Page 20 - Geri Smith News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

See me the very next day, which she was very anxious and happy to do. i asked her to bring 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 t...

Because i really thought i was blessed. >> first it was renee she looked after. then renee and pepper and then two years later little brother raymond leonard smith jr. wait. brother? it wasn't just the two girls. there was a younger brother the girls never knew they had. the father wasn't around very much. geri supported them all with what she could make as a waitress. and shirley made a change, a positive one, it seemed, at least financially. >> she got this job supposedly at the motel managing, which was further from where i worked. so i arranged with her to watch the kids while i worked. >>...

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 strange men pass by their car until the night when, terrified and unable to sleep, renee ...

Was happening to us was completely wrong at a very, very young age. >> why had she been taken? she didn't know. not for money, certainly. there were no ransom demands. and without pepper's birth certificate, shirley couldn't use her to score public assistance. though she did use renee that way. frightened, compliant renee, eager for a mother's love, even if that mother figure was shirley. >> i never wanted to do anything wrong. i felt like if i did something wrong or whatever, she wouldn't love me. she would give me away. >> wouldn't love me? shirley told her, says renee, she was born to a pro...

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 our program. >> i saw the picture of shirley and went crazy. i was hysterical because 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'm getting old. and it was like a mir...