Original subtitles

So many years, so many memories.

He was very, very beautiful.

And he was a very beautiful baby.

It's sort of like a landmine in the mind, you know, and you go, wow, I

wonder where they are, I wonder what they're doing.

I just wanted my mom.

I was angry that the adults in my life were not solving this for me.

If I had been in my power, I would have grabbed the aisle and turned it upside

down and shrugged it to try to find Charlotte and Mark.

I didn't know if we'd ever get results with this case after 30-plus years.

I couldn't believe that this story could take a turn and just blow up. I

never saw it coming.

Everything seemed to be going great.

Charlotte seemed to be very happy.

I was sort of working into the position of being a father and all that good

stuff. I mean, everything was great.

It truly was.

Twenty-six-year-old Mark Barnes lives on the island of Oahu with his 31-year-old

girlfriend, Charlotte Moriarty, and their six-month-old son, Mark.

The couple plans to spend the day working on the house where they've been

living rent-free in exchange for maintaining the property.

So I had built a deck, and we were planting birds of paradise on the

corners. Hey, I'm going to go down to Kapula to pick up the stuff up.

Charlotte said she was going down to the little store that was three blocks away,

and that she'd be back shortly.

I'll take Mark's with me.

So I said, fine, great, see you soon.

Several hours go by, but Charlotte and Mark don't come back.

I walked down to the little store, but they were not there.

Instead, he finds Mark's stroller abandoned at a bus stop.

I figured she got on a bus, so I took the stroller and walked home, figuring

she had gone somewhere and waited.

That evening, there's still no sign of Charlotte and Mark.

Mark wonders if maybe Charlotte took a bus to see one of her girlfriends on

another part of the island.

She would go and see people and, you know, sometimes not come back for two or

three days.

She had a baby bag with bottles and everything in it, so I was not overly

concerned. Charlotte was just sort of living for the day, which was pretty

much... The way it was in the 70s.

In 1976, Mark is a freelance writer from California who landed on Oahu after a

tour in Vietnam with the Navy.

I was pretty much living by myself, you know, and just trying to take care of

odds and ends and write.

One evening I was writing, and Charlotte arrives with a gentleman.

Hey, man, how you doing? Hi.

They were lost.

Asked for directions.

Right-hand side.

Can't miss it.

And then the next morning, I'm up and...

I was at the front door, but Charlotte.

Hey. She'd evidently lost her gentleman.

She was alone, and she wanted to see the island.

What are you doing today?

So I volunteered to take her around.

The connection between Mark and Charlotte is instant.

She was very free-spirited, very smart, very beautiful.

She had a great sense of humor and very set in what she wanted to do and when

she wanted to do something, she did it.

Mark and Charlotte were anti-establishment. I mean, that was

part of their attraction to each other.

They moved in together up the hill from me, and so they were neighbors and a

happy couple.

They were both kind of nuts, you know, frivolous and happy.

It was a great combination.

Charlotte tells Mark she was previously married and has a 7-year-old daughter

who lives with her father in New Mexico.

My mother was a very deep thinker. She was a searcher, I

think, even before it became a little bit popular.

She definitely was raised with sort of an upper-middle-class lifestyle. I think

the expectation for her was that she would marry well.

And she did.

But she wanted something a little bit more free, a little bit more bohemian.

My dad tried very hard to make her happy, and it wasn't enough for her,

and they split up.

So I ended up living with my dad.

My mom was very much in and out of my life at that point, but I was always

happy to see her.

I remember she picked me up from school one day, and I'll never forget it. It

was just because I didn't see her.

We went to the woods, and we discovered a little butterfly larva, and we took it

home, we put it in a jar, and we just watched it.

over time, and it was incredible.

Now that I'm an adult, looking back, I can see that that was kind of symbolic

of where she was at that time in her life.

She was changing. She was transforming into something else.

In 1976, Charlotte moved to Hawaii.

