is antique credenza. we refinished this piece in a two-toned design. applied new hardware, which gave this piece a much-needed facelift. thanks for joining me on a tour of my first major design project in chicago. it was a labor of love, and i really enjoyed sharing it with you. coming up, designer sam allen shows us a colorful design project in connecticut. because of the open floor plan, i wanted to keep the kitchen clean and simple. and we are heading to a designer show house in beverly hills.

welcome back. interior designer sam allen first burst onto the design scene when he was a teenager. his style is clean, glamorous, bold,

and everything in between. take a look at one of his latest design projects in connecticut. hi. my name's sam allen of sam allen interiors. and today, i'm giving you a tour of a home i've recently designed on the saugatuck shore in westport, connecticut. for me in my design process, i always say it's all about the mix-- different time periods different styles, different colors. the main level of the home has a very open floor plan, which actually makes for a great entertaining house. my design scheme in the entry was something that was very simple but had a focal point. i found this fabulous pair of chinese terra cotta lamps, and i instantly knew that that was going to be the focal point in the foyer. my favorite piece in the entryway is this breathtaking brass chandelier that came out axel vervoordt's kitchen in belgium. as you walk in the home, you'll notice a pair of iron sconces that were actually made from belgian architectural elements. sometimes, i may find something and not know exactly where i'm going to put it.

but i love it enough to know that i'm going to incorporate it somewhere in the house, and that was the case in these sconces. the starting point for the living room were the vintage belgian wooden chairs that i had reupholstered in orange velvet. and from there, the rest is history. when using multiple upholstered pieces in a room, i strongly feel that there needs to be a mix of some slip covered, some upholstered, and some open and airy bases. that way, the room doesn't feel heavy. my favorite pieces would have to be the african ceremonial shell necklaces that sit atop the fireplace mantle. i wanted to offset the african necklaces with a hammered metal moroccan tray. on top of this tray, i layered moroccan tea light holders that actually also double as vases. when designing the living room, i truly felt like i went on a journey around the world. because of the open floor plan, i wanted to keep the kitchen clean and simple. to achieve this, i added the drama and focal point through using a single slab of calcutta marble backsplash

and countertops. the variations of the gray veining in the marble tie all the gray wall colors i've selected throughout the home. i decided to paint the cabinets in high gloss paint instead of flat paint to add a subtle interest. i didn't want to select a light fixture that would be too heavy or would block the view of the water, so i decided upon an all-glass lantern. in the sitting room, it really does prove that opposites do attract. the inky blue and hot orange make for an unusual but impactful color scheme. when selecting colors, almost imagine you are putting together an outfit for yourself. what colors come to you that are impactful and always work together? blues always are chic with orange, pink, white, green, and red. am i right, or am i right? [record scratch] i decided on a bold color palette of rich navy and vibrant hermes orange set against crisp white trim and shutters, keeping with the waterfront roots. thank you so much for joining me today. i hope you enjoyed touring this home just as

much as i enjoyed designing it. still ahead on "open house," get inspired at this fabulous show house in beverly hills. "open house" is sponsored in part by "luxe interiors + design" designer show house at the historic doheny greystone mansion. 23 world-renowned interior designers transform the beverly hills estate for the second annual show house. each designer's space will be featured in the january-february 2016 issue of "luxe interiors + design." for more information, visit luxesource.com.

welcome back. we are catching up with some of our favorite designers in los angeles. they've transformed every room in the historic doheny greystone estate in beverly hills. it's all part of the maison de luxe show house. take a look. hi. i'm pamela jaccarino, editor in chief of "luxe interiors + design" magazine.

