>> her name is pepper. >> i lived a secret life. >> she was kidnapped at age four. >> we got in the car, and we never went back. >> she spent deck kaeades tryin kind her way home again, and she finally made it, or so she thought. >> i said i'm rhonda christy, or do you know her and there was a lock pause. >> pepper's story had many ups and downs.

>> when i looked at the e-mail, i just couldn't even believe it. >> but after so many tears, so many years, and so many turns in her story -- >> i was like whoa. >> there are still more stunning twists to be revealed. >> it's amazing. it's the best gift ever. >> lost and found. >> hello. welcome to dateline extra. a young girl was abducted at the age of four and raised by her kidnapper. for the next four decades she searched for her family, her name, and herself. her story has an extraordinary ending and as it turns out, that ending was just the beginning. here is keith morrison. >> our story begins with this mother of a teenage daughter. a woman who had spent most of her life trying to figure out

who she was. what was her name? where did she come from? we'll tell you about her long search, her discovery of finding what felt like truth. as you'll soon see, real truth can be elusive. it can hide. let's begin at the beginning. but at the beginning all she had was a memory. >> a twin canopy bed with pink ruffles around it. kind of wave over the top of it. >> it was dream like, really. and for years it was all that felt real in her upside down life. >> and it was all pink and white. everything matched. >> the closet full of dresses, the dolls, the teddy bears. >> actually, there was a little old fashioned where you put the baby in the wagon. >> and the reason for those torments memories?

>> it's a lot of hurt and sadness. sadness for the little girl that didn't have a life. >> for most of her life, the part after that little girl's bedroom she has been pepper, and the baffling terrifying story of what happened to her kidnapped, held captive for years, is the reason she gripped that life preserver of a memory. shocking where that memory will lead by the end of this hour. she was, she is certain, an only child, and spoiled by the parents whose faces she can't pull into focus. they're in an apartment, was it san diego, perhaps? >> it looks like a very happy childhood, like love was there. >> she knows there were two parents, blonde beehive on her mother, but the name lost now. though there was a nickname, bobby, and in the early years she was always, always there. her father, on the other hand,

was absent mostly. long stretches away, punk wa. >> 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. >> the memories are how she survived it all, all the trouble. >> holding my mom's hand. having fun with my mom. being in the moment of joy. i don't have bad memories. >> yes, those. the bad memories. like the day everything good went away. it was 1973. though she and her happy little childhood bubble had no idea what year it was. she knows she was not yet five, that it was autumn, that someone came to the door with a plan. >> i remember a woman coming over and knocking on the door. >> her name was shirley.

she was a friend of her mother's she said. she said renee, a little girl with her was six. this is renee now. that room is stuck in her memory too. >> her name was gorgeous. a nice size room for a little kid. she had a canopy bed. she had tons of dresses. toys galore. >> and you had none of that? >> no. i was like wow, this is nice. >> an alien world to renee. the most wonderful thing she'd seen. while the little girls played in the living room, shirley was talking and then she called renee. >> when it was time to leave, i didn't want to go. i said can we stay longer? >> no, but your new friend is coming with us. >> i'm like okay. so she came and that's how everything started. >> so it did. it was to be an overnight, the girls were told, a little fun. they'd stay with shirley in her

los angeles motel room, return the next morning. that was the plan, said shirley. but shirley lied. >> we got in the car, and we never went back. and my life completely changed from that point on. completely. >> this woman took you away? >> yes. and this was our -- >> and you weren't taken home? >> no. i never went back again. >> do you remember that feeling? >> yes. i wanted to go home. >> she had been kidnapped, must have been. there was no little girl's overnight in shirley's motel room. they stopped there only to pack some belongings, hit the road, and a blissful childhood entered the fall of history. the memory of the beautiful bedroom. all she had to confront the nightmare just beginning. >> coming up, a four-year-old on the road with her kidnapper. >> i knew that everything that was happening to us was completely wrong at a very young

age. >> when lost and found continues. ♪ what i got's full stock

♪ of thoughts and dreams that scatter ♪ ♪ you pull them all together ♪ and how, i can't explain ♪ ♪ oh yeah, well well well youuuu ♪ ♪ you make my dreams come true ♪ ♪ well, well, well youuuu ♪ topped steak & twisted potatoes at applebee's. now that's eatin' good in the neighborhood.

