Saturday 11 June 2022 09:16 PM Baby Holly's biological aunt reveals their 'miraculous' reunion 40 years after ... trends now
Baby Holly's biological aunt has revealed their 'miraculous' reunion 40 years after her parents were murdered in the woods and she was abducted by a cult then abandoned at a church.
In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, Cheryl Clouse also revealed how her brother - Holly's father - joined a Christian cult as a teenager but left after two weeks and returned home 'barefoot' and in a robe.
Holly is the daughter of Harold Dean Clouse and Tina Gail Linn, a married teenage couple who vanished in 1980 after moving from Florida to Texas when Holly was less than a year old. For decades, Cheryl and the rest of her family believed they had gone off-grid with a religious group. Last year, they learned that the pair had been murdered forty years ago and their bodies dumped in woods in Houston.
It was the result of a genetic genealogy breakthrough by a group of scientists who wanted to identify a couple known as 'The Houston Does' whose bodies were found by a dog in 1981.
While her parents were murdered, Holly was abducted by a group of women who wore white robes and traveled as a religious group. They dropped her off unharmed at a church in Arizona and she was raised happily by an adoptive family, only discovering last week that her birth parents had been brutally murdered.
Speaking this weekend, Cheryl, a 62-year-old nurse who lives in Alabama, told of the moment she, her sisters and her mother found out that their beloved 'Junior', as they called her brother, had been killed - and of their astonishment at learning his daughter may still be alive.
'It is such an amazing miracle that we found her. The whole family is so happy and relieved. Our hearts are still healing but we’re so, so happy that we found her. And that she is alive, she has a family, and she survived. Nothing terrible happened to her. Hallelujah and Amen... we have Holly,' she said.
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'Baby Holly' is no 42 (left) and lives in Oklahoma. She is shown holding up a photo of her parents, taken not long before they were murdered in 1980. Her aunt Cheryl Clouse, right, spoke with DailyMail.com about the family's emotional reunion and how they now hope to find the cult killers responsible for ripping the family apart
They had their first Zoom call as a family this week, and Cheryl hopes they will meet in person in the future.
'It was exciting. I was very anxious. My heart was racing, it was delightful to meet her and we all took turns at letting her know who we were in the family.
'Mom went first saying she’s her grandma. It was exciting to talk to her and see her.
'She looks like her mother. She has her nose, chin, lips, smile, and then when I heard her voice, she sounded like Tina. It’s very exciting.
'Our hope is to meet Holly in person and that she will allow our family to meet her and just love on her and be a part of her family. We want to pour the love on her, she needs it.'
. Our hearts are still healing but we’re so, so happy that we found her. And that she is alive, she has a family, and she survived. Nothing terrible happened to her. Hallelujah and Amen... we have Holly
The family are also hopeful that Dean and Tina's killers will be found and brought to justice.
'There’s a very good chance these people may still be alive. That’s my prayer. Maybe not all of them are but at least one or two of them and that justice is served,' she said.
The family's hope that they were alive was fueled for years by a mysterious 1981 interaction with a cult member who called herself Sister Susan, several months after the family stopped hearing from them.
Susan called Cheryl and Dean's mother from California, telling her they had all joined a cult and no longer needed their car. She offered to drive it back to Florida in exchange for $1,000, but said they would never hear from Dean or Tina again.
They believed her because it wasn't Dean's first experience with religious groups; years earlier, before he married Tina, he had disappeared with a cult for several weeks.
Harold Dean Clouse and Tina Gail Linn met as teenagers. They got married when Tina was 15 and pregnant with Holly, then moved to Texas before she was one so that Dean could get a better-paying carpenter job. Cheryl says they were both 'sweet', kind' but too trusting of strangers
Holly is shown as a baby, aged 10 months, in one of the last photos that Tina sent to the Clouse family before she was murdered
'There were some times as a young adult when he’d go off for days.
'I can’t remember how long he was gone when he was a teenager and had been connected with these cult members but I do vividly remember when he came home because I was outside at the house in Florida.
He didn’t talk a lot about it, he just said it was a group that was learning about Jesus and faith and something that he wanted to research. 'He never explained to me why he decided to leave. I know it would have been rough. They travelled around, they’d get their food begging... He was glad to me home. He was only 15 or 16
Cheryl Clouse, on her brother's involvement with a cult as a teenager
'I looked down the street and I couldn’t tell it was him until he got closer to me. It was a young man walking with a long robe on. He was barefoot or he had sandals on, I think he was barefoot.
'As he got closer I realized “oh my gosh that’s Junior!” I went yelling for him and he came back.
'I was very surprised and kind of taken aback that he would do that just go off and join this group. He didn’t talk a lot about it, he just said it was a group that was learning about Jesus and faith and something that he wanted to research.
'He never explained to me why he decided to leave. I know it would have been rough. They travelled around, they’d get their food begging... He was glad to me home. He was only 15 or 16 so he was very young but he liked helping people and he liked adventure and he was trustworthy,' she said.
Cheryl told of another incident when
