Dear Savanna

No, not at all. This story is my safe space. You mean, you're all right?

“Yes, exactly. This story is the story of the story that I just understood.”

The story of the studio, the job or the music. The story of the house. It doesn't feel like a story. The story is a story. - Save. With this story. (music playing)

Wee, let's go! Remember? But it's not a good girl, come on me. Happy to hear me. A few months before my mom gave birth to me,

she started writing a diary. And it starts off on the first page saying, "To my dear Savannah, someday I'll give this journal to you so that you can hopefully understand your mother."

My name is Samantha Galdenheim. I was born in Savannah, but I didn't know that. Savannah lead on it. I grew up on the Sunshine Coast in Australia. It is the most magnificent place.

(music playing) I knew my mom as Alex my entire life. But in reality, she wasn't Alex at all. She was Lee. Come on, leave on it. In April of 1994, I got a phone call

that my dear friend Lee had disappeared. I thought, oh no, don't let this be true.

I never imagined that my good friend Lee

would be the subject of an international man hunt. Our investigation spans the United States and the globe. We searched, Belize, Central America, and South Africa. Dorothy Lee was very equipped running from the law. She thought about this. She was planned. She was determined.

I feel the FBI and every other law enforcement agency underestimated me. The FBI more than met the image when I tangled with Dorothy Lee Bonnet. Welcome to Malaysia.

It is our home. Did you would all think I'm going to get caught? They're going to get me every day, every day. I thought this was going to be one of those unsolved mysteries

that would never be solved.

Samantha, I wanted to think before in a couple of days. Until 2011, when we had the tip that she was living in, Australia.

“I remember getting a call when I was up at school,”

and my mom needed me to jump on a plane and come down because she was getting arrested. Two decades later, authorities have arrested her in Australia. When I heard that Alex wasn't Alex. I see Alex.

I was absolutely gobsmacked and amazed. I thought, wow, what a girl. Every new year! I realized it was all up. Merry Christmas.

That they'd found me. I love you more than life itself, your special mummy. And I knew that I'd have to face the consequences, what I did 20 years before.

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

It reminds me of great beauty. It also reminds me of my home, and someday it'll hopefully yours too." The endless reads, "The shrimp, the blue herons." Not pretty picture is how Lee Barnett remembered Charleston.

“In the secret diary, she kept for her daughter during their years on the run.”

A very different Charleston South Carolina than what she returned home to. Barnett was arrested in Australia. Lee was charged with kidnapping her daughter after losing a bitter custody battle.

For 20 years Lee Barnett had been hunted by the FBI, vilified in the press, called angry and violent and labeled mentally ill. Now, she tells her side of the story to 48 hours, and it is a very different story than you've heard before.

I need to tell the truth about what's happened, something needs to be changed. From the start, there was always something different about Lee Barnett. The little barefoot girl with the blue blue eyes

and a big smile says her oldest friend Susie Pogue. When I first met Lee, when she was five and I was seven,

and so I took one look at her and I said, "Oh, that looks like an interesting family. I want to be friends with her."

“Lee and her two brothers were raised by a free spirited single mother named Dottie”

after their father died. They didn't have much money. Dottie lived under husband's social security, but they had plenty of adventures, says Lee's brother Cliff. We had to learn how to do things with no money and no resources

and get by and do things on a fly. A kind of Swiss family Robinson, traveling between South Carolina, Florida, and the jungles of Belize. They were really living an Indiana Jones lifestyle

before there wasn't Indiana Jones. In Belize, they were in the jungle living with local families. Lee inherited her mother's love of adventure. At one point, traveling deep into Africa with Susie. I just knew that all of the traveling that we had done

“and that she had done with her family prepared her”

for really what was the ultimate adventure of her life. That adventure began in Charleston. When Lee, by then a flight attendant met Harris Todd, a stalk broker with a love of poetry. And to many, the picture of a perfect southern gentleman.

And was it love at first sight? No, not at all.

It wasn't love at first sight, it was friendship. All that changed. Five years later, it just professed to me that I made him feel different than anybody else's ever made him feel. And the one thing led to another.

But Lee's dear friend, Patty Roth, did nothing, it was a good match. They wanted very different things out of life. She was very outgoing and he kind of kept her to himself. To Lee, that was part of the attraction, part of the challenge.

I thought I was a person that was going to help him have a more normal, fun, loving life because he was so serious. When Lee came to me and told me that they decided to get married, I did not agree with that choice.