Soon after meeting Mark Barnes, she becomes pregnant with their son, Marks.

I was sort of shocked.

I wasn't ready to be a parent, but, you know, you're never ready for

that sort of thing.

So I embraced it and said, well, you know, let's do it.

And we did.

I remember that he was pretty stunned about it. It's a life-changing event.

But he was stoked, as we would say, and very proud.

We loved that little boy.

We were having a great time and living the Hawaiian life, and Charlotte seemed

to be very happy, and everything was just rolling along very smoothly.

For two days, Mark continues to work on the house and waits for Charlotte and

Mark to come home.

But they never do.

I became a little worried.

So next day, I called the Honolulu police.

According to Mark, he tells police that Charlotte is a free spirit who sometimes

takes off for a few days on a whim and doesn't call.

They said, well, you know, give it a little time.

So I said, fine.

Then after several days, I called again and said, my wife is missing with my

child.

They took down a description and everything, and if I recall, they never

sent anybody to the house.

But after almost three weeks passed, Charlotte and Mark still haven't

surfaced. At that point, I was really worried.

You know, several weeks later, hadn't seen my son, hadn't seen Charlotte.

Don't know what the hell happened.

Around this time, Mark learns that his good friend, Jim Murray, had spotted

Charlotte with Mark a few days after she went missing, walking along a busy road.

I was driving to Honolulu, and the kid was over her shoulder.

Couldn't stop. Everybody's going 50 miles an hour, and I thought it was

really strange.

because it's miles away from anything else.

But he told me that I was surprised because I couldn't imagine why she had

gone to Honolulu unless to pick up something or there was someone there

that I didn't know about.

I just had this feeling like, you know, what is she up to now?

Went down to the police station to see what the progress was. And I discovered

that they had no record of any phone calls I had made reporting her. They had

no record of a missing person.

They had no record at all.

On July the 10th of 1977, Mark Barnes contacted the police department to

initiate a missing persons case.

for Charlotte and for his son.

At that time, he said the last time that he had seen her was on June 21st at 9 o

'clock at a residence.

It was mentioned in the report that Charlotte had taken off prior and

returned prior.

So that was a known factor in regards to this case.

I don't believe that I said anything about her psychological state of mind.

I said she was a... You know, a free spirit and very determined. And, you

know, she did what Charlotte wanted to do when Charlotte wanted to do it.

I was fairly desperate to have them do anything, move in any direction as far

as finding her and Mark's. I'm going to head out to Kapua.

According to Mark, Charlotte seemed happy on the morning she went missing.

Great, see you soon.

But just after their son was born, her behavior had alarmed him.

It was a very crazy period of time when Charlotte came back with a baby from the

hospital. For a week to ten days, she walked around the house with a blindfold

on so she couldn't see.

I was doing most of the heavy lifting.

I was in charge of the baby.

taking care of the diapers, and eventually she took off the blindfold.

And she seemed to be a very doting mother.

Mark assumes Charlotte had suffered from postpartum depression, and some who know

her would say she is prone to mood swings.

I do remember that Charlotte had bouts of going in and out.

She wanted to be alone a lot.

I never noticed anything that was radically wrong or anything, but she

would go off sometimes all by herself and, you know, disappear for I don't

know how long.

But this time is the longest Charlotte has ever stayed away from Mark.

Her daughter Jennifer has a theory about what may have triggered her

disappearance.

The last time I saw my mom was in San Jose.

She was four months pregnant.

It was wonderful for me to see her. I didn't want her to go.

I remember she put her hand on her belly, and she put my hand on her belly,

and, you know, it was powerful.

I'll never forget that.

She said that she would come back at Thanksgiving.

And then we took her to the bus stop.

That was it.

After Marks is born, Charlotte starts making plans for Jennifer to come to

Hawaii to meet her new brother.

My father was working with my mother's father and my mother. They

were trying to organize a time for me to come out to visit in July.

of 1977.

