February 26, 2026 • 53 mins
This is part 1 of a 2-part series. Embroiled in a hellish custody battle over her 9-month-old daughter, Lee Barnett made a surprising and criminal decision, to leave the life she'd known behind and start a new one, as an international fugitive.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
The claims and opinions in this podcast are those of
the speaker and do not necessarily represent the Knife or
exactly right media.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
What is it?
Speaker 3 (00:15):
He says, I can't take medicine I'm pregnant, because oh no,
this will be really good for you. And he prescribed
me naving and Harris who called me every day, and Gil,
you take in your medicine with a good little girl.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Welcome to the Knife. I'm Hannah Smith, I'm Patia Eaton.
And this week we have part one of a two
part series, and part two will air next week. We
speak with Lee Barnett, who for many years was only
known as the woman who kidnapped her own child and disappeared,
leading to an international FBI manhunt, and then almost twenty
years later and her now adult daughter were located and
(01:02):
Lee was arrested.
Speaker 4 (01:04):
Lee Barnett joins us to tell us her side of
the story. Over these two episodes, Lee tells us about
the events leaning up to her disappearance, why she felt
she had no choice, and what she did all those
years on the run. Let's get into the interview.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Let's just start off by having you introduce yourself whatever
name you want to use, maybe Lee, since that's what
you go by, now, is that correct?
Speaker 2 (01:31):
I always introduced myself as overseas, I'm known by Alex S.
Galden Hughes.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
In the US, I'm known by Lee Barnett and also
have a prison number two by the FBI. So yeah,
Lee Barnett in the United States is what I go by.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Okay, great, So tell us about that chapter in your life.
Right before all of this started, I was.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Living down in Belize because I kind of grew up
off and on there. I went to Africa for a
long time. I'm with my best friend and moved back
to the States. And when we got back from Africa,
I got hired by Piedmont Airlines back then, and so
I started working with the airlines became US Air so
I was a flight attendant with them, and then I
invested some money and that's how I met my future husband, Harris,
(02:19):
because he was working for Marrill Lynch. I met him
at about nineteen eighty six when I went to invest
some money with him in Charleston, South Carolina. We were
just friends. He's very aloof and I'm the opposite. So
I always try and pull people out of their aloofness,
and so I started asking the cocktail parties at my
(02:41):
mother's house and just I have a lot of guy
friends because I do a lot of guy things, and
I kind of included him and everything. If he needed
a date to something formal, then he would ask me.
And we just went as friends for about four years.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
And how did that end up going from the friend
zone to something else? Yes?
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Well, I was.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Dating a Swiss pilot guy and he was quite volatile,
and Harris convinced me into coming out to his house
just to get away from this person. And one thing
led to another, and then he told me how he
felt and I was shocked, and then we got into
a relationship from there.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
Were there good times in the beginning, and are you
able to share any of those with us?
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Yeah, we had a lot of good times.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
I mean, hindsight, I saw that I was being isolated
from everybody. He had ten acres, nobody was allowed to
come out there without asking him first. But we did
have a lot of fun and I kind of got
him out of his hole and got him down to blize,
actually showed him where I grew up as a child
and took him to the ruins, took him to Guatemala.
(03:47):
We had a lot of fun when it came to
things like that. But he lived a very isolated life
and I had.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
To be a part of that.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
And at the time I thought it was because he
loved me so much and he wanted me for himself.
And you know, my friends were very, very nervous about
the whole situation.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Lee and Harris were two very different people. According to Lee,
Harris liked to live a very organized and controlled life. Lee,
on the other hand, was used to living a more
spontaneous life full of travel and adventure. In fact, traveling
was something she'd grown up with. Lee technically was raised
in Summerville, outside of Charleston, but when she talks about
(04:27):
her childhood, it sounds like they never stayed in one
place for very long.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
So my dad died when I was four months old,
My brother was three, my other brother was four. Mom
just started living kind of this almost hippyish life. I
spent first grade in Somerville, Charleston, and then we moved
to Ormond Beach full time. Prior to that, when I
was three and four, we lived in the Keys because
Mom would just pack us up and off we'd go.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
So I've lived in Ormond.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
All through second grade till twelfth grade, but we spent
every summer, in most every Christmas down and Believes, which
used to be British on Duras back in the sixties.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Despite their differences, Lee and Harris continued to date, but
Lee admits it was never a smooth or easy relationship.
There were always bumps in the road.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Harris, it was known by everybody that he didn't want children,
couldn't stand being around him, didn't want them.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
I wanted children.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
So we dated for about a year, but we kept
breaking up and we called it our Friday Night breakup
because the seriousness of him.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Not wanting children and me wanting them always seemed to.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Come up on a Friday night, and then we'd get
upset and we'd both be, you know, sad, and we
ended up getting back together. And it was this very
immature thing on both of our parts, especially mine, I suppose,
And then all of a sudden he decided to want
to get married. And because you know, so it's part
of trying to heal somebody whose women all try to do.
(05:53):
But it's also where I was missing out on something, thinking, hey,
I must be special of all the people, and you
know he wants to marry me. So it was kind
of the combination. It was very wrong in the first place,
but we got married.
Speaker 4 (06:07):
So you got married understanding that he did not want children, yes, and.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
He got married on understanding that I seriously wanted children.
So it was kind of a bad combination to begin with.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
In December of nineteen ninety one, Lee and Harris got married.
Lee recalls that she was thirty one years old at
the time and Harris was thirty nine.
Speaker 4 (06:30):
And so you guys are married in the early nineties then,
and tell us about those first years of marriage.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Well, there wasn't even years. I was on the pill.
I was having all kind of problems with flying with
the airlines, like had super stolen lymph nodes.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
It thought I had Hodgkins disease.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
Hindsight, I find out fifteen years later it was diagnosed
as severe allergies. But they said, oh, you shouldn't be
on the pill. So I got off the pill and
he was going to take care of everything, and then
I ended up getting pregnant after seven months of marriage.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Was it a surprise to you? When you found out
you were pregnant.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
I had no idea it was pregnant.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
He knew that you would stopped taking the pill, and
there was some conversation that he was gonna get a
vsectomy or something.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
He wouldn't get an aseectomy. He refused to.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
So you weren't using any kind of birth control.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Except for his rhythm methody.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Okay, I see.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
So you were like, Okay, I'm vaguely aware of my
cycle and we're going with that.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
I was, well, yeah, I didn't really pay much attention
to my cycle.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
But I was not you know.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
I was like, okay, that's what you want to do,
you know, you know, condoms or things like that. But
he wasn't interested in that evidently.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
I see, Wow, what was the moment of finding out
you were pregnant at home test?
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yeah, I think that's what happened.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
And then I went to my guyacologist and then he
did a blood test and he said, yes, you're pregnant,
and you know that normal elation of body has I
just had pure fear.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
I knew it was going to be really bad.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
And every single person I called, all of my best friends,
any family members, The only thing they said was, oh
my god, how is Harris.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Wow?
Speaker 3 (08:13):
So there was never like congratulations or whatever. And so
I was scared, but it also knew, you know, there's
no way I'm going to abort my child.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
So that wasn't even a thought in my mind.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
What were you scared of?
Speaker 3 (08:27):
I was scared I'd lose him. And you know, it's
a stupid thing, because I really really loved him. I
was afraid of that. I was never afraid of what
happened would happen. It didn't ever ever come to my
mind that he could be that diabolical. I just didn't
know that. I just thought, Okay, that's the end of it.
Speaker 4 (08:46):
Sounds like you tell close friends and family members. When
and how do you go about telling Harris?
Speaker 3 (08:52):
The first time I said it, before I went to
get the blood test, I only did the go to
the bathroom on the stick one and I said, I
have a feeling I'm pregnant, and he said that's okay,
we can just have an abortion, and I said, I
don't want an abortion. Then I did the stick and
found that I was like the next day and I
told him, and he's totally cold. He just turned away,
(09:14):
walked out of the house. Then he told me it
was a fate worse than death, and I went, ooh,
not going well, and then we just kind of tiptoed
around everything. He told me he was repulsed by pregnant women.
I now, this is really early early on. So I
started sleeping in the spare bedroom, thinking he's going to
come right. And I had friends over who had children,
(09:35):
you know, to try and get them to say how
great it is and whatever.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
And it just wasn't working. It wasn't working. And then
I miscarried.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
We were at a baby shower for a coworker and
I just started profusely bleeding and I said, Harris, I
didn't want to scare all the other women. I said,
we got to go. Got home and it was just blood,
and then a big plot came out in the toilet.
I called my guy to collogist straight away, and it
was Sunday, so he said, honey, there's nothing I can
(10:05):
do for you now. It was very early on. He said,
come in and see me tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Lee had some blood work done at her guyn incologist's
office and it was sent off to the lab. She'd
have to wait for the results. It was a holiday weekend,
and Lee went home believing she was no longer pregnant.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
So I had to wait for so long, you know,
to get the test back. So for all that time,
I thought I wasn't pregnant, and Harris was the kindest
person to me.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
There was nothing, you know.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Meantime, I hadn't spoken to me for two months, and
I had to sleep in the other bedroom. And now
he's back to his loving, kind sweet thing. And then
I got the answer machine recording. I'll never forget pushing it.
Doctor Rumble said, I can't believe this, but you're still pregnant.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Somehow, Lee was still pregnant, and while she was elated,
she also had a sinking feeling. She knew that her
husband would not be happy. According to Lee, when she
told Harris that she was still pregnant, he turned and
walked right out of the house.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
And so as your pregnancy progressed, how did Harris and
his response change from there?
Speaker 1 (11:17):
If at all I.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
Had to sleep in the other room, he wouldn't touch me.
I guess it was about when I was doing a
half months pregnant. It's right on the borderline of the abortion.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Time.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
I came home and I just said, oh, I just
saw a really cute church. I said, I think we
should see about joining, and he goes, you know, I'm
an atheist and I'm.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Not a very religious person either of I said, well,
we're going to.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Have a family now, it'd be really nice to join.
So I just drove by this really cute place and
he said, we are not going to be a family.
He was sitting on the floor watching a baseball game.
He said, you're going to have an abortion. And I
picked up.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
The coffee table.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
It was a long coffee table by the end, and
I dropped it and I said, I am not having
an abortion.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
And then I went to.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Spare bedroom and woke up the next morning he was gone.
And that was the end of that.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
That was the end of your relationship.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Yeah, he never came back. He wanted me out of
his house and I didn't leave. And that was the
next biggest mistake I made.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Why didn't you leave?
Speaker 3 (12:18):
I told everybody if I left and he changed his mind,
I would never be able to forgive him. If I
stayed there and he changed his mind, then I could
get over what he's done. And so I thought within time,
and seeing the pregnancy progress, you know, and things like that,
and people trying to speak sense to him that maybe
he would change his mind.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
So the relationship, he's gone. You're still in the house,
but you're continuing on with your pregnancy.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Yeah, Harris walked out October fifteenth, nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Lee has long maintained that it was the pregnancy and
her refusal to have an abortion that created this rift
in their marriage. On an episode of forty eight Hours,
a close friend of Lee's is interviewed, and she said
she was also aware that Harris did not want children.
