Samantha Geldenhuis

I realized it was all up.

Merry Christmas.

that they'd found me.

I love you more than life itself, your special mummy.

And I knew that I'd have to face the consequences, what I did 20 years before.

She's written, I've always loved the name Savannah.

It reminds me of great beauty.

It also reminds me of my home, and someday it'll hopefully be yours too.

The endless reeds, the shrimp, the blue herons.

That pretty picture is how Leigh Barnett remembered Charleston in the secret diary she kept for her daughter during their years on the run.

A very different Charleston, South Carolina than what she returned home to.

Leigh was charged with kidnapping her daughter after losing a bitter custody battle.

For 20 years, Leigh Barnett had been hunted by the FBI, vilified in the press, called angry and violent, and labeled mentally ill.

Now she tells her side of the story to 48 Hours, and it is a very different story than you've heard before.

From the start, there was always something different about Leigh Barnett, the little barefoot girl with the blue, blue eyes and a big smile, says her oldest friend, Susie Pogue.

When I first met Leigh when she was five and I was seven, she had a big black snake around her neck.

And so I took one look at her and I said, oh, that looks like an interesting family.

I want to be friends with her.

Lee and her two brothers were raised by a free-spirited single mother named Dottie after their father died.

They didn't have much money.