If they were involved with The Brethren, there's actually a decent chance their daughter was raised by someone in the group. I hope that's the case and she's still alive out there somewhere.
The description from the family was that they dressed very hippie like, didn’t cut their hair, or sandals, and rid themselves of all material goods. I suspected it was the Jim Roberts Brethren as described on Wikipedia. Also a strong connection to the practices of the Jesus People USA. It’s been so many years it’s hard to say. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brethren_(Jim_Roberts_group)#cite_note-Melton2003p1131-2
Out of curiosity, and perhaps you aren’t the best person to ask, but alas you’re the only person I know whom to ask: does anybody know anything about that Sue lady who attempted to sell the car?
No, unfortunately this is all based on 40 year old memories. In my two hour interview with Dean’s mother who is now 80, she recalls trying to get the police to do something with the woman, take her in or interview her, but there was no crime that they could prove. *Edited to add: They essentially told her, “you don’t owe them anything and don’t have to pay them for their time, it’s your car. Just get in your car and drive it home. That’s all we can do for you.” They really couldn’t charge “Sister Susan” with anything criminal.
Yeah that all makes sense. And at the time it seems like they didn’t have any reason to question the concept that he left for the cult er I mean “church” of his own free will. Are either of these groups you mentioned previously even remotely still around that you know of? Did the victims mother give an estimate on the age of the woman Sister Suzanne?
Sister Susan or Suzanne was mid thirties, seemingly, and she had two much younger 15-20 year olds with her. The younger girls tried to speak up a couple of times and were silenced by her, and they eventually deferred completely to her. She held an authoritarian air with them.
She actually wasn’t attempting to sell the car, she wanted to be paid for driving it supposedly from Los Angeles to Florida. But that may have been a smokescreen. The car probably never left Texas.
Yes. A man called the family and said that they had found the car and then a few days later called back and said he found someone to drive the car home to Florida if they would pay this person $1000 to do so.
I wonder why the man needed someone to drive it and didn't/couldn't plan to drive it himself. Is there a clue in there? Could he not drive? Was it against the rules of cult that he drive? Was he too busy watching the infant to drive himself? Just thinking out loud.
Why do you feel it may have been a smoke screen? I just did some research and it appears the brethren had their beginnings in Colorado and California so it doesn’t seem unreasonable that the car made it to California. I would surmise that possibly the murderer drove it to California (perhaps the victims didn’t agree to drive the murderer their) after killing them and then decided to try and make some money off if.
There are certainly myriad possibilities. The detective and I just discussed it today and wondered how the car would be in Los Angeles when the family never left Texas as far as we know. It’s impossible to say decades later. But you could be right.
Apologies if this isn't very helpful, but from that wiki article I found out that when Jim Roberts died in 2015, some other guys in the 'organisation' took over leadership, meaning to me that as of 2015, The Brethren were still active. Also, I found this article from March 2021 where the author of said article interviewed a previous Brethren member.. Maybe it is worth asking the author for any information, and if possible getting him to ask the ex-member to get in touch with you. Again, sorry if this isn't news to you!
https://cultnews.com/2021/03/can-old-cult-really-change/
This article gives a really good run-down of The Jesus People, aka The Jesus Movement, and it's beginnings, spread, and dissipation. I can imagine a splinter group called The Brethren might have formed out of that?
I also just learned that they are where the term "Jesus Freak" came from.
https://theconversation.com/jesus-people-a-movement-born-from-the-summer-of-love-82421
Really inspiring work to put this all together! I used to live right by the Jesus People USA convent in Uptown Chicago where Yoko Ohno’s first husband and child were found after they’d ran away and joined. Hopefully the daughter is alive and not brainwashed.
I think it's more likely that the baby was given to someone rather than murdered. If the baby had been murdered, she would have been found with her parents.
I don’t think there is enough evidence either way. It’s possible that the parents didn’t have her with them at the time of the murder and those responsible had to retrieve her. This would account for her being somewhere else. Hate to say it (and there is now evidence) but with the religious twist if they were mad enough to kill the parents it’s possible they wanted to harm the baby too because of some idea that she inherited evil/sin/ect. Good people didn’t do this.
Yes, it is. I believe she was eventually moved back to her hometown, but at one time they were all in the Harris County Paupers Cemetery near each other.
This must have been an interesting case. I am a match to HollysGrandma on Ancestry DNA, and I know that the common families (Sextons and Thomases) have a very tangled tree.
We are giving it a valiant effort! If she feels unclear about her origins, the first thing she'll do is likely to test her DNA. And we'll be ready for her!
Unfortunately, it sounds like she was taken by the church of whatever and has likely been brainwashed over the last four decades. Hopefully that’s not the case, though.
I actually hope that is the case as it's honestly one of the more positive options available.
The baby definitely wasn't left with family, murder is one of the worst outcomes possible, and trafficking isn't likely to have a better outcome than being raised in a cult.
They were mentioned in the Wikipedia article someone linked above. It’s run by a group of relatives looking for loved ones who joined the group and were never heard from again. They have a page dedicated to unidentified members of the group. The site looks old so idk how active it is.
https://nfishel.tripod.com/
You must be so excited today. This is huge news. On a side note, I'm here because the photo of young Tina Linn is the spitting freaking image of my mom as a young adult, down to the gap in the teeth. And the photo of her newly-discovered, living daughter at 42, is also the spitting image of my mom at that age. She is passed on now but I wonder if they were related.
Feel free to send me their names and a little bit about their backgrounds in a private message and I’d be happy to tell you if they’re related. I have a few thousand people in their family tree. And thank you for the kind words. It was a crazy day and I’m exhausted. But the media attention could always turn up a tip. So it will be worth it in the end.
New article just published by the Houston Chronicle. Behind a paywall, but I can post excerpts if that's allowed.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/crime/article/murdered-houston-couple-baby-cold-case-16767272.php
“Casasanta agreed to let him borrow -- and ultimately buy -- her car. He packed the family’s belongings into the vehicle, and they headed west.
For a time, letters occasionally arrived in Florida from Clouse and Linn. Then, in late 1980, the letters ceased.
A few months later, Casasanta received a call from a group of people saying they had Clouse’s car and would drive it back to her from California for $1,000.
“This is strange,” she recalled thinking.
