Lost & Found

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Speaker 11 From the Creator of Homeland, Claire Danes and Matthew Rees star in the new Netflix series The Beast in Me as ruthless rivals whose shared darkness will set them on a collision course with fatal consequences.

Speaker 10 The Beast in Me is a riveting psychological cat and mouse story about guilt and justice and doubt, now playing only on Netflix.

Speaker 14 Her name is Pepper.

Speaker 15 I lived a secret life.

Speaker 14 She was kidnapped at age four.

Speaker 15 We got in the car and we never went back.

Speaker 14 She spent decades trying to find her way home again.

Speaker 14 And she finally made it, or so she thought.

Speaker 15 I said, I think I'm Rhonda Christie, or do you know Rhonda, Patricia Christie? And then there was a long pause.

Speaker 14 Pepper's story had many ups and downs.

Speaker 17 When I looked at the email, I just couldn't even believe it.

Speaker 14 But after so many tears, so many years, and so many turns in her story, I was like, whoa.

Speaker 14 There are still more stunning twists to be revealed.

Speaker 7 It's amazing.

Speaker 19 It's the best gift ever.

Speaker 20 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dayline.

Speaker 21 Here's Keith Morrison with Lost and Found.

Speaker 9 Our story begins with the mother of a teenage daughter.

Speaker 23 A woman who'd spent most of her life trying to figure out who she was.

Speaker 26 What was her name?

Speaker 24 Where did she come from?

Speaker 24 We'll tell you about her long search, her discovery, finally, of what felt like truth.

Speaker 1 But as you'll soon hear, real truth can be elusive.

Speaker 29 It can hide.

Speaker 30 Let's begin at the beginning.

Speaker 31 But at the beginning, all she had was a memory.

Speaker 15 A twin canopy bed with pink ruffles around it. Kind of wave over the top of it.

Speaker 11 It was dreamlike, really.

Speaker 10 And for years, it was all that felt real in her upside-down life.

Speaker 15 And it was all pink and white, and everything matched.

Speaker 9 The closet full of dresses, the dolls, the teddy bears.

Speaker 15 And actually, there was a little old-fashioned where you put the baby in the wagon.

Speaker 23 And the reason for those tormenting memories?

Speaker 7 It's a lot of hurt and sadness.

Speaker 15 Sadness for the little girl that didn't have life.

Speaker 10 For most of her life, the part after that little girl's bedroom, she has been pepper.

Speaker 36 And the baffling, terrifying story of what happened to her, kidnapped, held captive for years.

Speaker 9 is the reason she gripped that life-preserver of a memory.

Speaker 27 Shocking where that memory will lead by the end of this hour.

Speaker 21 She was, she is certain of this, an only child, and spoiled, most likely, showered with attention and toys and dresses by the parents whose faces she cannot quite pull into focus.

Speaker 1 They're in their little apartment.

Speaker 27 Was it San Diego, perhaps?

Speaker 15 It looks like a very happy childhood, like love was there.

Speaker 10 She knows there were two parents, blonde beehive on her mother, that she remembers, but her mother's name, lost now.

Speaker 21 Though there was a nickname, Bobby, and in those early years, she was always, always there.

Speaker 31 Her father, on the other hand, was absent mostly, long stretches away punctuated by glorious reunions, when she'd be bundled up like some China doll and bustled off to the harbor where the Navy ships come in.

Speaker 15 We would go see him because he was coming in from the Navy and so it was an exciting moment and she would get us all dressed up and it was the anticipation of going to the shipyard and having a lot of attention, I think, as a child.

Speaker 21 The memories are how she survived it all, of course, all the trouble.

Speaker 15 Holding my mom's hand, having fun with my mom. Being in the moment of joy, I don't have bad memories.

Speaker 16 Oh, yes, those.

Speaker 31 The bad memories.

Speaker 45 Like the day everything good went away.

Speaker 10 It was 1973, though she and her happy little childhood bubble had no idea what year it was.

Speaker 21 She knows she was not yet five, that it was autumn, that someone came to the door with a plan.

Speaker 15 I remember a woman coming over and knocking on the door.

Speaker 47 Her name was Shirley.

Speaker 9 She was a friend of her mother's, she said.

Speaker 24 She said the little girl she brought with her was Renee, and that Renee was six.

Speaker 12 A little older then.

Speaker 49 Didn't matter. They dashed off to her bedroom to play.

Speaker 38 This is Renee now.

Speaker 13 That room is stuck in her memory, too.

Speaker 51 Her room was gorgeous, a nice-sized room for a little kid.

Speaker 51 You know, she had a canopy bed. She had tons of dresses, toys, galore.

Speaker 7 And you had none of that?

Speaker 34 No, and I was like, wow, this is nice.

Speaker 48 An alien world to Renee, the most wonderful thing she'd ever seen.

Speaker 21 And while the little girls played in the bedroom, Shirley was with Bobby in the living room, talking.

Speaker 46 And then she called Renee.

Speaker 51 So I guess when it was time to leave, I didn't want to go. I said, can we stay longer?