welcome to the second annual maison de luxe show house here in iconic beverly hills. we're inside the doheny greystone estate, where you'll find more than 20 of the world's leading interior designers under one roof. they've reimagined the rooms of this historic mansion, and it's an honor to bring their visions to life. here's a sneak peek of just a few of the beautiful rooms. hi. i'm lauren liess, and i designed the stair tower sitting room and the adjoining terrace at this year's show house. i love designing spaces that have a strong indoor-outdoor connection. and so the challenge with two spaces like this is that you want them to be connected, but you also want them to be different enough that they're still interesting. beginning with the sitting room, my goal was to create this sort of private getaway from the rest of the house. and i started with this black-and-white palette that brought in touches of nature. just bring what was going on outside inside. believe it or not, i actually really like things light and airy. and so even though i was going for a sort of cozy, moodier

space here, i did want to bring some light pieces, like the chairs, to keep it from feeling too dark and too moody. rather than going with a coffee table, i chose an ottoman. it's a cowhide, actually, but it's been painted to look like zebra. i love to layer rugs. like, anywhere i can get an extra, natural texture, like, i'm going to throw it in. so i went with a sea grass base rug and then a vintage moroccan rug layered over it. the light fixture is a vintage piece, just a really oversized, kind of modern piece that i really thought would be fun against the built-ins. and it also kind of reminds me of a moon when it's set against the black. i love, like, weird little quirky things, and that was one of them. with the terrace, i wanted it to be an outdoor party space or somewhere that you could go and just kind of hang out with friends. and so i really wanted to maximize seating, and i went with a custom sectional that just literally fits right into the space. i selected olive trees and succulents outside, because they don't require a lot of rain,

and they do really well in southern california. thanks so much for joining me, and i hope you enjoyed this peek at the stair tower sitting room and terrace at this year's show house. hi. i'm sara story, and i designed the living room for this year's show house. the inspiration for this room came from josef albers' "homage to the square" and his use of colors and forms. the architecture in this room was already so impressive, and i wanted to play off that by creating my own architectural element by the lacquered cubes as you walk into the space. a challenge with such a large room is, how do you make it feel intimate? so i decided to break it up into smaller seating arrangements. for the main seating area, which is on a beautiful custom rug, i chose a modern sectional and two angular petite chairs and found fabulous coffee tables by a local artist to add ambiance, patina, and depth. the natural light is also a significant element of this room, and i wanted to take advantage of that by having this beautiful sculptural bronze

table by david wiseman. this table captures the light. it reflects the light. the light just comes in and casts these beautiful shadows in the room. thank you for joining me on this tour of the living room. i hope you find some design tips and inspiration for your own home. for more design inspiration, visit luxesource.com. i hope you enjoyed the tour of this year's show house. that's all for now. we hope you're inspired by these rising stars in design. to see their amazing projects again, head to openhousetv.com. and if you need more inspiration, find us on pinterest, and share your ideas with us on twitter and facebook, @openhousetv. we'll be back next week. thanks for watching.

♪ it's like a bloody movie. and it is. it's just so intense and so deep. you go through all of these range of emotions that you don't know, you know?

that was the first time i started to hear about my life. i could have been an entirely different person. >> it was a mind-boggling mystery for almost 20 years, and she was at the center. >> i'm john walsh. 1-year-old savanna lee barnett is missing from isle of palms, south carolina. >> a child who suddenly vanished. >> the most important thing in my life was taken from me. just instant horror of where is she? >> what had happened to baby savanna? the answer would come decades later and astonish the world. >> it happened so fast, i couldn't fathom what was going on. >> imagine, your mother a fugitive, your father a stranger. your home, your name, your past -- was any of it real? >> the first thing i felt, just pit in my stomach. i just felt like it was my fault. >> a mother's crime. a father's pain. >> what kinds of emotions did it stir up when you would see that crib? >> it would just make me cry. >> a daughter forced to face the

shattering truth. >> i was shocked and i was just terrified. >> i'm lester holt, and this is "dateline." here's andrea canning with "finding savanna." >> in 20-some years, will i recall how you tucked and curled against my neck and chest? >> reporter: a father's love. harris todd once tried to put it into words. >> in 20-some years will i recall how i often held you long after you had fallen asleep, listening to you breathe? >> reporter: tried to express what it meant to cradle his baby daughter savanna. >> and you, what will you remember of these wondrous days as a baby girl along with your old father whose entire life you now are? >> reporter: back in 1994,

