Missing infant found alive 41 years after parents' bodies were recovered in Texas

Two parts of a three-part mystery — what happened to a Florida couple and their infant daughter who vanished more than 40 years ago — have been solved with an unexpected result: baby Holly has been found, alive and 42 years old.

The first part of the mystery was clarified last year when DNA genealogy identified two bodies, found in January 1981 in a wooded part of Houston, as Tina and Dean Clouse, who disappeared in 1980 after moving from Florida to Texas.

Their year-old daughter, however, wasn't located, but that mystery has also been solved after an extensive search recently identified Holly after tracking her journey to a church in Arizona, where she was taken in after having been left by members of a religious group, according to the Texas attorney general's office, whose cold case unit worked on the matter.

"The family that raised Holly are not suspects in this case," Brent Webster, first assistant attorney general, said at a Thursday news conference in downtown Austin.

ABC News reported that Holly, now a mother of five and a grandmother, was located in Oklahoma

Family members in Florida last heard from the Clouses in October 1980, and it is believed that they were killed in December 1980 or in early January 1981, Webster, said, declining to discuss many specifics beyond details intended to jog memories of potential witnesses.

Infant Holly, he said, was dropped off at an unnamed church in Arizona by two women barefoot and wearing white robes, who identified themselves as members of a nomadic religious group that believed in strict separation between men and women, were vegetarian and did not wear leather. Webster did not give a name for the religious group.

Group members are believed to have traveled through California, Arizona and possibly Texas, and female members were sighted begging for food in Yuma, Ariz., in the 1980s, Webster said.

According to the attorney general's office, Holly was left at the church on Nov. 8, 1980 — two months before her parents' bodies were found and about two months before somebody who called herself as "Sister Susan" contacted family members in Florida.

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Webster provided no details on how Holly was located, but an investigator with the Lewisville Police Department said she was found in Arizona after cooperation between multiple agencies led to court documents being unsealed in Florida.

"Then that led us to Arizona, and that led us to Holly," Lewisville police Detective Craig Holleman said Thursday.

Investigators declined to reveal Holly's current name or place of residence to protect her privacy.

The third part of the mystery — what happened to the Clouses — remains a work in progress, with a murder investigation ongoing and authorities asking anybody with information to contact the Texas attorney general’s Cold Case and Missing Persons Unit.

"We need to find pieces of the puzzle to solve this crime," Webster said.

Phone call from Sister Susan

According to Webster, in late 1980 or early 1981, about the time the Clouses are believed to have been killed, family members in Florida were telephoned by a woman who identified herself as Sister Susan, calling from Los Angeles, with an offer to return the Clouses' 1978 two-door, red AMC Concord.

The caller said the Clouses had joined her religious group, no longer wanted contact with family and were giving up their possessions.

The family agreed to pay money for return of the car and met several robed women at the Daytona, Fla., race track. Police took the women into custody, but there is no record of a police report on file, Webster said

"Given the age of this case, that is common," he added.

Relieved yet 'torn up'

After the Clouses' bodies were finally identified, relatives gathered in Houston on March 1 for a graveside service at the cemetery where the couple had been buried. They also visited the wooded site where their bodies were found, according to a GoFundMe page for the Hope for Holly DNA Project, dedicated to the search for the missing infant.

Holly met several members of her new and unexpected family on a video call Tuesday.

“It was so exciting to see Holly. I was so happy to meet her for the first time," Holly's aunt, Cheryl Crouse, said in a statement provided by the attorney general's office. "It is such a blessing to be reassured that she is all right and has had a good life. The whole family slept well last night."

Earlier coverage: Remains of Houston couple found in 1981 finally identified. But their child, now 41, is still missing.

"I believe Tina's finally resting in peace knowing Holly is reuniting with her family," said Sherry Linn Green, another aunt. "I personally am so relieved to know Holly is alive and well and was well cared for, but also torn up by it all. That baby was her life."

Also taking part in the investigation and the search for Holly were the Lewisville Police Department, 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.

"We are thrilled that Holly will now have the chance to connect with her biological family who has been searching for her for so long," said John Bischoff, vice president of the center's Missing Children Division. "We hope that this is a source of encouragement for other families who have missing loved ones and reminds us all to never give up."

Lewisville police were involved because the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb was the last known address of the Clouse family, making the department the lead agency in the missing person case involving Holly, Holleman said.

"It's been a long time that her biological family has been looking for her, but the investigation really unfolded rather quickly once we had all those offices working different angles to find out where she was," he said.

"A lot of the cases that I deal with don't have these type of happy resolutions, so it's really been refreshing to be part of something that has a happy ending," Holleman said.

The attorney general's cold case unit was launched in March 2021, began reviewing cases in December and has 15 investigations underway, an agency spokesman said, adding that there are more than 20,000 unsolved murders in Texas.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Missing infant Holly found alive decades after parents murder in Texas