spoken about her troubled history. Their stories all share common threads -- Ms. Curry-Demus was kind and engaging, but she was often manipulative and, occasionally, violent.

And she always expressed a burning desire to have a child, despite repeated miscarriages, including one at the age of 12.

Ms. Layne first met Ms. Curry-Demus when they lived near each other in Garfield. Ms. Curry-Demus, who worked occasionally in fast-food restaurants, invited her over so they could swap stories and advice about their pregnancies.

Ms. Layne, then 18, visited Ms. Curry-Demus at least four times in late 1989 and early 1990. Her new friend always gave her gifts from her vast collection of baby items.

In February 1990, Ms. Curry-Demus suffered her second miscarriage, according to documents. But Ms. Layne still believed she was pregnant.

As her own due date neared, Ms. Layne decided to move in with her mother in the Hill District. In May, just weeks before she would give birth to her first son, Ms. Layne saw her friend from Garfield on the news.

Ms. Curry-Demus had stabbed a Wilkinsburg woman who had recently given birth, and she had kidnapped another woman's baby from Children's Hospital.

Police found Ms. Curry-Demus with the infant, unharmed, at her home. She was arrested and taken to the county jail, and Ms. Layne wondered if she herself had been a target before she moved.

At the jail, Ms. Curry-Demus started complaining of hallucinations, including the sounds of crying babies, according to court records. A doctor diagnosed her with a personality disorder and major depression connected to her miscarriage.

Ms. Curry-Demus was treated at Mayview State Hospital. She then served seven years at State Correctional Institution Muncy in Lycoming County.

In 1998, she was released and placed on probation. But Ms. Curry-Demus repeatedly violated the conditions of her release. Over the next decade, she returned to the county jail five times.

In 2002, she was charged with assaulting a boyfriend. They filed dueling protection from abuse orders against each other, court records show.

Two years later, she was back in jail for eight months on a shoplifting charge. During that stint, she became friends with a male inmate, Eric Kennedy, who had pleaded guilty to aggravated assault. He would remove water from a toilet bowl and shout through the plumbing system to talk to Ms. Curry-Demus.

When both were free the next year, they briefly moved in together.

Mr. Kennedy, 44, who now lives in Wilkinsburg, said Ms. Curry-Demus was a "good, fair" woman when they first met. But their relationship quickly deteriorated. In November 2005, Ms. Curry-Demus filed for a PFA against Mr. Kennedy, accusing him of choking her, spitting in her face and waving a knife around.

Yet the pair continued to see each other. They were even arrested together shoplifting at the Marshalls clothing store in the Northway Mall. Surveillance cameras caught Ms. Curry-Demus ripping security tags off purses and stuffing the purses into larger bags.

Ms. Curry-Demus twice accused Mr. Kennedy of violating the PFA. Most recently, in April, she told police he showed up drunk at her home and smashed her car's window.

Mr. Kennedy denied the accusations. He said Ms. Curry-Demus was retaliating against him for seeing other women. He also said she became violent several times, swinging a golf club at him and spraying him with bleach.

Ms. Curry-Demus herself had met and married a new man, Raymond Demus, in September 2007. She had also developed a friendship with a woman named Kim Davis, who was close with Ms. Layne's family. The pair met through a mutual friend in Wilkinsburg, Ms. Davis said.

Ms. Davis, a personal care assistant from Monroeville, agreed to help Ms. Curry-Demus organize her wedding, despite protests from Ms. Layne, who saw them together in front of her Hill District home last year.

She immediately recognized her one-time friend from nearly two decades before.

"I was shocked to see her," Ms Layne said. "I was like, 'Andrea, you don't remember me?' "

Ms. Curry-Demus said she didn't.

Later, Ms. Layne told Ms. Davis of the woman's tumultuous past. Ms. Davis was skeptical, and she continued to help with the wedding.

In November, however, Ms. Davis witnessed the depth of her new friend's troubles, she said. Ms. Curry-Demus asked her for $612 after she and a man were caught stealing clothes from the Rainbow store at the Century III Mall in West Mifflin.

Joe Abbott , the store's manager, described the incident as one of the most brazen shoplifting attempts he had ever seen.

Ms. Curry-Demus and her companion, Douglas Brunson , entered the store just as it opened. Mr. Brunson began carrying coats, jeans and other items to an area near the entrance. Eventually, Ms. Curry-Demus asked if she could use the fitting room. As Mr. Abbott was taking her there, Mr. Brunson grabbed more than 40 articles of clothing, stuffed them in garbage bags and ran from the store.

Ms. Curry-Demus also tried to flee. Mr. Abbott stopped her in the hall. She hit him several times, and he dragged her back inside and pulled down the store's security gate to prevent her from running.

She then told Mr. Abbott that she was pregnant, but he didn't believe her.

"She was hoping I would let her slide by," he said.

Instead, Ms. Curry-Demus spent three weeks in the county jail. She was released after Ms. Davis covered the cost of the stolen clothes.

But Ms. Davis had become wary of her friend. She followed up on Ms. Layne's warnings and discovered that Ms. Curry-Demus was listed as a sex offender on the state police Megan's Law Web site because of her conviction in the Children's Hospital baby kidnapping in 1990.

In the early summer of this year, Ms. Davis was invited to attend a baby shower for Ms. Curry-Demus in Wilkinsburg. She declined to attend.

But dozens of relatives and neighbors did attend, eagerly awaiting the arrival of a baby boy.

Ms. Curry-Demus later told Allegheny County homicide detectives that she had another miscarriage, which sent her spiraling into a deep depression, according to court testimony from her preliminary hearing last month.

She also told police that a friend, a woman named Adrianna, agreed to help her get a baby.

On the evening of July 15, Ms. Curry-Demus told police, Adrianna and Mr. Kennedy showed up at her apartment with a pregnant woman. Ms. Curry-Demus said he gave the woman "pain pills" and, the next morning, took the woman into the bathroom and removed the baby.

Mr. Kennedy denies ever being at Ms. Curry-Demus' apartment that week or knowing Kia Johnson. He said he did visit Ms. Curry-Demus at West Penn Hospital in Bloomfield the day after she showed up there with Ms. Johnson's baby, the umbilical cord still attached.

County detectives later interviewed Mr. Kennedy and discounted Ms. Curry-Demus' story. Her sister, Brooke Curry, also denied seeing anyone else when she was at the apartment on July 15 and 16.

Based on surveillance camera footage, police say Ms. Curry-Demus met Ms. Johnson earlier in the week at the county jail; she had been visiting her husband, while Ms. Johnson had been visiting her boyfriend.

Ms. Layne first heard the news about Ms. Johnson in a phone call from her mother, as a coworker was driving her home.

She started to cry. For several nights, she had trouble sleeping as she thought of her own son, Corey, now a senior and a football player at Schenley High School.

"She befriended that girl just like she befriended me," Ms. Layne said. "I believe in my heart I could have been her first victim."