welcome back to date line extra. a four-year-old girl is kidnapped from her home, taken from the only life she knew by a woman who told her she'd be going on a sleepover with a play mate for one night. that one night turned into a terrifying odyssey that wouldn't end for many, many nights to come. here again is keith morrison. >> the story you'll hear now lives in the vivid so real you could touch them memories of two frightened girls. it began in a down market motel whose l.a. neighborhood was not child friendly. it was to be a one night sleep over with a new friend renee. instead the adult who brought her here, a woman named shirley didn't take her home again. instead she packed belongings, put the girls in her car and hit the road. where did they go?

the little girl had no idea. but she did know that from now on she had a new name. they called her pepper. pepper smith. she was not yet five years old. >> we lived in cars and motels. and going from state to state, staying at salvation armies to get a meal here and there. >> what's it like to live in a car? >> it's horrible. it's embarrassing. >> she was confused, of course, and terribly frightened at first. she begged, take me home. shirley ignored her. she imagined running away. >> i had nowhere to go, and i was too scared. >> then as the weeks and months and then years went by, as her powers of reasoning grew, the question grew too. did her mother bobbie actually give her away? shirley told pepper that renee was her sister, the two girls listened wide eyed as shirley

explained to strangers that she was their grandmother and the parents were killed in a car accident. >> i knew everything that was happening to us was completely wrong at a very young age. >> why had she been taken? she didn't know. not for money. there was no ransom demands. and without her birth certificate, shirley couldn't use her to score public assistant. though she did use that for renee. >> i never wanted to do anything wrong. i felt like if i did something wrong or whatever she would give me away and wouldn't love me. >> wouldn't love me? shirley told her says renee that she was born to a prostitute drug addict named jerry. that sherirley saved her and raised her as a daughter but kept in her in line by threatening to abandon her.

did she threaten that? >> yeah. many times we'd do something wrong and she would say you stop doing that or i'm going to send you off to jerry's life. >> so they lived a life of packing up and fleeing state to state searching for the cheapest place to stay and skip out of. hunger constant. medical care nonexistent. when money ran out, as it often did, shirley drove to the nearest truck stop. the girls would bed down in the car and watch shirley sneak off to do, well, they didn't know. and alone and frightened, they held onto each other and watched the shadows of strange men pass by their car. until the night when terrified and unable to sleep, renee followed shirley. >> she's taking a long time. and i'm getting scared because i'm thinking she left or she's died or something. so i go into where they work on the cars, and she's on the side

over here, and he's on top of her. 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. >> at least then they had a bit of money. but always pepper was afraid. afraid to ask for help. afraid to ask why she'd been taken. afraid of shirley's threats. >> she would scare us to believe that we were in a better place. she was doing something good for us. >> did you ever understand why she wouldn't take you back home? >> her personality was very up and down. very angry and so if i asked questions, she would say stuff like if you want to find your mom, she's on the streets shooting heroin and a prostitute. >> tirades were frequent, neglect part of life. verbal and physical abuse a regular occurrence. >> she would whip us with a

belt, slap us, verbally cuss at us. verbally abuse us. >> and threaten to send you away? >> right. >> i just took the belt. because it just -- if you take it, this is hard to explain, but if you just take it, it -- she gets out of the rage faster, so to speak. >> 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. >> all i wanted to be is loved. that's it. and i never got any kind of love that i wanted. >> instead, they were trapped, truck stop no mads in the care of a woman it seemed she had kidnapped both of them. they drifted one dump to another across any number of state lines for years. and then sometime in the early 80s, they settled down here. shirley pulled up to this motel

in los angeles county and took a job at the cleaning woman in exchange for a free room. and if it wasn't much, at least it gave them some measure of stability, and they signed up at a local school. junior high for pepper, high school for renee. much to shirley's disapproval. >> 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. >> so they got themselves up every morning and went to school and kept going. and then pepper was 12, eight of those years with shirley when she saw her chance to escape and seized it. she made herself useful as a babysitter for the couple next time in room 109. and when the family moved out of the motel, pepper went with them. but it didn't last long. pepper's new household caught in its own spiral of alcoholism and dysfunction was as troubled and

messy as her own life was. 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. >> i remember when i was trying to plot my escape before it went into action, i was in my mind going, i'm going to show her. she'll care. i remember thinking that. but she didn't care. she didn't come to get me. >> still, having tasted freedom once, pepper was determined to get away from her kidnapper for good. a second time she took a chance, moved after the family and a second time had to return. and then finally by the time she turned 16, pepper left for good. but that meant she left renee behind too. renee who so needed pepper and was alone now with shirley. >> 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.