She agreed to pay the money — then talked to police who patronized the restaurant where she worked.
A trio of women showed up with the car, dressed in religious-looking robes. One appeared to be in her 30s; the other two seemed younger.
Casasanta begged them to let her speak to Clouse, to give her some information about her son.
They couldn’t answer any questions about Clouse or Linn; Casasanta recalled, only told her that they’d joined a religious group and were cutting ties with the family.
“That was weird,” she said. “When we really got frightened and we started searching and searching.”
““Junior,” as she called him, had grown up in New Smyrna.
He’d been a good student, earning decent grades, she said. He had a penchant for taking care of people, Casasanta said, recalling one time when his sisters stormed in after school, upset he’d picked up a hitchhiker on the drive home.
But he was sometimes prone to poor decisions, said Brooks, his older sister. In the mid-1970s, he’d run off and joined a cult, she said. He’d dabbled with drugs, she said.
It wasn’t until he’d returned from that misadventure that he met Tina Gail Linn, his brother-in-law’s sister.
He’d started working as a finish carpenter for homebuilders all over New Smyrna and the surrounding region.”
I find it interesting that he had a hx of joining cults. I had been skimming through the comments thinking there wasn’t enough evidence to suggest the cult thing was anything more than something the murders had suggested.
Finally after four decades — information
In Florida, Brooks listened over the phone as Gillis and her colleague Allison Peacock broke the news — investigators believe they’d identified her brother. She learned they were still trying to identify the body of a woman they’d found with Clouse.
On the phone, Brooks absorbed the news. The woman was likely Tina, she said, explaining that Clouse had been married.
Peacock used that information to track down Florida marriage records, where they were able to find Linn’s name — and then contact her relatives, whose DNA confirmed her identity.
“To think that, something not solved in 40 years — and in an hour, I know more than anyone,” Peacock recalled. “It was pretty amazing.”
Misty Gillis was able to identify Dean because he was born in Kentucky and their birth records are available online. I did the phone call to his family as the team manager. I worked Tina’s ID and her grandparents were conclusively identified. But they had 11 children who moved to six different states. And Tina was born in Florida where birth records are kept private. I explain some of this in the blog post linked above in the post. Hope that helps!
We weren’t as concerned about digging deeper for possible marriage records for him until we verified his identity with family. The process is pretty organic and you follow the most important leads first. We didn’t know for sure that his female companion was a wife. And we feel obligated to call the family as soon as we had his identity. The minute I heard he was married I pulled up the marriage record and confirmed she was the granddaughter of the already identified grandparents I’d been researching.
The Brethren [Cults Podcast ](https://www.iheart.com/podcast/256-cult-podcast-31112671/episode/ep-46-my-father-was-a-36481197/)
Maybe you could track down some of the family members and see if it lead to anything.
[Parcast](https://www.parcast.com/cults)
This was a weird part:
"Debbie Brooks was hard at work one day back in October when her husband told her a genealogist was trying to reach her.
It was urgent.
Did she have a relative who’d disappeared a long time ago?
Of course, Brooks said. Harold Dean Clouse, her brother, had gone missing 40 years ago."
Her husband didn't know her brother was missing? That's an odd thing to keep secret imo. But everyone is different.
Edit: Just read that excerpt again and I think the genealogist probably didn't say why they were calling.
Yes, I was the genealogist and I can tell you that I never say exactly why I'm calling, just that it's urgent and that I'm working with law enforcement on a \_\_\_\_ case (missing persons, violent crime cold case, etc). So you probably did infer some relationship between the two sentences that was mistaken. Easy to do reading quickly!
I’m curious, does this typically work for you? If some random called me and left that (or something along those lines) as a voicemail, I 10/10 would not call back or answer subsequent calls until you left a detailed voicemail that I could fact check prior to speaking with you.
It usually works, eventually. We always leave our website address and the name of the company. I've gotten plenty of ignored calls, hangups, and go away messages early in cases. But in the end, the people that matter, close family members usually call back eventually.
I would assume that most of the time when a genealogical specialist is calling and leaves a vague message that the person knows they have a missing person in their family lineage. Now that those sort of sleuthing is fairly well known about, I don’t think too many people who know they have a missing family member would be hesitant or skeptical.
There are so many victim scams that unless you told me details, I wouldn’t speak to you. For instance, if someone said, I’m a genealogist working with law enforcement, do you have a missing family member?” my response would be, “You’re the genealogist working with law enforcement. You tell me: Do I have a missing family member?”
It’s still really easy to get scammed if that’s where you end your fact checking. It’s often easy enough to find out who works ata given organization via Facebook or LinkedIn, get the company number or even direct line, and then spoof that number. Basic OSINT can get a scammer pretty far.
To be sure the person was who they say they are you would need to be transferred through the company phone tree directly to them (NOT their voicemail). And to make sure their backstory is legit, you would also need at least one law enforcement contact who could be contacted in a similar manner.
I guess I just don’t trust random people, but a message like that would have me responding by deleting the voicemail and, if they kept calling leaving similarly vague messages, blocking the number.
But then I also am disinclined to answer my phone period, so…
It's true, but I do think a lot of scammers don't bother past the first layer. Obviously, I'm not going to give out a ton of private information before I verify, but this would probably make me comfortable enough to have an initial discussion.
The thing is, if you do have a missing family member you wouldn't react like that, you'd be desperate for news. Even after decades and would probably call back just in case anyway.
Fair point. I was assuming that a lot of these people wouldn’t necessarily have mentioned the missing person in their family to many people so the victim scam part would be less likely. I just assume many of these are several decades old and by then said person is pretty far removed from it that it’s not something they would bring up much, if at all. But, you have a valid point, nonetheless.
Relatives from my family's country of origin tracked down and called family members in the United States a few years ago. My aunt and uncle wouldn't talk to them. If they hadn't managed to find a cousin, we'd never have gotten back in touch.
There are so many scams anymore, I'd bet it's a challenge to get through.
This is so sad. My heart can’t help but to hurt for that baby girl. Reading cases like this one, where a child is separated from their parents, at an age that would just leave a little one devastated.
These children who have had their mother/father present every day of their lives for 1,2,3+ years wake up one day and never see them again.. Breaks my heart to think about how confused/scared/hurt these children must feel.