We wanted children. Harris was very clear to everyone that he never wanted children.

“Why would you marry a man who didn't want to have kids?”

I don't know. I just thought that I was going to do something. And he would change and we'd have this wonderful family. And I just had this crazy dream that I'd make everything right. She could not have been more wrong. When she told him that she was pregnant,

it's when all the problems started between the two of them. He kept saying over and over throughout my whole pregnancy, there is no baby. Even when I was eight months pregnant, there is no baby, there is no baby. Before Lee Barnett fled the country,

she made a tape and sent it to friends and enemies alike. I can't tell you how painful this is. In it she condemns her husband, Harris Tom. For casting her is the villain in a sinister drama, she claims he fabricated out of vengeance.

A characterization she stands by to this day. He went to hurt me so badly. He didn't care who took down. And that includes a little baby. Lee says he'd all began seven months into the marriage. I said to him, I said, "I have a feeling I might be pregnant."

And he said, "Okay, seven abortion." That was heartbroken, heartbroken. But I still thought, "I'll come right." Anyway, two days later, I found out it was pregnant. He was very cold and indifferent.

And he remained that way. Harris claimed the problem wasn't the pregnancy. It was Lee's uncontrollable temper. One argument, two and a half months later, God's so heated, she flipped over the coffee table.

Lee woke up the next morning and Harris was gone. I just felt so abandoned and I couldn't figure out how somebody I'd loved and none for so long could be this cruel.

Harris Todd, who consistently has said he never asked Lee

to get an abortion, says he left because he couldn't take her anger anymore. That he even feared for his safety. He repeatedly asked Lee to move out of his house. But she refused. I thought if I left his house, I would never ever come back.

She really wanted the marriage to work.

Including going to marriage counseling. Lee's mother suggested a psychiatrist named Dr. Oliver Bjorkston. Lee says to her surprise, Harris agreed to go. I made the appointment to both of us. Lee says what happened in those appointments would change her life.

She walked in hoping to save her marriage. Instead, she walked out with a diagnosis on the bipolar spectrum. Dr. Bjorkston said Lee had something called hyperphymic temperament. A condition characterized by dwelling, blaming, and temper outbursts. A condition he wanted to treat with medication.

Did you ever have any history of mental illness?

We never had any mental illness.

Lee admits she was emotional. I cried quite a lot. She was alone having a difficult pregnancy and just had a scare that her baby might have down syndrome.

“I said, "I think I've got a good reason to be upset," and he said, "Give you something to make you feel better."”

Dr. Bjorkston prescribed nothing. Lee talked to a doctor friend who said it's an anti-psychotic drug and advised her not to take it. And I took three tablets by then. Then Lee discovered something else.

Something that terrified her. Harris taught and her own mother had contacted Dr. Bjorkston before she had ever even heard his name. So you're saying that Harris went to Bjorkston first. Telling Bjorkston what he said was going on.

And you were under the impression that Harris had never met him before.

Never met him. We both walked in and they both introduced themselves and said it's nice to meet you. Harris has said he was only trying to get help for his wife. But Lee believes Harris was setting her up. Spinning an elaborate tale of an unstable wife with a violent temper,

even convincing her mother of it. For what purpose?

“To save his face for walking out in his pregnant wife.”

I mean, the physical violence is one thing. The mental instability is another. 48 hours has been covering the story since 1999. Harris taught denied our recent requests for an interview, but that then he told us Lee was a ticking time bomb.

You never know whether you're going to come through the door and have a flower pot launched. A danger not only to him, but to herself. Came down the hallway and there she is. Sitting there banging her head against the wall. Did you bash your head against the wall tonight to the point

that the lights were flickering on and on?

I've never ever bash my head against the wall.

Harris said he was so afraid of you that he feared for his life. Yeah, did you threaten him? Never once. Slap him? I slapped him once.

Hit him? Never. Lee admits she did get angry.

“Angry enough to throw pointers off the porch and push over that coffee table.”

But she says Harris was the threatening one, making menacing phone calls throughout the entire pregnancy. I would say to me on the time you're sick. Look in the mirror, see your face. It's contorted you're insane.

You're insane. And he just kept saying you're sick. You're crazy. Over and over again. Patty says she was listening in when Lee got one of those calls.