>> renee was feeling abandoned. >> i told her don't go. stay here. i need you. you're my sister. so she went. she did her thing, and i was upset, and i was sad. >> by 1986 and on her own now, pepper had given hope she'd ever find her real parents, but she had an immediate problem, the trouble that comes with having no real name, no i.d., no birth certificate. she was under rhonda smith at shirley's urging at school. she had no way to prove her legal name, and without some cooperation from shirley, her search for such documents seemed hopeless. and then -- how did you find out she was sick? >> she turned completely yellow when they diagnosed her with pancreatic cancer. >> with shirley on her death bed, shirley tried to act like a dutiful daughter.

tried to make her comfortable, visited her regularly, but there was another important reason to see her, maybe the most important reason. one last opportunity to find out who she was. >> as she was dying, did you try to find -- maybe she'd make a death bed confession and say i did take you, and here are your parent's names and how to find them. any of that happen? did you ask? >> oh, yeah, and shirley had a response for the girl she renamed pepper. the question was, what could she do with that answer? coming up, if jesus christ duggar could be found at 18 years, certainly there must be hope for pepper. >> it triggered a lot of my own personal memories and how come i didn't get found? and i was still missing? >> but would she be missing much longer? when "lost and found" continues. i saw the change in rich when we moved into the new house.

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returning to lost and found, here again is keith morrison. >> it was the summer of her 16th year. the girl they call pepper smith sat a at the death bed of the woman who'd stolen her with questions burning in her brain. she had to know who was she. where did she come from? who were her parents? what was her true identity? and at the very least, where could she find the documents that could give her a real life? she took a round about route. she asked the question indirectly. >> i took driver's ed just like

any 16-year-old wants to be free. i want to go work and be free from all this. i have a plan. i asked her for, i need my birth certifica certificate. and she told me they changed the laws. you can't get your driver's license until you're 18 years old. yeah. and i'm supposed to believe this. as i sit in a classroom where i have friend getting permits. >> of course. >> she took the lies with her. she was not going to tell. >> what about the birth certificate? >> couldn't get anything out of her. the lies stayed with her. >> shirley knew the answers, of course. knew the whole bizarre story, but she looked pepper in the eye through her obvious pain, and told her nothing. she left the lies behind and took the truth to her grave on july 29th, 1986, at the age of 63. she was buried here, this cemetery in an unmarked grave.

renee now 19, got on with life, moved in with her boyfriend. soon pepper showed up at their apartment homeless and nowhere else to turn to. 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 nonperson. so it took a little while for determination to come back. she was in her mid 20s, a single mother by then. if only she could find her birth certificate, that could lead her to her parents. anyway, she needed documents to live. she needed a passport. so she contacted state offices. their departments of vital records with perhaps predictable results. >> 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 need, and you kind of know you think how it's going to go? >> i get emotional usually. i usually cry.

it was really -- i would -- it just brings me to a sad place. >> you'd be sitting across the desk from somebody trying? >> absolutely. >> and they couldn't do anything for you? >> no. you need this document. this is what you need to provide. >> sorry. >> i have no way to get this document because i don't know my parent's name. i don't know my real name. pepper. >> and once again, pepper felt perhaps understandably like giving up. but by then she was living with her daughter in south lake tahoe working as a waitress and what do you know, hometown girl jay see duagaard was found. >> the community was just buzzing all over the place with joy. and i was happy for her. but it triggered a lot of my own personal memories and how come i didn't get found? and i felt so missing. >> so once again, charged up with determination, she launched a fresh attempt.

turns out there's such a thing as adult adoption. find someone to adopt her and even if she couldn't find her parents, at least she could get an official identity and birth certificate and a passport. a friend offered to adopt her. they applied and waited and something amazing happened. someone in that great california bureaucracy did research. talked to pepper, asked her questions, hauled out records not readily available online. all she could offer for the names bob and bobbie and the date of birth, and somehow buried among the files in the hundreds of millions, a match, and there it was, came in the mail after all these years, a copy of her actual birth certificate. 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. was this her real past? coming up. a journey ending? >> i was like whoa. >> or was it just beginning? when "lost and found" continues. when heartburn hits, fight back fast with tums smoothies. it starts dissolving the instant it touches your tongue. and neutralizes stomach acid at the source. ♪ tum -tum -tum -tum smoothies! only from tums

