i'm craig melvin. >> and i'm natalie morales. >> and this is dateline. >> her name is pepper. >> i lived a secret life. >> she was kidnapped at age 4. >> we got in the car, and we never went back. >> she spent decades trying to find her way home again, and she finally made it. or so she thought. >> i said, i think i'm rhonda christie, or do you know rhonda patricia christie. and then there was a long 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. >> that's amazing. it's the best gift ever. >> welcome to dateline. a 4-year-old girl was abducted 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 would spend 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 finally of what felt like truth. but 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 waved 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. it was -- everything matched. >> the closet full of dresses. the dolls, the teddy bears. >> i actually -- there was a little old-fashioned where you put the baby in the wagon.

>> and the reason for those tormenting memories? >> it's a lot of hurt, 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 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. they're in their little apartment. was it san diego perhaps? >> it looks like a very happy childhood. like love was there. >> she knows there were two parents. blond beehive on her mother, but her mother's name lost now. she goes by the nickname bobbie, and in the early years she was always, always there. her father on the other hand was

absent mostly, long stretches away punctuated by glorious reunions. when she'd be bundle up like a china doll and bustled off to the harbor where the navy ships come in. >> we'd go see him because he was coming in from the navy. 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 of 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. >> oh, yes, those. the bad memories. like the day everything good went away. it was 1973. though she and her happy little childhood bubble have no idea what year it was. she knows she was not yet 5, it was not yet 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. the little girl she brought with her was renee and renee was 6. a little older then. didn't matter. they dashed off to her bedroom to play. this is renee now. that room is stuck in her memory, too. >> her room was gorgeous. a nice sized room for a little kid. she had a canopy bed. tons of dresses. toys galore. >> and you had none of that. >> no. and i was like, wow, this is nice. >> an alien world to renee. the most wonderful thing she'd ever seen. and while the little girls played in the bedroom, shirley was with bobbie in the living room talking. and then she called renee. >> so when it was time to leave, i didn't want to go. can we stay longer? >> no, but your new friend is coming with us, said shirley. >> oh, okay. so she came, and then 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 -- >> you weren't to be taken home again? >> 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 girls' overnight in shirley's motel room. they stopped there only to pack some belongings, hit the road and a blissful childhood entered the fog of history. the memory of the beautiful bedroom. all she had to confront the nightmare just beginning. coming up -- on the road with her kidnapper. >> i knew that everything that was happening to us was completely wrong at a very, very young age. >> when dateline continues. >> when dateline continues

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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 hotel whose neighborhood was most decidedly not child friendly. it was to be a one night sleepover with new friend rene. instead a woman named shirley

simply didn't take her home again. instead she packed some belongings, put the girls in the 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 5 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. just -- >> 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. 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. that their parents had been killed in a car accident. >> i knew that everything that was happening to us was completely wrong at a very, very young age. >> why had she been taken? she didn't know. not for money, certainly. there were no ransom demands. and without pepper's birth certificate, shirley couldn't use her to score public assistance. though she did use renee that way. frightened, compliant renee, eager for a mother's love, even if that mother figure was shirley. >> i never wanted to do anything wrong. i felt like if i did something wrong or whatever, she wouldn't love me. she would give me away. >> wouldn't love me? shirley told her, says renee, she was born to a prostitute drug addict named geri. that shirley saved baby renee,

raised her as a daughter. but kept renee in line by threatening to abandon her. did she ever threaten to do that? >> yeah, many times. we'd do something wrong, and she would say, well, you stop doing that or i'm going to send you off to geri's house. >> 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. 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 on to 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 like on the

side over here, and he's on top of her. and i didn't know what was -- i got scared and then she see 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 because 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. like very angry and so if we -- 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. physical and verbal abuse a

regular occurrence. >> she would whip us with the belt, slap us, verbally cuss at us. verbally abuse us. >> and threaten to send you away? >> right. >> i just took the belt because 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 nomads in the care of a woman who it seemed clear had kidnapped at least one if not both of them. and they drifted one dump to another across any number of state lines for years. and then some time in the early '80s they settled down, here.

