A mysterious religious cult is being investigated after the baby of two murdered parents was found safe and well 42 years later.
Holly Marie Clouse vanished alongside her parents Harold Dean Clouse and Tina Clouse shortly after they had moved from Florida to Texas.
The bodies of Holly Marie's parents were found in Texas in 1981 but it was only 40 years later in October 2021, with improvements in technology and DNA databases, that they were identified as the Clouses.
Dean Harold had been beaten to death and Tina had been strangled - both had been dead for some time when they were discovered.
However, there was no sign of baby Holly until on Tuesday when she was found "alive and well" living in Oklahoma after her remaining family spent decades looking for her.
Police are now investigating a strange cult which is believed to be connected to the whole bizarre incident.
At the time baby Holly had been dropped off at a church in Arizona by two white robe-clad women, who claimed to be part of a nomadic religious group, Texas Assistant Attorney General Brent Webster said.
The women said their religious beliefs included the separation of male and female members, following a vegetarian diet, and not using leather, according to Webster.
They also said this wasn't their first time dropping off a baby — they had left one at a laundromat before.
The family that raised Holly are not being treated as suspects in the case of her parents' murders.
Harold Dean's mother Donna Casasanta has spent the last four decades seeking answers, according to the Houston Chronicle, and was this week delighted to receive a phone call confirming that Holly had been found.
“Finding Holly is a birthday present from heaven since we found her on Junior’s birthday,” Casasanta said in a statement released by a family spokeswoman to the Houston Chronicle.
“I prayed for more than 40 years for answers and the Lord has revealed some of it.”
Casasanta regularly received letters from her son after he relocated to Texas, before they stopped abruptly in October 1980.
Several months later she received an anonymous call from someone who said she had found the family's car in California, with three women clad in white robes driving it all the was back to Donna in Florida.
One of the women, who referred to herself as 'Sister Susan', told Donna that her son had become a member of a cult, given up his possessions and would be cutting all ties with his past – including his family.
“That was weird,” Donna told the Chronicle. “We really got frightened, and we started searching and searching.”
In January 1981, a German Shepherd found the remains of a human arm, prompting a police search of an area in Harris County, Texas.
"The Linn and Clouse families have been searching for answers concerning the welfare of the Clouses and their daughter, Holly, since they were last heard from in 1980," said a statement from the Texas Attorney General's Office, reported the Houston Chronicle.