Speaker 42 No, but your new friend is coming with us, said Shirley.

Speaker 7 I'm like, oh, okay.

Speaker 51 You know, so she came, and then that's how everything started.

Speaker 16 So it did.

Speaker 52 It was to be an overnight, the girls were told, a little fun.

Speaker 48 They'd stay with Shirley in her Los Angeles motel room, return the next morning.

Speaker 16 That was the plan, said Shirley.

Speaker 6 But Shirley lied.

Speaker 15 We got in the car and we never went back.

Speaker 53 And my life completely changed from that point on.

Speaker 53 Completely. This woman took you away?

Speaker 7 Yes, and this was our...

Speaker 53 You weren't being taken home again. No,

Speaker 52 never back again. Do you remember that feeling?

Speaker 6 Yes, it was.

Speaker 7 I wanted to go home.

Speaker 54 She had been kidnapped. Must have been.

Speaker 21 There was no little girls overnight in Shirley's motel room.

Speaker 36 They stopped there only to pack some belongings, hit the road, and a blissful childhood entered the fog of history.

Speaker 23 The memory of the beautiful bedroom.

Speaker 30 All she had to confront the nightmare just beginning.

Speaker 1 Coming up, a four-year-old on the road with her her kidnapper.

Speaker 15 I knew that everything that was happening to us was completely wrong at a very, very young age.

Speaker 14 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 4 The story you'll hear now lives in the vivid, so real you could touch the memories of two frightened girls.

Speaker 55 It began in a downmarket motel whose LA neighborhood was most decidedly not child-friendly.

Speaker 42 It was to be a one-night sleepover with new friend Renee.

Speaker 4 Instead, a woman named Shirley simply didn't take her home again.

Speaker 25 Instead, she packed some belongings, put the girls in her car, and hit the road.

Speaker 26 Where did they go?

Speaker 42 The little girl had no idea, but she did know that from now on, she had a new name.

Speaker 39 They called her Pepper.

Speaker 30 Pepper Smith.

Speaker 49 She was not yet five years old.

Speaker 15 We lived in cars and

Speaker 15 motels and going from state to state, staying at Salvation Armies to get a meal here and there. You know, just...

Speaker 7 What's it like to live in a car? It's horrible.

Speaker 15 It's embarrassing.

Speaker 24 She was confused, of course, and terribly frightened at first.

Speaker 26 She begged, take me home.

Speaker 39 Shirley ignored her.

Speaker 44 She imagined running away.

Speaker 15 I had nowhere to go, and I was too scared.

Speaker 24 Then, as the weeks and months and then years went by, as her powers of reasoning grew, the question grew too.

Speaker 12 Did her mother, Bobby, actually give her away?

Speaker 35 Shirley told Pepper that Renee was her sister.

Speaker 9 The two girls listened wide-eyed as Shirley explained to strangers that she was their grandmother, that their parents had been killed in a car accident.

Speaker 15 I knew that everything that was happening to us was completely wrong at a very, very young age.

Speaker 22 Why had she been taken?

Speaker 31 She didn't know. Not for money, certainly.
There were no ransom demands.

Speaker 55 And without Pepper's birth certificate, Shirley couldn't use her to score public assistance.

Speaker 4 Though she did use Renee that way.

Speaker 46 Frightened, compliant Renee, eager for a mother's love, even if that mother figure was Shirley.

Speaker 51 I never wanted to do anything wrong.

Speaker 51 I felt like if I did something

Speaker 51 wrong or whatever, she wouldn't love me. She would give me away.

Speaker 6 Wouldn't love me?

Speaker 44 Shirley told her, says Renee, Renee, that she was born to a prostitute drug addict named Jerry.

Speaker 9 That Shirley saved baby Renee, raised her as a daughter, but kept Renee in line by threatening to abandon her.

Speaker 7 Did she ever threaten to do that?

Speaker 51 Yeah, many times we'd do something wrong, and she would say, well,

Speaker 51 you stop doing that, or I'm going to send you off to Jerry's house.

Speaker 30 And so they lived a life of packing up and fleeing state to state, one flop house to the next, searching for the cheapest place to stay and then skip out of.

Speaker 39 Hunger, constant.

Speaker 12 Medical care, non-existent.

Speaker 48 When money ran out, as it often did, Shirley drove to the nearest truck stop.

Speaker 37 The girls would bed down in the car and watch Shirley sneak off to do,

Speaker 26 well, they didn't know.

Speaker 31 And alone and frightened, they held on to each other and watched the shadows of strange men pass by their car.

Speaker 12 Until the night when, terrified and unable to sleep, Renee followed Shirley.

Speaker 51 She's taking a long time and I'm getting scared because I'm thinking she left or she's died or something.

Speaker 51 So I go into where they work on the cars and she's like on the side over here and he's on top of her.

Speaker 51 And I didn't know what was going on. I got scared and then she seen me and she yelled at me and said, get out of here.
Go.

Speaker 47 At least then they had a bit of money.

Speaker 32 But always Pepper was afraid. Afraid to ask for help.