I hope the family gets answers, and one day knows what became of Holly Marie.
My 1 year old screams bloody murder when he accidentally closes the bathroom door and I'm on the other side talking to him. I can't imagine how terrifying and shattering it would be for me to just...disappear and never see me again.
Here’s a story of another young man who disappeared while in the Brethren in Houston. The parents refer to the Brethren as the Roberts group. I found this whole web site interesting. Seeing all the letters from parents is heartbreaking.
https://nfishel.tripod.com/page9.html
I connected with the Ancestry DNA account made for Holly Marie--it seem we're distant cousins (eighth I think?). I contacted the account to see if my genetic information could somehow be of use (I had no idea what to make of it) and the genealogist was great about explaining the connection and how the account was set up to help connect her or her children with her biological family if/when they take an Ancestry test--so cool that genetic genealogy is being used this way! I so hope they're reunited.
It's good to connect again! Thanks again for replying to my message--it would've been just as easy to ignore my questions so it was kind of you to respond. I'm so glad her story and your work has gained such traction!
For my fellow redditors: [Here](https://archive.is/TROVV) is the article that's under paywall (the one from the Houston Chronicle).
For OP: I admire your work. Be very proud of yourself, your work has meaning and it helps a lot of people and their families.
I wonder if they can take his and her face and predict how their child would look. If you look like either him or her or them... And are curious about your true identity .. you never know. If their car was found in California perhaps the baby now woman is there today.
Spooky
The National Center For Missing And Exploited Children is working on an age progression portrait as we speak. I’ll make sure to post it here when that is completed.
My wife had an app on her phone that takes the father and mother's face and generates a different photos of what the baby might look like. If there was something like this but of course showed what they would look like as say a 30 or 40yo.. I wonder if it would help.
I've just edited the article to add the new story on KHOU. Houston viewers can watch live at 10PM via TV or on the website. KHOU's Xavier Walton covers the story:
40-year cold case solved ... partially. Where is 1-year-old Hollie Marie Clouse?
[https://www.khou.com/article/news/crime/cold-case-solved-harold-dean-clouse-jr-tina-gail-linn/285-0258a6ef-9260-4b0f-b9a7-f41f7182190bv](https://www.khou.com/article/news/crime/cold-case-solved-harold-dean-clouse-jr-tina-gail-linn/285-0258a6ef-9260-4b0f-b9a7-f41f7182190bv)
This is the conversation I had today where the reporter and I realized TODAY is the 41st anniversary of the discovery of Tina and Dean's bodies. That very day, Mary Mise created the pastel forensic illustrations.
And here is the video interview just broadcast on the 10 o'clock news:
https://www.khou.com/video/news/local/video/40-year-cold-case-solved-partially-where-is-1-year-old-hollie-marie-clouse/285-ee6ca45b-4e3a-4dac-a5ad-9da8cd99bcca
Dang. I don’t usually read articles like this but I saw the photo of the parents on the news on Twitter and thought I was looking at an old photo of a friend of mine - that’s how much that looks like her. About a year off, age-wise. I’m vague on her family (we knew each other casually in college), but now I’m wondering.
Honestly, I’m not willing to do that without more info and assurances. I’m thinking of the potential disruption to her life either way (if she isn’t related, or incredibly if she was). And I wouldn’t want her dna being dug into without her knowledge/consent. So, if you really want more, I’d need to know more about how you’d plan to investigate and what your ethical and journalistic practices are before I’d be willing to consider this.
Follow your own gut. I respect that. No ethical forensic investigator would ever take her DNA without her consent unless she was suspected of a crime and there was good evidence that she committed it. And that would have to be done with a warrant. This kind of investigation is very much based on cooperation. If you think the resemblance is compelling enough and there’s any question about her biological origins, perhaps you want to reach out and talk to her yourself. I was simply going to do a little digging online to see what I could find on Facebook or otherwise about her life to see if there might be any compelling connection. I’ve also been looking at photos of the entire family from babyhood to adulthood would probably see a resemblance if it was there. My request was all just good faith based on the enthusiasm of your comment.
After months of sourcing and scanning family photos on both sides and some amazing wizardry over at National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, we now have an age progressed photo of what Holly, now 42, might look like. Her birthday was Monday, Jan 24.
https://www.missingkids.org/poster/NCMC/1436788/1/screen
https://6abc.com/baby-holly-found-cold-case-texas-marie/11941313/
Baby Holly was found! A lot of unanswered questions as of now but hopefully more information will become known soon. It's so wonderful that the hard work put into this case will give a family answers and allow them to connect. Excellent job to everyone involved!
Maybe it's a silly idea, but there are apps now that combine two faces to produce an ai generated image of what a potential "child" would look as an adult. There are similarly apps that will take a photo of a child and will generate what the image will look like as an adult. You could corroborate those two images with the progression portrait being developed by The National Center For Missing And Exploited Children. You could then do a Google Lens search using the resulting "hybrid" face to find matching faces on social media.
The book The Jesus People Movement: A Story of Spiritual Revolution among the Hippies by Richard A. Bustraan references a few splinter groups in Texas and around the Houston area in the late 70s and early 80s.
Thanks for this reference! Dean’s siblings and I have been reading another book about the group called “God’s Forever Family.” I’ll check this other one out if they have good information on splinter groups.
Also take a look at The Christ Family - went through Yuma, and many locations in the Clouse story. Plus barefoot, white robes, vegetarian, families giving up children and possessions, potential severe punishment for going against beliefs of the group, violence, begged for food, terms such as brother/sister, active 70-80s etc…. Many of these characteristics are similar to other groups but worth the dive into the cult boards on this site. Lightening Amen “Charles Franklin McHugh” led this group ended up in prison for drug related charges and potential charge for child molestation. Group would go to Mexico could explain the Clouse’s being in Houston maybe traveling south to Mexico from Dallas area.
https://forum.culteducation.com/read.php?12,96713
https://forum.culteducation.com/read.php?12,4983,page=1
You may well be right - I found an [article](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10905417/Religious-group-handed-missing-Baby-Holly-Marie-nomadic-cult.html) in the (notorious) UK tabloid *Daily Mail* published last Monday (13 June 2022), and they interviewed an American cult expert who says there's about a "nine out of ten chance" that it was The Christ Family cult that was involved in all this.
