30 Years After His Adoption, A Man Sees His Own Face On A Missing Persons List

After more research, this is what he found: On June 21, 1977, Mark Barnes, a Vietnam War veteran who was working as a journalist at the time, was gardening outside his home in Hau’ula, on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, when his girlfriend, an artist named Charlotte Moriarty, said she was taking their six-year-old son, Marx, on a walk around the neighborhood.

Charlotte, who had a reputation for being a free spirit, never returned. After three weeks, Mark finally called authorities to report his son and girlfriend missing. Unsurprisingly, the police struggled to find any traces of their whereabouts.

Devastated, Mark spent over a year searching for his missing partner and son all over Hawaii. He didn’t want to give up hope, but he had no way of knowing for sure that his son was alive, living a new life in a completely different part of the globe, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth.

Because the truth was when Charlotte and Marx went on that fateful walk, they weren’t just strolling around the neighborhood. They made their way to the opposite end of Oahu, where a resident saw them loitering and called the police.

Carissagalardo / Wikimedia Commons

Once the police officers showed up, Charlotte made up fake names for herself and her son: Jane Amea for herself, and Tenzin Amea for her son. She even provided a fabricated birthday for the boy. By the time Mark reported his girlfriend and child missing three weeks later, police couldn’t make any connection.