Speaker 9 Afraid to ask why she'd been taken.

Speaker 54 Afraid of Shirley's threats.

Speaker 15 She would scare us to believe that we were in a better place.

Speaker 15 She was doing something good for us.

Speaker 53 Did you ever understand why she wouldn't take you back home?

Speaker 15 Her personality was very

Speaker 15 up and down, like very angry.

Speaker 15 And so if I asked questions, she would say stuff like, if you want to find your mom, she's on the street shooting heroin and a prostitute.

Speaker 35 Tire raids were frequent.

Speaker 10 Neglect, part of life.

Speaker 4 Verbal and physical abuse a regular occurrence.

Speaker 51 She would whip us with the belt,

Speaker 51 slap us,

Speaker 51 verbally cuss at us,

Speaker 51 verbally abuse us.

Speaker 53 And threaten to send you away. Right.

Speaker 15 I just took the belt. Because it just,

Speaker 15 if you take it, this is, it's hard to explain, but

Speaker 15 if you just take it, it calms,

Speaker 15 she gets out of the rage faster, so to speak.

Speaker 39 They went to school when they could, made very few friends and lost the ones they did make, struggled to be ordinary kids and then normal teenagers.

Speaker 51 All I wanted to be is loved.

Speaker 7 That's it.

Speaker 34 And I never got any kind of love that I wanted.

Speaker 23 Instead, they were trapped, truck-stop nomads, in the care of a woman who it seemed clear had kidnapped at least one, if not both, of them.

Speaker 23 And they drifted one dump to another across any number of state lines for years.

Speaker 35 And then, sometime in the early 80s, they settled down.

Speaker 9 Shirley pulled up to a motel in Los Angeles County and took a job as the motel's cleaning woman in exchange for a free room.

Speaker 13 And if it wasn't much, at least it gave them some measure of stability.

Speaker 3 And they signed up at a local school, junior high for Pepper, high school for Renee, much to Shirley's disapproval.

Speaker 15 Shirley would tell us, girls don't go to school. They get married.
Why do you want to go to school? I didn't like being late to school. I didn't like being absent all the time.

Speaker 12 So they got themselves up every morning and went to school and kept going.

Speaker 4 And then Pepper was 12, eight of those years with Shirley, when she saw her chance to escape and seized it.

Speaker 45 She made herself useful as a babysitter babysitter for the couple next door in room 109.

Speaker 23 And when the family moved out of the motel, Pepper went with them.

Speaker 43 But it didn't last long.

Speaker 30 Pepper's new household, caught in its own spiral of alcoholism and dysfunction, was as troubled and messy as her own life was.

Speaker 47 She swallowed her pride and moved back to room 110 Colonial Motel, even though by then, says Pepper, Shirley didn't seem to care much what she did.

Speaker 15 I remember when I was trying to, so-called run away, plot my escape before it went into action. I was in my mind going,

Speaker 15 I'm going to show her. She'll care.
Like I remember thinking that, but she didn't care. She didn't come to get me.

Speaker 9 Still, having tasted freedom once, Pepper was determined to get away from her kidnapper for good.

Speaker 39 A second time she took a chance, moved out with a family, and a second time had to return.

Speaker 22 And then finally, by the time she turned 16, Pepper left for good.

Speaker 10 But that meant she left Renee behind too.

Speaker 1 Renee, who so needed Pepper and was alone now, was Shirley.

Speaker 51 She was my best friend growing up. That was my best friend.
You know, we did everything together. We fight like sisters.
We did everything together.

Speaker 21 Renee was feeling abandoned.

Speaker 51 I was telling her, don't go, you know, stay here. You know, I need you.
You're my sister. So she went, she did her thing.
And I was upset and I was sad.

Speaker 42 By 1986 and on her own now, Pepper had all but given up hope that she'd ever find her real parents. But now she began to encounter a more immediate problem.

Speaker 42 The inevitable trouble that comes with having no real name, no birth certificate, no ID.

Speaker 21 Though she was enrolled in school under the name Rhonda Smith at Shirley's urging, she had no way to prove this was her legal name.

Speaker 22 And without some cooperation from Shirley, her search for such documents seemed hopeless.

Speaker 1 And then?

Speaker 53 How did you find out that she was sick?

Speaker 15 She turned completely yellow. And they diagnosed her with pancreatic cancer, and she literally died quickly after that.

Speaker 47 With Shirley on her deathbed, Pepper tried to act like the dutiful daughter, went to see her regularly, tried to make her comfortable.

Speaker 23 But there was another terribly important reason to see her then, maybe the most important.

Speaker 24 One last opportunity to find out who she was.

Speaker 53 As she was dying, did you try to find, you know, I mean, maybe she'd make a deathbed confession and say, yes, I did take you, and here are what your parents' names are and how to find them.

Speaker 7 And any of that happened? Did you ask? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 24 And Shirley had a response for the girl she renamed Pepper.

Speaker 28 The question was,

Speaker 32 what could she do with that answer?

Speaker 36 Coming up.

