instant horror of where is she what had happened to baby savanna? the answer would come decades later and astonish the world. it happened so fast, couldn t fathom what was going on imagine, your mother fugitive. your father stranger. your home, your name your past was any of it real? the first thing i felt, jus a pit in my stomach. i jus felt like it was my fault. a mother s crime. a father pain what kinds of emotions di it stir up when you would se that crib? it would just make me cry a daughter forced to face the shattering truth i was shocked and i was jus terrified. hello and welcome t dateline a father left childless and daughter left questioning he very identity. it was a case that started as custody battle, but turned int an international mystery tha spanned two decades and took investigators nearly 10,00 miles around the world all driven by a determined dad searching for answers and hi daughter here s andrea canning with finding savanna. in
they searched the internet and discovered lee s secret. they re real detectives. i think so. reporter: they figured it out. they tracked you down and then, essentially knowing the wrath that the would face if my ex-wife eve found out that they did it they went ahead anyway. they told me, we feel like you have a right to know your daughter. reporter: harris gave the couple s information to fb agent ed klimas. and now tha they knew lee s alias, the fbi was finally able to figure out how she had left the u. s. without being detected. she ha set her abduction plan i motion by getting a fake birth certificate about two months before taking savanna. dorothy lee barnett goes to become a fictitious person named alexandria maria canton. she went to texas to obtain texas driver s license, then used the information from that to obtain a united state passport. what we learned wa
reporter: time marched on harris continued working as financial adviser at merrill lynch. he had a fe relationships, but he neve remarried. after ten years, th fbi assigned a new agent, ed klimas, to the case, but nothing new turned up. i believe that the chance of success for this case wer probably very slim at that point. that they had disappeared to a foreign country that we would never be able to locate them. reporter: about the onl thing that changed were th images on the missing person posters. from the baby harri had loved, to a computer simulated image of a teen he barely recognized. if i die before i wake from this nightmare - reporter: he d stoppe filming his messages to savann long ago, but he wrote one las poem and please do keep an eye out across the fields. watch the end of the long driveway someday my daughter will b there asking for me.
they went ahead anyway. they told me, we feel like you have a right to know your daughter. reporter: harris gave the couple s information to fbi agent ed klimas. and now that they knew lee s alias, the fbi was finally able to figure out how she had left the u. s. without being detected. she had set her abduction plan in motion by getting a fake birth certificate about two months before taking savanna. dorothy lee barnett goes to become a fictitious person named alexandria maria canton. she went to texas to obtain a texas driver s license, then used the information from that to obtain a united states passport. what we learned was she had left the united states, went to malaysia, and then from malaysia went to south africa where she met geldenhuys. from there, in 1999, she moved to botswana. in 2003, she moved out to new zealand. and then after a couple of years, she
fbi assigned a new agent, ed klimas, to the case, but nothing new turned up. i believe that the chances of success for this case were probably very slim at that point. that they had disappeared to a foreign country that we would never be able to locate them. reporter: about the only thing that changed were the images on the missing persons posters. from the baby harris had loved, to a computer simulated image of a teen he barely recognized. if i die before i wake from this nightmare reporter: he d stopped filming his messages to savanna long ago, but he wrote one last poem. and please do keep an eye out across the fields. watch the end of the long driveway. someday my daughter will be there asking for me. reporter: had you given up? no, but one has to face reality. i mean you just say, well, look, here it is. she s