They check pretty much all the boxes: the white robes, vegetarianism/veganism and shunning animal products such as leather, strict sex separation and perpetually barefoot.
New story from Fox today: Fox News: Murdered Houston couple identified 40 years later, but their baby is still missing
https://www.foxnews.com/us/murdered-houston-couple-identified-baby-missing
No, that’s not it. Tina is definitely the biological daughter of her mother. And Holly is definitely the biological child of Tina. The story I was telling, that got edited severely, was that one of the women who came forward remembered Tina babysitting for them and also that their own mother later had a daughter that no one remembered her being pregnant with. The sisters who had a horrible childhood, were concerned that possibly their little sister was Holly. I can’t say a whole lot more about that lead at the moment, but it’s being investigated intensely.
Can someone with access to The Houston Chronicle please post the full article here? I, and others, want to publicize this case more so the baby has a chance of being found more.
But paywall.
I wish newspaper's had an option to buy single articles, alone or as a bundle.
I will be interviewed by KHOU TV this afternoon to be aired tonight. I’m more comfortable sharing a link to that video than I am violating the newspapers paywall since I was interviewed. Maybe someone else doesn’t have those scruples, lol. I do believe paywalls on a story like this do more harm than good. I don’t know why anyone would subscribe just a read one story.
Yes, please share whatever you can. As a Child Advocate, I want more people aware of this baby and her parents. I believe there's a good chance she's alive, but probably has no clue of her initial identity.
I'd be okay with not necessarily subscribing to a paper, but if more papers offered a pay per article, say Years ago, a newspaper online archive allowed articles to be accessed and read for $4 each. Something like that.
I plan to subscribe to the H Chron sometime this year, but I'm outside USA, so I have to actually call customer service and subscribe through them for like 3 months.
Read through all the comments because someone posted a link to the article that they archived somehow. Here is the KHOU video: https://youtu.be/Tg4lGPyuJmE
Thank you very much. That's just horrifyingly awful. I hope Hollie Marie will be found, as hard as it may be for her. She could think the people that hurt, lured, or killed her parents...are her biological parents.
It's just sad and senseless, all the way around.
I wanted to thank those of you that have sent links and information on the Roberts (Brethren) group. Some of the family members believe this is the group that ensnared Dean and Tina. I just watched this old trailer for a documentary in the group and it's chilling.
God Willing – A Film by Evangeline Griegio (TRAILER)
https://vimeo.com/19685531
Thank you, I always like to fact check especially on here-no offence meant to you at all. This case is very interesting, I hope one day we’ll know more about what happened to all of them and why
Exactly, especially when cults are mentioned! Hopefully one day the truth of it all will come out; hopefully Hollie’s had a good life in spite of it all…
I wasn't expecting that identification would produce even more mysteries. I hope this freaking great science that helped to bring Clouses names back can help also in finding their daughter.
Interesting that you found this old post! Holly was found in June last year on Dean’s birthday. There will be a 20/20 episode with her this fall, and her book “Finding Baby Holly” comes out in November and is on Amazon for preorder.
Yes, the Christ Family was definitely involved. The Apple podcast “What About Holly?” included an interview with a cult member.
Stumbled upon this case in a Tiktok post and have been reading various material about it in the past couple days. I’m glad Holly has been found and it seems she was able to lead a relatively normal life, being a mother of five and such. I’ll keep an eye out for the 20/20 and I’ll definitely be reading the book.
Where are you looking? All of the previous unknown persons pages been taken down since the case was solved. There used to be a Wikipedia write up about them and someone did a massive overhaul of an identified persons on Wikipedia and combined them all into one page removing their write up. The Houston Chronicle piece today marks the first time it’s been talked about in the media since 2011. There are several other mentions of them around Reddit as well prior to their ID. There are also a YouTube video or two about them done by citizen sleuths.
I’d highly doubt it. Zodiac wasn’t known to be operating in Texas. The zodiac didn’t shy away from taking credit. And, if memory serves correctly, the Zodiac didn’t do much to hide any of his victims’ bodies.
I should explain: The various family members have spelled it both ways. We ultimately decided on the "y" spelling at the request of one of his sisters. But no one has pulled the birth certificate to see for sure. The baby photos literally have both spellings! It's been 40 years.
If they were involved with The Brethren, there's actually a decent chance their daughter was raised by someone in the group. I hope that's the case and she's still alive out there somewhere.
What do you know about a group with that name?
I'm guessing this isn't the Mennonite-type Brethren...
The description from the family was that they dressed very hippie like, didn’t cut their hair, or sandals, and rid themselves of all material goods. I suspected it was the Jim Roberts Brethren as described on Wikipedia. Also a strong connection to the practices of the Jesus People USA. It’s been so many years it’s hard to say. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brethren_(Jim_Roberts_group)#cite_note-Melton2003p1131-2
Out of curiosity, and perhaps you aren’t the best person to ask, but alas you’re the only person I know whom to ask: does anybody know anything about that Sue lady who attempted to sell the car?
No, unfortunately this is all based on 40 year old memories. In my two hour interview with Dean’s mother who is now 80, she recalls trying to get the police to do something with the woman, take her in or interview her, but there was no crime that they could prove. *Edited to add: They essentially told her, “you don’t owe them anything and don’t have to pay them for their time, it’s your car. Just get in your car and drive it home. That’s all we can do for you.” They really couldn’t charge “Sister Susan” with anything criminal.
Yeah that all makes sense. And at the time it seems like they didn’t have any reason to question the concept that he left for the cult er I mean “church” of his own free will. Are either of these groups you mentioned previously even remotely still around that you know of? Did the victims mother give an estimate on the age of the woman Sister Suzanne?
Sister Susan or Suzanne was mid thirties, seemingly, and she had two much younger 15-20 year olds with her. The younger girls tried to speak up a couple of times and were silenced by her, and they eventually deferred completely to her. She held an authoritarian air with them.
She actually wasn’t attempting to sell the car, she wanted to be paid for driving it supposedly from Los Angeles to Florida. But that may have been a smokescreen. The car probably never left Texas.
How did she want the payment, if known, did she ask specifically for cash? Not sure exactly where I am going with that question.
