Donna Casasanta got the call this week, a call she’s spent half of her life praying for.
A call about Holly Marie.
More than 40 years ago, her son, Harold Dean Clouse, moved to Texas from New Smyrna, Fla., with his wife, Tina Linn, and their young daughter. Then, all three abruptly vanished.
Finally, in October 2021, genealogists called Casasanta and her relatives with painful news: Police had discovered the couple’s bodies, back in 1981, in a copse of trees in east Harris County, but only had recently identified them using modern technology.
Dean was beaten to death. Tina had been strangled.
There was no sign of their baby, Holly Marie.
But this week that changed. Holly Marie is alive and well and living in Oklahoma, where a family adopted her as a baby.
Investigators walked into Holly’s workplace on Tuesday and told her who she was.
Hours later, Holly and her grandmother and aunts and uncles met, in a raucous Zoom call.
It was June 7, the day that her father would have turned 63.
“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. “I prayed for more than 40 years for answers and the Lord has revealed some of it.”
The Houston Chronicle first broke the story, in January, of the successful identification of Dean and Tina. This piece relies on Chronicle archival materials and exclusive interviews with those involved in tracking down the long-missing child of the murdered couple.
A bit of a vagabond
Clouse had grown up in New Smyrna, a beach town in central Florida. Casasanta remembered him as a good student and a wanderer. Dean — that’s what most people called him, except for his mom, who called him “Junior” — had a thick mop of brown hair and an easy smile. Family photos from that time show him splashing in a kiddie pool; decked out in his football gear, and playing with his siblings.
He was a searcher, a rascal, a bit of a vagabond. He sometimes picked up hitchhikers, and in the mid-1970s, he’d run off and joined a cult. Other times, he’d disappear for a week at a time. Once after that happened, he called home and asked Casasanta to send cash so he could fly home.
When he returned, he started working as a carpenter for a construction company, building homes in New Smyrna and the surrounding region. It was during that time that he met Tina Gail Linn. Soon, the two were in love, and married in a surprise courthouse wedding.
They had Holly soon after.
Relatives snapped photos of the two cuddling the bright-eyed toddler. Clouse told his mom he wanted to move to Texas. His bosses promised better pay, money he could use to support Tina and Holly.
He borrowed Casasanta’s sedan, and in 1980, the family headed west.
She heard from them for a time — letters arriving from their home in Lewisville, a Dallas suburb.
The last letter came in October of that year. Then, silence.
She wondered what had happened, why the letters had stopped.
The only clue she had was an anonymous call, a few months after his disappearance, from a man who claimed to have found the couple’s car in California. Three women dressed in white robes drove it back to Florida. They met at the Daytona Speedtrack late at night. The leader of the trio, “Sister Susan,” told Casasanta that Dean had joined a cult, renounced his worldly possessions, and wanted nothing to do with his family or his past.
“That was weird,” she said. “We really got frightened, and we started searching and searching.”
Months turned to years. Worry turned to panic, then that faded to grief. The questions never ceased, however.
For years, when she met new people, she occasionally spoke of her other children, but she tried to avoid mentioning Dean.
She didn’t want to bring that pain back to the surface — it would leave her upset for days.
A terrible discovery
Donna Casasanta sits with her daughter, Debbie Brooks, while showing a childhood photo of Casasanta’s late son, Harold Dean Clouse, at her Edgewater, Fla., home on Friday, Jan. 14, 2022.
Patrick Connolly, Houston Chronicle / ContributorJust a couple of months after the last letter from Tina and Dean, a German Shepherd in east Harris County trotted back to its owner’s house, a decomposed human arm in its jaws. It was Jan. 6, 1981.
Police began searching the area, bringing prison inmates to help sweep the quiet patch of land about 11 miles east of downtown Houston.
A week later, investigators found the bodies of a young man, beaten to death, and a woman, who’d been strangled. The remains suggested the two people had been dead for some time. They were 5 feet 4 inches to 5 feet 8 inches tall and had “beautiful teeth,” a forensic investigator told the Chronicle, years later. They found a pair of green gym shorts and a bloody towel discarded near their bodies.
In the months after the discovery, medical investigators hired a pastel artist to create sketches based on photos of the corpses.
The move was “probably our last shot,” the now-deceased medical investigator, Cecil Wingo, said.
In Florida, Casasanta and the couple’s other relatives startled every time the phone rang, wondering if the call contained news.
After five years and still no information, they inquired with the Social Security Administration and the Salvation Army. They registered the names on annual missing persons lists.
They hoped for the best, in spite of the long silence.
“We pretty much thought they had joined this religious group and didn’t want to have contact with us,” said Les Linn, Tina’s brother.
The call
Donna Casasanta in front of her Edgewater, Fla., home on Friday, Jan. 14, 2022.
Patrick Connolly, Houston Chronicle / ContributorForty-two years after Dean and Tina went missing Casasanta got a call from her daughter, Debbie Brooks. A pair of genealogists had news — they’d finally found Dean.
Two employees at Identifinders International, a California-based organization that performs genetic genealogy for law enforcement, had asked officials at the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences for permission to test remains of the John and Jane Doe discovered near Wallisville Road.
They uploaded the genetic information into Gedmatch.com, a genealogy site that allows users to share their data with law enforcement agencies across the country in the hopes it might help solve such crimes. (Other sites, such as 23andme or ancestry.com, do not share their information with police.)
They quickly were able to connect Clouse’s DNA to relatives in Kentucky — who ultimately helped point them to Casasanta’s daughter, Debbie Brooks.
It had taken them 10 days to track down the identity of a man who’d been nameless for four decades.
