The Lost Identity of Steve Carter: A Childhood Mystery Solved After 34 Years
- Harriet Wilder
- Aug 26
- 5 min read
What would you do if one day, while getting ready for work, you stumbled across a news story that made you question everything you thought you knew about your life? For Steve Carter, a salesman from Philadelphia, that single moment of curiosity led to the unraveling of a decades-old mystery about who he really was.
“I had an amazing childhood,” Steve told the What It Was Like podcast. “I was adopted and raised by two individuals who are just phenomenal… They’ll always be my parents.”
But as much as Steve loved his adoptive family and the life they gave him, he had always carried unanswered questions about where he came from. Those lingering doubts eventually pushed him into a journey of self-discovery that would reconnect him with a past he never expected — one that
stretched back to a missing child case in Hawaii in the late 1970s.
A Happy Childhood with a Hidden Past
Steve Carter grew up in New Jersey after being adopted from an orphanage in Honolulu when he was four years old. His adoptive parents, Steve and Pat Carter, provided him with everything a child could want: stability, love, and support. From the outside, his life looked normal and fulfilled.
Yet even in the happiest childhoods, small gaps in identity can persist. Steve knew almost nothing about the circumstances that had brought him to the orphanage in Hawaii. He didn’t know who had left him there, or why. It was a silence in his personal story that he had learned to live with, until one ordinary morning changed everything.
The Story That Sparked It All
One day in 2011, Steve was getting ready for work when CNN ran a segment about a missing woman who had been abducted as a child. She had only discovered the truth years later after stumbling across her photo on a website for missing children.
The story caught Steve’s attention. Later, he heard the same report again while driving to work. Then it appeared once more in the form of a tablet notification. It felt as though the universe was trying to tell him something.
So he acted. He visited a website listing missing children in Hawaii and typed in three simple terms: Hawaii, male, missing 34 years. The result stopped him in his tracks.
Staring back at him was an age-progression photo of a baby who had gone missing in the late 1970s. The digitally aged image looked uncannily like Steve himself.
A Missing Child Named Marx
The photograph Steve found was based on a six-month-old boy named Marx Panama Moriarty Barnes, who had disappeared on June 21, 1977. That day, Marx’s mother, Charlotte Moriarty, had taken her baby out for a walk in Hawaii and never returned.
Charlotte eventually turned up at a stranger’s house, giving both herself and her son false names. Authorities soon realised something was wrong. Charlotte was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, and baby Marx was placed in protective care. Days later, Charlotte vanished once again, this time for good.
The false name she had given made it almost impossible for officials to trace the baby’s true identity. Unable to link him back to his father, Mark Barnes, who had reported him missing, the little boy became a ward of the state. Three years later, he was adopted by the Carters and renamed Steve Carter.
DNA Brings the Truth to Light
At first, Steve thought the resemblance to the missing child’s image was just an interesting coincidence. He showed the picture to friends, who strongly urged him to go to the police.
He eventually submitted a DNA test, though the results took months to process. Finally, the truth came back: Steve Carter was indeed the missing baby, Marx Panama Moriarty Barnes.
For Steve, the discovery was life-changing. “I kind of took on a kind of ‘guilt factor’ because I felt like I should have been doing more to alert [my biological family] that not only am I safe, I’m extremely happy,” he later reflected.
Reconnecting with a Lost Family
Through this discovery, Steve learned that he had an older half-sister, Jennifer Monnheimer, who had been just eight years old when their mother vanished with her baby brother. She had long assumed both her mother and sibling had died, though she had later convinced authorities to reopen the case, which eventually led to the age-progression photo being made.
When Steve and Jennifer finally spoke, the connection was immediate. “We definitely shared a lot of similarities,” Steve said. “Not just genetics-wise… We shared the same taste in certain things and had the same sense of humour.”
Steve also reconnected with his biological father, Mark Barnes. For Mark, hearing his son’s voice for the first time was overwhelming. “All I could say was, ‘Wow. Oh wow. Wow,’” he told PEOPLE.
Mark recalled the agony of losing his girlfriend and infant son so suddenly and never finding them again. “I spent about a year and a half going crazy driving around the island,” he said of his desperate search.
The Mystery of Charlotte
The story of Steve’s birth mother, Charlotte Moriarty, remains unresolved. Letters from relatives revealed that Charlotte had a turbulent relationship with Mark and often disappeared for days at a time.
“She was more of a free spirit,” Steve explained. “If you’re not in the right headspace and you’re dealing with other things, you might put the oxygen mask on yourself first. I don’t blame her for anything.”
Steve has speculated that Charlotte may have travelled to East Asia for a fresh start, perhaps immersing herself in a carefree lifestyle before eventually passing away. Whatever the truth, she was never seen again after leaving the hospital in Hawaii.
A Life Reframed
Although Steve never managed to meet his biological father in person before his death in 2023, the two exchanged phone calls and letters that helped fill in some of the missing pieces.
Despite the complexities of his story, Steve feels grateful. He has spoken openly about how lucky he was to be adopted by loving parents who gave him a secure life. At the same time, he recognises how his experience has brought hope to others.
On one occasion, while riding a bus, a woman recognised him and told him how much his story meant. Her own child had been missing for 22 years, and Steve’s journey gave her hope.
“And for anyone dealing with a missing loved one,” Steve said, “always have hope. There is a chance that person is doing well and will surface again to be reunited with you.”
Legacy of a Rediscovered Life
Steve Carter’s story is a rare reminder that missing children’s cases don’t always end in tragedy. Sometimes, decades later, pieces fall into place and long-lost connections can be restored.
It’s also a story of identity — of how we are shaped by the families who raise us, but also by the mysteries that linger in our pasts. For Steve, answering those questions gave him not just a sense of closure but also a powerful role in inspiring others never to give up hope.
Sources
PEOPLE – “Man Finds Out He Is a Missing Child After Seeing Himself on Website”
https://people.com/crime/man-finds-out-he-is-missing-child-after-seeing-himself-on-website
CNN – “Adopted man finds he was a missing child”
BBC – “US man discovers he was a missing child”
What It Was Like Podcast – Interview with Steve Carter
Associated Press – “Man discovers he was missing child”