Hello, everyone. We are all well and healthy with marks growing more

beautiful every day. Good news.

Jenny leaves the 8th. I hope you are as excited as I am.

Jenny has kept the letters from her mom that reveal how much Charlotte was

looking forward to her visit.

She'll have some time to be with her favorite people. She's going to stay

with us for about a month. She should have a fun time, especially with her

brother.

But a few weeks before Jennifer is supposed to arrive, the plan

falls apart.

My dad was very protective and concerned.

During the 70s, it was hard. If there was a separation or a divorce and a

child was in another state, sometimes it could be hard to get that child back.

So my dad was worried that I may not be sent back from Hawaii, that my mother

would keep me in Hawaii with her.

I think that when I did not come, my mother fell apart.

That's the sense.

that I get.

It was the last straw.

I think she just spiraled.

After Mark files a report, Honolulu police issue an official missing persons

advisory and launch a search for Charlotte.

They check with friends, family members, check for the hospitals to see if there

was anyone that might be there.

They took down a description and everything, and thank you very much, and

give us a call if she comes back.

I don't think they were overly concerned about it.

I mean, people would go off with someone else. They'd be living with someone and

say, well, I'm going to go with this person. That sort of behavior was sort

of rampant during the time we were there.

She just disappeared.

Lots of people did that in those days and on an island like Hawaii.

And with her background, I think that she could have made a phone call and got

a plane ticket and just left.

I mean, that happened all the time.

After a brief mention in the local news, the case goes quiet.

Mark continues the search on his own.

Well, I hitchhike up and down the North Shore.

you know, stopping at all the beaches and everything.

And I'd look around with no luck whatsoever.

I mean, did everything I could in my power to try to find her.

On January 17th, 1978,

Mark is faced with one of the most difficult days yet.

His son Mark's first birthday.

When his birthday rolled around, I was feeling very alone and lonely and

worried and confused and a little dazed.

A very empty feeling.

I don't know when I found out, but I think my dad pulled me into...

a room shut the door and told me that my mom was missing, and nobody knew where

she was.

I remember just being so sad. I was just so wanting to meet my new half-brother,

and I was on the swing, there were two swings, and I would kind of swing the

other swing and pretend I was talking to him, and, you know, we were just

cheering like siblings.

I really wanted to know him.

But I just knew that, you know, they were gone.

For years, everyone assumed Charlotte chose to leave, taking Marks with her.

But a new lead is about to surface, suggesting a much darker answer to the

mystery. We started knocking on neighbors' doors to try and see if

anybody had been there back in the 1970s.

It was really surprising. I had no idea that this was going on. Mind if we ask

you a few questions?

They said they argued fair amount.

What would you say if we said we believe Mark is a suspect?

We were all looking for Charlotte and Martin.

You just get disappointed and discouraged every time you come back

without finding anybody.

It was just a really, really dark time.

I just sort of withdrew, you know, and stayed by the house.

You know, did whatever odd jobs I could to keep a subsistence lifestyle.

You have to come to a realization, at least I did, that she has gone somewhere

to make a better life.

And they were, I hoped, happy and, you know, and prosperous and living the

family life.

With still no sign of Charlotte or Mark, the case officially goes cold.

Mark decides to leave Hawaii.

Employment opportunities were not there, and so it was just time to come back to

the States and try to start again.

Mark moves to Northern California and continues to work as a freelance writer.

I got married, and the outcome of that was two beautiful daughters.

But Mark still can't put Charlotte and Mark's disappearance behind him.

It's sort of like a landmine in the mind.

It'll just pop up at the most unexpected times.

You go, wow, I wonder where they are. I wonder what they're doing.

My first and second marriage were both dissolved because I was preoccupied with

Charlotte and Mark.

You know, it's tough to feel deeply enough for someone when you have someone

else on your mind all of a sudden.

