Annie Dutton arrived in Springfield from Chicago in December 1994 and began working as a nurse on staff at Cedars. In January 1995, she began treating Joshua Lewis, who had broken his leg in the 5th Street fire, and the pair quickly fell in love. However, unknown to everyone, Annie had a secret -- she had been married to Rick Bauer in Chicago, but the marriage had fallen apart due to Annie's alcohol problems and her affair with a man named Jake.

Rick returned and told Annie that they were still legally married because their lawyer had died before he had been able to complete the divorce procedures. Annie kept the information from Josh, and the pair soon became engaged. Unfortunately, Hawk Shayne, Josh's former father-in-law, learned the truth and told Josh about it to break Josh and Annie up, since he believed that his presumed-dead daughter, Reva, was still alive. Cornered, Annie was forced to reveal the whole truth to Josh, who angrily left her.

Though Rick was still in love with Annie, he realized she was in love with Josh, and they got a divorce in Mexico. Not long after, Josh forgave Annie, and they married. However, during their wedding on the carousel that Josh had built for Annie, Alexandra Spaulding arrived and told Josh that Reva was, in fact, alive, so Josh and Reva were still legally married. Though unnerved by Reva's reappearance, Josh was determined to stay with Annie.

Later, Josh and Reva fought for custody of their children, Marah and Shayne, and Reva eventually won after a widow testified that Annie and Jake had run over and killed her husband with their car while driving drunk. In time, Josh and Reva grew closer again, but Shayne, and especially Marah, loved Annie and wanted her as their mommy, so Reva decided to stay away and told Josh she was in love with another man. In March 1996, Reva married Buzz Cooper, and Josh legally married Annie in the Cedars chapel.

Unfortunately, Annie knew that Josh was still in love with Reva. This infuriated Annie, who had started drinking again and had become addicted to painkillers that she took to relieve migraines. Soon she was caught stealing drugs from the hospital and forging Rick's name on prescriptions, and Lillian Raines fired her. Josh and Rick intervened with the help of drug consultant Rachel Sullivan, and Annie went through a radical withdrawal treatment in the Bauer cabin. To Josh's dismay, Annie then took a job as a private physical therapist to Alan Spaulding, who soon fell in love with her.

However, Annie was still obsessed with Josh and decided the only way to keep him was to get pregnant. When Josh, who didn't want another baby, stopped sleeping with her, an increasingly desperate Annie slashed her diaphragm, and then was twice artificially inseminated. Meanwhile, Annie succeeded in getting Josh back into her bed. In January 1997, with help from her old classmate, Fran Richkin, whom Annie blackmailed, her second insemination took, and Annie became pregnant. When Annie told Josh about her pregnancy, without knowing for sure if she was pregnant, Josh decided to stay with Annie until the baby was born and then divorce her.

At the same time, Annie learned that Reva was searching for her long-lost sister, so she blackmailed her friend Blake Marler with the fact that her twins, Kevin and Jason, had two fathers, Rick and Ross Marler, and forced her to spy on Ross so that Blake would tell her what Reva knew about her sister. With help from Alan, who wanted to keep Josh and Reva apart also, Annie laid a false trail for Reva and pretended to be her long-lost sister until Blake finally exposed her. In retaliation, Annie revealed Blake's secret. Later, under stress, and experiencing cramping, Annie went to Dr. Steven Levine and learned something startling -- she'd miscarried her child.

Stunned, Annie sneaked out of the office, carrying the dead baby inside her for three days. Then, on the third day, she provoked a fight with Reva at Amanda's party at the Spaulding mansion. She took Reva's hand, threw herself down the stairs, and framed Reva for the death of her unborn child because of the fall. While Reva was charged for murder, she accused Annie of being artificially inseminated, so Annie got the dead baby out of the Cedars' morgue so it couldn't be autopsied. When Reva wanted to find evidence of a miscarriage from Annie's doctor, Fran stole the evidence.

Finally, Annie was exposed when Dr. Levine, while being cross-examined by Reva's attorney, finally saw her and recognized her as his patient, Mrs. Leslie Johnson. Found out, Annie was forced to confess the whole truth. Reva was then cleared of all charges and reunited with Josh. Afterwards, Annie was sent to Cedars to undergo an emergency hysterectomy after her uterus had been infected, thus she was no longer able to have children. Annie was then put on probation for her crimes, with the clause that if she violated probation, she'd be sent to a mental hospital.

Annie became involved with Alan, and together, they wanted to sabotage the Lewis family. They went to Chicago and found Reva's real sister, Cassie Layne, who was working at a strip club. They hired Cassie to seduce first Billy and then Josh so that Alan could steal Lewis Oil while the brothers were at odds over Cassie. Though Cassie didn't want to do it, Annie and Alan had her daughter, Tammy, so she had to. Though Annie became obsessed with Tammy, nothing came of it becauase, thanks to Reva, the court discovered that Annie had violated her parole by not seeing a court-appointed psychiatrist, and Annie was sent to a mental hospital.

