Finally Casasanta, Harold's mother, reported her son as missing to the police. She told them that the young man and his wife had probably joined the sect. Unfortunately, the police downplayed her report and assumed that as adults the Clouses had the right to make their own choices, e.g. to break ties with their family. "I spent years waiting for a call from my son, calling police stations every time a new body was found. I've spent years with fire in my chest just waiting," Casasanta said. Eventually, under pressure from Harold's mother, the police did put Harold on the missing list.
A few months later, in a wooded area in Houston, a dog came across human remains. For years, however, it was impossible to identify them. They were buried as unknowns.
Strangled, beaten to death
In 2011, Jennifer Love, director of forensic anthropology at the Harris County Medical Examiner's office, authorized the exhumation of ’’the bodies from the forest” in order to collect DNA samples. However, it was still impossible to establish who the dead might be.
Another ten years passed, and a new technique called genetic genealogy offered new hope. DNA and details from ‘’the bodied from the forest” were sent to Gedmatch.com, a genealogy portal that shares its users' genetic information with law enforcement agencies around the country. After comparing and analyzing the data, it turned out that the hitherto unnamed victims from the forest were indeed Tina and Harold Clouse, who had disappeared years ago. Examination of the remains also showed that Tina had been strangled and that her husband had been gagged and beaten to death.
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For four decades Harold's mother had wondered if her son was still alive. "Once I was on a motorway and I saw a young man passing by and he looked so much like my son. Often I told myself that he must still be somewhere out there, that one day he would ring the doorbell and say: ‘Hey mom’", 80-year-old Casasanta said.
After identifying the couple’s bodies, the family focused on trying to figure out what had happened to Holly, Harold and Tina's daughter. Genealogists unequivocally stated that of the examined remains in the woods none belonged to a child. Therefore, two investigations were initiated. The first dealt with the Clouses’ murder while the second looked into the disappearance of their little daughter. Other murders and disappearances in Texas between the fall of 1980 and 1981 were analyzed.
Representatives of the Clouse family went on to work with multiple agencies to create the most faithful image of what the face of an adult Holly might look like. Family members submited their DNA samples to ancestry.com, which deals, among other things, with searches for missing people.
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