I just wanted my mom, and nobody could tell me where she was.

Anything important like birthdays or high school graduation, college

graduation, you want to celebrate that milestone or whatever it is in your

life, and you're not able to.

It was sad. It was very sad.

More than two decades have passed without any news of Charlotte and Mark.

Around 2004, 2005, I got involved in a really pretty big way.

I wanted it to become front and center because, again, I needed to have some

kind of answer as to what happened.

In 2004, the state attorney general's office decides to take another look at

the case.

Jennifer travels to Hawaii to meet with Honolulu police.

When we obtained copies of the initial missing persons report, the first thing

we noted was when Mark was interviewed regarding the missing persons case, he

waited over approximately three weeks before he made the actual report.

He reported it on July the 10th. All right, thank you.

Said that the last time he had seen her was 9 o'clock in the morning on a

Tuesday, June the 21st.

Because it was reported late, there was no one else to corroborate it.

Mark claimed that he called the police twice in the first few days after the

disappearance.

But there's no record of Mark's prior calls.

Mark Barnes.

as a person of interest because there was a delay in reporting and there was

no subsequent information about where she was.

I agreed with Jennifer that we could take a look and see where we would go

with the investigation.

Just give me a few days on this.

Thank you.

Detective Fitchett and his partner returned to the neighborhood in Hawula

where Charlotte and Mark lived.

He started knocking on neighbors' doors to try and see if anybody had been there

back in the 1970s.

And we were very fortunate to find a neighbor that remembered these two

people that lived in the residence at that time.

Can you tell me anything about them?

Yeah, they live right here, right next door.

The relationship, he said, was kind of a volatile one.

They did get into arguments.

There was a lot of yelling, a lot of fighting.

They weren't real friendly.

So it's pretty odd.

The investigative team starts tracking down anyone who was close to the couple

back then.

Jim Murray was the first person that we located in Gresham, Oregon.

In 2005, Mark's friend from Hawaii, Jim Murray, gets an unexpected visit.

Jim Murray?

Yes. Do you mind if we ask you a few questions?

Sure.

Jim and Mark have kept in touch over the years.

But Jim doesn't know that Charlotte's case has been reopened.

It was really surprising. I had no idea that this was going on.

They told me that Mark was a suspect.

Mark?

That really upset me because I didn't believe it at all.

He wasn't that kind of guy.

I was convinced that Mark didn't do this.

It just wasn't in him. He's too mellow of a person.

He was adamant that Mark would never commit such a crime or hurt Charlotte in

any fashion, and especially an infant child.

And he really wanted to make sure that we understood that.

Jim's answers are later confirmed when he takes a polygraph test.

It actually never occurred to me that Mark was guilty of...

Doing this really never entered my mind.

We decided that we would approach Mark based on what we knew and see if he'd be

willing to talk with us.

Mark is still living in Northern California, and this is the first he's

heard anything about the case in years.

I get a phone call from a cold case detective from the Honolulu Police

Department. It says he'd like to talk to me.

It's tough to digest.

I mean, for Christ's sake.

Now I'm a suspect in murdering my girlfriend and my son.

What are you guys trying to do here?

It's an unsolved case, Mark.

When they indicated that they thought that I was... You know, the primary

suspect in this. I told him it's ridiculous.

I mean, I had no motive.

Certainly wasn't for money.

And if it was for getting custody of Marks, there's plenty of legal ways.

He gave me the information.

Pretty much was consistent with the missing persons case.

that he filed back in 1977.

But investigators want to know why Mark waited three weeks to file a missing

persons report for Charlotte and Mark.

He discussed the fact that she had been missing on several occasions previous to

this, and after a week or three or four days, she had come back.

You didn't find that worrisome?

Sometimes she would just, you know, need to go.

She was gone for a couple days, and she'd come right back.

They also inquire about witness reports of loud arguments between Mark and

Charlotte.