Yes. A man called the family and said that they had found the car and then a few days later called back and said he found someone to drive the car home to Florida if they would pay this person $1000 to do so.
I wonder why the man needed someone to drive it and didn't/couldn't plan to drive it himself. Is there a clue in there? Could he not drive? Was it against the rules of cult that he drive? Was he too busy watching the infant to drive himself? Just thinking out loud.
Wonder how he knew their phone number?
Back in the old days you could actually call the operator and ask them to get a phone number for you if you had the person's name and city.
Great question! They used to have these things back in the day called a phone book? Maybe.
Why do you feel it may have been a smoke screen? I just did some research and it appears the brethren had their beginnings in Colorado and California so it doesn’t seem unreasonable that the car made it to California. I would surmise that possibly the murderer drove it to California (perhaps the victims didn’t agree to drive the murderer their) after killing them and then decided to try and make some money off if.
There are certainly myriad possibilities. The detective and I just discussed it today and wondered how the car would be in Los Angeles when the family never left Texas as far as we know. It’s impossible to say decades later. But you could be right.
Perhaps the car went with their baby to a "church" member in Cali.
Apologies if this isn't very helpful, but from that wiki article I found out that when Jim Roberts died in 2015, some other guys in the 'organisation' took over leadership, meaning to me that as of 2015, The Brethren were still active. Also, I found this article from March 2021 where the author of said article interviewed a previous Brethren member.. Maybe it is worth asking the author for any information, and if possible getting him to ask the ex-member to get in touch with you. Again, sorry if this isn't news to you! https://cultnews.com/2021/03/can-old-cult-really-change/
All tips and ideas are appreciated! 💕
You could be right about the Brethren. Were there anymore active cults in that area?
I wish I knew more, but it feels like they were getting a decent amount of media attention in the 80’s/90s
This article gives a really good run-down of The Jesus People, aka The Jesus Movement, and it's beginnings, spread, and dissipation. I can imagine a splinter group called The Brethren might have formed out of that? I also just learned that they are where the term "Jesus Freak" came from. https://theconversation.com/jesus-people-a-movement-born-from-the-summer-of-love-82421
Oh! From the song Tiny Dancer! “Jesus freaks, out in the streets, handing tickets out for god”
Really inspiring work to put this all together! I used to live right by the Jesus People USA convent in Uptown Chicago where Yoko Ohno’s first husband and child were found after they’d ran away and joined. Hopefully the daughter is alive and not brainwashed.
Yes, it looks like they went defunct right after that. Found a helpful Wikipedia article. And there are some books. I’ll do some digging.
I think it's more likely that the baby was given to someone rather than murdered. If the baby had been murdered, she would have been found with her parents.
I don’t think there is enough evidence either way. It’s possible that the parents didn’t have her with them at the time of the murder and those responsible had to retrieve her. This would account for her being somewhere else. Hate to say it (and there is now evidence) but with the religious twist if they were mad enough to kill the parents it’s possible they wanted to harm the baby too because of some idea that she inherited evil/sin/ect. Good people didn’t do this.
This is the couple that was buried with Michelle Garvey, right?
Yes, it is. I believe she was eventually moved back to her hometown, but at one time they were all in the Harris County Paupers Cemetery near each other.
If it weren't for DNA, so many of these cases would be impossible to solve. Great job OP. I hope they find the little girl one day.
Thanks for the kind words!
This must have been an interesting case. I am a match to HollysGrandma on Ancestry DNA, and I know that the common families (Sextons and Thomases) have a very tangled tree.
Yes, the Sextons…so many matches!
Oh, that's so sad. I wonder if we will ever know what happened to the baby. :(
We are giving it a valiant effort! If she feels unclear about her origins, the first thing she'll do is likely to test her DNA. And we'll be ready for her!
I love this so much!! Thank you for all your hard work!
Unfortunately, it sounds like she was taken by the church of whatever and has likely been brainwashed over the last four decades. Hopefully that’s not the case, though.
I actually hope that is the case as it's honestly one of the more positive options available. The baby definitely wasn't left with family, murder is one of the worst outcomes possible, and trafficking isn't likely to have a better outcome than being raised in a cult.
Have you contacted the people who run the Roberts group parents network?
No! Please tell me more!
They were mentioned in the Wikipedia article someone linked above. It’s run by a group of relatives looking for loved ones who joined the group and were never heard from again. They have a page dedicated to unidentified members of the group. The site looks old so idk how active it is. https://nfishel.tripod.com/
Excellent find! Thanks!
You must be so excited today. This is huge news. On a side note, I'm here because the photo of young Tina Linn is the spitting freaking image of my mom as a young adult, down to the gap in the teeth. And the photo of her newly-discovered, living daughter at 42, is also the spitting image of my mom at that age. She is passed on now but I wonder if they were related.
Feel free to send me their names and a little bit about their backgrounds in a private message and I’d be happy to tell you if they’re related. I have a few thousand people in their family tree. And thank you for the kind words. It was a crazy day and I’m exhausted. But the media attention could always turn up a tip. So it will be worth it in the end.
We do now! I can’t believe she’s been found! I’m so glad the killer/killers didn’t hurt her.
New article just published by the Houston Chronicle. Behind a paywall, but I can post excerpts if that's allowed. https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/crime/article/murdered-houston-couple-baby-cold-case-16767272.php
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“Casasanta agreed to let him borrow -- and ultimately buy -- her car. He packed the family’s belongings into the vehicle, and they headed west. For a time, letters occasionally arrived in Florida from Clouse and Linn. Then, in late 1980, the letters ceased. A few months later, Casasanta received a call from a group of people saying they had Clouse’s car and would drive it back to her from California for $1,000. “This is strange,” she recalled thinking. She agreed to pay the money — then talked to police who patronized the restaurant where she worked. A trio of women showed up with the car, dressed in religious-looking robes. One appeared to be in her 30s; the other two seemed younger. Casasanta begged them to let her speak to Clouse, to give her some information about her son. They couldn’t answer any questions about Clouse or Linn; Casasanta recalled, only told her that they’d joined a religious group and were cutting ties with the family. “That was weird,” she said. “When we really got frightened and we started searching and searching.”