harris could not imagine that these wondrous days would abruptly end. that the next 20 years would turn a father's love into a father's nightmare? >> losing you took most of the life out of me. and sometimes i feel like i'm already dead and just haven't fallen over yet. >> reporter: it all began in charleston, south carolina, when harris, a financial advisor, met a beautiful flight attendant named dorothy lee barnett. everyone knew her as lee. >> reporter: when she's at her best, she's a very vivacious and attractive and alluring person. very lively and interested in a lot of things. >> she was very outgoing, very friendly. she lived life to its fullest. >> reporter: patty roth was a fellow flight attendant and one of lee's best friends. they had traveled the world, but

patty said lee ultimately wanted a conventional life. >> lee and i both wanted marriage. we wanted children. we wanted animals. we wanted the picket fence. >> reporter: harris thought that he could build that life with lee, but early in their relationship he noticed some problems. he said she was overly emotional and sometimes quick to anger. still, he thought love would conquer all. >> i suffer from the misconception that i can fix things. that i can make things better. >> reporter: they married in december 1991. but within months, harris said, it became apparent that his fixing skills were no match for lee's behavior. >> i mean, i never knew what was going to face me when i came through the door after work. and it could be nothing, and it could be nothing but screaming and yelling and throwing pots. >> reporter: things got so bad harris told lee he wanted a divorce. he said, lee told him that she was pregnant.

>> everything fell apart when she told him that she was pregnant. >> reporter: patty said what actually made the marriage go sour was harris' refusal to have children. >> he wanted her to terminate the pregnancy, and that was just not an option for lee. it broke her heart. >> reporter: lee says that you didn't want her to have the child? is that true? >> not at all true. i never said that. not once. >> reporter: either way, the marriage was over. harris left lee when she was still in her first trimester. and lee initiated divorce proceedings. when baby savanna was born in may 1993 she asked for full custody. >> i felt at the end of the lee day, lee would have her child. harris would have visitations. >> reporter: but to everyone's surprise, harris counter-sued. you decided you wanted full custody? >> from my point of view, i decided that before the baby was born. it was like a responsibility

that i suddenly realized had, if you will, been thrust upon me. >> reporter: the fight for savanna turned into an epic battle. a family court showdown that became one of the longest and most contentious that charleston had ever seen. there will be mothers everywhere saying shame on him. how can he, you know, try to rip that baby from her arms when she's still nursing. she's built this bond. >> i wasn't trying to take her away from her mother. i just felt that i was the more stable parent. >> reporter: at the hearing, harris and others testified that lee's behavior was erratic, sometimes violent. one psychiatrist testified that lee had a mood disorder. according to harris' lawyer, graham sturgis, lee's emotional outbursts were on full display in the courtroom. so much so that the judge had to take action. >> as the case wore on, it was clear that her level of anxiety and frustration rose until the judge required that a bailiff stand behind her chair with his hands on her shoulder to keep

her seated. >> reporter: some people might say that she felt that her baby was slipping away from her. and that any mother might start to lose her mind a little bit in court. >> i think there's truth in that, but it's also indicative of her inability to control her behavior. >> reporter: but on lee's behalf, two other psychiatrists testified she had no mental or emotional disorders, and was a perfectly fit parent. and as for her allegedly manic behavior? patty and other friends testified they had never seen it. >> i saw lee almost every day for a couple years, and i did not see any episodes like that. she was full of life. she had a lot of energy, absolutely saw no depression. >> reporter: after 2 1/2 weeks of acrimonious testimony, it was up to the judge. harris was with the toddler when the phone rang. >> savanna and i were in the yard, and it was a warm day, and she was barefoot walking on the grass.