She also said she urged Lee not to marry Harris
in the first place. Now, I want to note this
(13:14):
is Lee's account. We did not speak to Harris for
this episode, but according to court documents, which we'll get
into later, Harris offered a very different explanation as to
why the marriage fell apart. In interviews, he has also
said he never asked Lee to have an abortion. What
becomes clear very quickly is that Lee and Harris tell
(13:35):
fundamentally different stories about their relationship, about the pregnancy, about
what went wrong and who is to blame, And as
the legal battle unfolds, those differences only get bigger, Lee
will face allegations. She says she never could have imagined
she will walk into a courtroom that, to her feels
like a nightmare. Looking back now, she says, if she'd
(13:58):
known what was coming, she would have made different choices.
Maybe she wouldn't have been so focused on trying to
repair a marriage that was already fracturing. But back in
the winter of nineteen ninety two, as Lee's pregnancy progressed,
she still held onto this hope of creating a loving
family with Harris, of raising this baby together.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
I thought he was just licking his wounds, trying to
come right, you know. I tried to show him the
ultrasound results. He called the police on me. I met
him at a restaurant.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
Did you know he was at the restaurant or did
you show up a meeting there?
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Okay, he said he would meet me there.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
I said I had something to show him, which is
going to be the because he kept telling me there's
no baby over and over again, even as big as
I was, so, I was so excited about the ultrasound pictures.
So we were sitting down and I pulled him out
and he just went nuts. And he's like that doesn't
prove anything. He took off, threw some money on the table,
and it was raining, and he went and jumped in
(14:58):
his car, and I tried to get in the passenger's side,
and he said, I'm calling the police, and he starts
calling the police and I'm standing out there in the rain,
and then the police came up.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
How did he call the police? Did he have a
cell phone?
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Yes, he did, he had one of those car ones.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Oh wowah, the big, big old car ones. I don't
think he called in the restaurant now. I think he
was one of the first people that had those big,
chunky things.
Speaker 4 (15:22):
And so when the police show up, Harris has told
them what he said.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
I'm attacking him. I'm bothering.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
I'm following him everywhere, and I'm like, no, I met
him at the restaurant, you know, and I'm holding my
little ultrasound pictures for the police to see, and I said,
I just want to show him there is a baby.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
There is a baby.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
And they told him to leave, and they sat there
and talked to me for a few minutes and they
were just really sweet.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
You know, this period of time, I want to ask
because it's clear that things were becoming more and more
tense between you and Harris, and it sounds like you
still had this hope or belief that like may be
something on work out, and you were like fighting for that,
and he was clearly holding to his stance that he
(16:06):
was very anti having a baby. And you know that
you wouldn't be a family if you were't gonna have
an abortion. He wasn't going to be a part of this.
You know. Later he would go on to say things
and accuse you of physical violence and an uncontrollable temper
and talk about this time in your relationship is being
very volatile. You know, what can you tell us about that?
Speaker 3 (16:30):
The only time we ever had any fight was prior
to all this. We were in bonn Air. We're walking
down the beach and nice To been telling him a
story about some sailboat and Harris was very proud of
his He said, his greatest weapon in the world is
his language, because he's incredibly bright. And he interrupted me,
(16:53):
and I was telling him, I said, why do you
always interrupt me? And he said, because the stupid words
that come out of your mouth and the stupid things
you say, I just can't take it.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Something to that effect. And I just said I've had it.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
And we get back to the hotel, and I said,
the things I say might not be as articulate as you,
however they're meaningful to me because he'd always use words
that nobody could understand. So I get up to the
room and he kept right behind me, just going at me,
and I kept walking away from him, walking away. I
went into the bathroom and he pushed the bathroom open
(17:26):
and bathroom door open, and then I just said, just
leave me alone, and I turned around and I slapped him,
And like an idiot, I told everybody that because I
just don't keep any secrets, I slapped him one time.
Then the other time, when he first told me I
had to have an abortion, I went out on the
porch and I just had these pots that I'd put
flowers in, and I pushed them off the porch, and
(17:48):
then the coffee table. And those are the only three
things that ever happened. If anybody, he was very abusive
physically to me one time.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Harris has portrayed Lee in court documents and in interviews
as angry and volatile. Lee, for her part, has described
Harris as controlling, cruel, and at least once physically violent.
What follows is messy, contentious, the kind of unraveling where
allegations pile up and clarity becomes harder to find. The
(18:21):
line between truth and exaggeration starts to blur depending on
who you ask. It becomes kind of a classic, he said,
she said, And in a court room that can be
a tipping point, because ultimately someone will be believed and
someone will not. For Lee, the months leading up to
the divorce trial were incredibly stressful. With every filing, every accusation,
(18:46):
the walls seem to close in tighter, pushing her toward
a future that will feel so impossible she'll eventually decide
the only way out is to run. Lee has claimed
(19:08):
there was one time when Harris was physically violent with her.
She says it happened when she was about seven months pregnant,
and that her friend Patricia was witnessed to it.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
So I had a girlfriend over who just had a baby,
so she came over. Her car wasn't there, and he
slammed me up against his car, and he pulled his
hand back to hit me, and then he stopped, and
my girlfriend was inside and she was so scared for
her baby and herself that she went and hid in
the bedroom and he either got a glimpse of her
(19:42):
in there or something, and he just stopped.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
This incident that Lee is talking about was discussed at
the trial. In February of nineteen ninety four. Lee's friend
Patricia was called to the stand and she described that incident,
which had occurred about a year prior, around February of
nineteen ninety three, when Lee was still pregnant. Patricia says
that she was a reluctant witness to an encounter between
(20:06):
Lee and Harris. At the time, Patricia was visiting Lee,
helping her paint the nursery when a car pulled up.
It was Harris, and according to Patricia, Lee turned to
her and said that Harris was supposed to call before
coming by, but he had not called, so Lee left
the house to see what he wanted. Patricia became worried
(20:27):
for Lee, so she went into the kitchen to look
through the window to see what was happening outside. In
her testimony, she says, quote I saw Lee in a
very vulnerable position up against the car, with Harris in
a dominating position with his one hand restraining her wrist
end quote Patricia said that she then fled back to
(20:50):
the nursery afraid. Eventually Lee came back inside the house
and she seemed shaken up. Patricia also mentions that her
husband did not want her getting involved because he worked
at Merrill Lynch with Harris. Patricia testified that at one
point she and Lee became aware that Harris was screening
Lee's calls at the office, so that when Lee tried
(21:12):
to get a hold of him, she was not able to. Now,
there is some debate in the trial about when exactly
Harris dropped by unexpectedly to see Lee that day and
whether or not it was a violation of a restraining order,
but eventually, both Lee and Harris would be granted restraining
orders against each other before the trial even took place.
(21:33):
But back in early nineteen ninety three, Lee continued to
hope that she and Harris would reconcile, so much so
that she and Harris decided to go to marriage counseling.
Lee said they went to go see an episcopal priest
and Lee liked him, but Harris did not, so they
agreed to continue looking for a marriage counselor.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
Then I get a phone call from my mother who
said a friend of hers goes to a psychiatrist that
is really renowned, and.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Why don't I give him a call?
Speaker 3 (22:04):
And I said, well, mom, Harris would never and my
mom is not a good person, so I'm just saying
that out front, so she is what she is. And
I said, Mom, Harris will never accept to go to
a psychiatrist. He says, that's whitch doctor stuff. So she said, well,
here's the guy's name. Give him a call. And I
called to me said he'd see us for marriage counseling.
(22:24):
I called Harris and he said, yeah, I'll go. Where's
the directions? How do you get there? It was only
a couple of blocks from his office. So we go
for marriage counseling. I set the whole thing up, I
organize everything. I think I've been paid for it to
my insurance with the airlines. We went and once again
he was very belligerent, very cold, and I'm crying and
(22:46):
telling me, you know, you know, this is just a
miserable situation and all that, and so we kept going
for marriage counseling.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Lee recalls what would later become a pivotal session that
she had with this psychiatrist. We will call him doctor A.
During a session with Lee and Harris, she said doctor
A turned to her and said that she wasn't handling
things very well, and Lee's response was that yes, she'd
(23:16):
had a hard time. She described the tumultuous past few months,
the unexpected pregnancy, the pressure to have an abortion, the
scare of a potential miscarriage, and then the shock that
she was still pregnant. She later had an additional scare
that her child would have a genetic disorder, although further
testing showed that that was not the case. And in
(23:38):
the midst of all of this, her husband left her,
and while she hoped they could reconcile, she was also
preparing for the reality that she might be a single mom.
She had been through a lot, to say the least.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
I've cried a few times in here. I don't think
that that's out of the norm. He gives no, No,
I'll give you something to make you feel a lot better.
And Harris was in there when this happened.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
What is it?
Speaker 3 (24:03):
He said, I can't take medicine, I'm pregnant, and he goes, oh, no,
this will be really good for you, and he prescribed
me Navan and Harris would call me every day and go,
are you taking your medicine like a good little girl.
You'd being a good little girl and taking your medicine. Meantime,
he'd call me all the time. You go, you're sick,
You're insane. This is why I said about things were
going weird. I was out with my girlfriend, who was
(24:25):
my infectious disease specialist, and we're out for dinner and
she said, Lee, I'm so proud of how you're handling
everything you've gone through. And I said, well, you should
tell doctor that he's put me on medication. And she
said what medication? I said, naving. She goes, Lee, that's
an antipsychotic medication. You'll lose your child. How many of
you taken? And I'd taken three w and I went,
(24:49):
it's a what because he keeps it. It'll just calm
your nerves so you're not so upset. It'll help your pregnancy.
And so that's when I said everything just wasn't adding up.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
We do not access to Lee's medical records, but she
said that she trusted doctor Ay and so she took
this medicine, not knowing it was an antipsychotic. Naving is
a high potency, antipsychotic medication often prescribed to patients diagnosed
with schizophrenia. It seemed unusual to Lee at the time
(25:20):
that she'd been given an antipsychotic, because, as far as
she was aware, she did not have a diagnosed psychiatric disorder. Regardless,
it was now part of her medical record that she'd
been prescribed naving and that she had taken it.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Then one day I was in there and Harris was late,
and he's never late.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Then he comes walking.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
And he opens the door and he goes, I'm just
going to tell you I want to divorce. I don't
want anything more to do with this, So I start crying.
He leaves.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Even after everything that they'd been through, Lee was shocked,
but she was finally starting to realize Harris wasn't going
to change. He wasn't going to suddenly decide that he
wanted to reunite with her and raise a child together.
Their relationship was over. Lee's attorney filed for a divorce,
and Li said it was only once the legal proceedings
(26:13):
started that she realized how ugly things were going to get,
that this divorce was going to be more contentious than
she ever could have imagined.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
They stood up that they were countersuing on grounds of
physical abuse that he suffered from post traumatics disorder. I
don't think that countersuit went in for a divorce. I
think that was just some grandioso thing to do in
the courtroom. But we just were shocked, you know, my
new lawyer and I were like what And then everything
starts tying together. Meantime, I'm still seeing doctor book because
(26:45):
I think I'm doing the right thing. And of course
I told doctor I'm not touching that medication. I don't
know why you'd get a bit to me. But I'm
still seeing him because I'm trying to maintain some semblance
of doing the right thing.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Blah blah blah.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
And then I got a call from my mother's childhood
friend who would come and stay with her from Chicago
for three months. And she says, Lee, you've got to
come to Somerville. I'm with your mother. And I go,
what do you mean? My mom lived half the year
and Belize and half the year in Charleston or Somerville.