He totally changed. And his southern charm turned into just sheer hatred towards Lee. When she was seven months pregnant, Lee filed for divorce. Harris counter sued claiming that Lee was so abusive. He was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

I've never seen her violent. She's not a moody person. We never had an argument. And we were together constantly. Patty was by her side when she gave birth to Savannah.

Savannah was born a beautiful, beautiful baby girl. Just, healthiest can be. Lee was thrilled. Beyond words. She was amazing.

But that happiness wouldn't last for long. When Savannah was two and a half months old, her parents divorce would take another turn. Harris sued for custody. Now the bitter battle would get even uglier.

With plenty of mud slinging from both sides. Lee says Harris wanted to take her baby to Punisher. Harris said he loved Savannah with all his heart. He said she was promiscuous. She said he was gay.

She stalked him. He lied. The list went on and on. But in the end, it came down to one not so simple question. Was it in Savannah's best interest to be with her mother?

Dr. Oliver Bjorkston was called as a witness for Harris Todd. How damaging was his testimony to your case? Damaging is probably not the right word. He was life destroying. Dr. Bjorkston, who also declined to be interviewed,

testified that the condition he diagnosed Lee with is associated with violence. That he had seen people with Lee's degree of dwelling do things which are quite serious.

I absolutely never saw any signs of mental illness.

Lee's friends took the stand painting a very different picture. I saw distress from having somebody try and fight you and take your baby away.

“And so how hard is it to prove that you are not crazy?”

It's impossible. The more you claim you're not mentally ill, the crazy you sound because people look at you as a mental person then. And Lee says there was plenty of evidence that she was not crazy.

Two respected psychiatrists testified that there was nothing wrong with her and that she certainly did not need anti-cycotic drugs. But then another expert was brought in as a so-called

tiebreaker to see if Lee really did have hyperthymic temperament.

After evaluating Lee, he said she did have the condition. Lee experts said Harris was the more predictable parent, recommending that he should have custody. The child advocate for Savannah also agreed. Still, Lee and her friends were hopeful.

“We thought there is no way that a judge is going to look at this”

and take this loving, healthy, happy, vibrant baby away from her mother. Now the decision was up to Judge Robert Mallard. And it was clear who he believed. He cited Harris as willing to share custody when Lee was not. He said that while Lee was a flight attendant, Harris was a successful stock broker.

So he believed Harris would be better able to provide a stable environment.

The judge also noted what he called Lee's inability

to control her impulses in court. I think I got hyper. I think I got stressed. I think I got scared. I was very scared.

Because I knew something was really, really going wrong. This is the court order. Lee says what was most damaging and untrue was the judge's finding that she had been violent toward Harris and his conclusion that her condition might lead to homicide or suicide.

It left me so scared and so cold because when you label somebody as that, that means I'm such a danger to my child. On February 18, 1994, we didn't think it could happen. Judge Mallard awarded full custody of nine and a half month old Savannah to her father, Harris Todd.

I promised to swear on my life that I will continue to take sure of my daughter. The little girl was her life and everything I witnessed, she was a fabulous mother. She really, really was. It was hard to believe that it could even happen. Lee's friends were still reeling from the judge's decision.

The decision in my view was totally unjust. Gordon came. It was beyond my comprehension to know that they were going to remove the child from her. Harris came to get Savannah the very same day he was awarded custody. When they came and took her, is when I lost it.

And I just went to the bathroom and sat in the bathtub and cried. Lee says would worried her the most with something Harrison said in court that he would take his daughter to a psychiatrist as young as three years old if he saw any signs of her mother's illness. It sounds like what you're saying Lee is you were afraid Harris Todd was going to do

to this baby girl what he had done to you. I knew as a grown woman if I couldn't prove that I wasn't mentally ill. How can a two or three year old? Lee says her only option was an appeal but the judge didn't file the necessary paperwork in the usual 30 days.

By day 45 she was desperate.

“At this point did you lost all faith in the judicial system?”

No, the court system and the family court system. All faith. I knew nobody was there to help me. I had started to make my plan to leave.

donkeys. And off she went. Guy was what he wanted and I said I need two birth certificates here two names. And he said he'd be back here at what o'clock tomorrow. By the next afternoon Lee Barnett had been reborn as Alexandria Maria Canton

and Savannah was now her son Nick. A boy boy. She had no hair yet so I thought that's his boy. Next stop Houston Texas. She put on a black wig walked into the DMV and got a Texas driver's license.

