Echoes of the past

One of the biggest family secrets of all time

NEWS| December 2024

June 7, 2022 was just a normal morning for 42-year-old Holly Marie. She woke up and took care of her five kids and went to go to her waitress job at Oklahoma diner. Holly was finishing making a big order when a detective from Texas attorney general’s Cold Case and Missing Persons Unit approached Marie.

They sat in a booth, and the detective proceeded to tell her that they were investigating a cold case from 1980 involving a couple, Tina and Dean Clouse. “I was in shock. I couldn't move,” Marie explained. 

Tina and Dean Clouse were a young couple. They met when Tina was 15 years old and Dean was 19 years old. The couple got married young, in 1970 and not soon after had a baby girl named Holly. The family was described as happy and joyful with a bright future. Before Dean and Tina got married, Dean was in a religious group and had a history of being in other groups like that, which was actually a cult, but Tina told Dean that she wouldn't marry Dean if he didn't leave the group.

In 1980, the couple moved away from their families in Florida to Dallas, Texas, because Dean had gotten a new job. Dean kept in touch with his mother and took her car to Texas when he was 21 years old and Tina was 17 years old. Tina always would send letters to her family in Florida, and she seemed like she had such an great life. However, in October of 1980—all of a sudden—the letters stopped.

A few months later, Dean's mother got a phone call from a lady who called herself  “Sister Susan.” She told Dean's mom that Dean and Tina had joined a religious group, and they were giving away all their belongings. Sister Susan said she would trade Dean's mother her car back for $1,000. Dean's mother agreed and went to meet up with Sister Susan. They met up at midnight in a parking lot, and the trade was successful.

Several weeks had passed since Tina and Dean’s families had heard from them after the car and money trade-off. Then weeks turned into months and still nothing from Tina or Dean. Their families started to get worried and filed a missing persons report for them and Holly, but the police turned the family down and didn't take them seriously. Tina and Dean’s bodies had already been found in a wooded area 200 miles away from their home in January 1981. Around the same time that Dean’s mother got her car back from Sister Susan, Dean's and Tina's autopsies showed that Dean was trying to protect Tina. Tina had been strangled, and Dean had been beaten to death.

Somehow, the investigators didn't make the connection that Tina and Dean were the people who got filed as missing persons, and the investigators listed them as Jane and John Doe. Tina and Dean were unidentified for 40 years.

One of Dean’s relatives took a DNA test and identified Dean and Tina as their Jane and John Doe. In 2021, Tina and Dean’s families found out that they were dead. Dean’s relative called their family immediately, and Holly had come up in the conversation. Everyone was wondering where Holly had gone. The investigators had no idea that Tina and Dean had a baby they were supposed to be looking for, and they were speechless.

Investigators immediately hired forensic artists to make missing posters, and investigators did the same DNA test that Dean’s relatives did to find Holly, and on June 7, 2022, investigators found that Holly was still alive. 

Holly went missing when she was one year old and then was found over 40 years later. Holly was dropped off at a church in Arizona by a group of women who claimed to belong to a religious group. The women had Holly’s birth certificate, which they gave to the church, and the priest gave the women back a note written by Dean and Tina. It was parental rights to Holly.

The priest of the church and his wife had been trying hard for a baby, but they were unsuccessful. They adopted Holly instead. They gave Holly a good life, and they had nothing to do with religious groups or the disappearance and death of Tina and Dean. Holly’s adoptive parents weren't suspects of murder, and Holly was soon after reunited with her biological grandparents and extended family. John Bishoff, Vice President of the Missing Children's Department stated, “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.” 

Holly’s story is very inspirational, and still to this day, she shares her story. There have been many books, and movies written about Holly’s experiences. Holly is now working with investigators to help find the people who murdered her parents. There are also many similar cases like Holly’s, including Austin Hernandez, Kreneice Jones, Trenton Duckett, and Vanessa Morales, but unfortunately, none have been found.