So I drove to Somerville and walked in. She goes,
your mother has something to give you.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
I go, what's that? Finally her friend handed me over
his paper. She said, I was at the house.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
It was Halloween, October thirty first, remember he left me
October fifteenth when he called your mother and said, I
need you to sign these papers to get Lee institutionalized.
And I said what She said, yes, and she said
your mom said no, two people can't sign it. You
have to have a doctor's signature. She hands me the
(27:48):
piece of paper. It was a letter he wrote to
her down in Belize, thanking her forgetting me to see doctor,
and that they had been seeing doctor for two months
prior to me ever going for marriage counseling.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
This was a letter from Harris to your mother that
your mother's friend found and sort of forced your mom
to come clean to you and tell you the situation.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Yeah, so that was the end of March ninety three.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Lee originally believed that doctor A, the psychiatrist she'd seen
with Harris who prescribed her naving, was recommended by a
friend of her mother's. She'd believed that the day that
she and Harris walked into his office for their first
marriage counseling session was the first time that either of
them had met Doctor A, but that was not true.
(28:41):
It turns out Harris was the one who found doctor A,
and he involved Lee's mother, Dottie, all without Lee's knowledge.
This is confirmed in court records. Doctor A is called
to testify at trial, and he explains that he talked
on the phone with and met in person with both
Harris and Dottie prior to ever meeting or speaking with Lee.
(29:04):
Based on what comes after and how critical the conversation
around mental health would become in this trial, it's hard
not to see this as a calculated move. Why did
Harris need to speak with doctor A first secretly and
why did he need to involve Lee's mother, Dottie. What
becomes clear is that Harris's legal team argues that Lee
(29:26):
was mentally unwell, that her mental health issues were severe
enough to drive Harris away. He says it was not
the pregnancy that made him leave, but Lee's mental health problems,
and the explanation given as to why Harris spoke to
doctor A in secret prior to him meetingly comes off
(29:46):
like someone arranging an intervention. Doctor A's testimony reveals that
Harris came to him in distress and told him that
his wife, Lee was out of control and needed help.
Lee's mother, Dottie, seems to to confirm this portrayal of Lee.
Doctor A says that Dottie told him Lee was manipulative,
(30:07):
had a flaring temper, and a long history of difficulties.
Dottie said that she was worried for Harris, that Harris
was scared for his life, which indicates that Dottie thought
there was some world in which Lee might hurt or
kill Harris. Dottie even said she thought Lee might have
a gun. The way that Harris and Dottie spoke to
(30:29):
doctor A about Lee portrayed her as a danger to Harris,
to herself, and potentially in the future, to her baby.
Before Lee set foot in that office, she was already
painted as someone who was not in touch with reality,
someone dangerous, and someone who might need medical intervention. And
(30:50):
what was your mom's relationship with Harris at that time?
Did she like him? Like? What was her relationship with Harris?
And with you?
Speaker 3 (30:57):
I guess I got mom to see Harris as a stockbroker,
so all her money was invested with him. He couldn't
stand my mother. She wasn't even allowed at our house.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
So this is how smart he is, So he.
Speaker 3 (31:10):
Knows that she craves attention, and so when he was
setting me all up after I refused to have an abortion,
which all the whole snowball happened like this, unbeknownst to me,
he called her and said, you know, I love your
daughter so much, but she's got all these mental problems.
You know, I need your help because you're such an
amazing single mother, just like mine, and you know.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
All of this craft. And that's what basically the letter
said too. And I had no idea.
Speaker 4 (31:37):
Can you speak to any sort of questions around your
mental health prior to Harris in your life?
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Yeah, there was zero, nothing, no doctors.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
I'd never done anything untoward, never in my entire life.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
As soon as she discovered that Harris and her mother,
Dottie had spoken with doctor A prior to Lee meeting him,
she stopped seeing Doctor A. She then found a different,
reputable psychiatrist in Charleston and began seeing him. What Lee
didn't realize at the time was that the damage had
been done and that Doctor A's testimony at trial would
(32:21):
not be good for her. Lee felt betrayed by her
mother that her mother would go along with Harris's plan.
Lee was hurt but not that surprised my mom is.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
You know, the diagnosis could be extreme narcissism. Back then,
we didn't even I didn't even know what that meant.
You know, everything's so different back then than it is now.
She's very immature, you know, we had this really crazy childhood.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
But it's maturity, isn't that where she has?
Speaker 4 (32:50):
Your belief or perspective on how this played out is
that Harris was manipulating your mother, who you are already
did not maybe have the most trusting relationship with, and
it was all calculated.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
Oh yeah, my brother uses that excuse all the time,
and my brother is fantastic. My other brother died while
I was gone, but my brother used the excuse of
the time that Harris manipulated her.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
I think she knew what she was doing.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
Which is a very sad, horrible thing, but it's a
realistic thing.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (33:26):
But you think she was motivated in part because Harris
was managing her money.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
No, I think it's because he didn't like her, and
Nolvison he's paying her attention and now all of a
sudden he likes her and he's complimenting her on being
a single mother and doing an amazing job, and he
just wants to help her poor daughter. But I don't
think she had all ever believed that there was anything
wrong with me. All of us were really good kids.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
So all of this is kind of coming to light
for you. There's a lot going on, So can you
kind of just walk us through the timeline here of
like when that's happening when you give birth and leading
us up to the divorce proceedings.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
So things got pretty quiet.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
I had this brilliant psychiatrist and gynecologists, and then I
go in to have Samantha, and we made it so
there was a court order that he could not come
in that day. It could not bother me while I'm
trying to give birth, and I was doing everything to
have her because she was way overdue, and so they
finally had to induce her. So I knew when I
(34:27):
was going to have her. So my girlfriend, Patty, who
went through all the lama's classes and everything else with me,
she and I went in to the hospital and then
they could not she was too big. So finally, after
many many hours, they had to do an emergency sea section.
And when they did that c section efforts, they handed
it to Patty first, and then they handed it to me,
(34:49):
and then they said I was bleeding out. They had
to chase Patty out, and then they knocked me out,
and all I remember waking up and hearing Patty was
the kind of this girl in the whole world going,
You're not supposed to be here. What are you doing here?
And Harris and his mother had come to the hospital
and his mother said, you don't know what my son
(35:11):
has been through. And Patty goes, I have just seen
what Lee's been through. I wasn't you know, in the
operating room, and and it was got really ugly, and
they because there was a court order, they the police
told him to leave. So then I'm in my room
and I said, well, Harris can come and visit her,
because she was in my room with me. I said,
(35:32):
but he has to come alone because I'm not going
to have witnesses to say I beat him or I
did anything on tooward to him, you know, because I
now I know everything he's I thought I knew everything
he'd already been setting me up with. So they agreed
on that, and he came in and.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
I said, Harris, have got a nurse her.
Speaker 3 (35:50):
Could you please walk over to the window and look out,
because this is a man who was repulsed by a
pregnant woman who never wanted this baby.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
And I hear this noise and I look.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
Up and he's clicking pictures of me nursing with his camera.
And I just felt so violated and so discussing, and
I was like, please just get out.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Can I ask you, know, as someone who has claimed
that he never wants children, never wants to be a father,
what did you observe in him when he came to
the hospital and met Savannah Her name was the Savannah
at the time, Yes.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
Savannah, Yeah, and he was holding her. And what does
he do? If there was a definition of the first selfie,
that was Harris. He would take pictures of himself everywhere.
So there he is taking a picture of him with Savannah's.
All he did was take like fifty million pictures so
he could show people what a great daddy was.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
Always said to me is.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
Why did she take that black hair on her ears?
And he said, and these fingernails were discussing. I'm going
to get a nail clipper out. I said, no, you're
not getting a nail clipper out. And that's all I really.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Remember, Lee's daughter's birth certificate reads Savannah Lee Barnett, which
is Lee's last name, not Harris's. Savanna's name would later
be changed to Samantha, which is why Lee sometimes calls
her that Lisa. That Harris only visited her once in
the hospital, the incident in which he snapped photos of
Savannah and of Lee breastfeeding, and then he never came back.
(37:14):
In fact, she said she left the hospital, she went home,
and she didn't see or hear from Harris for weeks.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
The pictures thing is surprising to me because it seems
like he was vocal with everyone in his life that
he didn't want children, and so this about face to
then be wanting to snap a lot of photos for
the purposes of, you know, maybe portraying himself as a
doting dad.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
So he had to pretend he was something he wasn't.
He meets me, who's from Charleston, he's working at his
uncle's Merrill Lynch office. Every single thing way he dressed,
the way he moved, the way he spoke was.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
All an act.
Speaker 3 (37:57):
So when it came to me having the baby, he
could not pretend that he didn't want the baby. I mean,
he had to pretend that he was interested. So he
had to pretend that that he had to get pictures
and show what a good daddy was. But now meantime,
he's told everybody in Charleston that I'm so mentally insane
that he fears for his life and all the restless stuff.
(38:18):
So when I take her home by myself, he's still
lying everybody and telling him that he's seeing his daughter
and whatever. So after six weeks of not seeing him
or something left, I think it was six weeks, maybe seven,
I see a secretary. I'm with Savannah with my girlfriend
at a restaurant and she goes, oh my gosh, she
(38:39):
looks just like Harris and I we'll tell him that
because he hasn't seen her.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
The second biggest mistake of my life.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
So now everybody's saying, how can you let this mentally
insane woman take your youborn home and have no supervision
or you know, she's so dangerous. So now he has
to start backtracking, tracking, tracking, try and covers tracks, and
that's when they went for custody, because how could you
let this horrible woman have this baby.
Speaker 4 (39:09):
He has said he doesn't want kids, that he has
no interest in being a father. Then there's the moment
at the hospital where he's taking a lot of selfies
and he's told people that you are unwell mentally, and
so it's like this sort of I don't know if
the word is incongruent, but it's like, it's not what
I would do if I didn't want the responsibility of parenthood,
(39:30):
if I didn't want that responsibility, I would say, well,
she's got it, she can do this, she doesn't need me.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
Well, let me explain that better.
Speaker 3 (39:39):
So, because of his status that he feels he was
holding in Charleston, even though people knew he never wanted children,
he couldn't say he left me at two and a
half months because I wouldn't have borked. So he had
to have an excuse of why he left me. So
that's when he developed all the mentally ill stuff. The
baby he acted like he wanted, because now it would
(39:59):
look really bad if he said, oh, I don't want it,
and my friends all tried to get me to move
to another state. I should have done that, and there's
a lot of things I should have done, because then
it had been out of side, out of mind, and
I didn't do it, not because I thought I would
get back together, but I thought he didn't want her,
But then I.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Never thought about his reputation is the most important thing
to him.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
He's worked his whole life to be looked at like
he's something that he wasn't. So you don't just walk
out on your pregnant wife, especially back then. So there
had to be a reason why he left his pregnant wife,
and that's where it all stemmed from, right, So I
hope that makes more sense.
