New York, June 10, 2022 – ‘Baby Holly‘ was found alive in Oklahoma40 years later the murder of her parents: Holly Marie Clousenow 42 and a mother of five, was tracked down by esperti in cold case after they had been lost for decades. “She is alive and well”announced the texas search launching an appeal to the public to help them do light on the murder of parents, Tina and Harold Clouse. Holly was tracked down thanks to “genetic genealogy“, a technique that uses DNA and complex family trees to identify victims and suspects of years old unsolved cases. Among the family members who now rejoice at the discovery is a grandmother: Donna Casasanta, Harold’s mother, has learned that the granddaughter had been found on the day her son would have celebrated his birthday. “A gift from heaven”, he defined it.
Originally from Florida, Tina and Harold in 1980 they had cut ties with their families of origin. In 1981, a dog found a half-deconstructed arm in a wooded area of Houston: the corpses of a young couple, he beaten to death and she apparently strangled, which only last year, thanks to DNA, were identified with certainty. Holly’s mystery remained open: “She was put in contact with her biological relatives and on Tuesday she met them in person,” said Deputy Attorney Brent Webster trying to piece together the pieces of a 40-year-long puzzle. . According to what was reconstructed by the prosecutor, the girl was left in a church in Arizona e adopted by a family who is not considered to be involved in the mystery. The police are instead looking for two women who they would deliver Holly to the church identifying themselves as members of a nomadic religious sect that practices gender separation and veganism: “They wore white clothes and walked barefoot.”
Between the late 1980s and 1981, the Clouses’ relatives received a phone call from a self-styled ‘Sister Susan’. The woman said that the Clouses had joined her group, they wanted to cut the bridges of the family and give all their material possessions, offering to return Harold and Tina’s car to his mother in exchange for money. Family members obviously contacted the police: when ‘Sister Susan’ and two other white-clad women drove to Daytona Beach late at night they were arrested but never charged. Holly’s case shines the spotlight on the high number of unsolved homicides in the United States: over 270 thousand, according to the calculations of the Texas prosecutor’s office, of which twenty thousand in the state of the lone star.