Speaker 14 If JC Dugard could be found after 18 years, certainly there must be hope for Pepper.

Speaker 15 It triggered a lot of my own personal memories, You know, and how come I didn't get found that I felt still missing.

Speaker 14 But would she be missing much longer when Dateline continues

Speaker 3 from the creator of Homeland?

Speaker 10 Claire Danes and Matthew Rees star in the new Netflix series The Beast in Me as ruthless rivals whose shared darkness will set them on a collision course with fatal consequences.

Speaker 31 The Beast in Me is a riveting psychological cat and mouse story about guilt, injustice, and doubt.

Speaker 3 Now playing only on Netflix.

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Speaker 10 The girl they call Pepper Smith sat at the deathbed of the woman who'd stolen her with questions burning in her brain.

Speaker 12 She had to know who was she, where did she come from?

Speaker 1 Who were her parents?

Speaker 35 What was her true identity?

Speaker 12 And at the very least, where could she find the documents that could give her a real life?

Speaker 35 She took a roundabout route.

Speaker 31 She asked the question indirectly.

Speaker 15 I took driver's edge just like any 16-year-old wants to get their driver. I want to, you know, I want to be free.
I want to go work and be free from all this. You know, I have a plan, you know.
And

Speaker 15 I asked her for, I need my birth certificate. You know, I need this.
I need, you know, and she...

Speaker 15 Told me they changed the laws. You can't get your driver's license until you're 18 years old.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 15 And I'm supposed to believe this as I sit in a classroom where I've got friends who are getting permits. Of course.
So she took the lies with her. She was not going to tell.

Speaker 53 What about the birth certificate?

Speaker 15 She never really gave me a concrete answer, nothing. We couldn't get anything out of her.

Speaker 15 The lies stayed with her.

Speaker 11 Shirley knew the answers, of course, knew the whole bizarre story.

Speaker 12 But she looked Pepper in the eye through her obvious pain and told her nothing.

Speaker 13 She left the lies behind and took the truth to her grave on July 29, 1986.

Speaker 9 At the age of 63, she was buried in an unmarked grave.

Speaker 47 Renee, now 19, got on with life, moved in with her boyfriend.

Speaker 10 Soon Pepper showed up at their apartment, homeless and nowhere else to turn to.

Speaker 24 And everywhere Pepper went from then on, Shirley's poison gift followed because of that woman and what she did, Pepper was officially at least a non-person.

Speaker 23 So it took a little while for determination to come back.

Speaker 35 She was in her mid-twenties, a single mother by then.

Speaker 10 If only she could find her birth certificate, that could lead her to her parents.

Speaker 23 Anyway, she needed documents to live.

Speaker 52 She needed a passport.

Speaker 24 So she contacted state offices, their departments of vital records, with perhaps predictable results.

Speaker 53 Tell me what it feels like when you know you have to go to an official and ask for something that you really, really, really, really need.

Speaker 53 And

Speaker 53 you kind of know, you think how it's going to go about.

Speaker 51 I get emotional usually.

Speaker 51 I usually cry.

Speaker 15 It was really, I would cry. It just brings me to a sad place.

Speaker 53 So you'd be sitting across the desk from somebody crying.

Speaker 7 Oh, absolutely. And they

Speaker 53 can't do anything for you.

Speaker 53 Would say, I can't do anything for you, probably.

Speaker 15 You need this document. This is what you need to provide.

Speaker 53 Sorry.

Speaker 7 I have no way to get this document because I don't know my parents' name. And I don't know my real name.
Pepper.

Speaker 31 And once again, Pepper felt, perhaps understandably, like giving up.

Speaker 48 But by then, she was living with her daughter in South Lake Tahoe, working as a waitress.

Speaker 1 And what do you know?

Speaker 55 Hometown girl JC Dugard, kidnapped years and years earlier, was found.

Speaker 15 The community was just buzzing all over the place with joy. And I was happy for JC Lee.
But it triggered a lot of my own personal memories, you know, and how come I didn't get found

Speaker 7 and I felt still missing.

Speaker 23 So, once again, charged up with determination, she launched a fresh attempt.

Speaker 55 Turns out there's such a thing as adult adoption.

Speaker 23 Find someone to adopt her, and even if she couldn't find her parents, at least she could get an official identity and a birth certificate, and thus a passport.

Speaker 21 A friend offered to adopt her.

Speaker 31 So Pepper and friend applied and waited.

Speaker 4 And something quite amazing happened.

Speaker 23 Someone in that great California bureaucracy did some research.

Speaker 12 A lot, apparently.

Speaker 27 Actually talked to Pepper, asked her questions, hauled out records not readily available online.

Speaker 10 All Pepper could offer were the names Bob and Bobby and the date of her birth.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 23 somehow, buried among all those files in all their hundreds of millions, a match.

Speaker 25 And there it was, came in the mail, after all these years, a copy of her actual birth certificate.

Speaker 10 The key to unlock her past, though she had no idea then, looking at that birth certificate, that the appropriate question should have been this:

Speaker 52 Was this her real past

Speaker 36 coming up?