>> reporter: what do you hear on the phone call? >> the judge awarding me full and sole custody. >> reporter: harris was too emotionally depleted from the vicious custody battle to jump for joy, but he was surprised by what he suddenly felt. >> that overwhelming sense to protect and care for a child. i didn't anticipate the depth. >> reporter: were you feeling an intense bond with savanna at this point? >> oh, tremendous. i'd never been happier in my entire life. >> reporter: but lee was reeling from the verdict that allowed her to see savanna only every other weekend. the judge wrote in his ruling that the psychological and emotional problems experienced by the mother, if left untreated, will create conflict and havoc in the child's life. >> she was angry. she thought it was corrupt. >> reporter: babs mccambridge was lee's friend and savanna's baby-sitter. she went with lee to pick up savanna for a visitation weekend

two weeks after the verdict and said she was horrified when harris handed over baby savanna. >> she had black and blue marks on her forehead. she had blood on her nose. lee sat in the back seat with with the baby, and she was crying. and we went to the emergency room. >> reporter: did you ever harm savanna? did you ever abuse her? >> heavens, no. she fell when she was with my mother at the house. that's all it was. >> reporter: the emergency room report supported what harris had told lee. savanna's injuries were consistent with a minor fall. the e.r. doctor wrote he found no signs of abuse. >> i mean, i would never have let a hair on that baby's head be harmed. >> reporter: but lee was convinced harris was an unfit parent and refused to return savanna until harris forced her to do so by emergency court order. the situation seemed to stabilize for a time.

but then came april 24th, 1994. a date harris would remember forever. savanna had been with lee for a weekend visitation, and once again, lee failed to bring the baby back. but when harris went to lee's home -- >> nobody was there. and then all calls were fruitless. nothing turned up. >> reporter: was there a moment where you thought, i'm getting really scared here. i think that maybe my daughter's not coming back? >> no, i didn't even imagine anything that horrible. >> where had they gone? when we come back -- >> you have that just instant horror of where is she? >> a father's misery would soon become a worldwide mystery. >> i'm john walsh. 1-year-old savanna lee barnett is missing. >> did you worry that savanna could be in danger? >> yeah. lilly.

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there are times when words can't capture a moment. so you stand back. take it all in. listen. you let the story speak for itself. in paris, so many tributes, so many messages. but they all say the same thing. paris is alive. ♪ harris todd's ex-wife lee had failed to return their baby daughter savanna after a weekend visitation. so he went to her house to get the baby back. but the house was not only empty, it was completely cleaned out. >> you have that just instant horror of where is she? >> reporter: harris immediately notified all missing children's agencies.

since parental abduction of a child is a federal crime, fbi agent chris quick was assigned to the case. >> i wasn't thinking this was well thought out initially and that, you know, we'd have this case resolved in a week, two weeks. >> reporter: did you worry that savanna could be in danger? >> yes. is she this woman who's really caring for her child and going to take care of her child? or is this the woman who does harm to the child? >> reporter: if lee had family or friends who had any information about her whereabouts, they didn't volunteer it. so agent quick put a trace on their phones. any calls from lee? >> no. the thing that trips up most people that are running from the law is not having that discipline to talk to old friends or going back to places that they're familiar with. and as this case went on we realized that dorothy lee had that discipline. >> reporter: quick discovered that lee had inquired about a job in australia or south africa and that her mom owned a home in the central american country of

belize. so he put tabs on flights to those countries. >> they turned up nothing. >> reporter: did you assume that maybe she had changed her identity? >> yes. like a new license, maybe a new passport. >> reporter: lee seemed to have vanished without a trace. but out of the blue, a message appeared. >> savanna and i belong together. and nobody besides god has the right to destroy that. >> we had found out five days or so after the kidnapping, relatives and associates received a letter and a videotape from dorothy lee. and it states, "to whom it may concern, i recently lost custody to my beautiful 9 1/2-month-old nursing baby. this happened because of a truly evil person, b. harris todd, and a totally corrupt family court system." >> reporter: now agent quick knew this child abduction was not a spur of the moment decision.