After that the passports were easy. It was something that was just propelling me forward knowing that I had to get her safe. I can't tell you how painful this is. But now and I belong together. And nobody beside God has the right to destroy them.

64 days after losing custody and during one of her regularly scheduled visitations. Lisa, she takes her last $10,000 and the baby. The two then get into a rental car here in Charleston with her oldest brother. Stop at a gas station, she cuts her hair, dies it brown, and drives to the Atlanta airport. And then she disappears.

“What time on Sunday were you supposed to return Savannah?”

It was six o'clock at night. And where were you at six o'clock at night? Oh, I would probably be in France by then in Paris. And did that make you nervous or did you get a little smile? Oh, I don't think I was smile.

I never wanted to take it for granted every second.

I had a freedom. It was never taken for granted. But did you feel free? I mean you were on the run. Were you free?

I was free from them. She was free from them. Soon after, Lisa's younger brother Cliff Barnett got a call from Harris. And he goes, where's your sister? I have no idea.

Then he goes, "Your sister is not a fit mother. She can't take care of a child by herself. She doesn't have the sense for it."

And finally, he's eventually said, "Well, apparently she has the sense to disappear from you."

I'm John Wolch.

“What year old Savannah Lee Barnett is missing from Islo Palm, South Carolina?”

The FBI launched a massive manhunt. I believe Lee Barnett could possibly harm her child. Initially, Agent Chris Quick thought they'd find her in some motel within a week. Most fugitives mess up, make mistakes, because they can't leave a life that they came from. This doesn't occur in this case.

She's totally cut all ties from everyone. I had no idea where she went, who she was with, what she was doing. Lee and Savannah ceased to exist. From then on, it was Alex, and the baby she renamed Samantha. How do you leave your family, your friends, your country?

Never pick up the phone, never be in touch, just walk away from it.

It broke my heart. It killed me. We thought about her all the time. She was never never far from our thoughts. We always tried to keep pictures of Savannah around the house, and this was one of our favorites. In my mind, I knew she was fine. Don't talk about somebody that can adapt and survive.

Alex's first stop, Malaysia. She wrote to Sam and her diary that the hardest part was the loneliness. I wrote a hope one day that I made a man that loves you, like I love you, and that's all I ever asked. Seven months later, she did in South Africa, her next stop on the run. There, she met an engineering geologist named Shawan Geldin-Hice.

She told him everything. And they married a few months later. I got married to him because he was mad and leveled with my daughter. Soon, Samantha had a baby brother named Rhys, and the family moved to Botswana. We had Darais walking outside our house on the streets,

and buffalo and all that sort of stuff around there was just really um, it was fun. All that time. Well, Alex Geldin-Hice was growing her family in Africa. Back in Charleston, Harris Todd was grieving the daughter taken from him by Lee Barnett. It was done to hurt me, it was not done to save Savannah, it was done to hurt me.

He says he had wanted a family, and he wanted his daughter.

“I can't believe it, how could something like this possibly happen?”

How could it possibly happen? How could she be here and then be gone? It is not hard to destroy a college.

Campus Colts and more. And now, Campus Files is back for another season. There's a guy screaming into a phone, he's like, "Just saw Charlie Kirk's assassinated right in front of me." Every week is a new episode and a new story. It's okay, Alex. It's almost a university on a siege.

Listen to and follow Campus Files, available now wherever you get your podcasts. What bothers me the most is the not knowing and the fact that this is like, constantly grieving for someone who's died. Five years after Leigh Barnett vanished with his daughter, Harris Todd decided to take matters into his own hands. Nothing else has worked, I'm going to go look for him, I saw.

48 hours followed him to Costa Rica. I don't have any specific knowledge of her whereabouts, but there's high probability that she could be here. I'm into the stores. Blond stand out in Costa Rica. Then to the farmers' markets.

I'm going to go up and look at a school.

“I think it's worthwhile going up there to have a look.”

If I've spent the rest of my life doing this, it's so be it. That would put the child in a great yellow name. Harris also went on national TV shows, determined to keep his daughter in the news, as well as her mother, who according to him was a very ill.

A bipolar effective disorder also known as manic depressive illness. Very violent. She would hit me in the side of the head with her fist. And in this recreation, a very dangerous woman. I've got the pleadings ready for filing in your toward action.

Harrison, his lawyer, Graham Sturgis, also went after Leigh's family and friends. We'll be ready to get the paper served starting tomorrow on the various defendants.

Finally, suit against those Harris believed had helped her.

