Steve Carter, a man who had a wonderful childhood recently stumbled upon a shocking discovery about his past. It turned out that he had been reported missing for over three decades.
The 37-year-old salesman, who was adopted from an orphanage in Honolulu, Hawaii when he was just 4 years old, had always felt that he had an 'amazing childhood.'
Raised by loving adoptive parents in New Jersey, Carter had no reason to question his origins or past.
However, that all changed when Carter heard a news story about a woman who discovered she had been abducted as a child after finding her missing children's poster online.
Suddenly intrigued by this, Carter decided to do some digging into his own background.
After searching for information about missing children cases in Hawaii, Carter was stunned to discover his own face staring back at him from the MissingKids.com website.
There was his baby photo, alongside an aged digital rendering of what he might look like today, based on images of his birth parents.
"I immediately knew it was me," Carter recounted in an interview.
It turned out that Carter's birth name was Marx Panama Moriarty Barnes, and that he had gone missing in June 1977 after his birth mother, Charlotte Moriarty, took him for a walk and never returned.
According to reports, Moriarty had gone to a stranger's home and given a fake name for herself and the baby, before then checking into a psychiatric hospital.
This made it incredibly difficult for the authorities to track down the missing child and ultimately led to Carter being placed into the foster care system.
Three years later, Steve and Pat Carter adopted the young boy, raising him as their own in New Jersey, completely unaware of his mysterious past.
"I had an amazing childhood," Carter said
He stated. "I was adopted and raised by two individuals who are just phenomenal... They'll always be my parents."
It wasn't until decades later, when Carter decided to investigate his origins, that the full truth was revealed.
After contacting the police and providing a DNA sample, the authorities were able to confirm that the man they had in front of them was indeed the same child who had been reported missing all those years ago.
Remarkably, Carter was even able to reconnect with some of his biological family, including his father, Mark Barnes, and a half-sister.
However, he never had the chance to meet his birth father in person, as Barnes passed away shortly after their first phone conversation.
Barnes told People magazine in 2012, describing their emotional reunion. "I always expected a knock at the door or a phone call."