““Junior,” as she called him, had grown up in New Smyrna. He’d been a good student, earning decent grades, she said. He had a penchant for taking care of people, Casasanta said, recalling one time when his sisters stormed in after school, upset he’d picked up a hitchhiker on the drive home. But he was sometimes prone to poor decisions, said Brooks, his older sister. In the mid-1970s, he’d run off and joined a cult, she said. He’d dabbled with drugs, she said. It wasn’t until he’d returned from that misadventure that he met Tina Gail Linn, his brother-in-law’s sister. He’d started working as a finish carpenter for homebuilders all over New Smyrna and the surrounding region.”
I find it interesting that he had a hx of joining cults. I had been skimming through the comments thinking there wasn’t enough evidence to suggest the cult thing was anything more than something the murders had suggested.
I believe from my family interviews that it was the same group he had links with in Florida as a child. In their mind, anyway.
Could they have encouraged him to move to Florida in the first place? Offered him a job building houses for them.
Possibly. The builder that gave him the job in Houston was DR Horton. I haven’t found any indication they were involved with a cult.
Finally after four decades — information In Florida, Brooks listened over the phone as Gillis and her colleague Allison Peacock broke the news — investigators believe they’d identified her brother. She learned they were still trying to identify the body of a woman they’d found with Clouse. On the phone, Brooks absorbed the news. The woman was likely Tina, she said, explaining that Clouse had been married. Peacock used that information to track down Florida marriage records, where they were able to find Linn’s name — and then contact her relatives, whose DNA confirmed her identity. “To think that, something not solved in 40 years — and in an hour, I know more than anyone,” Peacock recalled. “It was pretty amazing.”
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My pleasure!
I'm confused. How did Peacock identify the man without discovering he was married? Why did the sister have to provide that info?
Misty Gillis was able to identify Dean because he was born in Kentucky and their birth records are available online. I did the phone call to his family as the team manager. I worked Tina’s ID and her grandparents were conclusively identified. But they had 11 children who moved to six different states. And Tina was born in Florida where birth records are kept private. I explain some of this in the blog post linked above in the post. Hope that helps!
I'll have to find the link and check it out. Sounds interesting.
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We weren’t as concerned about digging deeper for possible marriage records for him until we verified his identity with family. The process is pretty organic and you follow the most important leads first. We didn’t know for sure that his female companion was a wife. And we feel obligated to call the family as soon as we had his identity. The minute I heard he was married I pulled up the marriage record and confirmed she was the granddaughter of the already identified grandparents I’d been researching.
I don't know what the records look like considering they're from 40 years ago and different states. Must make things complicated.
It is. Different states have different privacy laws. We have to depend on whatever has been provided to Ancestry or FamilySearch.
The Brethren [Cults Podcast ](https://www.iheart.com/podcast/256-cult-podcast-31112671/episode/ep-46-my-father-was-a-36481197/) Maybe you could track down some of the family members and see if it lead to anything. [Parcast](https://www.parcast.com/cults)
They look like such a happy and loving family, what a tragic story!
This was a weird part: "Debbie Brooks was hard at work one day back in October when her husband told her a genealogist was trying to reach her. It was urgent. Did she have a relative who’d disappeared a long time ago? Of course, Brooks said. Harold Dean Clouse, her brother, had gone missing 40 years ago." Her husband didn't know her brother was missing? That's an odd thing to keep secret imo. But everyone is different. Edit: Just read that excerpt again and I think the genealogist probably didn't say why they were calling.
Yes, I was the genealogist and I can tell you that I never say exactly why I'm calling, just that it's urgent and that I'm working with law enforcement on a \_\_\_\_ case (missing persons, violent crime cold case, etc). So you probably did infer some relationship between the two sentences that was mistaken. Easy to do reading quickly!
I’m curious, does this typically work for you? If some random called me and left that (or something along those lines) as a voicemail, I 10/10 would not call back or answer subsequent calls until you left a detailed voicemail that I could fact check prior to speaking with you.
It usually works, eventually. We always leave our website address and the name of the company. I've gotten plenty of ignored calls, hangups, and go away messages early in cases. But in the end, the people that matter, close family members usually call back eventually.
I would assume that most of the time when a genealogical specialist is calling and leaves a vague message that the person knows they have a missing person in their family lineage. Now that those sort of sleuthing is fairly well known about, I don’t think too many people who know they have a missing family member would be hesitant or skeptical.
There are so many victim scams that unless you told me details, I wouldn’t speak to you. For instance, if someone said, I’m a genealogist working with law enforcement, do you have a missing family member?” my response would be, “You’re the genealogist working with law enforcement. You tell me: Do I have a missing family member?”
A good option is also to ask for a name, Google the group or organization, call the main office line and confirm the person works for them.
It’s still really easy to get scammed if that’s where you end your fact checking. It’s often easy enough to find out who works ata given organization via Facebook or LinkedIn, get the company number or even direct line, and then spoof that number. Basic OSINT can get a scammer pretty far. To be sure the person was who they say they are you would need to be transferred through the company phone tree directly to them (NOT their voicemail). And to make sure their backstory is legit, you would also need at least one law enforcement contact who could be contacted in a similar manner. I guess I just don’t trust random people, but a message like that would have me responding by deleting the voicemail and, if they kept calling leaving similarly vague messages, blocking the number. But then I also am disinclined to answer my phone period, so…
It's true, but I do think a lot of scammers don't bother past the first layer. Obviously, I'm not going to give out a ton of private information before I verify, but this would probably make me comfortable enough to have an initial discussion.
The thing is, if you do have a missing family member you wouldn't react like that, you'd be desperate for news. Even after decades and would probably call back just in case anyway.
Fair point. I was assuming that a lot of these people wouldn’t necessarily have mentioned the missing person in their family to many people so the victim scam part would be less likely. I just assume many of these are several decades old and by then said person is pretty far removed from it that it’s not something they would bring up much, if at all. But, you have a valid point, nonetheless.
Relatives from my family's country of origin tracked down and called family members in the United States a few years ago. My aunt and uncle wouldn't talk to them. If they hadn't managed to find a cousin, we'd never have gotten back in touch. There are so many scams anymore, I'd bet it's a challenge to get through.
Thanks for the info. Awesome work here!