Speaker 14 A journey ending?

Speaker 15 This is it.

Speaker 14 You know, I was like, whoa, or was it just beginning

Speaker 14 when dateline continues

Speaker 1 For 37 years, she'd been searching for her parents, her life, her name.

Speaker 13 And now, just as she'd given up ever finding the answer, she had it.

Speaker 7 A copy of her birth certificate with her real name in black and white, Rhonda Patricia Christie.

Speaker 62 And there were the names of her parents, too, Robert and Barbara Christie.

Speaker 15 Well, this is it. You know, I was like, whoa, they were my parents, that Bobby and Bob.

Speaker 15 They were my parents.

Speaker 62 With their names and Social Security numbers, Rhonda and her friends tracked down a phone number in Ohio.

Speaker 7 She dialed the number.

Speaker 50 A man answered.

Speaker 12 It was June 5th, 2010.

Speaker 15 I said, are you Robert Teen Christie? Because I was on the birth certificate, and he said, yes. And I said, are you married to a Barbara Blackwelder? Or were you married? You know, I didn't know.

Speaker 15 He's all yes. And then I said, I think I'm Rhonda Christie, or do you know Rhonda Patricia Christie?

Speaker 15 And then there was a long pause.

Speaker 13 The man she was talking to was Bob Christie.

Speaker 63 I almost dropped the phone. She knew I'd hesitated, and she said, this is your daughter, Rhonda.
And there was something that clicked in my mind that I reckon the voice rang a bell.

Speaker 15 And he called to my mom, Barbara, to pick up the phone. She saw Rhonda's on the phone.
She picked up the phone and the first thing out of her mouth was, Shirley stole you.

Speaker 32 Pepper was shaking inside and out.

Speaker 15 I went into like a very emote, the most emotions I think I've ever had in my entire life. Ever.

Speaker 54 The memories were true, or so it certainly seemed.

Speaker 29 She got on a plane for Ohio.

Speaker 37 They were all, of course, 37 years older and in a way strangers now, but there they were, together on a couch, looking at all the images she had clung to in fantasy, dreamed about, for those 37 long years.

Speaker 29 And there you are in your bath.

Speaker 15 All those rolls, too.

Speaker 57 You was the chubby little baby.

Speaker 19 And happy.

Speaker 19 And look at you, just learning to walk

Speaker 29 and smiling the whole way.

Speaker 53 You had a good life, honey. I know.

Speaker 33 So it was happy and sad, comforting, but also deeply strange.

Speaker 4 Because sitting on that couch, Pepper heard some stunning revelations, such as,

Speaker 47 these were not her birth parents. She had been adopted, and the arrangement was mysterious.

Speaker 13 And now, it was Barbara's turn to tell a story.

Speaker 47 Shirley had been her friend, she said, had told her about a woman working in the sex trade named Jerry Smith who didn't want her babies.

Speaker 48 And one day Shirley showed up at Barbara's house with a three-month-old baby she called Rhonda Patricia Smith.

Speaker 21 Barbara could see it was a little iffy, but she wanted that baby so badly.

Speaker 10 And so, she said, she ignored the red flags.

Speaker 19 Nope, didn't care. Didn't really care.

Speaker 35 She was going to see to it, she said, that Rhonda was loved and cared for by the best parents she could ever possibly have.

Speaker 31 Bob and Barbara legally adopted their little princess four years later, in the fall of 1973.

Speaker 4 And it was shortly after that, said Barbara, when Shirley and Renee showed up at her door.

Speaker 19 And the kids played together and we visited together and she asked if Rhonda could come spend the night with Renee and took me a while to get an answer to that.

Speaker 19 I really had to think about that hard. I'm one of these tender-hearted people and I said, well, I want her to know her sister.

Speaker 25 Sister?

Speaker 47 Why, yes.

Speaker 46 Barbara told Rhonda she and Renee were half-sisters, daughters of the same mother, the woman who worked the streets.

Speaker 36 Barbara said that by then, she didn't trust Shirley with Rhonda, but...

Speaker 19 I want Rhonda to know her sister. I wanted her to have family and stuff.
And I asked Bob, and...

Speaker 19 He said no, she couldn't at first, and then

Speaker 19 he relented, let her go.

Speaker 19 And next morning we went to get her and they were gone.

Speaker 53 And they didn't come back.

Speaker 10 Bob and Barbara called the police right away, of course.

Speaker 25 But here's what they said they were told, that the police could do nothing for them since they'd allowed Rhonda to leave with Shirley.

Speaker 27 They were on their own.

Speaker 30 And so, desperate, they said, they started their own search.

Speaker 48 Discovered Shirley had taken the girls to a relative's house several states away.

Speaker 45 But when they got there, it was too late.

Speaker 21 All that remained sitting on the porch were the little red shoes Rhonda wore the day she was kidnapped.

Speaker 9 It was hopeless.

Speaker 22 They returned to their childless home.

Speaker 37 Nothing left but the photographs of the little girl who stopped growing up for them at four.

Speaker 26 And now, out of the booth, that phone call.