He admitted to several arguments, but he felt it was not physically violent

towards her.

So after completing the interview and adamantly denying having any involvement

in her disappearance physically, we asked him if he'd... participate in a

polygraph.

I said, sure.

So they hooked me up to a lie detector.

Have you ever lived in New Mexico?

Yeah.

They asked me all these rather inane and don't make any sense sort of questions,

you know, questions like, did you ever want to kill someone?

No.

He's one of the few guys, you couldn't read him. Both of us had a hard time

determining whether or not Mark was actually telling us the truth.

But it's just, we didn't know.

The polygrapher wanted to call the test inconclusive at that stage.

Despite the lack of concrete evidence against Mark, Detective Fitchett

believes the case against him is strong.

I met with the Honolulu Police homicide lieutenant, and he agreed to move it

from a missing persons case to a homicide case.

Investigators take a closer look at the property where Mark and Charlotte had

lived.

We ended up going back with the help of ground penetrating radar.

We just felt that maybe he would dig a hole in the backyard under the cover of

night. and bury the body there, or bodies there.

It took us a day and a half to dig this area.

We could not locate any type of human remains.

With the case at an impasse once more, all investigators can do is file Marks'

profile and age-progressed photo with the National Center for Missing and

Exploited Children.

Mr. Barnes.

agreed to submit to a DNA process also. So that information was registered and

put on file.

We had DNA from me and from my grandmother on file.

We're still hoping, right, that something would come of this, even

though we hit a dead end.

For the next six years, Mark Barnes remains a suspect.

though police have yet to find any incriminating evidence against him.

So this is all building up and, you know, having the police come in and out

of my life.

Unless you've been a suspect as a murderer, it's tough to digest.

And so that plays with you when you think, well, you know, are the police

going to pull up at the door and say, well, you're under arrest?

You have that sort of anxiety all the time.

Then, in November 2011, comes the most stunning moment in this 34-year mystery.

I got a call from the Honolulu Police Department saying that your

son is alive.

I got a call from the Honolulu Police Department, not long after I gave the

last DNA samples.

And they said, well, we have a match with your DNA

to your son. Your son is alive.

I was elated. Can I talk to him? Can I see him?

And they won't tell me anything else.

My name is William Stevens Tenzin Carter.

Growing up, I never really had any questions about my lineage or where I

was from. I was adopted at three and a half. This is my family, and this is who

I am.

Thirty-four-year-old Steve Carter knew he had lived in Hawaii until he was

adopted, but he had very little information about his origins.

I didn't really start to contemplate my birth parents until I was in college.

And didn't really want to do anything else until I started having children of

my own.

In the spring of 2011, Steve hears about an adopted woman who discovered her true

identity through a website run by the National Center for Missing and

Exploited Children.

Kind of triggered my head to think, hey, go check it out.

It was at lunch that day that I shut my office door and went to the website,

missingkids.com.

And I actually entered the criteria.

State, Hawaii, sex, male, and then how long you'd been missing. The top

response was Mark Barnes, who went missing at six months, had a birthday

very similar to mine, and the age regression photo they had was a lot like

looking in a mirror.

As soon as I saw the picture, I immediately copied and pasted and

emailed to a number of different individuals saying, Hey, what do you

think? Is this me?

Everybody was like, oh, yeah, that's you.

Later that day, Steve calls the Honolulu Police Department.

They ask him to submit a DNA sample.

The DNA sample confirmed that Stephen Carter was, in fact, the offspring

of Mark Barnes and Charlotte Moriarty.

It's a tremendous...

Emotional feeling for me, locating this infant after all of these years.

I never in my wildest dreams thought I would ever have a result like this after

30 plus years.

After Steve's parents adopted him in Hawaii, the new family moved to an

affluent town in New Jersey, where he grew up.

I was so lucky to have these parents.

My reaction to finding out that I was Mark's Panama was a difficult one.

