Man Finds Himself On Missing Kids Site

Steve Carter knew he was adopted, but he says he didn’t care about his birth parents until he got married and started thinking about having children.

Raised in New Jersey and Philadelphia, Carter always knew there was something off about his own story, he told CBS News. Carter’s birth certificate wasn’t issued until roughly a year after he was born, and in spite of Carter’s blue eyes and blond hair, it listed him as half Hawaiian.

After reading a story about Carlina White, an Atlanta woman who discovered her own photo on a missing children’s website, Carter visited the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children website, according to CNN.

That’s when he saw a picture of a 5-month-old missing baby named Marx Panama Barnes, and a composite photo representing what he might look like as an adult.

“My first thought was, ‘Oh my God, that’s me,'” Carter told CBS.

The profile said the baby in the photo was born within a day form Carter’s birthday, and listed the same birthplace.

Carter told CBS he emailed a copy of the picture to his adoptive mother, who recognized him right away.

“She’s like, ‘Oh my God, that’s you,'” Carter recalled. “And I was like, ‘That’s what I thought.'”

But Carter’s parents adopted him when he was four years old and weren’t told anything about him being a missing child.

Carter’s biological mother, who suffered from mental illness, gave him up for adoption under a different name and said a Hawaiian man was the biological father, changing his race on the registration form.

It was discovered that Carter’s biological mother, Charlotte Moriarty, told Carter’s father that she was taking the child for a walk and never returned. Carter, whose real name was Marx Panama Moriarty Barnes, was reported missing but authorities weren’t able to crack the case, says CNN.

Carter believes Moriarty told the orphanage his name was Tenzin Amea when Moriarty gave him up for adoption in the late 1970s, and at the time, there were no networked databases or DNA tests that could have proven Carter’s identity.

A year after finding his photo on the missing children’s site in 2012, Carter received the results of a DNA test that verified he was the son of Mark Barnes. Mark, who lives in North Carolina, said it was the first time he’d heard his son’s voice in over three decades when Steve contacted him.

“He introduced himself over the phone,” Mark told CBS. “And I was absolutely, positively, thunderstruck and amazed. And we just sort of, in an hour of conversation, tried to catch up on 32 years.”

According to CBS News, Moriarty “vanished without a trace” after being checked into a psychiatric hospital.

“Not one day went by when I wasn’t — he wasn’t in my thoughts,” Barnes added.

Carter was left having to settle 10 different names, two birthdays, and three birth certificates.

Sources: CBS News, CNN / Photo credit: Handout and MissingKids.com via Daily Mail