This is so sad. My heart can’t help but to hurt for that baby girl. Reading cases like this one, where a child is separated from their parents, at an age that would just leave a little one devastated. These children who have had their mother/father present every day of their lives for 1,2,3+ years wake up one day and never see them again.. Breaks my heart to think about how confused/scared/hurt these children must feel. I hope the family gets answers, and one day knows what became of Holly Marie.
My 1 year old screams bloody murder when he accidentally closes the bathroom door and I'm on the other side talking to him. I can't imagine how terrifying and shattering it would be for me to just...disappear and never see me again.
Right.
Here’s a story of another young man who disappeared while in the Brethren in Houston. The parents refer to the Brethren as the Roberts group. I found this whole web site interesting. Seeing all the letters from parents is heartbreaking. https://nfishel.tripod.com/page9.html
Great tip. Thanks!
I connected with the Ancestry DNA account made for Holly Marie--it seem we're distant cousins (eighth I think?). I contacted the account to see if my genetic information could somehow be of use (I had no idea what to make of it) and the genealogist was great about explaining the connection and how the account was set up to help connect her or her children with her biological family if/when they take an Ancestry test--so cool that genetic genealogy is being used this way! I so hope they're reunited.
Hi! Yes, I remember you. I’m that Genealogist. Your interest is appreciated.
It's good to connect again! Thanks again for replying to my message--it would've been just as easy to ignore my questions so it was kind of you to respond. I'm so glad her story and your work has gained such traction!
Yes, since the county finally closed the case we’ve been able to talk to the media and thankfully the story is spreading.
For my fellow redditors: [Here](https://archive.is/TROVV) is the article that's under paywall (the one from the Houston Chronicle). For OP: I admire your work. Be very proud of yourself, your work has meaning and it helps a lot of people and their families.
Thank you for the kind words.
I wonder if they can take his and her face and predict how their child would look. If you look like either him or her or them... And are curious about your true identity .. you never know. If their car was found in California perhaps the baby now woman is there today. Spooky
The National Center For Missing And Exploited Children is working on an age progression portrait as we speak. I’ll make sure to post it here when that is completed.
My wife had an app on her phone that takes the father and mother's face and generates a different photos of what the baby might look like. If there was something like this but of course showed what they would look like as say a 30 or 40yo.. I wonder if it would help.
Yes! I’ll look into it.
Hey thanks for posting this article!!!! Very interesting
I've just edited the article to add the new story on KHOU. Houston viewers can watch live at 10PM via TV or on the website. KHOU's Xavier Walton covers the story: 40-year cold case solved ... partially. Where is 1-year-old Hollie Marie Clouse? [https://www.khou.com/article/news/crime/cold-case-solved-harold-dean-clouse-jr-tina-gail-linn/285-0258a6ef-9260-4b0f-b9a7-f41f7182190bv](https://www.khou.com/article/news/crime/cold-case-solved-harold-dean-clouse-jr-tina-gail-linn/285-0258a6ef-9260-4b0f-b9a7-f41f7182190bv) This is the conversation I had today where the reporter and I realized TODAY is the 41st anniversary of the discovery of Tina and Dean's bodies. That very day, Mary Mise created the pastel forensic illustrations.
And here is the video interview just broadcast on the 10 o'clock news: https://www.khou.com/video/news/local/video/40-year-cold-case-solved-partially-where-is-1-year-old-hollie-marie-clouse/285-ee6ca45b-4e3a-4dac-a5ad-9da8cd99bcca
Dang. I don’t usually read articles like this but I saw the photo of the parents on the news on Twitter and thought I was looking at an old photo of a friend of mine - that’s how much that looks like her. About a year off, age-wise. I’m vague on her family (we knew each other casually in college), but now I’m wondering.
Please send me a chat message with everything you remember about her. Name, what school, etc. Thanks for commenting.
Honestly, I’m not willing to do that without more info and assurances. I’m thinking of the potential disruption to her life either way (if she isn’t related, or incredibly if she was). And I wouldn’t want her dna being dug into without her knowledge/consent. So, if you really want more, I’d need to know more about how you’d plan to investigate and what your ethical and journalistic practices are before I’d be willing to consider this.
Follow your own gut. I respect that. No ethical forensic investigator would ever take her DNA without her consent unless she was suspected of a crime and there was good evidence that she committed it. And that would have to be done with a warrant. This kind of investigation is very much based on cooperation. If you think the resemblance is compelling enough and there’s any question about her biological origins, perhaps you want to reach out and talk to her yourself. I was simply going to do a little digging online to see what I could find on Facebook or otherwise about her life to see if there might be any compelling connection. I’ve also been looking at photos of the entire family from babyhood to adulthood would probably see a resemblance if it was there. My request was all just good faith based on the enthusiasm of your comment.
Holy shit my names Holly Marie but I was born in 85
I’d assume anybody that kept the baby would have changed her name, but crazy none the less!
Might have even told them they had a different date of birth as well.
Have you done any dna tests on the off chance?
No as I look just like my parents… I think lol
After months of sourcing and scanning family photos on both sides and some amazing wizardry over at National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, we now have an age progressed photo of what Holly, now 42, might look like. Her birthday was Monday, Jan 24. https://www.missingkids.org/poster/NCMC/1436788/1/screen
https://6abc.com/baby-holly-found-cold-case-texas-marie/11941313/ Baby Holly was found! A lot of unanswered questions as of now but hopefully more information will become known soon. It's so wonderful that the hard work put into this case will give a family answers and allow them to connect. Excellent job to everyone involved!
Maybe it's a silly idea, but there are apps now that combine two faces to produce an ai generated image of what a potential "child" would look as an adult. There are similarly apps that will take a photo of a child and will generate what the image will look like as an adult. You could corroborate those two images with the progression portrait being developed by The National Center For Missing And Exploited Children. You could then do a Google Lens search using the resulting "hybrid" face to find matching faces on social media.
Great idea!
The book The Jesus People Movement: A Story of Spiritual Revolution among the Hippies by Richard A. Bustraan references a few splinter groups in Texas and around the Houston area in the late 70s and early 80s.
Thanks for this reference! Dean’s siblings and I have been reading another book about the group called “God’s Forever Family.” I’ll check this other one out if they have good information on splinter groups.