Speaker 6 And here she was.

Speaker 16 How good? How are you?

Speaker 6 I'm good.

Speaker 60 It is definitely a gift.

Speaker 63 Not only did we get a daughter, we got a granddaughter.

Speaker 39 Just in time, it turns out.

Speaker 24 Barbara had terminal cancer.

Speaker 48 She would die a year later.

Speaker 38 Still, back then,

Speaker 37 they celebrated.

Speaker 23 Renee joined them for Rhonda's birthday and the Christie's 38th wedding anniversary.

Speaker 55 An amazing reunion.

Speaker 21 So, of course, Stateline was happy to broadcast it all around the country on March 25th, 2011.

Speaker 26 No idea that something quite unbelievable would happen.

Speaker 16 Because one of the people who tuned in that night was a woman named Jerry.

Speaker 33 And oh, what a story she had to tell.

Speaker 14 Coming up, it was a story two sisters had waited a very long time to hear.

Speaker 15 99.99% probability. Yep, that means it's confirmed.

Speaker 14 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 57 Some stories never make national headlines, but stories from small towns and coastal communities deserve recognition too.

Speaker 57 I'm Kylie Lowe, host of Dark Down East, a true crime podcast that gives voice to victims through investigative journalism and powerful storytelling.

Speaker 57 Set in my home state of Maine and the greater New England area, it's my goal to dig through the archives to bring the stories of the people at the heart of these cases to light.

Speaker 57 Listen to Dark Down East, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 31 When we first told you the story about Pepper Smith and her lifelong journey journey to find her family, her identity, it was a Friday night in March, 2011, and the following Monday morning.

Speaker 17 My office received a call

Speaker 17 and then I received an email.

Speaker 9 Attorney Gloria Allred found herself looking at a remarkable message.

Speaker 4 Allred had been helping the two sisters deal with their new identity issues.

Speaker 13 And there it was, the ping of a message on her BlackBerry.

Speaker 17 When I looked at the email,

Speaker 17 I just couldn't even believe it. I looked at it about three times.

Speaker 17 Am I really seeing this?

Speaker 35 It was a woman claiming to be the biological mother of both Pepper and Renee.

Speaker 18 Claiming to be the woman who, according to Shirley and Barbara, was a child-abandoning, drug-adult prostitute, probably dead.

Speaker 35 Could this woman really be their mother?

Speaker 27 Hardly a claim Allred could take on simple faith.

Speaker 17 I asked her to come in to see me the very next day, which she was very anxious and happy to do. I asked her to bring whatever evidence she had.

Speaker 4 And in that meeting, the woman presented her evidence.

Speaker 17 She brought some photos that she had

Speaker 17 of Pepper and Renee when they were very little.

Speaker 9 She told Allred she had been a waitress when the girls were little, brought a photo of that, too, and a picture of Shirley.

Speaker 36 And also a photo of a man she said was the girl's father, long since dead.

Speaker 9 She said her name was Jerry.

Speaker 17 I asked her immediately, Jerry,

Speaker 17 would you be willing to do a DNA test? She said, I'll take the DNA test, but these are my children.

Speaker 17 I know it.

Speaker 13 Allred put the DNA test on a fast track and waited.

Speaker 12 And within a week, called Pepper and Vinay to her office.

Speaker 31 to hear in person the results of the test.

Speaker 15 99.99% probability. Yep, that means it's confirmed.
That's it.

Speaker 51 I can't believe this is actually happening. I really can't right now.

Speaker 9 How soon could they meet Jerry?

Speaker 31 The sisters wanted to know.

Speaker 9 And what's she like?

Speaker 22 How did she know Shirley?

Speaker 4 We arranged a reunion for the next day.

Speaker 10 Jerry arrived first and told us how she saw her long-lost girls on our program.

Speaker 65 I saw the picture of Shirley. I went crazy.
I was satirical because I knew that's who she was.

Speaker 19 And then when I saw the girls,

Speaker 53 I knew they were mine.

Speaker 53 After all those years of looking at them.

Speaker 7 Seven years.

Speaker 7 There they are.

Speaker 19 What did that feel like?

Speaker 7 It felt great.

Speaker 53 I had hoping I could find my children before I died because I'm getting old. And that was just like a miracle.

Speaker 9 Jerry's story?

Speaker 12 The Shirley who took the girls had been her friend.

Speaker 39 turned roommate, turned babysitter.

Speaker 65 She said, I'll babysit for you. You know, I'll take care of her while you work.
I said, well, that's great, because I really thought I was blessed.

Speaker 32 First, it was Renee she looked after, then Renee and Pepper, and then two years later, little brother Raymond Leonard Smith Jr.

Speaker 1 Wait, brother?

Speaker 32 It wasn't just the two girls.

Speaker 35 There was a younger brother the girls never knew they had.

Speaker 37 The father wasn't around very much.

Speaker 4 Jerry supported them all with what she could make as a waitress.

Speaker 39 Then Shirley made a change, a positive one, it seemed, at least financially.

