Chapter 1: What led to Dorothy Lee Barnett's disappearance in 1994?
A few months before my mum gave birth to me she started writing a diary and it starts off on the first page saying to my dear Savannah someday I'll give this journal to you so that you can hopefully understand your mother. My name is Samantha Geldenhuis. I was born in Savannah, but I didn't know that. Savannah Lee Barnett. I grew up on the Sunshine Coast in Australia.
It is the most magnificent place. I knew my mom as Alex my entire life. But in reality, she wasn't Alex at all. She was Leigh. Leigh Barnett.
Chapter 2: How did Samantha Geldenhuis discover her mother's true identity?
In April of 1994, I got a phone call that my dearest friend Leigh had disappeared. I thought, oh no, don't let this be true. I never imagined that my good friend Lee would be the subject of an international manhunt.
Our investigation spanned the United States and the globe. We searched Belize, Central America, and South Africa. Dorothy Lee was very equipped and running from the law. She thought about this. She was planned. She was determined.
I feel the FBI and every other law enforcement agency underestimated me.
Chapter 3: What was the FBI's role in the international manhunt for Dorothy Lee Barnett?
The FBI more than met their match when they tangled with Dorothy Lee Barnett.
Welcome to Malaysia. This is our home.
Did you at all think, I'm going to get caught? They're going to get me. Every day. Every day.
I thought this was going to be one of those unsolved mysteries that would never be solved.
Samantha, we're going to Singapore in a couple days.
Until 2011, when we had the tip that she was living in Australia.
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Chapter 4: What challenges did Leigh Barnett face while living on the run?
I remember getting a cold when I was up at school and my mom needed me to jump on a plane and come down because she was getting arrested. Two decades later, authorities have arrested her in Australia.
When I heard that Alex wasn't Alex, I was absolutely gobsmacked and amazed. I thought, wow, what a girl.
Happy New Year. 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.
Chapter 5: How did the custody battle between Leigh Barnett and Harris Todd unfold?
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.
Barnett was arrested in Australia.
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.
Chapter 6: What were the consequences of Leigh Barnett's actions after fleeing?
I need to tell the truth about what's happened. Something needs to be changed.
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. Dottie lived on her husband's social security. But they had plenty of adventures, says Lee's brother Cliff.
Chapter 7: What did the court's decision reveal about the perception of Leigh Barnett?
We had to learn how to do things with no money and no resources and get by and do things on the fly.
A kind of Swiss family Robinson traveling between South Carolina, Florida, and the jungles of Belize. They were really living an Indiana Jones lifestyle before there was an Indiana Jones. In Belize, they were in the jungle living with local families. Lee inherited her mother's love of adventure. at one point traveling deep into Africa with Susie.
I just knew that all of the traveling that we had done and that she had done with her family prepared her for really what was the ultimate adventure of her life. That adventure began in Charleston when Lee, by then a flight attendant, met Harris Todd, a stockbroker with a love of poetry. And to many, the picture of a perfect Southern gentleman. And was it love at first sight?
Chapter 8: How did Samantha Geldenhuis reconcile her past with her mother's actions?
No, not at all. It wasn't love at first sight, it was friendship. All that changed five years later. He just professed to me that I'd made him feel different than anybody else has ever made him feel.
And the one thing led to another.
But Lee's dear friend, Patty Roth, did not think it was a good match. They wanted very different things out of life. She was very outgoing, and he kind of kept her to himself. To Lee, that was part of the attraction, part of the challenge. I thought I was a person that was going to help him have a more normal, fun, loving life because he was so serious.
When Lee came to me and told me that they decided to get married, I did not agree with that choice. Lee wanted children. Harris was very clear to everyone that he never wanted children. Why would you marry a man who didn't want to have kids? I don't know.
I just thought that I was going to do something and he would change and we'd have this wonderful family. And I just had this crazy dream that I'd make everything right.
She could not have been more wrong. When she told him that she was pregnant is when all the problems started between the two of them. He kept saying over and over throughout my whole pregnancy, there is no baby. Even when I was eight months pregnant, there is no baby. There is no baby.
I'll try and start from the beginning.
Before Leigh Barnett fled the country, she made a tape and sent it to friends and enemies alike. I can't tell you how painful this is. In it, she condemns her husband, Harris Todd. A very, very evil, evil man. For casting her as the villain in a sinister drama she claims he fabricated out of vengeance. a characterization she stands by to this day.
He wanted to hurt me so badly, he didn't care who took down, and that includes a little baby. Lee says it all began seven months into the marriage. I said to him, I said, I have a feeling I might be pregnant.
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