A woman who went missing as a baby in 1980 has been found alive and well.
Holly Marie vanished alongside her parents Harold Dean Clouse and Tina Clouse shortly after they had moved from Florida to Texas.
The bodies of Holly Marie’s parents were identified in October 2021, having been found in Texas in 1981.
However, there was no sign of baby Holly until recently when she was found living in Oklahoma and positively identified.
The family that raised Holly are not being treated as suspects in the case of her parents’ murders.
Harold Dean’s mother Donna Casasanta has spent the last four decades seeking answers, according to the Houston Chronicle, and was delighted to receive a phone call confirming that Holly had been found this week.
“Finding Holly is a birthday present from heaven since we found her on Junior’s birthday,” Casasanta said in a statement released by a family spokeswoman to the Houston Chronicle.
“I prayed for more than 40 years for answers and the Lord has revealed some of it.”
Casasanta regularly received letters from her son after he relocated to Texas, before they stopped abruptly in October 1980.
Several months later she received an anonymous call from someone who said she had found the family’s car in California, with three women clad in white robes driving it all the was back to Donna in Florida.
One of the women, who referred to herself as ‘Sister Susan’, told Donna that her son had become a member of a cult, given up his possessions and would be cutting all ties with his past – including his family.
“That was weird,” Donna told the Chronicle. “We really got frightened, and we started searching and searching.”
In January 1981, a German Shepherd found the remains of a human arm, prompting a police search of an area in Harris County, Texas.
Two bodies were found a week later but it was only 40 years later, with improvements in technology and DNA databases, that they were identified as the Clouses.
Dean Harold had been beaten to death and Tina had been strangled; both had been dead for some time when they were discovered.
The Texas Attorney General’s Office took control of the case once the Clouse’s remains were identified, and at a press conference revealed that baby Holly had been dropped off at a church in Arizona by two white robe-clad women, who claimed to be part of a nomadic religious group.
“The Linn and Clouse families have been searching for answers concerning the welfare of the Clouses and their daughter, Holly since they were last heard from in 1980,” said a statement from the Texas Attorney General’s Office, reported the Houston Chronicle.
“Baby Holly has been located alive and well and is now 42 years of age. 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.”
“Finding Holly is a birthday present from heaven since we found her on Junior’s [Dean Clouse’s] birthday,” Donna said through a family spokesperson.
“I prayed for more than 40 years for answers and the Lord has revealed some of it.”