Speaker 65 She got this job supposedly at the motel

Speaker 65 managing, which was further from where I worked, so I arranged with her to watch the kids while I worked.

Speaker 21 It was a godsend, really, since Jerry had to be hospitalized for weeks after Raymond was born and then get back to work.

Speaker 29 and find a new home to take the kids to.

Speaker 65 I'd come out there on my days off and stay with the kids and spend some time with them. And so then

Speaker 65 I had called her and told her that I was coming to get the kids and the next day I went out there and

Speaker 65 gone.

Speaker 27 Not a sign of them.

Speaker 11 No kids.

Speaker 33 No Shirley.

Speaker 9 Frantic then, she went to the police.

Speaker 53 What did you tell them your children have been kidnapped?

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 65 And they took the report and that's the last I heard.

Speaker 53 Did you go back and talk to them again?

Speaker 65 I went down there two or three times and they kept telling me the same thing. They hadn't found anything.

Speaker 52 Jerry says she didn't know who else to talk to.

Speaker 37 So she looked on her own and found year after year

Speaker 26 nothing.

Speaker 39 Had no idea, she said, that Shirley had left Pepper with Barbara, that Barbara persuaded a court that Pepper had essentially been abandoned and thus could be adopted, or that Shirley stole her back again.

Speaker 47 And then there they were, telling their story on date lines, telling how Shirley and Barbara had described her.

Speaker 65 Yes, I heard what they said about me.

Speaker 65 I was not a street walker.

Speaker 65 I was a waitress all my life.

Speaker 53 They also said you didn't really want your children.

Speaker 46 You were happy to abandon them.

Speaker 65 I never abandoned my children. Never.

Speaker 65 Ever.

Speaker 65 And would never, ever do that.

Speaker 23 And she wasn't a drug addict either, she says.

Speaker 33 She's not had a smooth or easy life.

Speaker 9 And for much of it, she has missed her children and blamed herself for what happened.

Speaker 53 Trusting Shirley. Yes.
And for not having those kids under your wing all the time.

Speaker 19 That's right.

Speaker 53 Tell me about that.

Speaker 65 Because to me, I feel like it was my fault because I put them in the hands of this monster.

Speaker 4 We're in a hotel room in Los Angeles.

Speaker 12 Jerry is eager, anxious, terrified, visibly shaking.

Speaker 26 And then they come around the corner.

Speaker 9 Their first meeting in 37 years.

Speaker 9 Wow.

Speaker 66 It's been a lifetime we've missed.

Speaker 7 Oh my god.

Speaker 54 I feel like it's dreaming still.

Speaker 26 So am I.

Speaker 34 I can't really get it yet. I can't either.

Speaker 50 I just want to see how you stay.

Speaker 7 Can I just scare somebody?

Speaker 34 Yes, you can't do anything, Eddie.

Speaker 7 I don't have a memory.

Speaker 66 I'm sad because I was there with you guys.

Speaker 66 Yes,

Speaker 66 you're my baby's.

Speaker 66 You're my baby's. It's been 37 years.
It's dead.

Speaker 35 And just about here, as they cling and cry, something rather magical happens.

Speaker 1 The center of gravity shifts.

Speaker 7 What happened?

Speaker 39 What happened?

Speaker 56 It's Renee who wants the answers now. You will know.

Speaker 66 You will know.

Speaker 66 You will know. I promise you.
You were kidnapped.

Speaker 66 You were illegally adopted.

Speaker 66 Me? What happened to me? She was adopted, but what happened to me?

Speaker 66 I thought I could never find you. Help me! I thought I'd never find you either.
I searched and I searched and I searched. I didn't know where to go.
I had no money for a journey.

Speaker 66 And when I turned the date line on and saw you, girls.

Speaker 57 Come on, honey.

Speaker 57 Woohoo!

Speaker 7 Little lizard!

Speaker 7 It's okay. I thought you didn't care about me.

Speaker 66 You know, I loved you, both of you.

Speaker 66 I could never not love you. I had you.

Speaker 51 I was so mad at you.

Speaker 7 I'm Shem. I was so mad at you.
Honey, I didn't. I didn't.

Speaker 7 I thought you gave me away. No.

Speaker 35 They spent hours together here, talking about their pasts, their likes and dislikes, their amazing similarity.

Speaker 56 We gave them a few weeks to get to know each other, Then sat down again with Pepper and Renee.

Speaker 36 So there it is.

Speaker 61 You have your mother, but what now?

Speaker 25 Are you

Speaker 25 will you have a relationship with her?

Speaker 51 Well, we're gonna move her in with me.

Speaker 7 Move into your house? Yes, yes.

Speaker 51 Once she gets all her affairs into or in order, we're gonna move her in.

Speaker 7 Why?

Speaker 51 Because I want her. My husband wants her too.

Speaker 7 There.

Speaker 51 So I want to have a relationship with my mom

Speaker 51 like I was telling you earlier I want to go shopping I want to have lunch I want to go buy stuff

Speaker 51 I want to have Christmas Thanksgiving her there with me

Speaker 9 and Pepper well for one thing Pepper has adopted her real birth name the one her parents gave her before it was lost in the abductions and adoption it's Ronique Ronique Smith.