lee had a well thought-out plan. >> i promise and swear on my life that i will continue to take care of my daughter. i will keep her safe. i will never allow anybody to harm her again. >> i mean, that was an attempt to embarrass and destroy me. but it's not surprising. you know, she is building a case for whatever else, to justify what she did. i just hope you know that i love you. >> reporter: though he had nowhere to send it, harris made his own home video, a message to savanna. >> i just hope you're safe and clean and healthy out there wherever you are. >> reporter: it took a lot out of harris to shoot that video in savanna's room. >> every morning i would come in and wake her up, feed her, dress her, and we'd head off.

and you know, i couldn't bear to see the crib empty. >> reporter: what kind of emotions did it stir up when you would see that crib? >> mostly tears. and it would just make me cry. so i left the -- i'd keep the door closed. when i walked down the hall, i'd just touch the door. that was about all i could do. >> reporter: but harris also began to take action. he wrote to john walsh of "america's most wanted" who recorded a public service announcement for him. >> i'm john walsh. 1-year-old savanna lee barnett is missing from isle of palms, south carolina. >> reporter: and he appeared on "unsolved mysteries" which dedicated an entire segment to his case. >> i wake up now every morning with a broken heart. >> reporter: harris' tv appearances generated hundreds of leads. >> those leads came from everywhere, anywhere from california, georgia, alabama. we would follow those up and try to determine if that was dorothy lee or the child. nothing. nothing panned out.

>> april 24th, 1996. you're gone two years now, which is unimaginable. i don't know how old you'll be when you see this, if you ever see this. i'll be here for you whenever you do come back. >> reporter: then finally, four years into his search, harris thought that moment had arrived. someone had seen a little blond-haired girl about 5 years old, walk into a grocery store in mexico. >> the woman who called in was there when the little girl's mother came to the door and said, "savanna, come on." you need to come home. >> reporter: coming up -- mexico? private detectives are on the case. >> the lady said that, yes, the little girl comes in here by herself because her mother has bad headaches and doesn't come out sometimes for days. >> reporter: did that sound like lee to you? >> it did, yes.

>> had mother and daughter been found? ♪

♪

so this is where i keep all the files and notebooks that i've amassed over the years. i have got everything in here from maps and letters and copies of everything. >> reporter: are there a lot of dead ends here, too? >> oh, there are plenty of dead ends. >> reporter: but after four years of searching, harris todd thought he'd found his daughter in a small town in mexico. especially after a source gave a description of the girl's mother. >> the lady said that, yes, the little girl comes in here by herself all the time to play games or whatever because her mother has bad headaches and doesn't come out sometimes for days. >> reporter: did that sound like lee to you? >> it did, yes. mm-hmm. >> reporter: harris hired private detectives to check out the lead. what was the report you got from the detectives? >> they found absolutely nothing. you know, they checked everything out. they went everywhere, and they never found the little girl, for

that matter. >> reporter: perhaps lee and savanna had been there and left. or maybe it wasn't them at all. either way, it was another dead end. >> you run through the cycle of excitement and disappointment enough times and you just say, well, look, do you really want to put yourself through that again? because there's a wealth of pain associated with this, and i can only dip into it so often and survive. >> reporter: how much do you think you've spent on your search? >> i spent everything i had and everything i could borrow. graham sturgiss, my attorney, told me that i better quit spending enough money or there wouldn't be anything for her to come back to. >> reporter: fbi agent chris quick knew the chance savanna would come back was getting smaller and smaller. you were kind of grasping for straws. >> to some extent, you're right. >> reporter: must have felt cold? >> oh yeah, definitely.

definitely. after the three or four years, it's considered a cold case. >> reporter: harris tried to move on. tried to fill that gaping hole in his life. one thing that helped, he said, was his niece, who was just three years younger than savanna. >> i spent an awful lot of time with her. i mean, from a very early age. i did homework with her every day. would walk her to school, pick her up from school. >> reporter: did you think to yourself i should have been doing this with my daughter? >> yeah, i thought about it. you know, when you go see your child in the thanksgiving play, you see them singing the christmas pageant. well, i was watching my niece instead of my daughter. but i was thinking about my daughter at that time. >> reporter: time marched on. harris continued working as a financial adviser at merrill lynch. he had a few relationships, but he never remarried. after ten years the fbi assigned a new agent, ed klimas, to the case, but nothing new turned up.

