In 1994, after she lost custody of her baby daughter, Dorothy Lee Barnett abducted the girl and went on the run, evading authorities for nearly 20 years as she hopscotched countries and kept the child from her father.
In a recent interview, she explained why she did it.
Barnett’s initial motivation, she told CBS’ 48 Hours, was hearing the child’s father state in a South Carolina courtroom that he believed she had mental illness — and that if the child exhibited symptoms, he would consider putting the girl in psychiatric care.
“I knew as a grown woman … if I couldn’t prove that I wasn’t mentally ill … how could a 2- or 3-year-old?,” said Barnett, who had earlier been diagnosed as being on the bipolar spectrum, which she contests.
With that, Barnett disappeared for close to two decades and became the subject of an FBI manhunt until she was finally arrested in 2013 in Australia.
Until then, she and her daughter had lived an itinerant life that saw then slip away from their home in Charleston, South Carolina, and travel through Germany, France, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa and Botswana before settling in Australia.
She’d assumed a new identity with fake documents and changed the name of her daughter, Savanna — who was 11 months old when they disappeared — to Samantha. She’d also married again, had a second child with the man her daughter believed to be her father, and then divorced once more.
After Barnett’s return to face charges in the U.S., she pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 21 months in prison for international child kidnapping and two counts of passport fraud. She was released in May 2015 with credit for time served.
At the time of Barnett’s release, the girl’s father, Harris Todd, said of Barnett, “I don’t care if I ever see her ever again. But, I have no animosity for her. She’s my daughter’s mother and that’s what she is and that’s what she’ll always be,” reported Charleston TV station WCIV.
Questions Over Mental Illness
Barnett, a flight attendant, had a short marriage with the stockbroker Todd. Towards the end of it, Todd alleged his wife had an uncontrollable temper and suffered from mental illness, according to the divorce court proceedings.
In a 1999 interview with 48 Hours, Todd said, “The physical violence is one thing. The mental instability is another.” He added: “You never know whether you’re gonna come through the door and have a flower pot launched.”
He asked Barnett to move out of his house, and she refused. After the pair committed to seek marriage counseling, they saw a psychiatrist — who gave Barnett a diagnosis on the bipolar spectrum and prescribed her an antipsychotic drug, according to the TV newsmagazine.
Barnett filed for divorce when she was seven months pregnant. Todd countersued, claiming his wife’s abuse had left him with PTSD. Then he sued for child custody.
Two psychiatrists testified Barnett did not suffer from mentally illness and that the prescribed medication was unnecessary, according to the court record cited by 48 Hours.
But the judge ruled for child custody in the father’s favor, and Barnett hatched her plan to kidnap the child.
Plot to Abscond with Child
She learned from watching 60 Minutes about a street in Los Angeles where she could easily acquire false identity documents. After traveling there to get two fake birth certificates — and adopting the alias of Alexandria Maria Canton — Barnett stopped in Houston and, while wearing a wig, secured a Texas driver’s license and later two passports bearing false identities for her and her daughter.
Then, during a court-approved child custody visit in April 1994, Barnett had her brother drive her and her daughter to the airport, cutting and dying her own hair along the way in a gas station bathroom. She figures that by the time she was scheduled to turn the child back over to her father, mother and daughter already were in Paris.
FBI agent Chris Quick said of his initial thinking during the search, “I believe Lee Barnett could possibly harm her child,” he told the TV newsmagazine.
“Most fugitives mess up, make mistakes because they can’t leave the life that they came from,” he said. “This didn’t occur in this case. … she totally cut all ties from everyone.”
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In South Africa in 1995 Barnett married engineering geologist Juan Geldenhuys, and told him everything, she said.
After the birth of a son, the couple moved to Botswana.
Father Mourned Missing Daughter: ‘It Was Done to Hurt Me’
In the meantime, Todd grieved the daughter he’d lost, he told 48 Hours in 1999. “It was done to hurt me, not to save Savanna,” he said.
Barnett’s journey came to an end after she confided in someone who got word to Todd about their whereabouts. Barnett was by then divorced again when law enforcement agents knocked on her door.
“One of the agents said to me, ‘You must be relieved,’ but I wasn’t relieved,” said Barnett, who plans to publish a memoir about her experiences. “I knew that my life would change, my children’s lives would change.”
Only after Barnett’s arrest did law enforcement agents fill in the gaps for her daughter about her background. But the daughter stands by her mother’s viewpoint that the diagnosis of mental illness was incorrect.
“Every characteristic they said that my mother had was wrong and incorrect,” the daughter told 48 Hours. “Every single thing. Like, she — she had bipolar. I mean, that was the most incredibly confronting thing. And I felt very rude because I just laughed in their faces. … I just — I had to laugh. And I said, ‘Whoa, you’re wrong.'”
She has since met her father once, and said she’s open to a relationship with him, but she adds, “There is no way I’m letting go of my mom.”
Asked if she felt any remorse about denying her daughter a relationship with her father for 20 years, Barnett replied: “None.”
“There’s nothing wrong with me. I’ve never done anything violent. I’ve raised two amazingly healthy, intelligent children who are happy,” she said. “So who’s telling the truth?”