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more backlash for charlie rose following sexual misconduct allegations. they parted ways with rose. >> the u.s. navy identified the three sailors who lost their lives in a plane crash on wednesday. the remains of lieutenant steven combs, airman matthew chialastri were recovered on thursday. now back to dateline. welcome back to dateline

extra. i'm gregg melvin. the woman known as pepper finally has a piece of paper in her hand. the paper she's waited for most of her life to find. her birth certificate, but where would that piece of paper lead? here again is keith morrison. >> a 37 years she'd been searching for her parents, her life, her name. just as she'd given up ever finding the answer, here it was. a copy of her birth certificate with her real name in black and white. rhonda patricia christy, and there were the names of her parents, too, robert and barbara christy. >> this is it. i was like whoa. they were my parents. that bobbie and bob. they were my parents. >> with their names and social security numbers, rhonda and her friends tracked down a phone number in ohio. she dialled the number. a man answered.

it was june 5th, 2010. >> i said are you robert t christy. he said yes. i said are you married to a barbara blackwelder or were you? he said yes. and then i said, i think i'm rhonda christy or do you know rhonda patricia christy. and then there was a long pause. >> this is who she was talking to. his name is bob christy. >> 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 -- the voice rang a bell. >> and he called to my mom, barbara, to pick up the phone. he said rhonda's on the phone. she picked up the phone and the first words out of her mouth was shirley stole you. >> the most emotions i think i've ever had in my entire life,

ever. >> the memories were true, or so it seemed. she got on a plane for ohio. they were all, of course, 37 years older, and in a way, strangers now. but here they were, all the images she'd clung to in fantasy, dreamed about for those 37 long years. >> and there you are in your bath. >> all those rolls, too. >> you was a chubby little baby. >> and happy. >> and look at you. just learning to walk. and smiling the whole way. you had a good life, honey. >> i know. >> so it was happy and sad. comforting. but also deeply strange because sitting on this touch, pepper heard some stunning revelations. such as -- these were not her birth parents. she had been adopted. and the arrangement was mysterious. and now it was barbara's turn to

tell a story. shirley had been her friend, she said, had told her about a woman working in the sex trade who didn't want her babies, and one day she showed up with a baby she called rhonda patricia smith. barbara could see it was a little iffy, but she wanted that baby so badly, and so she said she ignored the red flags. >> nope. didn't care. didn't really care. >> 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. bob and barbara legally adopted their little princess four years later in the fall of 1973. and it was shortly after that, said barbara, when shirley and renee showed up at her door. >> 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. i really had to think about that hard. i'm one of these tender hearted people, and i said i want her to know her sister. >> sister? why, yes, barbara told rhonda she and renee were half sisters, daughters of the name mother, the woman who worked the streets. barbara said by then she didn't trust shirley with rhonda, but -- >> i want rhonda to know her sister. i wanted her to have family and stuff, and i asked bob, and he said no, she couldn't at first, and then he relented, let her go. and next morning we went to get her, and they were gone. >> and they didn't come back. >> bob and barbara called the police right away, of course. but here's what they said they were told. the police could do nothing for

them since they'd allowed rhonda to leave with shirley. they were on their own, so desperate, they said, they started their own search. discovered shirley had taken the girl to a relative's house several states away. when they got there, it was too late. all that remained sitting on the porch were the little red shoes she wore on the day she was kidnapped. it was hopeless. they returned to their childless home. nothing left but the photographs of the little girl who stopped growing up for them at four and now out of the blue, that phone call. and here she was. >> i'm good. >> it is definitely a gift. >> we got a daughter and we got a granddaughter. >> just on time, it turns out. barbara had terminal cancer. she would die a year later. still, back then, they celebrated. renee joined them for rhonda's birthday and the christy's 38th wedding anniversary, an amazing

reunion. of course, dateline was happy to broadcast it all around the country on march 25th, 2011,, no idea that something quite unbelievable would happen. because one of the people who tuned in that night was a woman named jerry, and oh, what a story she had to tell. coming up, it was a story two sisters had waited a very long time to hear. >> 99.99% probability. that's confirmed. >> when "lost and found" continues. ♪ what i got's full stock

