
- #Dateline secrets uncovered smoke and mirrors full
- #Dateline secrets uncovered smoke and mirrors free
“Savanna and I belong together and nobody besides God has a right to destroy that,” she said in the tape obtained by “Dateline: Secrets Uncovered.” It was a videotaped message and letter explaining why she went on the run. Just days after she disappeared, Barnett’s friends and family members received one last communication from her.

Not long after the incident, she disappeared with Savanna in tow. Just two weeks after the judge’s ruling, Barnett arrived to pick up her daughter and found she had remnants of a bloody nose and several bruises on her face after Todd said his daughter had fallen while in his mother’s care, according to “Dateline: Secrets Uncovered.”īarnett rushed her daughter to a hospital and although a treating emergency room physician found “no signs of abuse” and ruled the injuries were consistent with a minor fall, Barnett was furious.
#Dateline secrets uncovered smoke and mirrors full
However, several psychiatrists hired by her legal team countered back that they saw no signs of any emotional disorders.Ī judge in the case ultimately sided with Todd and awarded him full custody, writing that “the psychological and emotional problems experienced by the mother, if left untreated, will create conflict and havoc in the child’s life.”īarnett was awarded visitation rights every other weekend. Psychiatrists testified that Barnett had erratic mood swings and one believed she had a personality disorder.

Her birth would spark a contentious custody battle as both parents fought for primary custody of the infant.īarnett argued that she was the better fit for her nursing daughter, but Todd questioned Barnett’s mental health. Todd denied that he ever wanted her to end the pregnancy, but either way, there was no repairing the marriage. “He wanted her to terminate the pregnancy and that was just not an option for Lee. “Everything fell apart when she told him that she was pregnant,” she said. Todd asked for a divorce, but Barnett was already pregnant by that time.Īlthough Todd contends that the marriage began to crumble because of his wife’s erratic behavior, Roth said Todd had not wanted to keep the pregnancy. “It could be nothing and it could be nothing but screaming and yelling and throwing pots.” “I never knew what was going to face me when I came through the door after work,” he said. Todd said he was unsettled by his wife’s frequent mood swings. The pair married in December 1991, but the romance soon started to sour. We wanted the picket fence,” her friend and fellow flight attendant Patty Roth told Seven Network Australia in a clip obtained by “Dateline” of the early days of the courtship. “Lee and I both wanted marriage, we wanted children, we wanted animals.

“When she’s at her best, she’s a very vivacious and attractive and alluring person,” Todd said of what drew him to the beautiful flight attendant.īarnett was also smitten and had been looking to settle down and begin a family. The romance between Todd, a financial advisor, and Barnett began full of promise. Then, nearly two decades after Savanna disappeared, Todd received an email that would blow the case wide open and finally lead to the answers Todd had spent years of his life trying to find.
#Dateline secrets uncovered smoke and mirrors free
Watch More 'Dateline' Episodes In Our Free App “Losing you took most of the life out of me,” he said in one video, adding, “And I - sometimes I feel like I’m already dead and just haven’t fallen over yet.” With only an empty crib, some home movies, and the memories of his daughter, Todd filmed messages for Savanna as the years stretched on. “The most important thing in my life was taken from me,” Todd told “Dateline: Secrets Uncovered,” airing Thursdays at 8/7c on Oxygen, describing the realization she was gone as “instant horror.”įor nearly two decades, Todd would tirelessly search for his daughter - even recruiting the help of former “America’s Most Wanted” host John Walsh to film a public service announcement pleading for Savanna’s return.įBI investigators were unable to determine how Barnett, a former flight attendant, had gotten out of the country or where she might be living. His child, Savanna, disappeared, alongside Todd’s ex-wife, Dorothy Lee Barnett, in April 1994 during a weekend visitation with her mother, leaving few clues to her whereabouts.

Watch Dateline: Secrets Uncovered Peacock and the Oxygen App.