Speaker 4 (40:36):
Yeah, So, if I'm understanding correctly, your feeling is that
culturally in the South, and also his own personal sort
of upbringing has informed this state of mind where he
now needs to save face at all costs, which is
going to have to mean taking the baby from you
(40:57):
because he has proclaimed that you're mentally now.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
Yeah, so that's what the whole idea was. It wasn't
ever for him to have her. It was to try
and save face throughout this whole thing.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
Lee was shocked to find out that Harris wanted full
custody of their daughter, Savannah, but she felt comforted by
the fact that a court would probably side with her
the mother. After all, she was still breastfeeding and Harris
had not been involved in the pregnancy or in the
first few months of Savannah's life.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
The court appoints a guardian alightem, and it's a paid
guardian alightem. Everybody said, just be really careful what you
say to her. I tiptoed around her. She starts telling me,
she goes Lee, You've got to trust me. Everything I'm
doing is for you and for your baby. And then
she starts taking her away and giving her to Harris,
like for an hour or three hours, and I'm nursing
and I had a terrible time funded pump pumps back
(41:54):
then were horrible. They're not like they are now. So
she'd take away and then I you're taking her, and like,
I don't even know where you're going. But I wasn't
allowed to know anything. So every time we turned around,
she take me back into court because she wanted to
extend the hours, or she wanted to give him. Instead
of two hours, he got three hours. And every single time,
(42:16):
you have to have all your lawyers pilot and it
costs you all the money.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
You can imagine.
Speaker 3 (42:21):
From there, we set a court date. It took forever
to go to court, and everybody kept saying, don't worry
a good mother. There's no records of any problems. Will
not lose a baby, the nursing baby especially, It's not
going to happen. So we ended up going back and
forth for these tip for tat things. Meantime, I'm losing
all the money I have, I'm not able to work,
(42:44):
and then we finally have a court date set.
Speaker 1 (42:47):
The trial started on January nineteenth, nineteen ninety four, and
lasted thirteen non consecutive days. It ended on February eighteenth,
nineteen ninety four. The psychiatrist doctor A's testimony was not
good for Lee's case. He had diagnosed Lee with a
mental health disorder. Since he also saw her mother, Dottie
(43:08):
on multiple occasions. Doctor A claimed that this mental health
disorder was genetic. It also affected Dottie, and he guessed
probably Lee's grandmother as well. The diagnosis something called hyperthymic temperament.
In his testimony, he describes it akin to bipolar disorder
and states multiple times that it is treatable with medication.
(43:32):
He states that if Lee had not been pregnant, he
would have prescribed her lithium, but instead he prescribed her naving. Now,
this was nineteen ninety four and things obviously change, but
doctor A's description of hyperthymic temperament is very inaccurate based
on today's understanding. In fact, hyperthymic temperament is not considered
(43:54):
a disorder at all. It's classified as a personality style.
Characteristics include increased energy productivity, talkativeness, cheerfulness, as well as
tendency for risk taking. People with hyperthymic temperament can sometimes
be mistaken for having bipolar disorder, but they are very
different things, and it is not standard practice to prescribe
(44:16):
a person with hyperthymic temperament and antipsychotic drug like navying,
because again, hyperthymic temperament is not a psychiatric disorder now,
if you'll recall, after Lee stop seeing doctor A, she
sought out psychiatric treatment from another doctor. She knew that
she would need a second opinion and she wanted to
(44:38):
see a doctor who was unbiased, who had not conferred
with her estranged mother or her soon to be ex husband.
That was doctor Fulk. Doctor Fulk also testified at the trial,
and he disagreed with the diagnosis of hyperthymic temperament. He
said that he saw no signs of any emotional or
mental problem that would just putting Lee on medication. He
(45:02):
also noted that he had seen Lee interact with her daughter, Savannah,
and that she was a patient and attentive mother. These
two doctors testimonies were wildly different from one another, and
perhaps in anticipation of that, the judge had decided that
they would need a third psychiatrist to testify.
Speaker 3 (45:23):
Then the judge decides that he wants a tiebreaker psychologist,
So he points a paid tiebreaker.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
Because there's the doctor who had diagnosed you, and then
there's your reputable psychiatrist who I assume testified that there
was nothing wrong with your mental health.
Speaker 3 (45:43):
Over and over yes, and depositions and by other psychiatrists
that I had too right.
Speaker 1 (45:48):
So then the judge wanted another psychiatrist to testify. It
was psychologist psychologist.
Speaker 3 (45:55):
This is prior going to court. So we had I
think it was seven sessions each. I had seven, Harris
had seven, and he said I'd have to agree that
I believe at times Lee was hyperthymic, and lithium might
have been a good option for my lawyer didn't do anything,
just very.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
Suspect throughout the trial. The case is built that Lee
is unstable, unfit, and mentally unwell. It is proposed that
she could be a danger to her daughter, Savannah. At
one point, it's even said that if she went unmedicated,
she could become homicidal or suicidal. Finally, in February of
(46:34):
nineteen ninety four, the trial concluded.
Speaker 3 (46:37):
It was Friday morning. I got there at eight in
the morning, as usual. My lawyer pulled me into another
room and he said we got to talk. And I said,
what's up? And he goes, last night we all had
a meeting. I said, who's wee? And he said me.
Harris is lawyer. And the judge called us up. Harris
is getting full custody. And I said, well, how can
(46:59):
that even? And he goes, well it has so, I
of course was hysterical. I went and called my brother
and my friends, and I called my mother's.
Speaker 2 (47:10):
Friend and to come and they let her sit with me.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
Savannah was nine and a half months old and still breastfeeding.
Now Lee would only legally be able to see her
four days out of each month. She was in shock,
horrified that this was really happening, and she said the
judge seemed to only take her emotions as further evidence
that she was mentally unwell.
Speaker 3 (47:34):
And I had to sit there and I was crying,
and he said, now, this is like the fourth time
you've cried.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
You're out of control. And I was just crying.
Speaker 3 (47:43):
I mean, they'd taken my baby from me, my nursing baby,
and he force weaned her on the spot that day,
and they took her from me. And I'm the only
one that ever had her, you.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
Know, horrible.
Speaker 4 (47:53):
Yeah, I mean, being postpartum is already a very difficult
and vulnerable time for a lot of people. Crying to
me doesn't feel like an abnormal reaction for someone to feel.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:10):
Lee had always held out hope that she would get
custody of Savannah. She said she'd never been opposed to
Harris having visitation and being in Savannah's life, but the
decision to give full custody of her infant child to
the man who begged her to have an abortion was overwhelming.
She did not trust that he would care for Savannah,
(48:31):
and she said there was something else said in the
courtroom that terrified her for her daughter.
Speaker 3 (48:37):
What happened in the courtroom was Harris is on the
witness stand, and my lawyer said, you think this woman
is so mentally ill, don't you? And Harris said, yeah,
me and all the doctors, and you know it's obvious
she is. And so he said, you've said she's a
third generation with this hypothemic temperament, and Harris said yeah,
and he said, you're saying it's genetic. And he's like, yeah,
(49:00):
he said, so your daughter, he said, because you'd already
written a poem called the Fourth Generation about his baby
girl with this mental illness. So he said, so are
you going to watch her to see if she shows
any signs?
Speaker 2 (49:13):
And he said, yeah, I am.
Speaker 3 (49:15):
And he goes, I'll watch her ever so closely, and
I'm just chillsen as a thirty two or three year
old woman. If I can't prove I'm not mentally ill,
happen a little baby. So because I'll watch her ever
so closely, and when I see one sign of hyperthymic temperament,
I'll whisker her off to one good doctor, doctor, and
(49:35):
I'll have her medicated as young as three years old.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
That's why I left.
Speaker 4 (49:41):
I mean, yeah, that's a very scary thing to hear,
and especially if you already feel like you're being misportrayed
and misdiagnosed and losing custody. If that's how for someone.
Speaker 3 (49:53):
So I had to wait to get my visitations. My
lawyer called me and said, you get her four nights
a month, nursing baby. So first week I get her,
she's got a contusion on her head, bloody nose.
Speaker 1 (50:08):
In the forty eight Hours episode, Harris is interviewed and
he admits that this is true, but claims that his
mother was watching Savannah and the bruising was caused by
an accidental fall. For Lee, it was only an escalation
of an impossible situation. She felt that her daughter was
in unsafe hands. She called the police and attempted to
(50:29):
block Harris from getting Savannah back, but it did not work.
Lee was determined to file an appeal to the court
order as soon as she could, but she legally had
to wait until the written decree of divorce was released.
Her legal team expected it to arrive within thirty days
of the trial ending, but thirty days came and went
and they still waited.
Speaker 3 (50:51):
So in the state of South Carolina, a judge has
thirty days to do a written court order.
Speaker 2 (50:57):
Without a written court order, you can't go to the
appellate court. I watched a.
Speaker 3 (51:01):
Sixty minutes show, which was my favorite show back then,
and they showed how you could get at MacArthur Park
in LA.
Speaker 2 (51:09):
You could get anything illegal you wanted to.
Speaker 3 (51:12):
And I just kind of put back because it was
before I went to court that I saw that show
and I was like, that'll never happen.
Speaker 2 (51:18):
But I stuck in the back of my head.
Speaker 3 (51:19):
So on day forty six, without a written court order,
I had no way to appeal.
Speaker 2 (51:24):
So I left MacArthur Park.
Speaker 4 (51:26):
So you left flew yeah, you La?
Speaker 1 (51:31):
Like wait, You're like wait what?
Speaker 3 (51:33):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (51:33):
So you flew to LA.
Speaker 3 (51:35):
This girl has never even smoked pot and I'm going
down to MacArthur Park to get something.
Speaker 1 (51:40):
Did you take Savannah with you to LA or did
you return her and then you went on this like
yeah trip? So you you did end up returning her
to Harris Oh.
Speaker 2 (51:52):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (51:53):
Lee felt she was out of options. Her child had
been taken away from her and she saw no way forward.
Her experience with the court system and with the judge
on her case led her to believe that they were
not acting Impartially, she felt she'd been framed, told she
had a mental illness when she did not, and so
Lee made a decision. It was a decision that would
(52:16):
impact the rest of her life. Lee had decided to flee.
She didn't quite know how or when, but she decided
she would take Savannah and disappear. Her plan started with
a flight to Los Angeles and a trip to MacArthur Park,
a park known in the nineteen nineties for crime and
illegal activity. She went there looking for something very specific, passports.
(52:50):
That's it for part one. Please join us next week
to hear the second part of Lee Barnett's story, when
she tells us about her life on the run.
Speaker 3 (52:57):
And I just waited every minute to be swarmed in
on by cops, you know, I just knew I was
going to get nailed. And there were cameras back in
those days in there, and I opened up the envelope
and there were two brand new, beautiful.
Speaker 2 (53:10):
Real US passports.
Speaker 4 (53:13):
If you have a story for us, we would love
to hear it. Our email is The Knife at exactly
rightmedia dot com, or you can follow us on Instagram
at the Knife Podcast or Blue Sky at the Knife Podcast.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
This has been an Exactly Right production hosted and produced
by me Hannah Smith, and me Pasha Eny.
Speaker 4 (53:30):
Our producers are Tom Bryfogel and Alexis Samarosi.