>> i believe that the chances of success for this case were probably very slim at that point. that they had disappeared to a foreign country that we would never be able to locate them. >> reporter: about the only thing that changed were the images on the missing persons posters. from the baby harris had loved to a computer simulated image of a teen he barely recognized. >> if i die before i wake from this nightmare -- >> reporter: he'd stopped filming his messages to savanna long ago, but he wrote one last poem. >> and please do keep an eye out across the fields. watch the end of the long driveway. someday my daughter will be there asking for me. >> reporter: had you given up? >> no, but one has to face reality. i mean you just say, well, look, here it is. she's 16. she's 17. she's 18. and you don't know where she is. so --

>> reporter: perhaps the only sign that harris had not abandoned all hope was savanna's room. it stood just as she had left it almost 18 years before. then you get an e-mail totally out of the blue. >> i did. >> reporter: what did it say? >> it said essentially, i have information about your daughter. but again i learned to temper my expectations over the years. because the well had long since gone dry. so all of a sudden the bucket goes down again and this time it comes up and there's water in it. coming up -- >> were you just floored? >> completely floored. >> that mysterious e-mail. turns out someone else had been doing some detective work, too. >> they tracked you down. >> they told me, we feel like you have a right to know your daughter. ♪ (politely) wait, wait, wait! you can't put it in like that,

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♪ almost 18 years had gone by since harris had seen his daughter savanna. so it was hard to comprehend the e-mail that arrived in the early morning hours of november 27th, 2011. a single line that said "i'd like to speak with you with regards to your daughter." was there that little bit of hope? >> oh sure. there always is. >> reporter: that maybe this is real? >> yes, yeah. >> reporter: the e-mail was from a couple living in a beach town on the sunshine coast of australia. they claimed to have known lee and savanna for more than 12 years. harris immediately wrote back. >> do you have any pictures? anything that you could send me to corroborate this? it's a horrible thing to have to admit that i have no idea what my daughter would look like at this age. >> reporter: but you would know

what your ex-wife would look like? >> i would. >> reporter: the photo arrived a couple of days later. and there was no doubt. that was his ex-wife, dorothy lee barnett. and there on the opposite side stood a tall girl, nearly a woman. would that be savanna on the left? hi, harris, the couple wrote. that beautiful girl on the left is indeed your daughter, savannah. were you just floored? >> completely floored. you know, how wonderful is it to have a picture of your grown daughter, to just see, you know, how pretty she is and she had a big smile, and i could recognize my smile in her smile. >> reporter: i would just be staring at that photo constantly. >> i was at a loss for a while. i had to refrain from looking at it very much, because it was just too much after all these years. >> reporter: the couple told harris they had met his ex-wife and daughter in 1999. they knew them as alex and samantha.

lee was married to a south african named juan geldenhuys with whom she had a son. although lee never spoke about her past, the couple had long suspected that savanna was not juan's biological daughter. what did the couple tell you about how they had discovered this secret? >> you know, i think it was a gradual process on their part. >> reporter: the couple told harris lee and her husband divorced in 2008 and that recently they themselves had had a falling out with her. they had always wanted to know more about their friend's mysterious past so they decided to do some investigating of their own. lee had once mentioned that she had a home in belize. armed with that, savanna's birth date and other tidbits of information they had picked up over the years, they searched the internet and discovered lee's secret. they're real detectives. >> i think so. >> reporter: they figured it out. they tracked you down. >> and then, essentially knowing the wrath that they would face if my ex-wife ever found out that they did it, they went

ahead anyway. they told me, we feel like you have a right to know your daughter. >> reporter: harris gave the couple's information to fbi agent ed klimas. and now that they knew lee's alias, the fbi was finally able to figure out how she had left the u.s. without being detected. she had set her abduction plan in motion by getting a fake birth certificate about two months before taking savanna. >> dorothy lee barnett goes to become fictitious person named alexandria maria canton. she went to texas to obtain a texas driver's license, then used the information from that to obtain a united states passport. what we learned was she had left the united states, went to malaysia, and then from malaysia went to south africa where she met geldenhuys. from there in 1999, she moved to botswana. in 2003, she moved up to new zealand.

