she knows she was not yet five that someone came to the door with a plan. i remember a woman coming over and knocking on the door. her name was shirley. a friend of her mother s she said. she said she brought renee with her. renee was 6. a little older then. it didn t matter. they dashed off to her bedroom to play. this is renee now. that room is stuck in her memory, too. her room was gorgeous. a nice-sized room for a little kid. she had a canopy bed. she ha tons of dresses, toys, galore. i was like wow, this is nice. an alien world to renee. the most wonderful thing she had ever seen. while the little girls played in the bedroom. shirley was with bobby in the living room talking and then she called renee. when it was time to leave, i didn t want to go. i said can we stay longer. but your new friend is coming with us. i said okay. she came and that s how
both of you. i could never not love you. i was so mad at you. i m sure you were. i was so mad at you. i thought you gave me away. no. they spent hours together here talking about their pasts. their likes and their likes and dislikes. their amazing similarities. we gave them a few weeks to get to know each other, and then sat down again with pepper and renee. so there it is. you have your mother, but what now? are you will you have a relationship with her? well, we re going to move her in with me. move into your house? yes, yes, once she gets all her affairs in order. we re going to move her in. why? because i want her. my husband wants her, too, there, so. i want to have a relationship with my mom. like i was telling you earlier, i want to go shopping.
welcome back to dateline extra. a 4-year-old girl is kidnapped from her home, taken from the only life she knew by a woman who told her she d be going on a sleepover with a playmate for just one night. that one night turned into a terrifying odyssey that wouldn t end for many, many nights to come. here again is keith morrison. the story you ll hear now lives in the vivid so real you could touch them memories of two frightened girls. it began in a down market motel whose l.a. neighborhood was most decidedly not child friendly. it was to be a one night sleepover with new friend renee. instead the adult who brought her here, a woman named shirley, simply didn t take her home again. instead, she packed some belongings, put the girls in the car and hit the road. where did they go?
smith who didn t want her babies and one day shirley showed up at barbara s house with a 3-month-old baby she called rhonda patricia smith. barbara could see it was a little iffy but she wanted that baby so badly. and so she said she ignored the red flags. nope, didn t care. didn t really care. she was going to see to it, she said, that rhonda was loved and cared for by the best parents she could ever possibly have. bob and barbara legally adopted their little princess four years later in the fall of 1973. and it was shortly after that, said barbara, when shirley and renee showed up at her door. and the kids played together, and we visited together, and she asked if rhonda could come spend the night with renee. and took me awhile to get an answer to that. i really had to think about that
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 to school. i didn t like being absent all the time. so they got themselves up every morning and went to school and kept going. and then, pepper was 12. eight of those years with shirley when she saw her chance to escape and seized it. she made herself useful as a babysitter for the couple next door in room 109. and when the family moved out of the motel, pepper went with them. but it didn t last long. pepper s new household caught in its own spiral of alcoholism and