Steve Carter lived a normal life in New Jersey for 34 years, believing he knew his story. He had been adopted from Hawaii as a child and raised by loving parents, Steve told the What It Was Like podcast. But his world changed forever when he decided to browse a missing children’s website in 2011.
What started as casual curiosity after hearing about another missing child case led to a shocking discovery. Carter found himself staring at an age-progression photo on the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children website that looked exactly like him.
The photo showed what a missing baby named Marx Panama Moriarty Barnes might look like as an adult. Carter had been “missing” since he was 4 years old, though he never knew it. His mother had abandoned him with a false name before disappearing forever.
The disturbing truth behind a decades-old disappearance
Carter’s real story began in 1977 in Hawaii. He was born Marx Panama Moriarty Barnes to Charlotte Moriarty and Mark Barnes. On June 21, 1977, Charlotte took her 6-month-old son for a walk and never returned home. Mark Barnes found the baby’s empty stroller at a bus stop but waited nearly three weeks to report them missing because Charlotte had disappeared before.
The truth was more complicated than anyone knew. Charlotte had taken baby Marx to a stranger’s house, where police found them both. She gave false names to authorities, calling herself Jane Amea and her son Tenzin Amea. She even provided a fake birth date for the child. Charlotte was taken to a psychiatric hospital while Marx was placed in protective care.
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Steve Carter, raised in Philadelphia and adopted as a baby, always felt a lingering curiosity about his origins. That curiosity turned urgent in 2011, when news surfaced about a woman abducted as an infant, sparking Steve to explore the MissingKids database.… pic.twitter.com/HCeJNk1U6W
Just days later, Charlotte left the hospital and vanished completely. She has never been seen again. Because of the false identity she provided, police could not connect baby Marx to his father’s missing persons report. The child became a ward of the state and was placed in an orphanage just 30 miles from his biological father’s home.
Three years later, Steve and Pat Carter adopted the boy and moved to New Jersey, giving him the name Steve Carter. Meanwhile, his biological father, Mark Barnes, spent years driving around the island searching for his son, never knowing he was safe but living under a different identity.
DNA test confirms shocking identity after 30 years
After seeing his photo on the missing children’s website, Carter contacted Hawaiian authorities. He provided a DNA sample in February 2011, and eight months later, the results confirmed his true identity. Just like other bizarre missing person cases that continue to puzzle investigators, Carter’s story had taken decades to unravel.
The discovery connected Carter with his biological family. He learned he had a half-sister named Jennifer Monnheimer, who was 8 years old when he disappeared. Jennifer had never given up hope and convinced authorities to reopen the case in 2001, which led to the age-progression photo that Carter eventually found.
In 2011, 34-year-old Steve Carter saw an age-progressed image of a missing Hawaiian baby that looked just like him—DNA tests confirmed he'd been missing since 1977 pic.twitter.com/SaeegHTXem
— Today In History (@historigins) August 16, 2025
When Carter finally spoke to his biological father Mark Barnes by phone in 2012, Barnes could only say, “Wow. Oh wow. Wow.” Barnes told People magazine, according to Daily Mail, how rough it had been to lose his girlfriend and son so suddenly. “I spent about a year and a half going crazy driving around the island,” he said.
Carter learned that his parents had a troubled relationship, with Charlotte often disappearing for days at a time. Like many unsolved mysteries that continue to haunt families, Charlotte’s whereabouts remain unknown. Carter believes she may have traveled to East Asia for a fresh start but likely died years ago.
In 2010, 35-year-old Steve Carter from Philadelphia was browsing the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's website out of sheer curiosity when something stopped him cold. He stumbled upon an age-progressed image of a missing child that looked eerily familiar-it was… pic.twitter.com/hoEeIMTpRr
— KNOWLEDGE WORM(@Knowledge_worm) August 27, 2025
Despite the shocking discovery, Carter holds no anger toward his biological mother. He understands she was suffering from mental health issues and possibly postpartum depression. “If you’re not in the right headspace and you’re dealing with other things, you might put the oxygen mask on yourself first,” Carter explained. “I don’t blame her for anything.”
Carter’s case became one of the longest-solved missing child cases in United States history. Sadly, he never got to meet his biological father in person before Mark Barnes died in 2023. However, his story continues to inspire other families searching for missing loved ones, proving that even after decades, some cases can still have happy endings.