Are you doing today?

“Including Leigh's mother, her brother Cliff, and Susie Pogue.”

Bye-bye. Thank you. He accused me of conspiracy to kidnapped Samantha. Of course none of that was ever proven, but it was financially devastating for me.

But she says the worst part was the private investigators who tracked her every move. They threatened me by saying that they were going to destroy my life, my family. They were going to take me down. All the while, Lee and Samantha stayed under the radar, traveling from the US to Germany, France, Malaysia, South Africa,

Botswana, and New Zealand. After 13 years on the run and four continents, Lee finally landed here along the shores of Australia's Sunshine Coast. A safe harbor about as far away from Charleston as she could get. The Sunshine Coast is known for its beaches.

Be ready, Mike.

“And it's a very wonderful and family-like environment to grow up in.”

But Sam's own family was having a tough time. The man she adored and believed was her father had fallen in love with another woman, ending her parents' marriage. How did it impact your mother? She stayed strong, she stayed resilient and she was a great single mother.

The doors were always open, everyone was always welcome.

There was one door that remained closed. The door to her mother's past. When she talked about America, she loved it. But at the end of the day, you can see in her eyes. And if you know and you love someone well enough,

you can see when they're hurting. And it's not for me to sit there and go, "Well, get sadder and tell me more, and tell me why, and I deserve to know, because I didn't." You know, I trusted that when she wanted to tell me she let me know.

That day finally came. The man? How old are you? I'm here for four. Eight.

Nineteen years after they boarded that plane into the unknown. I'm with on the telephone at 7.30 in the morning and it was a big pounding on my door, and I was asleep at pajamas. And I opened the door, and the man was staying there with guns, and he said, "I'm here with the warrant for your rest."

Alex Gilden-Highs had finally made a mistake.

She confided in the wrong friend that friend contacted Harris Todd, with the one missing piece of the puzzle says assistant U.S. attorney Nathan Williams, her name. All we really needed was a way to identify Ms. Barnett under her alias.

But it took two years to work a deal between the two countries.

A deal that eventually led federal agents to this little house in Malu, LeBa.

“One of the agents said to me, "You must be really relieved, but I wasn't relieved."”

I knew that my life would change, my children's lives would change. It could not have been a worse time. One week earlier, their dad had died from bone cancer. I'm very lucky to be able to say the last thing I said was I loved here. Because people don't get that.

Now she and Reece faced losing their mother to prison. My mom was sitting on the couch with two FBI agents next to her. I said, "Mom, what's going on?" And she took me to another room and just told me everything that happened. Tell me I got a trust in, of course I did.

Next, she called Sam a way at university studying to be a nurse.

I said, "Sam, you know how we never had communication with the family and friends."

“And the U.S. said, "Yeah, I said, "Well, I was married before, and I'm going to jail now."”

Because I'm going to accuse a kidnap. And I said, "I had to keep you safe all this years ago." I had to call her back and say, "Wait, does that mean that dad wasn't my dad?" And then she started crying and I started crying. Alex Gildenheim, aka Lee Barnett, was taken to a jail in Brisbane.

The next day, FBI agents set Samantha down and began to tell her the story of the beginning of her life. And that's when I met where I was born. I met Savannah. I didn't know anything before that. She learned about Harris Todd and her mother's better backstory.

Every characteristic they said that my mother had was wrong and incorrect. Every single thing, I mean, they take what, what kind of thing. Like she had bipolar. I mean, that was the most incredibly confronting thing. And I felt very rude because I just laughed in their faces.

That was the first time you ever heard that accusation.

Yeah, I just, I had to laugh and I said, "Well, you're wrong." Perhaps most disturbing agents told her they had feared her mother would hurt her. Did your mother ever hurt you? Did she ever hit you? Was she abusive to you? A friend in Malulaba, Bruce Michelle, was equally perplexed by the version of his friend he read about in the court order.

And I thought, "Wow, this is not the person we knew." Bruce and Sam set out to read every document. Every transcript relating to the case. It's like a novel that is so sickening that you can't put down. It's been a terrible, terrible injustice and somebody should go to jail.

And he says, "It shouldn't be Lee." The time had come for Lee to tell Samantha about the diary. She'd kept hidden all these years. Sam opened the book of secrets and began to read. I'm having difficulty writing because I'm very scared.