and then after a couple of years she moved to australia. >> reporter: an 18-year-old mystery solved. in the movies, on tv, they find the person and they rush out to make the arrest. story's over. did that happen in this case? >> no. we had to get the state department involved. department of justice involved. and we had to get a provisional arrest warrant that the australians would accept because we have to abide by their laws. >> reporter: harris wanted to fly to australia right away, but the fbi asked him to let bureaucracy take its course. harris had waited 18 years. he figured he could wait a bit more. i think some people, though, may say that a real father would have gotten on that plane the moment he found out about where his daughter was. >> if i'd showed up in australia without any backup and run into my ex-wife or my daughter, i would have had no legal backing at that point.

>> they could have caused, you know, an altercation. he could have been in trouble with the local authorities. alexandria and samantha geldenhuys could have fled. and then we'd be back to square one. >> reporter: a year passed. then almost two. that was too much even for a patient man like harris. he bought his plane tickets and told the fbi he was going no matter what. you weren't going to wait any more. >> i wasn't going to wait. and it just so happened that suddenly the paperwork went from the bottom of the stack to the top. >> reporter: harris' determination may have forced law enforcement's hand. on november 4th, 2013, two days before he landed in australia. lee was finally arrested. >> she didn't appear surprised. she was very cordial. and she seemed to be very calm. so she expressed a willingness to talk to us. >> reporter: lee also asked if she could make a phone call to

savanna. coming up -- >> i couldn't fathom what was going on. >> an astonishing moment of truth for savanna. >> the first thing that popped into my head, does that mean that my dad isn't my dad? >> and her father. >> i kept thinking i'll get to see her. ♪ >> when "dateline" continues. affordable renters insurance. with great coverage it protects my personal belongings should they get damaged, stolen or destroyed. [doorbell] uh, excuse me. delivery. hey. lo mein, szechwan chicken, chopsticks, soy sauce and you got some fortune cookies. have a good one. ah, these small new york apartments... protect your belongings. let geico help you with renters insurance. and we'll have to use like double! maybe more!! i'm going back to the store? yes you are. dish issues? get cascade platinum. one pac cleans tough food better than

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when australian police and the fbi showed up at lee's doorstep she didn't seem surprised. but her 20-year-old daughter was about to receive the shock of her life. >> i couldn't fathom what was going on. it happened so fast that, you know, it keeps replaying in my mind. >> reporter: savanna, or samantha, as she knew herself, was away at college when her boyfriend brad handed her the phone and said her mom was on the line. she talked about that moment of truth with australia's 7 network. >> and brad said, she's crying. and it's not like mom to cry. she's a very strong woman. so she said, look, i'm being arrested. and of course, i went, oh my goodness, you know? i'd never expect out of anyone in the world my mom would have done anything. it was a brief conversation about how she was married previously in america and she conceived me with him, and then something became unsafe, and she just took me and ran. so the first thing that popped

into my head, i said, does that mean dad isn't my dad? >> reporter: as far back as savanna could remember, juan geldenhuys had always been by her side. she believed he was her biological dad, something lee kept reinforcing. i'm lester holt. thanks for joining us. this sunday morning, donald trump's call to temporarily ban muslims from entering the country may have thrilled his supporters but it's disgust it had establishment. >> you really have no choice. it's so out of control. it's so terrible. >> why republicans fear a ticket headed by trump is a ticket headed for disaster. plus, could we be looking at a contested convention? our new nbc news/"wall street journal" poll on the republican race shows a serious three-way contest developing with new signs that ted cruz and marco rubio are on the move. rubio joins me exclusively. also, a global deal