with everything. and you know? so, it really, really show that everything that she s given to them, they re givin back to her. reporter: word of lee s capture had reached charleston savanna was flooded with supportive e-mails and phone calls from lee s former friend and from family. she had often wondered about her relatives i the united states, like he grandmother and her uncle. now suddenly, she was meeting them for what seemed like the ver first time beautiful house and m beautiful granddaughter. hi. oh my goodness. looks lik her mommy did. reporter: now, the bigges reunion of all seemed like i was about to happen, too. le was in an australian jai fighting extradition back to the u. s., and the man she wanted to keep away from savanna all those years wa just a few miles away asking t meet his long-lost daughter. the fbi interviewed m daughter and they informed her of me. i was told that she was
it did, yes. mm-hmm reporter: harris hire private detectives to check ou the lead. what was the repor you got from the detectives? they found absolutely nothing. you know, they checke everything out. they wen everywhere and they never foun the little girl, for tha matter reporter: perhaps lee and savanna had been there and left. or maybe it wasn t the at all. either way, it was another dead end you run through the cycle o excitement and disappointmen enough times and you just say, well, look, do you really want to put yourself through that again? because there s a wealt of pain associated with this and i can only dip into it s often and survive. reporter: how much do you think you ve spent on your search i spent everything i had an everything i could borrow. graham sturgis, my attorney, told me that i better quit
other still professing love fo diane, but one of them still defiantly lying about having killed her that is all for this editio of dateline. i m craig melville, thank yo for watching hello, i m craig melvin, an this is dateline he said it s like a blood movie, and it is, it s just so intense and so deep. you go through all these range of emotions that you don t know, you know? that was the first time i started to hear about m life. i could have been an entirely different person. it was a mind-bogglin mystery for almost 20 years, and she was at the center. i m john walsh. 1-year-ol savanna lee barnett is missing from isle of palms, sout carolina a child who suddenl vanished the most important thing in my life was taken from me. jus
reporter: that maybe this i real yes, yeah reporter: the e-mail wa from a couple living in a beac town on the sunshine coast o australia. they claimed to hav known lee and savanna for more than 12 years. harri immediately wrote back do you have any pictures? anything that you could send m to corroborate this? it s horrible thing to have to admi that i have no idea what m daughter would look like a this age reporter: but you would kno what your ex-wife would look like i would reporter: the photo arrived a couple of days later and there was no doubt. that was his ex-wife, dorothy lee barnett. and there on th opposite side stood a tall girl, nearly a woman. would that be savanna on the left? , harris asked. hi, harris, the couple wrote, that beautiful girl on th left is indeed your daughter savanna. were you just floored? completely floored. you know, how wonderful is it to have picture of your grown daughter to just see, you know, how pretty she is and she had a b
savanna and i were in the yard, and it was a warm day, and she was barefoot walking o the grass. reporter: what do you hea on this phone call the judge awarding me full, sole custody reporter: harris was to emotionally depleted from th vicious custody battle to jump for joy, but he was surprise by what he suddenly felt that overwhelming sense t protect and care for a child. didn t anticipate the depth. reporter: were you feelin an intense bond with savanna a this point oh, tremendous. i d never been happier in my entire life reporter: but lee was reeling from the verdict tha allowed her to see savanna onl every other weekend. the judge wrote in his ruling that the psychological and emotiona problems experienced by th mother, if left untreated, wil create conflict and havoc in the child s life she was angry. she though it was corrupt reporter: babs mccambridg