shirley pulled up to this motel in los angeles county and took a job at the motel's 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 door 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, shirley didn't seem to care much what she did. >> i remember when i was trying to so-call run away, plot my escape, before it went into action, i was in my mind going, she -- 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. >> still, having tasted freedom once, pepper was determined to get away from her kidnapper for good. the second time she took a chance, moved out with 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.

we did everything together. we fight like sisters. we did everything together. >> renee was feeling abandoned. >> i was telling 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 sad. >> by 1986 and on her own now, pepper had all but given up hope that she'd ever find her real parents. now she began to encounter a more immediate problem. the inevitable trouble that comes with having no real name, no birth certificate, no i.d. 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, and without some cooperation from shirley, her search for such documents seemed hopeless. and then -- how did you find out that she was sick? >> she turned completely yellow when they diagnosed her with pancreatic cancer and she literally died quickly after that.

>> with shirley on her death bed, pepper tried to act like the dutiful daughter, went to see her regularly, tried to make her comfortable. but there was another terribly important reason to see her then. maybe the most important. one last opportunity to find out who she was. as she was dying, did you try to find, do you know, maybe she'd make a deathbed confession and say, i did take you and here are what your parents' names are 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 jaycee duggard could be found after 18 years, certainly there must be hope for pepper. >> it triggered a lot of my own personal memories, you know, and how come i didn't get found. and i felt still missing. >> but would she be missing much longer when "lost and found" continues. continues. hi! we're glad you came in, what's on your mind?

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the girl they called pepper smith sat at the deathbed of the woman who had stolen her with questions burning in her brain. she had to know, who was she? where does of 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 roundabout route. she asked the question indirectly. >> i took driver's ed, like any 16-year-old wants to get their -- i want to be free. i want to go work and be free from all of this. i have a plan. and i asked her for -- i need my birth certificate. i need this. 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've got friends who are getting permits. she took the lies with her. she was not going to tell. >> what about the birth certificate? >> never gave me a concrete answer, nothing. 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 crying. >> oh, absolutely. >> and they wouldn't do anything for you? >> no. they could say i can't do anything for you probably. >> 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 jaycee dugard, kidnapped years and years earlier, was found. >> the community was just buzzing all over the place with joy. and i was happy for jaycee lee. but it triggered a lot of my own personal memories. you know, and how come i didn't get found.

and i felt still missing. >> so once again, charged up with determination, she launched a fresh attempt. 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 a birth certificate and a passport. a friend offered to adopt her so pepper and friend applied and waited. and something quite amazing happened. someone in that great california bureaucracy did some research. a lot, apparently. actually talked to pepper. asked to pepper, asked her questions, hauled out records not readily available online. all pepper could offer were the names bob and bobbie and the date of her birth. and somehow, buried among all those files in all their 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? >> this is it. whoa. >> or was it just beginning? when dateline continues. when dateline continues. where does your almondmilk come from? almond breeze starts here with our almond trees in our blue diamond orchard in california. my parents' job is to look after them. and it's my job to test the product. the best almonds make the best almondmilk. blue diamond almond breeze. your happy place. find your breaking point. then break it. every emergen-c gives you a potent blend of nutrients

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i'm dara brown. here's what's haeng. saturday marked the fifth day of the senate impeachment trial as president trump's legal team presented their opening arguments. the team attempted to undercut the credibility of the house witnesses and accused the democrats of pursuing a political agenda. during a meeting with leaders of his party chinese president sxi jinping setup a committee to contain the spread of the coronavirus. xi referred to the spread of the virus as a grave situation.