Speaker 1 (53:33):
This episode was mixed by Tom Bryfogel. Our associate producer
is Christina Chamberlain. Our theme music is by Birds in
the Airport. Artwork five ansa Lilac executive produced by Karen
Kilgareth Georgia Hardstark and Danielle Kramer
This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
The claims and opinions in this podcast are those of
the speaker and do not necessarily represent the Knife or
exactly right media.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
What is it?
Speaker 3 (00:15):
He says, I can't take medicine I'm pregnant, because oh no,
this will be really good for you. And he prescribed
me naving and Harris who called me every day, and Gil,
you take in your medicine with a good little girl.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Welcome to the Knife. I'm Hannah Smith, I'm Patia Eaton.
And this week we have part one of a two
part series, and part two will air next week. We
speak with Lee Barnett, who for many years was only
known as the woman who kidnapped her own child and disappeared,
leading to an international FBI manhunt, and then almost twenty
years later and her now adult daughter were located and
(01:02):
Lee was arrested.
Speaker 4 (01:04):
Lee Barnett joins us to tell us her side of
the story. Over these two episodes, Lee tells us about
the events leaning up to her disappearance, why she felt
she had no choice, and what she did all those
years on the run. Let's get into the interview.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Let's just start off by having you introduce yourself whatever
name you want to use, maybe Lee, since that's what
you go by, now, is that correct?
Speaker 2 (01:31):
I always introduced myself as overseas, I'm known by Alex S.
Galden Hughes.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
In the US, I'm known by Lee Barnett and also
have a prison number two by the FBI. So yeah,
Lee Barnett in the United States is what I go by.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Okay, great, So tell us about that chapter in your life.
Right before all of this started, I was.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Living down in Belize because I kind of grew up
off and on there. I went to Africa for a
long time. I'm with my best friend and moved back
to the States. And when we got back from Africa,
I got hired by Piedmont Airlines back then, and so
I started working with the airlines became US Air so
I was a flight attendant with them, and then I
invested some money and that's how I met my future husband, Harris,
(02:19):
because he was working for Marrill Lynch. I met him
at about nineteen eighty six when I went to invest
some money with him in Charleston, South Carolina. We were
just friends. He's very aloof and I'm the opposite. So
I always try and pull people out of their aloofness,
and so I started asking the cocktail parties at my
(02:41):
mother's house and just I have a lot of guy
friends because I do a lot of guy things, and
I kind of included him and everything. If he needed
a date to something formal, then he would ask me.
And we just went as friends for about four years.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
And how did that end up going from the friend
zone to something else? Yes?
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Well, I was.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Dating a Swiss pilot guy and he was quite volatile,
and Harris convinced me into coming out to his house
just to get away from this person. And one thing
led to another, and then he told me how he
felt and I was shocked, and then we got into
a relationship from there.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
Were there good times in the beginning, and are you
able to share any of those with us?
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Yeah, we had a lot of good times.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
I mean, hindsight, I saw that I was being isolated
from everybody. He had ten acres, nobody was allowed to
come out there without asking him first. But we did
have a lot of fun and I kind of got
him out of his hole and got him down to blize,
actually showed him where I grew up as a child
and took him to the ruins, took him to Guatemala.
(03:47):
We had a lot of fun when it came to
things like that. But he lived a very isolated life
and I had.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
To be a part of that.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
And at the time I thought it was because he
loved me so much and he wanted me for himself.
And you know, my friends were very, very nervous about
the whole situation.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Lee and Harris were two very different people. According to Lee,
Harris liked to live a very organized and controlled life. Lee,
on the other hand, was used to living a more
spontaneous life full of travel and adventure. In fact, traveling
was something she'd grown up with. Lee technically was raised
in Summerville, outside of Charleston, but when she talks about
(04:27):
her childhood, it sounds like they never stayed in one
place for very long.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
So my dad died when I was four months old,
My brother was three, my other brother was four. Mom
just started living kind of this almost hippyish life. I
spent first grade in Somerville, Charleston, and then we moved
to Ormond Beach full time. Prior to that, when I
was three and four, we lived in the Keys because
Mom would just pack us up and off we'd go.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
So I've lived in Ormond.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
All through second grade till twelfth grade, but we spent
every summer, in most every Christmas down and Believes, which
used to be British on Duras back in the sixties.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Despite their differences, Lee and Harris continued to date, but
Lee admits it was never a smooth or easy relationship.
There were always bumps in the road.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Harris, it was known by everybody that he didn't want children,
couldn't stand being around him, didn't want them.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
I wanted children.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
So we dated for about a year, but we kept
breaking up and we called it our Friday Night breakup
because the seriousness of him.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Not wanting children and me wanting them always seemed to.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Come up on a Friday night, and then we'd get
upset and we'd both be, you know, sad, and we
ended up getting back together. And it was this very
immature thing on both of our parts, especially mine, I suppose,
And then all of a sudden he decided to want
to get married. And because you know, so it's part
of trying to heal somebody whose women all try to do.
(05:53):
But it's also where I was missing out on something, thinking, hey,
I must be special of all the people, and you
know he wants to marry me. So it was kind
of the combination. It was very wrong in the first place,
but we got married.
Speaker 4 (06:07):
So you got married understanding that he did not want children, yes, and.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
He got married on understanding that I seriously wanted children.
So it was kind of a bad combination to begin with.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
In December of nineteen ninety one, Lee and Harris got married.
Lee recalls that she was thirty one years old at
the time and Harris was thirty nine.
Speaker 4 (06:30):
And so you guys are married in the early nineties then,
and tell us about those first years of marriage.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Well, there wasn't even years. I was on the pill.
I was having all kind of problems with flying with
the airlines, like had super stolen lymph nodes.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
It thought I had Hodgkins disease.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
Hindsight, I find out fifteen years later it was diagnosed
as severe allergies. But they said, oh, you shouldn't be
on the pill. So I got off the pill and
he was going to take care of everything, and then
I ended up getting pregnant after seven months of marriage.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Was it a surprise to you? When you found out
you were pregnant.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
I had no idea it was pregnant.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
He knew that you would stopped taking the pill, and
there was some conversation that he was gonna get a
vsectomy or something.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
He wouldn't get an aseectomy. He refused to.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
So you weren't using any kind of birth control.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Except for his rhythm methody.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Okay, I see.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
So you were like, Okay, I'm vaguely aware of my
cycle and we're going with that.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
I was, well, yeah, I didn't really pay much attention
to my cycle.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
But I was not you know.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
I was like, okay, that's what you want to do,
you know, you know, condoms or things like that. But
he wasn't interested in that evidently.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
I see, Wow, what was the moment of finding out
you were pregnant at home test?
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yeah, I think that's what happened.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
And then I went to my guyacologist and then he
did a blood test and he said, yes, you're pregnant,
and you know that normal elation of body has I
just had pure fear.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
I knew it was going to be really bad.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
And every single person I called, all of my best friends,
any family members, The only thing they said was, oh
my god, how is Harris.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Wow?
Speaker 3 (08:13):
So there was never like congratulations or whatever. And so
I was scared, but it also knew, you know, there's
no way I'm going to abort my child.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
So that wasn't even a thought in my mind.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
What were you scared of?
Speaker 3 (08:27):
I was scared I'd lose him. And you know, it's
a stupid thing, because I really really loved him. I
was afraid of that. I was never afraid of what
happened would happen. It didn't ever ever come to my
mind that he could be that diabolical. I just didn't
know that. I just thought, Okay, that's the end of it.
Speaker 4 (08:46):
Sounds like you tell close friends and family members. When
and how do you go about telling Harris?
Speaker 3 (08:52):
The first time I said it, before I went to
get the blood test, I only did the go to
the bathroom on the stick one and I said, I
have a feeling I'm pregnant, and he said that's okay,
we can just have an abortion, and I said, I
don't want an abortion. Then I did the stick and
found that I was like the next day and I
told him, and he's totally cold. He just turned away,
(09:14):
walked out of the house. Then he told me it
was a fate worse than death, and I went, ooh,
not going well, and then we just kind of tiptoed
around everything. He told me he was repulsed by pregnant women.
I now, this is really early early on. So I
started sleeping in the spare bedroom, thinking he's going to
come right. And I had friends over who had children,
(09:35):
you know, to try and get them to say how
great it is and whatever.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
And it just wasn't working. It wasn't working. And then
I miscarried.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
We were at a baby shower for a coworker and
I just started profusely bleeding and I said, Harris, I
didn't want to scare all the other women. I said,
we got to go. Got home and it was just blood,
and then a big plot came out in the toilet.
I called my guy to collogist straight away, and it
was Sunday, so he said, honey, there's nothing I can
(10:05):
do for you now. It was very early on. He said,
come in and see me tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Lee had some blood work done at her guyn incologist's
office and it was sent off to the lab. She'd
have to wait for the results. It was a holiday weekend,
and Lee went home believing she was no longer pregnant.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
So I had to wait for so long, you know,
to get the test back. So for all that time,
I thought I wasn't pregnant, and Harris was the kindest
person to me.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
There was nothing, you know.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Meantime, I hadn't spoken to me for two months, and
I had to sleep in the other bedroom. And now
he's back to his loving, kind sweet thing. And then
I got the answer machine recording. I'll never forget pushing it.
Doctor Rumble said, I can't believe this, but you're still pregnant.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Somehow, Lee was still pregnant, and while she was elated,
she also had a sinking feeling. She knew that her
husband would not be happy. According to Lee, when she
told Harris that she was still pregnant, he turned and
walked right out of the house.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
And so as your pregnancy progressed, how did Harris and
his response change from there?
Speaker 1 (11:17):
If at all I.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
Had to sleep in the other room, he wouldn't touch me.
I guess it was about when I was doing a
half months pregnant. It's right on the borderline of the abortion.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Time.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
I came home and I just said, oh, I just
saw a really cute church. I said, I think we
should see about joining, and he goes, you know, I'm
an atheist and I'm.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Not a very religious person either of I said, well,
we're going to.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Have a family now, it'd be really nice to join.
So I just drove by this really cute place and
he said, we are not going to be a family.
He was sitting on the floor watching a baseball game.
He said, you're going to have an abortion. And I
picked up.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
The coffee table.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
It was a long coffee table by the end, and
I dropped it and I said, I am not having
an abortion.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
And then I went to.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Spare bedroom and woke up the next morning he was gone.
And that was the end of that.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
That was the end of your relationship.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Yeah, he never came back. He wanted me out of
his house and I didn't leave. And that was the
next biggest mistake I made.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Why didn't you leave?
Speaker 3 (12:18):
I told everybody if I left and he changed his mind,
I would never be able to forgive him. If I
stayed there and he changed his mind, then I could
get over what he's done. And so I thought within time,
and seeing the pregnancy progress, you know, and things like that,
and people trying to speak sense to him that maybe
he would change his mind.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
So the relationship, he's gone. You're still in the house,
but you're continuing on with your pregnancy.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Yeah, Harris walked out October fifteenth, nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Lee has long maintained that it was the pregnancy and
her refusal to have an abortion that created this rift
in their marriage. On an episode of forty eight Hours,
a close friend of Lee's is interviewed, and she said
she was also aware that Harris did not want children.
She also said she urged Lee not to marry Harris
in the first place. Now, I want to note this
(13:14):
is Lee's account. We did not speak to Harris for
this episode, but according to court documents, which we'll get
into later, Harris offered a very different explanation as to
why the marriage fell apart. In interviews, he has also
said he never asked Lee to have an abortion. What
becomes clear very quickly is that Lee and Harris tell
(13:35):
fundamentally different stories about their relationship, about the pregnancy, about
what went wrong and who is to blame, And as
the legal battle unfolds, those differences only get bigger, Lee
will face allegations. She says she never could have imagined
she will walk into a courtroom that, to her feels
like a nightmare. Looking back now, she says, if she'd
(13:58):
known what was coming, she would have made different choices.
Maybe she wouldn't have been so focused on trying to
repair a marriage that was already fracturing. But back in
the winter of nineteen ninety two, as Lee's pregnancy progressed,
she still held onto this hope of creating a loving
family with Harris, of raising this baby together.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
I thought he was just licking his wounds, trying to
come right, you know. I tried to show him the
ultrasound results. He called the police on me. I met
him at a restaurant.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
Did you know he was at the restaurant or did
you show up a meeting there?
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Okay, he said he would meet me there.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
I said I had something to show him, which is
going to be the because he kept telling me there's
no baby over and over again, even as big as
I was, so, I was so excited about the ultrasound pictures.
So we were sitting down and I pulled him out
and he just went nuts. And he's like that doesn't
prove anything. He took off, threw some money on the table,
and it was raining, and he went and jumped in
(14:58):
his car, and I tried to get in the passenger's side,
and he said, I'm calling the police, and he starts
calling the police and I'm standing out there in the rain,
and then the police came up.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
How did he call the police? Did he have a
cell phone?
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Yes, he did, he had one of those car ones.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Oh wowah, the big, big old car ones. I don't
think he called in the restaurant now. I think he
was one of the first people that had those big,
chunky things.
Speaker 4 (15:22):
And so when the police show up, Harris has told
them what he said.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
I'm attacking him. I'm bothering.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
I'm following him everywhere, and I'm like, no, I met
him at the restaurant, you know, and I'm holding my
little ultrasound pictures for the police to see, and I said,
I just want to show him there is a baby.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
There is a baby.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
And they told him to leave, and they sat there
and talked to me for a few minutes and they
were just really sweet.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
You know, this period of time, I want to ask
because it's clear that things were becoming more and more
tense between you and Harris, and it sounds like you
still had this hope or belief that like may be
something on work out, and you were like fighting for that,
and he was clearly holding to his stance that he
(16:06):
was very anti having a baby. And you know that
you wouldn't be a family if you were't gonna have
an abortion. He wasn't going to be a part of this.
You know. Later he would go on to say things
and accuse you of physical violence and an uncontrollable temper
and talk about this time in your relationship is being
very volatile. You know, what can you tell us about that?
Speaker 3 (16:30):
The only time we ever had any fight was prior
to all this. We were in bonn Air. We're walking
down the beach and nice To been telling him a
story about some sailboat and Harris was very proud of
his He said, his greatest weapon in the world is
his language, because he's incredibly bright. And he interrupted me,
(16:53):
and I was telling him, I said, why do you
always interrupt me? And he said, because the stupid words
that come out of your mouth and the stupid things
you say, I just can't take it.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Something to that effect. And I just said I've had it.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
And we get back to the hotel, and I said,
the things I say might not be as articulate as you,
however they're meaningful to me because he'd always use words
that nobody could understand. So I get up to the
room and he kept right behind me, just going at me,
and I kept walking away from him, walking away. I
went into the bathroom and he pushed the bathroom open
(17:26):
and bathroom door open, and then I just said, just
leave me alone, and I turned around and I slapped him,
And like an idiot, I told everybody that because I
just don't keep any secrets, I slapped him one time.
Then the other time, when he first told me I
had to have an abortion, I went out on the
porch and I just had these pots that I'd put
flowers in, and I pushed them off the porch, and
(17:48):
then the coffee table. And those are the only three
things that ever happened. If anybody, he was very abusive
physically to me one time.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Harris has portrayed Lee in court documents and in interviews
as angry and volatile. Lee, for her part, has described
Harris as controlling, cruel, and at least once physically violent.
What follows is messy, contentious, the kind of unraveling where
allegations pile up and clarity becomes harder to find. The
(18:21):
line between truth and exaggeration starts to blur depending on
who you ask. It becomes kind of a classic, he said,
she said, And in a court room that can be
a tipping point, because ultimately someone will be believed and
someone will not. For Lee, the months leading up to
the divorce trial were incredibly stressful. With every filing, every accusation,
(18:46):
the walls seem to close in tighter, pushing her toward
a future that will feel so impossible she'll eventually decide
the only way out is to run. Lee has claimed
(19:08):
there was one time when Harris was physically violent with her.
She says it happened when she was about seven months pregnant,
and that her friend Patricia was witnessed to it.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
So I had a girlfriend over who just had a baby,
so she came over. Her car wasn't there, and he
slammed me up against his car, and he pulled his
hand back to hit me, and then he stopped, and
my girlfriend was inside and she was so scared for
her baby and herself that she went and hid in
the bedroom and he either got a glimpse of her
(19:42):
in there or something, and he just stopped.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
This incident that Lee is talking about was discussed at
the trial. In February of nineteen ninety four. Lee's friend
Patricia was called to the stand and she described that incident,
which had occurred about a year prior, around February of
nineteen ninety three, when Lee was still pregnant. Patricia says
that she was a reluctant witness to an encounter between
(20:06):
Lee and Harris. At the time, Patricia was visiting Lee,
helping her paint the nursery when a car pulled up.
It was Harris, and according to Patricia, Lee turned to
her and said that Harris was supposed to call before
coming by, but he had not called, so Lee left
the house to see what he wanted. Patricia became worried
(20:27):
for Lee, so she went into the kitchen to look
through the window to see what was happening outside. In
her testimony, she says, quote I saw Lee in a
very vulnerable position up against the car, with Harris in
a dominating position with his one hand restraining her wrist
end quote Patricia said that she then fled back to
(20:50):
the nursery afraid. Eventually Lee came back inside the house
and she seemed shaken up. Patricia also mentions that her
husband did not want her getting involved because he worked
at Merrill Lynch with Harris. Patricia testified that at one
point she and Lee became aware that Harris was screening
Lee's calls at the office, so that when Lee tried
(21:12):
to get a hold of him, she was not able to. Now,
there is some debate in the trial about when exactly
Harris dropped by unexpectedly to see Lee that day and
whether or not it was a violation of a restraining order,
but eventually, both Lee and Harris would be granted restraining
orders against each other before the trial even took place.
(21:33):
But back in early nineteen ninety three, Lee continued to
hope that she and Harris would reconcile, so much so
that she and Harris decided to go to marriage counseling.
Lee said they went to go see an episcopal priest
and Lee liked him, but Harris did not, so they
agreed to continue looking for a marriage counselor.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
Then I get a phone call from my mother who
said a friend of hers goes to a psychiatrist that
is really renowned, and.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Why don't I give him a call?
Speaker 3 (22:04):
And I said, well, mom, Harris would never and my
mom is not a good person, so I'm just saying
that out front, so she is what she is. And
I said, Mom, Harris will never accept to go to
a psychiatrist. He says, that's whitch doctor stuff. So she said, well,
here's the guy's name. Give him a call. And I
called to me said he'd see us for marriage counseling.
(22:24):
I called Harris and he said, yeah, I'll go. Where's
the directions? How do you get there? It was only
a couple of blocks from his office. So we go
for marriage counseling. I set the whole thing up, I
organize everything. I think I've been paid for it to
my insurance with the airlines. We went and once again
he was very belligerent, very cold, and I'm crying and
(22:46):
telling me, you know, you know, this is just a
miserable situation and all that, and so we kept going
for marriage counseling.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Lee recalls what would later become a pivotal session that
she had with this psychiatrist. We will call him doctor A.
During a session with Lee and Harris, she said doctor
A turned to her and said that she wasn't handling
things very well, and Lee's response was that yes, she'd
(23:16):
had a hard time. She described the tumultuous past few months,
the unexpected pregnancy, the pressure to have an abortion, the
scare of a potential miscarriage, and then the shock that
she was still pregnant. She later had an additional scare
that her child would have a genetic disorder, although further
testing showed that that was not the case. And in
(23:38):
the midst of all of this, her husband left her,
and while she hoped they could reconcile, she was also
preparing for the reality that she might be a single mom.
She had been through a lot, to say the least.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
I've cried a few times in here. I don't think
that that's out of the norm. He gives no, No,
I'll give you something to make you feel a lot better.
And Harris was in there when this happened.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
What is it?
Speaker 3 (24:03):
He said, I can't take medicine, I'm pregnant, and he goes, oh, no,
this will be really good for you, and he prescribed
me Navan and Harris would call me every day and go,
are you taking your medicine like a good little girl.
You'd being a good little girl and taking your medicine. Meantime,
he'd call me all the time. You go, you're sick,
You're insane. This is why I said about things were
going weird. I was out with my girlfriend, who was
(24:25):
my infectious disease specialist, and we're out for dinner and
she said, Lee, I'm so proud of how you're handling
everything you've gone through. And I said, well, you should
tell doctor that he's put me on medication. And she
said what medication? I said, naving. She goes, Lee, that's
an antipsychotic medication. You'll lose your child. How many of
you taken? And I'd taken three w and I went,
(24:49):
it's a what because he keeps it. It'll just calm
your nerves so you're not so upset. It'll help your pregnancy.
And so that's when I said everything just wasn't adding up.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
We do not access to Lee's medical records, but she
said that she trusted doctor Ay and so she took
this medicine, not knowing it was an antipsychotic. Naving is
a high potency, antipsychotic medication often prescribed to patients diagnosed
with schizophrenia. It seemed unusual to Lee at the time
(25:20):
that she'd been given an antipsychotic, because, as far as
she was aware, she did not have a diagnosed psychiatric disorder. Regardless,
it was now part of her medical record that she'd
been prescribed naving and that she had taken it.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Then one day I was in there and Harris was late,
and he's never late.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Then he comes walking.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
And he opens the door and he goes, I'm just
going to tell you I want to divorce. I don't
want anything more to do with this, So I start crying.
He leaves.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Even after everything that they'd been through, Lee was shocked,
but she was finally starting to realize Harris wasn't going
to change. He wasn't going to suddenly decide that he
wanted to reunite with her and raise a child together.
Their relationship was over. Lee's attorney filed for a divorce,
and Li said it was only once the legal proceedings
(26:13):
started that she realized how ugly things were going to get,
that this divorce was going to be more contentious than
she ever could have imagined.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
They stood up that they were countersuing on grounds of
physical abuse that he suffered from post traumatics disorder. I
don't think that countersuit went in for a divorce. I
think that was just some grandioso thing to do in
the courtroom. But we just were shocked, you know, my
new lawyer and I were like what And then everything
starts tying together. Meantime, I'm still seeing doctor book because
(26:45):
I think I'm doing the right thing. And of course
I told doctor I'm not touching that medication. I don't
know why you'd get a bit to me. But I'm
still seeing him because I'm trying to maintain some semblance
of doing the right thing.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Blah blah blah.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
And then I got a call from my mother's childhood
friend who would come and stay with her from Chicago
for three months. And she says, Lee, you've got to
come to Somerville. I'm with your mother. And I go,
what do you mean? My mom lived half the year
and Belize and half the year in Charleston or Somerville.
So I drove to Somerville and walked in. She goes,
your mother has something to give you.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
I go, what's that? Finally her friend handed me over
his paper. She said, I was at the house.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
It was Halloween, October thirty first, remember he left me
October fifteenth when he called your mother and said, I
need you to sign these papers to get Lee institutionalized.
And I said what She said, yes, and she said
your mom said no, two people can't sign it. You
have to have a doctor's signature. She hands me the
(27:48):
piece of paper. It was a letter he wrote to
her down in Belize, thanking her forgetting me to see doctor,
and that they had been seeing doctor for two months
prior to me ever going for marriage counseling.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
This was a letter from Harris to your mother that
your mother's friend found and sort of forced your mom
to come clean to you and tell you the situation.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Yeah, so that was the end of March ninety three.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Lee originally believed that doctor A, the psychiatrist she'd seen
with Harris who prescribed her naving, was recommended by a
friend of her mother's. She'd believed that the day that
she and Harris walked into his office for their first
marriage counseling session was the first time that either of
them had met Doctor A, but that was not true.
(28:41):
It turns out Harris was the one who found doctor A,
and he involved Lee's mother, Dottie, all without Lee's knowledge.
This is confirmed in court records. Doctor A is called
to testify at trial, and he explains that he talked
on the phone with and met in person with both
Harris and Dottie prior to ever meeting or speaking with Lee.
(29:04):
Based on what comes after and how critical the conversation
around mental health would become in this trial, it's hard
not to see this as a calculated move. Why did
Harris need to speak with doctor A first secretly and
why did he need to involve Lee's mother, Dottie. What
becomes clear is that Harris's legal team argues that Lee
(29:26):
was mentally unwell, that her mental health issues were severe
enough to drive Harris away. He says it was not
the pregnancy that made him leave, but Lee's mental health problems,
and the explanation given as to why Harris spoke to
doctor A in secret prior to him meetingly comes off
(29:46):
like someone arranging an intervention. Doctor A's testimony reveals that
Harris came to him in distress and told him that
his wife, Lee was out of control and needed help.
Lee's mother, Dottie, seems to to confirm this portrayal of Lee.
Doctor A says that Dottie told him Lee was manipulative,
(30:07):
had a flaring temper, and a long history of difficulties.
Dottie said that she was worried for Harris, that Harris
was scared for his life, which indicates that Dottie thought
there was some world in which Lee might hurt or
kill Harris. Dottie even said she thought Lee might have
a gun. The way that Harris and Dottie spoke to
(30:29):
doctor A about Lee portrayed her as a danger to Harris,
to herself, and potentially in the future, to her baby.
Before Lee set foot in that office, she was already
painted as someone who was not in touch with reality,
someone dangerous, and someone who might need medical intervention. And
(30:50):
what was your mom's relationship with Harris at that time?
Did she like him? Like? What was her relationship with Harris?
And with you?
Speaker 3 (30:57):
I guess I got mom to see Harris as a stockbroker,
so all her money was invested with him. He couldn't
stand my mother. She wasn't even allowed at our house.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
So this is how smart he is, So he.
Speaker 3 (31:10):
Knows that she craves attention, and so when he was
setting me all up after I refused to have an abortion,
which all the whole snowball happened like this, unbeknownst to me,
he called her and said, you know, I love your
daughter so much, but she's got all these mental problems.
You know, I need your help because you're such an
amazing single mother, just like mine, and you know.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
All of this craft. And that's what basically the letter
said too. And I had no idea.
Speaker 4 (31:37):
Can you speak to any sort of questions around your
mental health prior to Harris in your life?
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Yeah, there was zero, nothing, no doctors.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
I'd never done anything untoward, never in my entire life.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
As soon as she discovered that Harris and her mother,
Dottie had spoken with doctor A prior to Lee meeting him,
she stopped seeing Doctor A. She then found a different,
reputable psychiatrist in Charleston and began seeing him. What Lee
didn't realize at the time was that the damage had
been done and that Doctor A's testimony at trial would
(32:21):
not be good for her. Lee felt betrayed by her
mother that her mother would go along with Harris's plan.
Lee was hurt but not that surprised my mom is.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
You know, the diagnosis could be extreme narcissism. Back then,
we didn't even I didn't even know what that meant.
You know, everything's so different back then than it is now.
She's very immature, you know, we had this really crazy childhood.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
But it's maturity, isn't that where she has?
Speaker 4 (32:50):
Your belief or perspective on how this played out is
that Harris was manipulating your mother, who you are already
did not maybe have the most trusting relationship with, and
it was all calculated.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
Oh yeah, my brother uses that excuse all the time,
and my brother is fantastic. My other brother died while
I was gone, but my brother used the excuse of
the time that Harris manipulated her.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
I think she knew what she was doing.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
Which is a very sad, horrible thing, but it's a
realistic thing.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (33:26):
But you think she was motivated in part because Harris
was managing her money.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
No, I think it's because he didn't like her, and
Nolvison he's paying her attention and now all of a
sudden he likes her and he's complimenting her on being
a single mother and doing an amazing job, and he
just wants to help her poor daughter. But I don't
think she had all ever believed that there was anything
wrong with me. All of us were really good kids.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
So all of this is kind of coming to light
for you. There's a lot going on, So can you
kind of just walk us through the timeline here of
like when that's happening when you give birth and leading
us up to the divorce proceedings.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
So things got pretty quiet.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
I had this brilliant psychiatrist and gynecologists, and then I
go in to have Samantha, and we made it so
there was a court order that he could not come
in that day. It could not bother me while I'm
trying to give birth, and I was doing everything to
have her because she was way overdue, and so they
finally had to induce her. So I knew when I
(34:27):
was going to have her. So my girlfriend, Patty, who
went through all the lama's classes and everything else with me,
she and I went in to the hospital and then
they could not she was too big. So finally, after
many many hours, they had to do an emergency sea section.
And when they did that c section efforts, they handed
it to Patty first, and then they handed it to me,
(34:49):
and then they said I was bleeding out. They had
to chase Patty out, and then they knocked me out,
and all I remember waking up and hearing Patty was
the kind of this girl in the whole world going,
You're not supposed to be here. What are you doing here?
And Harris and his mother had come to the hospital
and his mother said, you don't know what my son
(35:11):
has been through. And Patty goes, I have just seen
what Lee's been through. I wasn't you know, in the
operating room, and and it was got really ugly, and
they because there was a court order, they the police
told him to leave. So then I'm in my room
and I said, well, Harris can come and visit her,
because she was in my room with me. I said,
(35:32):
but he has to come alone because I'm not going
to have witnesses to say I beat him or I
did anything on tooward to him, you know, because I
now I know everything he's I thought I knew everything
he'd already been setting me up with. So they agreed
on that, and he came in and.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
I said, Harris, have got a nurse her.
Speaker 3 (35:50):
Could you please walk over to the window and look out,
because this is a man who was repulsed by a
pregnant woman who never wanted this baby.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
And I hear this noise and I look.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
Up and he's clicking pictures of me nursing with his camera.
And I just felt so violated and so discussing, and
I was like, please just get out.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Can I ask you, know, as someone who has claimed
that he never wants children, never wants to be a father,
what did you observe in him when he came to
the hospital and met Savannah Her name was the Savannah
at the time, Yes.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
Savannah, Yeah, and he was holding her. And what does
he do? If there was a definition of the first selfie,
that was Harris. He would take pictures of himself everywhere.
So there he is taking a picture of him with Savannah's.
All he did was take like fifty million pictures so
he could show people what a great daddy was.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
Always said to me is.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
Why did she take that black hair on her ears?
And he said, and these fingernails were discussing. I'm going
to get a nail clipper out. I said, no, you're
not getting a nail clipper out. And that's all I really.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Remember, Lee's daughter's birth certificate reads Savannah Lee Barnett, which
is Lee's last name, not Harris's. Savanna's name would later
be changed to Samantha, which is why Lee sometimes calls
her that Lisa. That Harris only visited her once in
the hospital, the incident in which he snapped photos of
Savannah and of Lee breastfeeding, and then he never came back.
(37:14):
In fact, she said she left the hospital, she went home,
and she didn't see or hear from Harris for weeks.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
The pictures thing is surprising to me because it seems
like he was vocal with everyone in his life that
he didn't want children, and so this about face to
then be wanting to snap a lot of photos for
the purposes of, you know, maybe portraying himself as a
doting dad.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
So he had to pretend he was something he wasn't.
He meets me, who's from Charleston, he's working at his
uncle's Merrill Lynch office. Every single thing way he dressed,
the way he moved, the way he spoke was.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
All an act.
Speaker 3 (37:57):
So when it came to me having the baby, he
could not pretend that he didn't want the baby. I mean,
he had to pretend that he was interested. So he
had to pretend that that he had to get pictures
and show what a good daddy was. But now meantime,
he's told everybody in Charleston that I'm so mentally insane
that he fears for his life and all the restless stuff.
(38:18):
So when I take her home by myself, he's still
lying everybody and telling him that he's seeing his daughter
and whatever. So after six weeks of not seeing him
or something left, I think it was six weeks, maybe seven,
I see a secretary. I'm with Savannah with my girlfriend
at a restaurant and she goes, oh my gosh, she
(38:39):
looks just like Harris and I we'll tell him that
because he hasn't seen her.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
The second biggest mistake of my life.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
So now everybody's saying, how can you let this mentally
insane woman take your youborn home and have no supervision
or you know, she's so dangerous. So now he has
to start backtracking, tracking, tracking, try and covers tracks, and
that's when they went for custody, because how could you
let this horrible woman have this baby.
Speaker 4 (39:09):
He has said he doesn't want kids, that he has
no interest in being a father. Then there's the moment
at the hospital where he's taking a lot of selfies
and he's told people that you are unwell mentally, and
so it's like this sort of I don't know if
the word is incongruent, but it's like, it's not what
I would do if I didn't want the responsibility of parenthood,
(39:30):
if I didn't want that responsibility, I would say, well,
she's got it, she can do this, she doesn't need me.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
Well, let me explain that better.
Speaker 3 (39:39):
So, because of his status that he feels he was
holding in Charleston, even though people knew he never wanted children,
he couldn't say he left me at two and a
half months because I wouldn't have borked. So he had
to have an excuse of why he left me. So
that's when he developed all the mentally ill stuff. The
baby he acted like he wanted, because now it would
(39:59):
look really bad if he said, oh, I don't want it,
and my friends all tried to get me to move
to another state. I should have done that, and there's
a lot of things I should have done, because then
it had been out of side, out of mind, and
I didn't do it, not because I thought I would
get back together, but I thought he didn't want her,
But then I.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Never thought about his reputation is the most important thing
to him.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
He's worked his whole life to be looked at like
he's something that he wasn't. So you don't just walk
out on your pregnant wife, especially back then. So there
had to be a reason why he left his pregnant wife,
and that's where it all stemmed from, right, So I
hope that makes more sense.
Speaker 4 (40:36):
Yeah, So, if I'm understanding correctly, your feeling is that
culturally in the South, and also his own personal sort
of upbringing has informed this state of mind where he
now needs to save face at all costs, which is
going to have to mean taking the baby from you
(40:57):
because he has proclaimed that you're mentally now.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
Yeah, so that's what the whole idea was. It wasn't
ever for him to have her. It was to try
and save face throughout this whole thing.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
Lee was shocked to find out that Harris wanted full
custody of their daughter, Savannah, but she felt comforted by
the fact that a court would probably side with her
the mother. After all, she was still breastfeeding and Harris
had not been involved in the pregnancy or in the
first few months of Savannah's life.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
The court appoints a guardian alightem, and it's a paid
guardian alightem. Everybody said, just be really careful what you
say to her. I tiptoed around her. She starts telling me,
she goes Lee, You've got to trust me. Everything I'm
doing is for you and for your baby. And then
she starts taking her away and giving her to Harris,
like for an hour or three hours, and I'm nursing
and I had a terrible time funded pump pumps back
(41:54):
then were horrible. They're not like they are now. So
she'd take away and then I you're taking her, and like,
I don't even know where you're going. But I wasn't
allowed to know anything. So every time we turned around,
she take me back into court because she wanted to
extend the hours, or she wanted to give him. Instead
of two hours, he got three hours. And every single time,
(42:16):
you have to have all your lawyers pilot and it
costs you all the money.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
You can imagine.
Speaker 3 (42:21):
From there, we set a court date. It took forever
to go to court, and everybody kept saying, don't worry
a good mother. There's no records of any problems. Will
not lose a baby, the nursing baby especially, It's not
going to happen. So we ended up going back and
forth for these tip for tat things. Meantime, I'm losing
all the money I have, I'm not able to work,
(42:44):
and then we finally have a court date set.
Speaker 1 (42:47):
The trial started on January nineteenth, nineteen ninety four, and
lasted thirteen non consecutive days. It ended on February eighteenth,
nineteen ninety four. The psychiatrist doctor A's testimony was not
good for Lee's case. He had diagnosed Lee with a
mental health disorder. Since he also saw her mother, Dottie
(43:08):
on multiple occasions. Doctor A claimed that this mental health
disorder was genetic. It also affected Dottie, and he guessed
probably Lee's grandmother as well. The diagnosis something called hyperthymic temperament.
In his testimony, he describes it akin to bipolar disorder
and states multiple times that it is treatable with medication.
(43:32):
He states that if Lee had not been pregnant, he
would have prescribed her lithium, but instead he prescribed her naving. Now,
this was nineteen ninety four and things obviously change, but
doctor A's description of hyperthymic temperament is very inaccurate based
on today's understanding. In fact, hyperthymic temperament is not considered
(43:54):
a disorder at all. It's classified as a personality style.
Characteristics include increased energy productivity, talkativeness, cheerfulness, as well as
tendency for risk taking. People with hyperthymic temperament can sometimes
be mistaken for having bipolar disorder, but they are very
different things, and it is not standard practice to prescribe
(44:16):
a person with hyperthymic temperament and antipsychotic drug like navying,
because again, hyperthymic temperament is not a psychiatric disorder now,
if you'll recall, after Lee stop seeing doctor A, she
sought out psychiatric treatment from another doctor. She knew that
she would need a second opinion and she wanted to
(44:38):
see a doctor who was unbiased, who had not conferred
with her estranged mother or her soon to be ex husband.
That was doctor Fulk. Doctor Fulk also testified at the trial,
and he disagreed with the diagnosis of hyperthymic temperament. He
said that he saw no signs of any emotional or
mental problem that would just putting Lee on medication. He
(45:02):
also noted that he had seen Lee interact with her daughter, Savannah,
and that she was a patient and attentive mother. These
two doctors testimonies were wildly different from one another, and
perhaps in anticipation of that, the judge had decided that
they would need a third psychiatrist to testify.
Speaker 3 (45:23):
Then the judge decides that he wants a tiebreaker psychologist,
So he points a paid tiebreaker.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
Because there's the doctor who had diagnosed you, and then
there's your reputable psychiatrist who I assume testified that there
was nothing wrong with your mental health.
Speaker 3 (45:43):
Over and over yes, and depositions and by other psychiatrists
that I had too right.
Speaker 1 (45:48):
So then the judge wanted another psychiatrist to testify. It
was psychologist psychologist.
Speaker 3 (45:55):
This is prior going to court. So we had I
think it was seven sessions each. I had seven, Harris
had seven, and he said I'd have to agree that
I believe at times Lee was hyperthymic, and lithium might
have been a good option for my lawyer didn't do anything,
just very.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
Suspect throughout the trial. The case is built that Lee
is unstable, unfit, and mentally unwell. It is proposed that
she could be a danger to her daughter, Savannah. At
one point, it's even said that if she went unmedicated,
she could become homicidal or suicidal. Finally, in February of
(46:34):
nineteen ninety four, the trial concluded.
Speaker 3 (46:37):
It was Friday morning. I got there at eight in
the morning, as usual. My lawyer pulled me into another
room and he said we got to talk. And I said,
what's up? And he goes, last night we all had
a meeting. I said, who's wee? And he said me.
Harris is lawyer. And the judge called us up. Harris
is getting full custody. And I said, well, how can
(46:59):
that even? And he goes, well it has so, I
of course was hysterical. I went and called my brother
and my friends, and I called my mother's.
Speaker 2 (47:10):
Friend and to come and they let her sit with me.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
Savannah was nine and a half months old and still breastfeeding.
Now Lee would only legally be able to see her
four days out of each month. She was in shock,
horrified that this was really happening, and she said the
judge seemed to only take her emotions as further evidence
that she was mentally unwell.
Speaker 3 (47:34):
And I had to sit there and I was crying,
and he said, now, this is like the fourth time
you've cried.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
You're out of control. And I was just crying.
Speaker 3 (47:43):
I mean, they'd taken my baby from me, my nursing baby,
and he force weaned her on the spot that day,
and they took her from me. And I'm the only
one that ever had her, you.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
Know, horrible.
Speaker 4 (47:53):
Yeah, I mean, being postpartum is already a very difficult
and vulnerable time for a lot of people. Crying to
me doesn't feel like an abnormal reaction for someone to feel.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:10):
Lee had always held out hope that she would get
custody of Savannah. She said she'd never been opposed to
Harris having visitation and being in Savannah's life, but the
decision to give full custody of her infant child to
the man who begged her to have an abortion was overwhelming.
She did not trust that he would care for Savannah,
(48:31):
and she said there was something else said in the
courtroom that terrified her for her daughter.
Speaker 3 (48:37):
What happened in the courtroom was Harris is on the
witness stand, and my lawyer said, you think this woman
is so mentally ill, don't you? And Harris said, yeah,
me and all the doctors, and you know it's obvious
she is. And so he said, you've said she's a
third generation with this hypothemic temperament, and Harris said yeah,
and he said, you're saying it's genetic. And he's like, yeah,
(49:00):
he said, so your daughter, he said, because you'd already
written a poem called the Fourth Generation about his baby
girl with this mental illness. So he said, so are
you going to watch her to see if she shows
any signs?
Speaker 2 (49:13):
And he said, yeah, I am.
Speaker 3 (49:15):
And he goes, I'll watch her ever so closely, and
I'm just chillsen as a thirty two or three year
old woman. If I can't prove I'm not mentally ill,
happen a little baby. So because I'll watch her ever
so closely, and when I see one sign of hyperthymic temperament,
I'll whisker her off to one good doctor, doctor, and
(49:35):
I'll have her medicated as young as three years old.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
That's why I left.
Speaker 4 (49:41):
I mean, yeah, that's a very scary thing to hear,
and especially if you already feel like you're being misportrayed
and misdiagnosed and losing custody. If that's how for someone.
Speaker 3 (49:53):
So I had to wait to get my visitations. My
lawyer called me and said, you get her four nights
a month, nursing baby. So first week I get her,
she's got a contusion on her head, bloody nose.
Speaker 1 (50:08):
In the forty eight Hours episode, Harris is interviewed and
he admits that this is true, but claims that his
mother was watching Savannah and the bruising was caused by
an accidental fall. For Lee, it was only an escalation
of an impossible situation. She felt that her daughter was
in unsafe hands. She called the police and attempted to
(50:29):
block Harris from getting Savannah back, but it did not work.
Lee was determined to file an appeal to the court
order as soon as she could, but she legally had
to wait until the written decree of divorce was released.
Her legal team expected it to arrive within thirty days
of the trial ending, but thirty days came and went
and they still waited.
Speaker 3 (50:51):
So in the state of South Carolina, a judge has
thirty days to do a written court order.
Speaker 2 (50:57):
Without a written court order, you can't go to the
appellate court. I watched a.
Speaker 3 (51:01):
Sixty minutes show, which was my favorite show back then,
and they showed how you could get at MacArthur Park
in LA.
Speaker 2 (51:09):
You could get anything illegal you wanted to.
Speaker 3 (51:12):
And I just kind of put back because it was
before I went to court that I saw that show
and I was like, that'll never happen.
Speaker 2 (51:18):
But I stuck in the back of my head.
Speaker 3 (51:19):
So on day forty six, without a written court order,
I had no way to appeal.
Speaker 2 (51:24):
So I left MacArthur Park.
Speaker 4 (51:26):
So you left flew yeah, you La?
Speaker 1 (51:31):
Like wait, You're like wait what?
Speaker 3 (51:33):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (51:33):
So you flew to LA.
Speaker 3 (51:35):
This girl has never even smoked pot and I'm going
down to MacArthur Park to get something.
Speaker 1 (51:40):
Did you take Savannah with you to LA or did
you return her and then you went on this like
yeah trip? So you you did end up returning her
to Harris Oh.
Speaker 2 (51:52):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (51:53):
Lee felt she was out of options. Her child had
been taken away from her and she saw no way forward.
Her experience with the court system and with the judge
on her case led her to believe that they were
not acting Impartially, she felt she'd been framed, told she
had a mental illness when she did not, and so
Lee made a decision. It was a decision that would
(52:16):
impact the rest of her life. Lee had decided to flee.
She didn't quite know how or when, but she decided
she would take Savannah and disappear. Her plan started with
a flight to Los Angeles and a trip to MacArthur Park,
a park known in the nineteen nineties for crime and
illegal activity. She went there looking for something very specific, passports.
(52:50):
That's it for part one. Please join us next week
to hear the second part of Lee Barnett's story, when
she tells us about her life on the run.
Speaker 3 (52:57):
And I just waited every minute to be swarmed in
on by cops, you know, I just knew I was
going to get nailed. And there were cameras back in
those days in there, and I opened up the envelope
and there were two brand new, beautiful.
Speaker 2 (53:10):
Real US passports.
Speaker 4 (53:13):
If you have a story for us, we would love
to hear it. Our email is The Knife at exactly
rightmedia dot com, or you can follow us on Instagram
at the Knife Podcast or Blue Sky at the Knife Podcast.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
This has been an Exactly Right production hosted and produced
by me Hannah Smith, and me Pasha Eny.
Speaker 4 (53:30):
Our producers are Tom Bryfogel and Alexis Samarosi.
Speaker 1 (53:33):
This episode was mixed by Tom Bryfogel. Our associate producer
is Christina Chamberlain. Our theme music is by Birds in
the Airport. Artwork five ansa Lilac executive produced by Karen
Kilgareth Georgia Hardstark and Danielle Kramer
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