I can only wait, though, and pray. It's not our time to be found. With each page, a new understanding of her mother. If you think about every single little thing that she has gone through. I've lived this wonderful life and she did everything she could and more to just keep me safe.

Now, it was Sam's turn to protect her mother.

“She is the most important thing and she was and she has been and she still is.”

You could just run through. Even Bruce collected affidavits from supporters across four continents. Friend, Carrie Gazard. Everybody's hot went out to everybody was behind her. 100% there was not a doubt at all, anyway.

For ten months, Alex and her supporters desperately fought extradition. But in fall of 2014, she was forced to leave her Australian paradise behind. And returned to the place where it all began here in Charleston. But this time, she would be at the federal courthouse, charged with international parental kidnapping and two counts of passport fraud. Crimes that could put Lee behind bars for 23 years.

Lee was denied bail while awaiting trial.

It's not complicated.

“You can't take the long to your own hands and flee the country with a child because you don't like the result from a divorce hearing.”

Lee acknowledges she broke the law by getting those fake passports.

But says she is not guilty of kidnapping. You do not think that you broke the law by taking her out of the country. Now, the law is broken when a corrupt court system took that baby from me and took her mother away from her. And your mind, you did not kidnap her. She's my daughter. You did not have the legal right to take her out of the country and a legal right be damned.

But after five months in jail, Lee realized she didn't have the money or the firepower to fight the US government. She pled guilty to all three charges, including kidnapping. Lee was sentenced to 21 months in prison with credit for time served. For the man who had searched for her, it was a disappointing sentence. What about Harris aside, the father side? She took the long her own hands and denied the father of 20 years I've ever seen his daughter.

“Have you ever, for one moment, thought maybe I should have let her know Harris taught?”

No. No remorse about cheating him out of 20 years with his daughter. Lee says time has proven she was not who Harris said she was.

There's nothing wrong with me. I've never done anything violent. I've raised two amazingly healthy intelligent children who are happy.

So who is telling a truth in his line? Sam had some questions of her own. She wrote an eight-page letter to Harris. Just telling him that I can't have the most amazing relationship with him as long as I am 100% sure there's no revenge, there's no spite, there's no nothing. Sam says all she wanted was the truth. Why Harris said her mother was violent? There was no response to that.

Instead, Harris wrote that he was pleased to hear she had done well on her exams. Has there ever been any response? A year would pass. Sam was finally ready to meet Harris. Her relationship was--

“A meeting Harris had imagined when we spoke with him back in 1999.”

Tell her who I am and hug her. It didn't quite turn out like that. They met at Harris's home. He held it his hand to shake my hand and I thought, "Well, I'm not quite comfortable with that, I'd rather give a hug." You know, it was just a surreal experience, almost. Sam says Harris took her on a two and a half hour tour of his house,

showing off his prized possessions. Lee's friend, retired judge, Miran Johnson, accompanied Sam. I really was very shocked that the conversation was not about he and Samantha and the years that they have missed and how they could go from here. I think we're both a little awkward. They have not seen each other since, but Sam says she remains open to a relationship.

As long as Harris understands one thing, there is no way I'm letting go of my mom. I've been very lenient with him and all the stuff that he said. I want to know if he'll be the same with me when this comes out. You made 2015. Lee Barnett was released from jail on two years probation. Back into the lives of family and friends, she had left all those years ago.

And then this is where we did that's an amazing experience. To have your best friend disappear for 20 years and come back. She is just overwhelmed with friendship. All of her childhood memories are all coming back. She's not going to go anywhere as far as I'm concerned.

At this point, Lee wasn't allowed to leave the United States. So with the help of 48 hours, her kids came to her. Rease was a total surprise.

The first time I got to Haugar after she got out of prison, she never let go of me.

She was, I think she cried. And Sam hadn't seen her mother in nine months. My mother and I have this incredible thing to know that we love each other. And the continent or an ocean isn't going to separate us. Over two decades ago, Lee Barnett married Harris Todd,

hoping to have a happy life together. Instead, he became a marriage measured in loss, a father lost 20 years with his daughter,

A story of hurt, anger, and despair.

But also a story of love.

“Dear Savannah, I just want to let you know how loved you are.”

You and I will be fine, more than fine, really. We'll be great.

And we'll get through this.

“Please always know that having you is the most important thing in my entire life.”

You'll always be my little girl. We've made it.

Sweet dreams. Love mommy. In 2019, Lee Barnett published a memoir about her 20 years as an international fugitive.