However, blackmailer Walter Travis (John Carpenter) forces Joe Taylor into recording a meeting at Spence and Iris's apartment that ends up being cancelled when instead it turns out to be a conversation between Iris and Betsy, revealing Mark as a rapist and father of Iris' baby she is carrying. Travis plans to use the tape to get Spence to drop out of the race but the plan backfires when Senator Al Preston dies in a car crash. Peter reconciles with Angel, and they settle down in wedded bliss with their baby daughter, Nicole. Joe confides to Betsy that Walter Travis is blackmailing him over the murder of Travis' wife, Joe's lover, seven years ago. Iris gives birth to a baby girl she names Maggie. Spence finally wins the election to become San Francisco, California's next state senator. 1973 : While under Betsy's care in the hospital for minor surgery, Walter Travis is murdered with an overdose of Demerol. Fearing that Joe's possible involvement in Travis' wife's murder will surface, Betsy confesses to the crime. Tom agrees to represent Betsy, who confesses the truth to him. Tom and Joe discover that Travis actually murdered his wife, not Joe, and later prove that Al Preston's secretary Celia Winters (Abigail Kellogg) killed Travis. Joe promises Iris and Mark that Laura and Spence (now played by Brett Halsey) will never hear the truth about Maggie's parentage, but before she's committed to a sanitarium, a deranged Celia reveals the truth to Laura. Iris's ex-flame Dr. Jim Abbott (Ron Hale) returns to San Francisco nearly five years later along with his fiancee Holly McCallister (Joan McMonagle) yet he never forgot Iris and pursues her even though she's married to Spence, who is now a state senator. Joe leaves the daycare to become Spence's administrative assistant while Holly becomes his secretary. Desperate for a baby, Laura schemes with Jim to get custody of Maggie after he figures out through a medical record that Mark is her biological father; however, Tom arranges a private adoption for Laura and Mark, and Laura reconciles her differences with Iris. Laura and Mark adopt a baby boy they name Philip Elliot. Peter learns that Angel has incurable cancer and vows to make her last days the happiest of her life. In the final telecast on March 23, 1973, Joe and Betsy, surrounded by all of their friends and family, are married in