An enterprising gumshoe-turned-journalist has tracked down the real-life actress behind the notorious (and fictional) globetrotting criminal Carmen Sandiego, two decades after she first embodied the elusive character.

American actress Janine LaManna was the first person to play the popular supervillain on live-action television, in the 1990s gameshow "Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?" LaManna donned the character's trademark red trench coat and fedora for one season of the show, though her face was always partially concealed and she was never explicitly named as Carmen Sandiego in the show's credits.

LaManna says she remained anonymous in the role because the show's producers wanted to keep an aura of mystery around Carmen Sandiego. "They really guarded my identity closely because they didn't want to spoil it for the kids," she told CTV News Channel on Thursday.

Huffington Post writer Todd Van Luling was the first person to find and identify LaManna, whom he recalls watching on TV when he was five years old. "One of the first big questions I ever experienced in my life was: Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?" he told CTV News Channel. That question stuck with Van Luling for years, he says, and it became the basis for his Huffington Post investigation into Carmen Sandiego's real-life alter-ego.

The Carmen Sandiego character was featured in several video games and television shows in the 1980s and '90s, including two gameshows for school-aged children. Contestants took on the role of "gumshoes" at a fictional detective agency, where they were tasked with foiling Sandiego's theft of major world landmarks. The gumshoes tracked her down by answering a series of geography or history-based clues.

Despite filling the shoes of the infamous villain, LaManna says no one has ever identified her until now. "Unless you're really looking for that chin or those lips (the only parts of her visible on the show), I don't think anyone recognized me," she said.

LaManna, who works as a stage and occasional television actress, has spent last few years of her life travelling the world, although those travels have been motivated by love, not crime. LaManna is married to a member of the U.S. military, and she's moved along with him each time he's assigned to a new post.

"We've been travelling quite a bit, as that comes with the territory of being an active-duty army family," she said.

However, her globe-trotting days are nearly over, as her husband is slated to retire on Friday. LaManna says she and her husband have plans to settle down in New York with their two kids, where she hopes to find work on Broadway.

Van Luling says it was a thrill to finally find Carmen Sandiego, after so many years of wondering where she was hiding.

"I felt like a gumshoe," he said.