now back to "dateline." welcome back to "dateline i'm craig melvin. the woman known as pepper finally has the piece of 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. >> for 37 years, she'd been searching for her parents, her life, her name. now 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 christie. and there were the names of her parents, too. robert and barbara christie. >> this is it. i was like, whoa. they were my parents. 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 dialed the number. a man answered. it was june 5th, 2010. >> i said are you robert dean christie, he said, yes. i said are you married to a barbara blackwelder, or were you? he said yes. i said i think i'm rhonda christie or do you know rhonda patricia christie and then there was a long pause. >> this is who she was talking to. his name is bob christie. >> i almost dropped the phone. she knew i'd hesitated and she said this is your daughter rhonda. and it was something that clicked in my mind that i reck -- the voice rang a bell. >> and he called to my mom, barbara, to pick up the phone. rhonda is on the phone. she picked up the phone and the first thing out of her mouth was shirley stoled you. >> pepper was shaking inside and out. >> i went into the most emotions i've ever had in my entire life,

ever. >> the memories were true, or so it certainly 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 had clung to in fantasy, dreamed about for those 37 long years. >> and there you are in your bath. >> all those rolls, too. >> 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 couch, 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. told her about a woman working in the sex trade named geri smith who didn't want her babies. and one day shirley showed up at barbara's house with a 3-month-old 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 tenderhearted people and i said, well, i want her to know her sister. >> sister? yes, barbara told rhonda she and renee were half-sisters, daughters of the same 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 says they were told.

that the police could do nothing for them since they'd allowed rhonda to leave with shirley. they were on their own. and so, desperate, they said, they started their own search. discovered shirley had taken the girls to a relatives' house several states away. when they got there, it was too late. all that remained sitting on the porch were the little red shoes rhonda wore 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 4. and now, out of the blue, that phone call and here she was. >> how are you? >> i'm good. >> it is definitely a gift. >> not only did we get a daughter but a granddaughter. >> just in time it turns out. barbara had terminal cancer and she would die a year later, but still back then, they celebrated. renee joined them for rhonda's birthday and the christies' 38th wedding anniversary.

an amazing reunion. "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 geri, and oh, what a story she had to tell. >> it was a story two sisters had waited a very long time to hear. >> coming up -- >> 99.99% probability. that means it's confirmed. >> when dateline continues. >> when dateline continues the $200 creams, the $400 creams... but, this jar works for me. olay regenerist makes my skin feel so dewy and soft and silky and hydrated...incredible. i love it. i'm busy phillips and my skin is confident i can face anything with my olay.

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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 allred found herself looking at a remarkable message. allred had been helping the two sisters deal with their new identity issues, and 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 biological mother of both pepper and renee.

claiming to be the woman who, according to shirley and barbara, was a child abandoning drug addled prostitute, probably dead. could this woman really be their mother? hardly a claim allred could take on simple faith. >> i asked her to come in and see me the very next day, which she was very anxious and happy to do. i asked her to bring whatever evidence she had. >> 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 told allred she had been a waitress when the girls were little. brought a photo of that, too, and a picture of shirley and also a photo of a man she said was the girls' father, long since dead. she said her name was geri. >> i asked her immediately, geri, 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. >> allred put the dna test on the fast track and waited.

and 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. >> yep, that means it's confirmed. >> i can't believe this is actually happening. >> how soon could they meet geri, the sisters wanted to know. and what's she like? how did she know shirley? we arranged a reunion for the next day. geri arrived first and told us how she saw the long lost girls on our program. >> i saw the picture of shirley and went crazy. i was hysterical because i knew who she was. and then when i saw the girls, i knew they were mine. >> after how -- all those years? >> 37 years. there they are. >> what did that feel like? >> it felt great. i had been hoping to find my children before i die because i'm getting old. and it was like a miracle.