♪ of thoughts and dreams that scatter ♪ ♪ you pull them all together ♪ and how, i can't explain ♪ ♪ oh yeah, well well well youuuu ♪ ♪ you make my dreams come true ♪ ♪ well, well, well youuuu ♪ topped steak & twisted potatoes at applebee's. now that's eatin' good in the neighborhood. welcome back to dateline extra. i'm gregg melvin. returning to our story now, here again, keith morrison. >> when we first told you the story about pepper smith and her lifelong journey to find her

family, her identity, it was a friday night in march, 2011. and the following monday morning -- >> my office received a call, and then i received an e-mail. >> attorney gloria alreld found herself looking at a remarkable message. there it was, the ping of a message on her blackberry. >> when i looked at the e-mail, i just couldn't even believe it. i looked at it about three times. am i really seeing this? >> it was a woman claiming to be the buy logical mother of both pepper and renee. claiming to be the woman who according to shirley and barra, was a child abandoning prostitute, probably dead. could this woman really be their mother? hardly a claim she could take on simple faith. 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. >> and in that meeting the woman presented her evidence. >> she brought some photos that she had of pepper and renee when they were very little. >> she said she was a waitress when the girls were little, but a photo of that. and a picture of shirley and also a photo of a man she said was the girl's father. long since dead. she said her name was jerry. >> i asked her immediately, jerry, would you be willing to do a dna test? she said i'll take the dna test, but these are my children. i know it. >> she put the dna test on the fast track and waited. within a week called pepper and renee to her office to hear in person the results of the test. >> 99.99% probability. >> that's it. >> yes.

test confirmed. i can't believe this is actually happening. i really can't right now. >> how soon could they meet jerry and what's she like? how did she know shirley? we arranged a reunion for the next day. jerry arrived first and told us how she saw her long lost girls on our program. >> i saw the picture of shirley and went crazy. i was hysterical, because i knew that's who she was. and then when i saw the girls, i knew they were mine. >> after all those years? >> 27 years. there they are. >> what did that feel like? >> it felt great. i had hoped i could find my children before i died because i'm getting old and it was like a miracle. >> jerry's story? shirley to took the girls was her friend turned roommate, turned babysitter. >> 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. >> first it was renee she looked after, then renee and pepper, and then two years later their little brother raymond leonard smith junior. wait. brother? it wasn't just the two girls. there was a younger brother, the girls never knew they had. the father wasn't around very much. jerry supported them all with what she could make as a waitress, and shirley made a change, a positive one, it seemed financially. >> she got this job supposedly at the motel managing which was further more, i worked, so i arranged with her to watch the kids while i worked. >> it was a god send, really, since jerry had to be hospitalized for weeks after raymond was born. and then get back to work and find a new home to take the kids to. >> i come out there on my days off and stay with the kids and spend some time with them.

and so then i called her and told her i was coming to get the kids, and the next day i went out there, and gone. >> not a sign of them. no kids. no shirley. frantic, she went to the police. >> what did you tell them? your children had been kidnapped? >> yep. they took the report and that's the last i heard. i went down there two or three times. they told me the same thing. they hadn't found anything. >> jerry said she didn't know who else to talk to. she looked on her own and found year after year nothing. had no idea she said that shirley had left pepper with barbara. that barbara persuaded a court that pepper had been abab donned and thus could be adopted or that shirley stole her back again. and then there they were, telling their story on dateline, telling how shirley and barbara had described her.

>> yes, i heard what they said about me. i was not a streetwalker. i was a waitress all my life. >> they also said you didn't really want your children. you were happy to abandon them? >> i never abandoned my children, never. ever. i would never, ever do that. >> and she wasn't a drug addict either, she said. she hasn't had a smooth or easy life, and for much of it she's missed her children and blamed herself for what happened. >> trusting shirley? >> yes. >> and for not having those kids under your wing all the time? >> that's right. >> tell me about that? >> because to me i feel like it was my fault because i put them in the hands of this monster. >> we're in a hotel room in los angeles. jerry is eager, anxious, terrified. visibly shaking.

and then they come around the corner. their first meeting of 27 years. >> it's been a lifetime we've missed. >> oh, my god. i feel like i'm dreaming still. i can't get it yet. >> i can't either. >> i just want to hug. >> can i just stare at you for a minute. >> yes, you can do anything. >> i don't have a memory. >> i'm sad because i was there with you guys. >> you're my mom. >> yes, you're my babies. you're my babies. it's been 37 years. it's sad. >> and just about here as they cling and cry, something rather magical happens. the center of gravity shifts. >> what happened? what happened? it's renee who wants the answers now. i want to know what happened. >> you will know.

