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For True Crime Tuesday we look in to the discovery of "Baby Holly" alive and living in Oklahoma, for 40 years after her parents’ 1981 murder in Texas.
Investigators said Tina and Harold Dean Clouse had connections to a cult, members of which apparently handed over “Baby Holly” to a church after the couple’s deaths. Officials did not name the group, but two cult experts said it likely was “Christ Family,” based on the descriptions of the women who gave away the baby.
“There aren’t any other groups that wore white robes and went around barefoot other than Christ Family, and the locality would match as well. The time frame also matches,” said Rick Ross, who has worked with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies.
Timeline of the 40-year search for Baby Holly Marie Clouse
- 1980: Harold Dean Clouse, known as Dean or Junior to his family, his wife Tina and their baby Holly Marie move from Florida to Texas
- October 1980: Dean stops writing letters to his mother Donna Casasanta, causing her alarm Around New Year
- 1981: A person contacts Dean's family to tell them that he has joined a cult and doesn't want anything to do with her Around this time: The family are contacted by a man claiming to be law enforcement who puts them in touch with a 'Sister Susan' from a religious group that wears white robes who offered them Dean and Tina's car back, for a $1,000 donation
- January 1981: The bodies of young man and woman are found in Houston, Texas. There is no sign of a baby and they are unidentified
- 2011: The bodies are exhumed to obtain their DNA samples by Identifinders International, a California-based organization that performs genetic research for law enforcement
- 2021: The bodies are finallyidentified after breakthroughs in DNA forensic technology and their relatives were told
- 2022: Holly discovered to be alive and identified