Speaker 15 I feel very content that everything has taken place, you know, the way it has played out.

Speaker 15 Finding my mom, my identity, the real identity, my biological father, seeing a picture of him, all these exciting things going on. But

Speaker 15 I think it's not over yet. I don't feel the journey's quite over yet.
It's just

Speaker 15 starting. This part of it is just starting.

Speaker 3 So it is, because, of course, one of them is still missing.

Speaker 36 Coming up.

Speaker 15 Our brother Raymond is still missing.

Speaker 51 We know he's out there somewhere.

Speaker 3 So he is, but not for long.

Speaker 14 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 21 It was Pepper's story when we began.

Speaker 31 Pepper, now officially Ronique, who set out to find a birth certificate, and discovered a past richer and more complex than even she dreamed possible.

Speaker 46 To find first the mother of her memory and then her long-lost birth mother, to discover that Renee was her actual sister and now to learn she had a brother.

Speaker 30 Raymond Leonard Smith Jr.

Speaker 25 is what Jerry called him before he too was snatched away, abducted by the babysitter, Shirley.

Speaker 43 Where was he now?

Speaker 9 Jerry gave us a copy of his birth certificate.

Speaker 48 He'd be just about 40 now.

Speaker 13 And our chances of finding him seem, frankly, slim.

Speaker 21 We called 40-year-old Ray Smith all over the country. There was Ray Smith in Colorado, Ray Smith in Maryland, in New Jersey, in Kansas.

Speaker 7 But did he go by the name Ray Smith?

Speaker 7 And then, a callback.

Speaker 4 It was the Ray Smith from Colorado.

Speaker 16 He had the right name, the right age, place of birth, had grown up without knowing any blood relatives.

Speaker 9 All this Ray Smith knew was his mother's name, according to his birth certificate, was

Speaker 1 Jerry.

Speaker 35 He was starting to sound a lot like our Ray.

Speaker 61 We asked if he'd submit to a DNA test.

Speaker 45 He agreed, and there was no doubt we'd found him.

Speaker 61 We brought Ray and his fiancée to a Los Angeles hotel and showed him the story of his sisters.

Speaker 31 In a way, his story, too.

Speaker 41 I thought that the story itself was sad

Speaker 41 It sounds like they had a rough life

Speaker 41 and it was really similar to mine.

Speaker 44 So it was and it began the same way too when Shirley took him from Terry except Ray was turned over to a woman named Anna Lee Brown who named him Jimmy Brown the only name he knew growing up.

Speaker 41 She told me that she had adopted me.

Speaker 41 But I was also shipped around a lot

Speaker 41 from home to home because she had a lot of health problems from what I was told.

Speaker 32 He was neglected, he said, and often abused, bounced around for years, until Anna Brown shipped him off to a Colorado couple when he was 14.

Speaker 9 And that's when he found his birth certificate, started calling himself Ray Smith, and began puzzling over the apparently unanswerable questions of his life.

Speaker 41 Why did Ann name me Jim Brown if my name was really Ray? How come I never knew about Jerry? Things like that. And then I wondered, you know,

Speaker 41 was I kidnapped?

Speaker 38 No answers from Anna Brown, who died soon after that.

Speaker 9 And as for life in Colorado, by the time he was 16...

Speaker 41 Things were getting a little rough.

Speaker 41 Maybe because of my past, I wasn't a real easy kid.

Speaker 6 So...

Speaker 41 I was

Speaker 41 put into foster care.

Speaker 43 And then?

Speaker 42 He graduated from high school.

Speaker 24 He got a job, moved in with some friends, and started his own rock band.

Speaker 23 And for all he's wondered about his past, he'd come to believe he'd go to his grave without ever meeting a blood relative until now.

Speaker 23 Wow,

Speaker 41 they're actually in the same building I'm in right now. That's amazing to me.

Speaker 18 And here they were.

Speaker 7 Oh, my baby.

Speaker 7 Oh,

Speaker 7 it's been forever.

Speaker 6 It's great to see you.

Speaker 4 Meeting family for the first time.

Speaker 34 Dad's kind of look like me.

Speaker 9 After so many years.

Speaker 7 So this is my first time meeting my blood.

Speaker 19 It's great.

Speaker 7 Thanks for

Speaker 7 my father.

Speaker 45 And this is how Pepper's desperate search for a warm memory of a lost childhood ended.

Speaker 15 You look like our dad.

Speaker 6 You're great.

Speaker 31 Far bigger than she imagined.

Speaker 52 Far better.

Speaker 7 It was good to see you. you.

Speaker 6 It's good to see you, too.

Speaker 5 The family that was stolen.

Speaker 7 Wow. It's amazing.

Speaker 15 It's the best gift ever.

Speaker 23 They sat here for hours, shared their photos, got to know each other, and made plans.

Speaker 38 Like families do.

Speaker 14 That's all for now.

Speaker 20 I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 9 Thanks for joining us.

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