Page 7 - Pepper Smith News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Told her nothing. she left the lies behind and took the truth to her grave. on july 29th, 1986, at the age of 63. she was buried here, this cemetery, in an unmarked grave. renee, now 19, got on with life, moved in with her boyfriend. soon pepper showed up at their apartment, homeless and nowhere else to turn to. and everywhere pepper went from then on, shirley's poison gift followed. because of that woman and what she did, pepper was officially, at least, a nonperson. so it took a little while for determination to come back. she was in her mid-20s, a single mother by then. if only she could fi...

Both of them. and they drifted one dump to another across any number of state lines for years. and then some time in the early '80s they settled down, here. shirley pulled up to this motel in los angeles county and took a job at the motel's cleaning woman in exchange for a free room. and if it wasn't much, at least it gave them some measure of stability. and they signed up at a local school, junior high for pepper, high school for renee. much to shirley's disapproval. >> shirley would tell us, girls don't go to school. they get married. why do you want to go to school? i didn't like being late...

That she was sick? >> she turned completely yellow when they diagnosed her with pancreatic cancer and she literally died quickly after that. >> with shirley on her death bed, pepper tried to act like the dutiful daughter, went to see her regularly, tried to make her comfortable. but there was another terribly important reason to see her then. maybe the most important. one last opportunity to find out who she was. as she was dying, did you try to find, do you know, maybe she'd make a deathbed confession and say, i did take you and here are what your parents' names are and how to find them. any ...

Thanksgiving, her there with me. >> and pepper? well, for one thing, pepper has adopted her real birth name, the one that her parents gave her before it was lost in the abductions and the documents, it's ronique. ronique smith. >> i feel very content, finding out who i am, finding my mom, and my real identity and my biological father, and the fixtures of him and all of the exciting things going on. but i think it's not over yet. i don't feel that the journey is quite over yet. it is just starting. this part of it is just starting. >> so it is, because of course, one of them is still missing. ...

Shirley told pepper that renee was her sister. the two girls listened wide-eyed as shirley explained to strangers that she was their grandmother. that their parents had been killed in a car accident. >> i knew that everything that 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 moth...