>> geri's story that shirley who took the girls had been her friend turned roommate turned babysitter. >> she said i'll babysit for you. 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 little brother raymond leonard smith jr. 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. geri supported them all with what she could make as a waitress. and shirley made a change, a positive one, it seemed, at least financially. >> she got this job supposedly at the motel managing, which was further from where i worked. so i arranged with her to watch the kids while i worked. >> it was a godsend, really,

since geri 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 to stay with the kids and spend some time with them. so then i had called her and told her that 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 then, she went to the police. >> what did you tell them? your children had been kidnapped. >> yeah. and they took the report. that's the last i heard. >> did you go back and talk to them again? >> i went down there two, three times. they kept telling me the same thing. they hadn't found anything. >> geri didn't know who else to talk to. so 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 essentially been

abandoned 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 street walker. 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. and would never, ever do that. >> and she wasn't a drug addict either, she says. she's not had a smooth or easy life. and for much of it, she has 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. >> to me, i felt like it was my fault, because i put them in the hands of this monster.

>> we're in a hotel room in los angeles. geri is eager, anxious, terrified, visibly shaking. and then they come around the corner. their first meeting in 37 years. >> a lifetime we've missed. >> oh, my god. >> i feel like i'm dreaming still. i can't really get it yet. >> i can't either. >> i want to see this face. can i just stare at you for a minute. >> you can do anything. >> i don't have a memory. >> i'm sad because i was there with you guys. >> you're my mommy. >> yes, you're my babies. you're my babies. it's been 37 years. >> 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. >> what happened? >> you will know. you will know. i promise you. you were kidnapped. you were illegally adopted. >> what happened to me? she was adopted, but what happened to me? i could never find you ever. >> i thought i'd never find you either. i searched and i searched. i didn't know where to go. i had no money for an attorney. when i turned "dateline" on and saw you girls -- come on, honey. >> 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 had you. >> i was so mad at you. >> i'm sure you were. >> i was so mad at you. >> i understand.

>> i thought you gave me away. >> no. >> they spent 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 then sat down again with pepper and renee. so there it is. you have your mother, but what now? are you -- will you have a relationship with her? >> well, we're going to move her in with me. >> move into your house? >> yes, yes, once she gets all her affairs 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 that her parents gave her before it was lost in the abductions and the documents, it's ronique. ronique smith. >> i have been very content of finding out who i am, finding my mom, and my real identity and my biological father, and the pictures of him and all the exciting things going on. but i think it's not over yet. i don't feel that the journey is quite over yet. it is just starting. this part of it is just starting. >> so it is, because of course, one of them is still missing. >> coming up -- >> my brother raymond is still missing. >> we know he's still out there somewhere. >> when dateline continues. l ou somewhere. >> when dateline continues ♪

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it was pepper's story when we began. pepper officially now ronnique who set out to find a birth certificate and discovered a past that was richer and more complex than even she dreamed possible. to find first the mother of her memory and then her long lost birth mother and to discover that renee was her actual sister and to learn now that she had a brother. raymond leonard smith jr. is what she called him before he was snatched away abducted by the babysitter shirley. where was he now?

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

to a los angeles hotel and showed him the story of his sisters, and in a way, his story, too. >> i thought that this story, itself, was sad. sounded like they had a rough life. and it was really similar to mine. >> and so it was. it began the same way, too, when shirley took him from geri except he was turned over the annalee brown, and named him jimmy brown, the only name that 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, he said, and often abused. bounced around for years. until anna brown shipped him off to a colorado couple when he was 14. that is when he found his birth certificate and started to call himself ray smith, and began puzzling over the apparently

unanswerable questions of his life. >> why did anne name me jim brown if my name was ray? how come i never knew about geri and 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 was not 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 you tube video shows him singing lead. and for all he has wondered about his past, he has come to believe that he would go to the grave without ever meeting a blood relative until now. >> wow. they are actually in the same

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

>> wonderful. >> like families do. >> that is all for this edition of dateline. i'm craig melvin. thank you for watching. i'm craig melvin. >> and i'm natalie morales. >> and this is dateline. >> my heart breaks for this mother. people don't randomly disappear. >> she was a design original. christina, the fashionista. it was news nationwide when she vanished. >> see went out for drinks with friends and never came home. >> we realized this was real. >> who was the last to see her? >> she wept away. that's all i can tell you. >> and where was her exmodel