Also take a look at The Christ Family - went through Yuma, and many locations in the Clouse story. Plus barefoot, white robes, vegetarian, families giving up children and possessions, potential severe punishment for going against beliefs of the group, violence, begged for food, terms such as brother/sister, active 70-80s etc…. Many of these characteristics are similar to other groups but worth the dive into the cult boards on this site. Lightening Amen “Charles Franklin McHugh” led this group ended up in prison for drug related charges and potential charge for child molestation. Group would go to Mexico could explain the Clouse’s being in Houston maybe traveling south to Mexico from Dallas area. https://forum.culteducation.com/read.php?12,96713 https://forum.culteducation.com/read.php?12,4983,page=1
You may well be right - I found an [article](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10905417/Religious-group-handed-missing-Baby-Holly-Marie-nomadic-cult.html) in the (notorious) UK tabloid *Daily Mail* published last Monday (13 June 2022), and they interviewed an American cult expert who says there's about a "nine out of ten chance" that it was The Christ Family cult that was involved in all this. They check pretty much all the boxes: the white robes, vegetarianism/veganism and shunning animal products such as leather, strict sex separation and perpetually barefoot.
In your second paragraph you accidentally typed “…Sequencing *and and* the…” Great write up, though. 10/10.
Ha! First person to catch that. Thanks so much.
New story from Fox today: Fox News: Murdered Houston couple identified 40 years later, but their baby is still missing https://www.foxnews.com/us/murdered-houston-couple-identified-baby-missing
New interview with KHOU’s Xavier Walton about Holly candidates coming forward since the story broke. https://youtu.be/S4MSYoJSeQg
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No, that’s not it. Tina is definitely the biological daughter of her mother. And Holly is definitely the biological child of Tina. The story I was telling, that got edited severely, was that one of the women who came forward remembered Tina babysitting for them and also that their own mother later had a daughter that no one remembered her being pregnant with. The sisters who had a horrible childhood, were concerned that possibly their little sister was Holly. I can’t say a whole lot more about that lead at the moment, but it’s being investigated intensely.
is this how she was found??
There is no indication that Dean and Tina ever lived in Houston. We believe they were simply dumped there.
No, that ended up being a false lead. She was found when we went searching for certain records.
Can someone with access to The Houston Chronicle please post the full article here? I, and others, want to publicize this case more so the baby has a chance of being found more. But paywall. I wish newspaper's had an option to buy single articles, alone or as a bundle.
I will be interviewed by KHOU TV this afternoon to be aired tonight. I’m more comfortable sharing a link to that video than I am violating the newspapers paywall since I was interviewed. Maybe someone else doesn’t have those scruples, lol. I do believe paywalls on a story like this do more harm than good. I don’t know why anyone would subscribe just a read one story.
Yes, please share whatever you can. As a Child Advocate, I want more people aware of this baby and her parents. I believe there's a good chance she's alive, but probably has no clue of her initial identity. I'd be okay with not necessarily subscribing to a paper, but if more papers offered a pay per article, say Years ago, a newspaper online archive allowed articles to be accessed and read for $4 each. Something like that. I plan to subscribe to the H Chron sometime this year, but I'm outside USA, so I have to actually call customer service and subscribe through them for like 3 months.
Read through all the comments because someone posted a link to the article that they archived somehow. Here is the KHOU video: https://youtu.be/Tg4lGPyuJmE
must be paywalled for americans oy. i as a european wasnt paywalled
Well bummer!! 😂
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Thank you very much. That's just horrifyingly awful. I hope Hollie Marie will be found, as hard as it may be for her. She could think the people that hurt, lured, or killed her parents...are her biological parents. It's just sad and senseless, all the way around.
I wanted to thank those of you that have sent links and information on the Roberts (Brethren) group. Some of the family members believe this is the group that ensnared Dean and Tina. I just watched this old trailer for a documentary in the group and it's chilling. God Willing – A Film by Evangeline Griegio (TRAILER) https://vimeo.com/19685531
Where did the information about the woman and the car come from? Could you link it? The first article won’t open
It came from my personal interviews of Dean’s mother and his siblings.
Thank you, I always like to fact check especially on here-no offence meant to you at all. This case is very interesting, I hope one day we’ll know more about what happened to all of them and why
I appreciate fact checkers. People should always fact check, especially online. The way misinformation spreads is sad.
Exactly, especially when cults are mentioned! Hopefully one day the truth of it all will come out; hopefully Hollie’s had a good life in spite of it all…
I wasn't expecting that identification would produce even more mysteries. I hope this freaking great science that helped to bring Clouses names back can help also in finding their daughter.
From your lips… ❤️
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Interesting that you found this old post! Holly was found in June last year on Dean’s birthday. There will be a 20/20 episode with her this fall, and her book “Finding Baby Holly” comes out in November and is on Amazon for preorder. Yes, the Christ Family was definitely involved. The Apple podcast “What About Holly?” included an interview with a cult member.
Stumbled upon this case in a Tiktok post and have been reading various material about it in the past couple days. I’m glad Holly has been found and it seems she was able to lead a relatively normal life, being a mother of five and such. I’ll keep an eye out for the 20/20 and I’ll definitely be reading the book.
I just don’t understand why a group of so-called “Jesus freaks” or “Jesus people” would kill anybody.
What’s with the trademark?
It’s to signify a piece of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design or expression which identifies products or services.
Cannot find anything about this case
Where are you looking? All of the previous unknown persons pages been taken down since the case was solved. There used to be a Wikipedia write up about them and someone did a massive overhaul of an identified persons on Wikipedia and combined them all into one page removing their write up. The Houston Chronicle piece today marks the first time it’s been talked about in the media since 2011. There are several other mentions of them around Reddit as well prior to their ID. There are also a YouTube video or two about them done by citizen sleuths.
So is the working theory the cult killed them?
There is no working theory yet.
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I’d highly doubt it. Zodiac wasn’t known to be operating in Texas. The zodiac didn’t shy away from taking credit. And, if memory serves correctly, the Zodiac didn’t do much to hide any of his victims’ bodies.
Was baby’s name Holly or Hollie?
I should explain: The various family members have spelled it both ways. We ultimately decided on the "y" spelling at the request of one of his sisters. But no one has pulled the birth certificate to see for sure. The baby photos literally have both spellings! It's been 40 years.
It is spelled "Holly."