The break in the case was the latest in an increasing number of cold-cases brought to resolution with the help of new genealogical testing. In recent years, millions of people have uploaded their DNA into genealogy testing sites such as Gedmatch or familytreeDNA.com. The information on the sites have helped people connect with long-lost relatives and learn about their origins.
In Florida, Casasanta and her children absorbed the news with shock. The woman found with Dean was likely Tina, they told the genetic investigators, an assumption that was soon confirmed.
“I totally lost it,” Casasanta said, in January after the news became public, “I kept praying for God to show me what happened and where he died, but I don’t know why anyone would want to hurt my son and wife.”
Other questions
Donna Casasanta in front of a painting showing her late son, Harold Dean Clouse, his wife, Tina Gail Linn, and their daughter, Holly Marie Clouse, at Casasanta’s Edgewater, Fla., home on Friday, Jan. 14, 2022.
Patrick Connolly, Houston Chronicle / ContributorThe news brought a certain kind of closure — but also raised a whole new reservoir of questions: while police had found Dean and Tina’s corpses amid the palmettos and live oaks in that isolated spot out by Wallisville Road, they’d never found any of Holly Marie’s remains.
Where was she? What had happened to her? Had scavengers carried the young girl’s body off? Had someone murdered the couple in order to abduct the toddler?
In March, Donna and her children, Tess, Cheryl and Debbie, and her son, Chris — now themselves middle-aged — as well as Les Linn, Tina’s brother, traveled to Houston.
They went first to the site where police had found the bodies. Today, the area is a neighborhood called “Seclusion Estates” across the street from a pediatric clinic.
A few dozen yards south of Wallisville Road, down a dirt path, the spot was sprinkled with palmettos, fallen trees, and a bed of leaves that crunched and rustled at every step.
Hours later, the family made another stop at the paupers cemetery where the two are buried. It sits on Oates Road, on a desolate stretch dotted with trucking yards, radiator repair shops and other industrial businesses.
They found the graves in Section G, side by side, each marked with a small, green, plastic flag.
It was hard standing out there, grieving again the fact they’d never gotten to say goodbye. Donna had grown old, Les had gray hair and a full beard, but memories of Dean and Tina brought them back to 1980, when the couple were still 21 and 17, a young couple with an infant baby.
“I still can’t believe it,” said Chris Casasanta, Dean’s younger brother, before sadness overcame him. “I’d like to know a lot more.”
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Investigation restarts
Childhood photos show Harold Dean Clouse at his mother Donna Casasanta’s home in Edgewater, Fla., home on Friday, Jan. 14, 2022. Clouse and his wife, Tina Gail Linn, were murdered 40 years ago and recently identified using genealogical evidence. The family learned in June 2022 that the couple’s daughter, Holly Marie Clouse, is still alive.
Patrick Connolly, Houston Chronicle / ContributorWith the new information, officials in the Texas Attorney General’s Office took over the case.
They set about trying to find out what they could learn about Holly Marie.
Casasanta, meanwhile, thought of the promise she’d made, after Dean went missing — that she’d do everything she could to find out what happened to him, to Holly, and to figure out who visited this crime upon them.
With all the attention the story drew earlier this year, she hoped investigators might get more information about her son’s killer.
Casasanta wondered if she would be able to find Holly — assuming her granddaughter was still alive — before old age took her.
And then it happened. Investigators found Holly. She was living in Oklahoma, with her husband of more than 20 years. She has five children and two infant grandchildren.
“After finally being able to reunite with Holly, I dreamed about her and my sister, Tina last night. In my dream, Tina was laying on the floor rolling around and laughing and playing with Holly like I saw them do many times before when they lived with me prior to moving to Texas. I believe Tina’s finally resting in peace knowing Holly is reuniting with her family. I personally am so relieved to know Holly is alive and well and was well cared for, but also torn up by it all. That baby was her life,” said Sherry Linn Green, Holly’s aunt.
“The very first thing that ran through my head when we heard Holly was found was the call that I got eight months ago from Allison about my sister’s death. The juxtaposition of that call with Holly’s sudden discovery just popped into my head. To go from hoping to find her to suddenly meeting her less than 8 months later —- how miraculous is that? All of the detectives involved ..They all expressed such fortitude to get to the bottom of this case.. They have the Linn family’s complete support,” said Les Linn, Holly’s uncle.
The two genetic genealogists who first decided to work the case couldn’t believe how much Holly looked like her mom.
“I cried during the whole thing,” said Misty Gillis, the Identifinders contractor who picked the couple’s case out last fall.
“It was extremely surreal,” said Allison Peacock, who worked the case with Gillis and has since started her own genetic genealogy investigations company. “To see her, to see what she looks like, to see her mother reflected in her face.”
Debbie Brooks, from left, Christopher Casasanta, Donna Casasanta, Cheryl Clouse, Les Linn and Tess Welch embrace and pray at the gravesite of their loved ones, Harold Dean Clouse and his wife, Tina Gail Linn, in the Harris County Cemetery #2 Tuesday, March 1, 2022 in Houston.
Brett Coomer, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographerUnanswered questions
Two puzzles in this grand jigsaw are now solved. But the revelation has only raised new questions. Was the couple who gave Holly up for adoption Tina and Dean? If it was them, what prompted them to give Holly up? Or was it a man and woman posing as Tina and Dean?
Did the couple actually join a cult? If so, who was in it? What was it named? Who were the women who tried to sell Casasanta back her car? Did they know anything about Tina and Dean’s murders?
Who killed the pair? How did a couple living near Dallas end up in the woods near Houston?
Those questions remain unanswered — for now.
But Casasanta finally knows what happened to her son and daughter-in-law.
She has kept her promise. She has found her granddaughter, who is alive and well.
And Holly Marie Clouse, meanwhile, has found her grandmother, her family, and her past.
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism