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Mans whole world turns upside down when he finds his photo on a missing kids website
I can't even imagine finding this out as an adult.
Sasha Alonzo
10.19.21

Most people have a basic understanding of their family’s history. Where they came from, their medical history and if they have any relatives living in other parts of the world. However, some people aren’t so lucky. Whether it’s because they were put up for adoption or abandoned, they don’t have the answers to those questions.

A missing child

A 35-year-old Philadelphia man named Steve Carter solved the case of a missing child. The twist is, he was that child.

The software salesman was adopted from an orphanage in Honolulu, Hawaii when he was just 4 years old. He grew up a happy child, by all accounts, with his adoptive parents in New Jersey.

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The woman that started it all

You might say Carlina White had something to do with solving the case as well.

Carter read about the Atlanta woman who solved her own kidnapping case. She had just been reunited with her birth parents 23 years after being abducted at 3 weeks old by a woman posing as a nurse from Harlem Hospital Center in New York.

White unraveled the case after finding her own baby photo on the website of the National Center for Missing Children.

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Something told Carter to visit the page as well.

“It popped up on my iPad, and right from there I went to the center’s website,” Carter told CNN.

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Finding answers

Carter was now married and thinking about having his own kids. So that naturally led to questions about his biological origins. And clearly the details his parents gave him led to a hunch that something wasn’t quite right.

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Questions that needed answers

He had also wondered why his birth certificate was issued an entire year after he was born and his father’s ethnicity was listed as Hawaiian.

When he clicked on Missingkids.com he saw an age-progression photo from a kidnapping case in Hawaii – it looked just like him. So he immediately called the Honolulu Police Department.

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“I let them know my info and they ran with it,” he told CNN. “They were the ones who did all the legwork.”

Carter took a DNA test in February and 8 months later an investigation revealed his real name: Marx Panama Moriarty Barnes.

His biological parents are Mark Barnes and Charlotte Moriarty. The manner in which he went missing is unclear – some outlets say Barnes reported his son missing after Moriarty took their son for a walk and returned without him.

All Carter knows is that it was his mother that took him to the orphanage and told the staff his name was Tenzin Amea.

A new life with an unknown past

The Carters believed their child had been in foster care for 3 years before they adopted him.

Steve Carter Sr. was stationed in Oahu, Hawaii a U.S. Army officer in 1980, and he and his wife Pat were keen to adopt a child. They fell in love with him immediately and had no reason to question anything the orphanage told them.

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A wonderful family

“My life has been filled with joy,” Steve Jr. told Hawaii News Now.

His quest to find his birth parents was simple curiosity. He wanted information that the rest of us take for granted.

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Carter tracked his father down in California, where Barnes lives with his two daughters. Moriarty’s whereabouts remain unknown.

Reaching out to his biological father

He reached out to his father. The man was shocked – and it was a lot to digest, so they decided to take things slowly.

“I was absolutely, positively thunderstruck and amazed,” said Barnes of hearing his son’s voice for the first time.

Carter has a half-sister by his mother who he found through DNA testing as well.

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The last time they updated the press, Carter was planning to meet his dad. And he and his half-sister planned to continue to search for their mother.

Learn more about Carter’s incredible story by watching the video below.

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