You know, you grow up a good portion of your life believing one thing, and then

to come to realize that there's been a family out there looking for you, it's

tough.

When Steve gets the DNA test confirming he is Mark's Barnes, He calls Mark.

Hello, is this Mark?

Yes.

The conversation I first had with Mark was probably one of my more difficult

ones.

And I introduced myself, and the first thing Mark said to me was, how's your

mother?

Mark was very shocked that Charlotte wasn't with me.

I... truly believed that they were just living the family life.

I was absolutely floored.

In New Mexico, Steve's half-sister Jennifer gets the news that her little

brother is alive.

When I heard that Mark was found, that it was Mark, I went into shock.

I never imagined that.

they would find Mark alive and living a really nice life.

He's extremely happy and well-adjusted.

It's just incredible.

Steve provides police with a key piece of the puzzle, his birth certificate

from the orphanage in Honolulu, where his name is listed as Tenzin Ame.

Detective Fitchett is now able to trace back Charlotte Moriarty's steps on the

day she and Mark disappeared.

Looking through records at HPD, I was able to determine that Charlotte left

Mark that day, left the stroller, went riding on the bus,

somehow turned up on the other side of the island.

On June 22, 1977, the day after Charlotte and Mark disappeared, a woman

now believed to be Charlotte shows up at a stranger's house carrying an infant.

Based on the police report, this person was Caucasian but gave a Japanese name,

identified the baby as a female, and asked the homeowner for milk and a

diaper change.

The homeowner, alarmed by the woman's state, called the police.

So this is where things get really crazy.

My mother gives a false name. She says her name is Jane Amay.

She gives a false name to Steve. She says his name is Tenzin Amay.

They felt that she was in need of mental help.

So he escorted the female to the Hawaii State Hospital for psychiatric

evaluation.

They admit Jaina May, and they take the child into protective custody.

I don't know why she gave false information. To me, it seems like she

wanted to hide her child for some reason, maybe knowing that she would

come back for him.

According to the police report, Jaina May remains at the hospital for five

days, where a social worker tries to reunite her with her baby.

The social worker had come to say, you know what, we want you back with your

child, here's the address.

And then Jaina May leaves, against medical advice, into the night.

They don't know where she went.

There's just no trace of her after that.

I can't see Charlotte.

Giving Mark's club. I mean, I truly believe that she would have kept him as

tight as she possibly could.

But evidently, she must have had some sort of psychological break.

She just lost it.

I don't have any animosity towards Charlotte.

Nor would I have any mother or father who gives a child up for adoption.

If she found it better to move on and do something else, I don't blame her for

it.

I've had a pretty amazing life.

Now I've just got a larger family, a family that I'd like to spend more time

with.

To this point, I've met my half-fistered... Jennifer twice.

Feeding Jennifer is amazing.

Growing up your entire life thinking you're an only child and finally find

somebody who is related to you.

I feel a deep connection to him.

You know, he's like my little brother, you know, who has been through a lot.

But Steve has yet to meet his biological father, Mark.

I'm fearful to bring everybody together too quickly.

I've talked to him on the phone a handful of times.

We've exchanged letters and texts.

I would say that I'm ready to meet Mark very soon.

I would love to, just to be able to see him.

Hopefully, at some point, when he's ready, we'll get together.

Since Steve's identification in 2011, there have been no additional leads in

Charlotte's case.

I can't really leave New Mexico because even though it's 40 years on, there's a

part of me that still thinks that she'll come back for me.

I have things out that remind me of my mother.

It feels extremely safe and very comforting.

And I feel that she's with me.

I still wonder every day about Charlotte.

If Charlotte ever shows up, which I'm almost positive she will at some point.

What would I ask her? Well, you would have to take a legal pad, divide it into

four different columns, number them down. I have that many questions to ask.

I miss her a lot.

I miss her presence.

I know she's out there somewhere. I just can't find her.

Hopefully she'll find me.