Page 17 - Geri Smith News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Had described her. >> yes, i heard what they said about me. i was not a street walker. i was a waitress all my life. >> you also said you didn't really want your children. you were happy to abandon them. >> i never abandoned my children. never. ever. and would never, ever do that. >> and she wasn't a drug addict either, she says. she's not had a smooth or easy life. and for much of it, she has missed her children and blamed herself for what happened. trusting shirley? >> yes. >> and for not having those kids under your wing all the time? >> i felt like it was my fault because i put them -- >> ...

>> yeah, many times. we'd do something wrong, and she would say, well, you stop doing that or i'm going to send you off to geri's house. >> and so they lived a life of packing up and fleeing state to state one flop house to the next searching for the cheapest place to stay and then skip out of. hunger constant. medical care, nonexistent. when money ran out, as it often did, shirley drove to the nearest truck stop. the girls would bed down in the car and watch shirley sneak off to do -- well, they didn't know. and alone and frightened, they held on to each other and watched the shadows of stran...

She was very anxious and happy to do. i asked her to bring me whatever evidence she had. >> in that meeting, the woman presented her evidence. >> she brought some photos that she had of pepper and renee when they were very little. >> she told allred she had been a waitress when the girls were little. brought a photo of that, too, and a picture of shirley and also a photo of a man she said was the girls' father, long since dead. she said her name was geri. >> i asked her immediately, geri, would you be willing to do a dna test? she said i'll take the dna test. but these are my children. i know ...

Confirmed. >> i can't believe this is actually happening. >> how soon could they meet geri, the sisters wanted to know. and what's she like? how did she know shirley? we arranged a reunion for the next day. geri arrived first and told us how she saw the long lost girls on the program. >> i saw the picture of shirley and went crazy. i knew who she was. and then when i saw the girls, i knew they were mine. >> after how -- all those years? >> 37 years. there they are. >> what did that feel like? >> it felt great. i had been hoping to find my children before i die because i was getting old and tha...

Where was he now? geri gave us a copy of the birth certificate and he seemed about 40 now. and our chances of finding him seemed, frankly, slim. we called 40-year-old ray smiths all over the country. ray smith in colorado and ray smith in maryland, new jersey, kansas, but did he go by the name ray smith? and then a call back. it was the ray smith from colorado. he had the right name, the right age, and place of birth and had grown up without knowing any blood relatives. all this ray smith knew was his mother's name, which according to his birth certificate, it was geri. he was starting to soun...