you will know. i promise you. you were illegally adopted. >> me? but what happened to me? she was adopted but what happened to me? i thought i would never find you ever. >> i thought i would never find you either. i searched and i searched and searched. i had no money for an attorney. i didn't know where to go. when i turned dateline on and saw you girls -- come on, honey. [ sobbing ] >> it's okay. >> i thought you didn't care about me. >> no, i loved you, both of you. i could never not love you. >> i was so mad at you. >> i'm sure you were. >> i was so mad at you. i didn't know. i thought you gave me away. >> no. >> they spend hours together here talking about their pasts, their likes and dislikes, their amazing similarities. we gave them a few weeks to get to know each other, and sat down

again with pepper and renee. >> so there it is. you have your mother. but what now? >> will you have a relationship with her? going to move her in with me. >> move into your house? >> yes. yes. once she gets all her affairs into -- in order, we're going to move her in. >> why? >> because i want her. my husband wants her too. there. so i want to have a relationship with my mom. like i was telling you earlier, i want to go shopping. i want to have lunch. i want to go buy stuff. i want to have christmas, thanksgiving, her there with me. >> 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. roniqi smith.

>> i feel very content the way everything has taken place. finding my mom, the identity, my real identity, my biological father. seeing a picture of him. all these exciting things going on. but i think it's not over yet. i don't feel the journey's quite over yet. it's just starting. this part of it is just starting. >> so it is. because of course one of them is still missing. >> right. >> yes. our brother raymond is still missing. >> we know he's out there somewhere. >> so he is. but not for long. ♪ let out your inner child at the lexus december to remember sales event. experience amazing at your lexus dealer.

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and now for the conclusion of "lost and found." here again is keith morrison. >> it was pepper's story when we began. 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. 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. raymond leonard smith jr. is what jehri called him before he too was snatched away, abducted by the babysitter, shirley. where was he now?

jehri gave us a copy of his birth certificate. he'd be just about 40 now. and their chances of finding him seemed sfrankly slim. he called 40-year-old ray smiths all over the country. ray smith in colorado, ray smith in maryland, in new jersey, in kansas. but did he go by the name ray smith? and then, a call back. it was the ray smith from colorado. they had the right name, right age, place of birth, had grown up without knowing any blood relatives. all this ray smith knew was his mother's name. according to his birth certificate was jerry. he was starting to sound a lot leek our ray. we asked if he'd submit to a dna test. he agreed. and there was no doubt. we'd found him. we brought ray and his fiance to a los angeles hotel and showed

him the story of his sisters. in a way his story too. >> i thought that the story itself was sad. it sounded like they had a rough life. and it was really similar to mine. >> so it was. and it began the sam way, too, when sheryly took him from jehri. except ray was turned over to a woman named anna lee brown, who named him jimmy brown. the only name he knew growing up. >> she had told me that she had adopted me. but i was also shipped around a lot from home to home because she had a lot of health problems from what i was told. >> he was neglected and often abused, bounced around for years, until anna brown shipped him off to a colorado couple when he was 14. 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.

>> why did ann name me jim brown if my name was really ray? how come i never knew about jehri? things like that. then i wondered, you know, was i kidnapped? >> no answers from anna brown, who died soon after that. and as for life in colorado, by the time he was 16 -- >> things were getting a little rough. maybe because of my past, i wasn't a real easy kid. so i was put into foster care. >> and then? he graduated from high school. he got a job, moved in with some friends, and started his own rock band. this youtube video shows him singing lead. ♪ leave it alone 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. >> wow. they're actually in the same building i'm in right now.

that's amazing to me. >> and here they were. >> oh, my baby. >> hi, mom. >> oh. oh, it's been forever. >> it's great to see you. >> meeting family for the first time. >> you guys kind of look like me. >> after so many years. >> so this is my first time meeting my blood. >> it's great. so great. >> and this is how pepper's desperate search for a warm memory of a lost childhood ended. >> you look like our dad. >> you're great. >> far bigger than she imagined. far better. >> good to see you. >> oh, it's good to see you too. >> the family that was stolen found. >> it's amazinamazing. it's the best gift ever. >> they sat here for hours, shared their photos, got to know each other, and made plans.

like families do. >> that's all for this edition of "dateline extra." i'm craig melvin. thank you for watching. ♪ this doesn't happen in our happy little world. >> their world shattered. a young mother strangled. >> nancy. i love you. >> who could have killed her? >> we had homicide. we had no suspects. >> also, no evidence. but police found a dark side behind that bright suburban facade. >> she slept with the children and the door locked. >> and finally, a vital clue. what happened to nancy? "the day she disappeared."