Today she is 42 years old
“Baby Holly” found alive after more than 40 years
More than four decades after the unexplained death of a couple in Texas, authorities have located their missing daughter.
Published: 2:54 p.m
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Updated: 4:56 p.m
“Baby Holly was found alive and well and is now 42 years old,” Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office said on Thursday. The authorities hope to be able to clarify the background to the death of the parents.
Left at church as a toddler
The bodies of Tina and Harold Clouse were found in a wooded area near Houston in 1981. However, it was only last year that they could be identified with the help of genetic genealogy, which is also used in genealogical research. The Clouses’ family said they last heard from the Florida couple and their baby in 1980.
According to Assistant Attorney General Brent Webster, Holly had been left as an infant in an Arizona church. There, a family took care of the little ones and raised them.
Authorities hope for further information
Baby Holly was brought into the church by two women who “posed as members of a roving religious group,” Webster said at a press conference. “They wore white robes, were barefoot and called themselves vegetarians.”
According to him, in late 1980 or early 1981 a woman who identified herself as “Sister Susan” telephoned the Clouses’ relatives. She said the couple have joined their group, wanting to cut ties with the family and give up their property.
The relatives called the police, and when two or three white-robed women drove up in the Clouses’ car, they were briefly arrested. However, the case was then apparently not pursued further, Webster said. The police are now hoping for new clues.
According to Webster, there has now been a first virtual contact between Holly and the relatives of her birth parents. The relatives hope to “soon get to know Holly personally”. “It’s a blessing to know that she’s doing well and has had a good life,” her aunt Cheryl Clouse said in a statement from the Texas Attorney General’s Office. (AFP/chs)