A Familiar Face On The Missing Person’s Website Made Him Fall Right Out Of His Chair
This story is mind blowing, to say the least. While searching the internet, a man came across his picture on a missing persons website. It sounds a bit unlikely, but it absolutely happened to Philadelphia man Steve Carter. He never knew he was a missing child, as he grew up in a loving home in the south New Jersey suburbs. Still, upon uncovering this new secret detail of his life, he recalled that something always felt a bit off with his upbringing.
In fact, Steve recalled that while he was adopted when he was four years old and his parents never hid him from the public eye, there were details about his life that never quite made sense. Most notably, his birth certificate was created a year after his birth. Though that detail raised a red flag, he never questioned it, but told People that it did make him “suspicious” about aspects of his adoption and identity.
He pushed all of that aside, however, until he was 35, when news reports of a woman named Carina White made headlines because she discovered her adoption may not have been legal. She started an investigation into the matter, visiting missingkids.com and seeing a photo of herself as a baby, later learning that she was kidnapped from a Harlem hospital by a woman posing as a nurse. Her story had a happy ending and she was able to reunite with her biological famly.
Steve started to question his own adoption and the woman’s story made him dig deeper when he checked the same missing persons website — only to discover a baby picture of himself with a composite photo next to it that looked just like him. He found that the missing baby listed on the website was last seen in Hawaii, which was the state listed on his birth certificate. He had been adopted from an orphanage in Honolulu.
He tracked down the lead, getting in touch with authorities as they were finally able to close the case of one of the oldest missing persons cases in the country. Steve explained to CNN that he contacted the Honolulu Police Department, noting: “I let them know my info and they ran with it. They were the ones who did all the legwork” with the investigation.
He found out his name given at birth, Marx Panama Moriarty Barnes, and discovered that his father had reported him missing when his mother took the baby for a walk and didn’t return.
He also connected with his biological father and half-sister, but he was unable to connect with his mother, who was last seen in a psychiatric ward around the time of his disappearance. Sadly, she hasn’t been located since that incident.
His father had hoped that his son wasn’t missing forever, of course, telling People: “I always expected a knock at the door or a phone call” and when Steve finally made contact, his dad noted that he was just absolutely speechless: “All I could say was, ‘Wow. Oh, wow. Wow.'”
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