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 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 prostitute drug addict named geri. that shirley saved baby renee, raised her as a daughter. but kept renee in line by threatening to abandon her. did she ever threaten to do that?
story about pepper smith and her lifelong journey to find her family, her identity, it was a friday night in march, 2011, and the following monday morning. my office received a call, and then i received an e-mail. attorney gloria allred found herself looking at a remarkable message. she had been helping the two sisters deal with their identity issues. there it was, a message on her blackberry. when i looked at the e-mail, i just couldn t even believe it. i looked at it about three times. am i really seeing this? it was a woman claiming to be the biological mother of both pepper and rene, claiming to be the woman who, according to shirley and barbara, was a child abandoning drug addict prostitute, probably dead. could this woman really be their mother? hardly a claim allred could take
as shirley explained to strangers 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 rene that way. frightened, compliant rene, 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 and she would give me away. wouldn t love me? shirley told her, says rene, that she was born to a prostitute drug addict named gerry, that shirley saved baby rene, raised her as a daughter, but kept rene in line by threatening to abandon her.
a little fun. they would stay with shirley in her los angeles motel room and return the next morning. that was the plan, said shirley. but shirley lied. we got in the car and we never went back. and my life completely changed from that point on. completely. this woman took you away. yes, and this was our you weren t taken home again? no, i never went back again. do you remember that feeling? yes, it was i wanted to go home. she had been kidnapped, must have been. there was no little girls overnight in shirley s motel room. they stopped there only to pack some belongings, hit the road, and a blissful childhood entered the fog of mystery, the memory of the beautiful bedroom. all she had to confront the nightmare just beginning. coming up, a 4-year-old on the road with her kidnapper. i knew that everything happening to us was completely wrong at a very young age.
occurrence. she would whip us with the belt, slap us, verbally cuss at us, verbally abuse us. and threaten to send you away. right. i just took the belt because it just if you take it it s hard to explain, but if you just take it, it she gets out of the rage faster so to speak. they went to school when they could, made very few friends and lost the ones they did make. struggled to be ordinary kids and then normal teenagers. all i wanted to be is loved, that s it. and i never got any kind of love that i wanted. instead, they were trapped. truck stop nomads with a woman who kidnapped one, if not boeing of them. they drifted across any number of state lines for years. and some time in the early 80s they settled down here. shirley pulled up to this motel