Reva helped extend Annie's hospitalization by hurting Annie at her own game by making it look like Annie had shoved her. While at the hospital, Annie befriended her new roommate, Caitlin, unaware that Caitlin was, in fact, Harley Cooper who Josh and Reva had hired to spy on her to get information about Reva's sister. Thanks to Alan, Annie learned who Harley was and had her drugged by the guards, but Phillip saved Harley. Not long after, Reva and Cassie discovered they were sisters, and Cassie got custody of her daughter with the Lewis' help.

Alan got Annie released and promised her they would adopt many children, so they got engaged. Unfortunately, with Harley's help, Reva found out that Annie was married in Chicago to a man named Eddie Banks. Eddie had helped Annie steal drugs from the hospital where they had worked when she lied to him about needing drugs to pay for her mother's operation. When they got caught, Annie had faked her own death so Eddie would take the rap for the drug charge. He went to jail, mourning the loss of his beloved Annie, but when he found out from Reva that she was still alive, he signed an affidavit stating the truth about Annie and their still-legal marriage.

At Annie's lavish wedding to Alan in January 1998, Eddie stopped the wedding just at the last minute and exposed Annie. A furious Alan left Annie and she was arrested. As Annie waited to be extradited to Ohio to face her drug charge, she talked a guard into entering her cell, knocked him out, and escaped. She went to attorney Ben Warren's office and traded him information about Blake and Ross for money.

After leaving town for several weeks, Annie returned to kill Reva. She got a private plane, then drugged and kidnapped Reva out of the Lewis Oil office and onto a plane. She forced the pilot out of the plane, and then she jumped out, with no parachutes left for Reva, who was tied up. Luckily, Reva survived the crash, while some people assumed that Annie was dead.

Several months later, a detective named Teri DeMarco arrived from Detroit and began to work at the Springfield Police Department with Frank Cooper on the case of the "Nursery Rhyme Stalker." However, unbeknown to everyone, Teri was, in fact, Annie, who had met the real Teri DeMarco at a vacation spot in the islands. After Teri was left in a coma after an accident, Annie had gotten a plastic surgeon to help recreate Teri's face on Annie's. The only one who knew the truth was Dinah, who recognized her by her habits.

Annie began drugging Josh with a hypnotic drug and tried to get him to fall in love with Cassie and hate Reva, so that Reva and Cassie would hate each other. Annie also wanted Josh to fall in love with her, but none of her tricks worked, so Annie staged an attack and arrested Josh for it. At the same time, she seduced Alan, who realized her true identity.

Meanwhile, when Josh, Reva, and the kids returned to Springfield from their Thanksgiving at Cross Creek, Reva read a newspaper article about a missing body in the morgue, and it made her more suspicious about whether Annie was really dead. Reva went to Detroit to visit Teri's slightly older brother, George DeMarco, who told Reva that "Teri" had changed when she returned from a skiing vacation where she had suffered a slight head injury during an accident. When Reva asked George what he meant, George said "Teri" had become more aloof and more distant to many of her friends and family.

In early 1999, Josh and Reva exposed Annie's schemes when they found the real Teri DeMarco in the clinic where Annie had left her. Annie later took Teri to her suite, but Josh and Reva found her there and took her to the hospital. Finally, Annie sneaked into Teri's room in the hospital, and Josh and Reva locked her up. Frank arrested Annie, and Teri went back to her old life. Meanwhile Alan hired Ben, with the promise of Lewis Oil, to get Annie out of jail.

During her incarceration, Annie set fire to her mattress and escaped when the guard opened the door. She hitched a ride with a trucker and hid out at a supposedly abandoned camp area. While she was there, she saw stalker Holly Reade, who had just kidnapped several Springfield children, among them the Lewis kids. Anxious that nothing happen to Shayne, Annie sacrificed her freedom for the kids by calling Reva and telling her everything.

Annie still couldn't get Josh out of her system, though, and proceeded to drug him. After she kidnapped Lizzie Spaulding, when she thought she was a better mother than Beth, India von Halkein and Alan saved Lizzie, and Alan's loyalty to Annie ended. So, with the help of Sam, a friend of Hart Jessup, Annie ran away from the authorities for parts unknown.

In January 2003, Josh and Reva managed to pry Annie's location out of Alan, who was keeping Annie in a mental facility and footing the bill. Reva had been receiving threatening phone calls and immediately wondered if Annie was the culprit. When she and Josh visited Annie, they were shocked to discover that while they had moved on with their lives, Annie had not. Annie was living in a replica of their study, believing that she was still married to Josh and raising his children.

Josh and Reva deduced that Annie wasn't the culprit, and they left. Reva visited again a few days later, and Annie began to slip back into reality at times. She warned Reva that the person responsible for the calls knew how terrible Reva was and wouldn't stop until they did serious damage. Reva left Annie to remain in her fantasy world.