After her parents were murdered when she was a baby, the whereabouts of Holly Marie Clouse remained. a mystery for over 40 years. Now, she has been found.
On June 8, the Texas Attorney General's Office announced that the previously missing woman, daughter of Howard Dean Clouse Jr. and Tina Linn Clouse, has been reunited with her extended family, thanks to efforts from law enforcement in three states and genealogists' use of advanced DNA tracing technology.
"Baby Holly has been located alive and well and is now 42 years of age," the office said in a statement. "Holly has been notified of the identities of her biological parents and has been in contact with her extended biological family and they hope to meet in person soon."
Donna Casasanta, her paternal grandmother, was told this week that her long-lost granddaughter had been found, according to The Houston Chronicle. Investigators walked into Holly's workplace June 7, on what would have been her father's 63rd birthday, and told her who she was. Hours later, she met Donna and aunts and uncles on Zoom.
"Finding Holly is a birthday present from heaven since we found her on Junior's birthday," Donna said in a statement provided by the Attorney General's Office. "I prayed for more than 40 years for answers and the Lord has revealed some of it... we have found Holly."
Cheryl Clouse, Holly's aunt, added, "It was so exciting to see Holly. I was so happy to meet her for the first time. It is such a blessing to be reassured that she is alright and has had a good life. The whole family slept well last night."
The Texas Attorney General's Office's Cold Case and Missing Persons Unit, the Lewisville Police Department, the Volusia County Sheriff's Office in Florida, the Arizona Attorney General's Office, the Harris County Sheriff's Office and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children all helped locate Holly, who is living in Oklahoma, where a family had adopted her as a baby. The family that raised her are not suspects in the deaths of her parents, an Attorney General's Office spokesperson said at a press conference in Houston on June 9.
She is married with five children and two grandchildren, The Houston Chronicle reported.
What happened to Baby Holly's parents?
In January 1981, a German shepherd in Harris County, Texas wandered out of the woods onto a road, carrying a decomposed human arm in its jaws. A week later, authorities found in a copse of trees the bodies of Harold, who went by Dean, 22, who has been beaten to death, and his wife Tina, 18, who'd been strangled, the Houston Chronicle reported. They were buried without being identified.
Was there a cult connection?
At the June 9 press conference, the Attorney General's Office spokesperson said Holly was left at a church in Arizona as a baby and "was taken into their care."
"Two women who identified themselves as members of a nomadic religious church brought Holly to the church," he said. "They were wearing white robes and they were barefoot. They indicated the beliefs of their religion, including the separation of male and female members, practicing vegetarian habits and not using or wearing leather goods. The women indicated they had given up a baby before at a laundromat. It is believed that this particular group traveled around the southwestern United States, including Arizona, California and possibly Texas."
Dean and Tina had moved from Florida to Texas before their deaths. Donna told the Houston Chronicle that she last heard from her son in October 1980, in a letter.
She said that a few months after their disappearance, she received a call from an anonymous man who claimed to have found the couple's car in California, and that three women dressed in white robes drove it back to Florida. Donna said one of them, "Sister Susan," personally told her Dean had joined their group and wanted nothing to do with his family. She also told the newspaper that her son had previously joined a cult in the '70s.
The Attorney General's Office spokesperson said that around December 1980 or January 1981, Dean and Tina's families received a phone call from a woman who identified herself as "Sister Susan," who told them she was calling from Los Angeles and wanted to return the couple's car in exchange for money.
"She further stated that Tina and Dean had joined their religious group and no longer wanted to have contact with their families," he said. "They were also giving up all of their possessions."
How were the Clouses' bodies identified?
After the Clouses went missing in 1980, their relatives in Florida registered the couple on lists of missing persons and inquired with the Social Security Administration and the Salvation Army, the outlet said. In 2011, Texas authorities exhumed their bodies to extract DNA from them as part of a broader effort to close cold cases.
California-based company Identifinders International tested the remains, uploaded the genetic information to Gedmatch.com and connected Dean's DNA to relatives in Kentucky, The Houston Chronicle said. This past October, genealogists notified Dean and Tina's families that the pair had been identified as the deceased couple. The investigation into their deaths remains open.
Hope for Holly Project
Several months ago, an initiative titled the Hope for Holly Project was launched to screen and DNA test people "with uncertain childhoods, including the women who have found hopeful connection to the 1981 story of Holly and her parents," according to FHD Forensics and Family History Detectives. They kept on file the AncestryDNA profiles of several of Holly's family members and urged women between ages 40 and 44 who were unsure of their biological origins, or who recognized details in Holly's story, to reach out or get DNA tested.
"The Hope for Holly Project was a success thanks to Mindy and her team," Sherry Linn Green, another of Holly's aunts, said in a statement provided by the Attorney General's Office, referring to Mindy Montford, senior counsel for the Cold Case and Missing Persons Unit.
Due to the sensitive nature of the ongoing criminal investigation, additional information about Holly's childhood and separation from her parents is not available at this time, Family History Detectives said.