202: The Fugitive Lee Barnett

Southern Fried True Crime

Erica Kelley

True Crime, Society & Culture, History

4.6 • 10.5K Ratings

🗓️ 6 December 2023

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In April of 1994, Lee Barnett picked up her 11-month-old daughter, Savanna, from her ex-husband Harris Todd’s house in Charleston, South Carolina. They were supposed to return at around six o’clock that evening. But they never showed up. Over the next 20 years, they’d travel the world together, as Lee fled from her child’s father, the FBI, and numerous international agencies. She claimed she was saving her daughter from an abusive father. But Harris claimed that Dorothy was the actual abuser.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Southern Fried True Crime covers cases that are not suitable for young listeners,
0:14.4	and there may also be some explicit language used.
0:17.3	Listener discretion is advised.
0:20.3	Everyone knows that saying, there are two sides to every story, and today's case is the perfect example of that.
0:28.0	In fact, everything about this case could be completely turned on its head just depending on who you believe.
0:35.1	On the one hand, this could be a case of a mentally unstable abusive woman.
0:40.4	A woman who tormented her husband behind closed doors, who berated, threatened, and became violent with him.
0:47.0	But on the other hand, this case could be the exact opposite.
0:51.0	It could be a case of an uncaring man who married an unsuspecting woman.
0:55.0	A man who after their divorce put their newborn little girl in danger.
0:59.0	A man who wanted to take his daughter away from her mother forever, for the simple sake that he could.
1:06.0	But it was the woman, Lee Barnett, who abducted her own newborn daughter,
1:11.0	and successfully fled her ex-husband, international authorities, and
1:14.8	FBI for nearly 20 years.
1:16.7	Welcome to episode 202, The Fugitive Lee Barnett.
1:23.2	Dorothy Lee Barnett was born on May 27th, 1960. Her mother's name was Dottie. Of course, Dottie was probably a nickname for Dorothy, and Dorothy Lee went by her middle name Lee.
1:44.3	Lee's father had died during her early childhood, so Dottie became a single parent.
1:49.4	Despite the tragedy of her husband's death, she maintained a passion for life.
1:54.8	She was known to be free-spirited, fun, and it showed.
1:58.8	Dottie and her children moved to all sorts of different places during their childhood, South Carolina, Florida, Belize.
2:06.5	When Lee's friend Susan first laid eyes on the Barnett family, she saw evidence of that.
2:12.1	Susan told journalist Maureen May her.
	...

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