The bodies of Florida couple Tina Gail Linn Clouse and Harold Dean Clouse, Jr. were found in a wooded area in Houston, Texas, in 1981. Their infant, Holly Marie, was spared and was left at a church.
Could the people involved in the deaths of baby Holly’s parents have been connected to a cult? That’s what authorities may be investigating as the 42-year search for the killers of Holly Marie Clouse’s mother and father continues.
The bodies of Florida couple Tina Gail Linn Clouse and Harold Dean Clouse, Jr. were found in a wooded area in Houston, Texas, in 1981. Their infant, Holly Marie, was spared and later left at a church. According to law enforcement, she was left by two mysterious women who claimed to be part of a religious cult.
Law enforcement officials are searching for the women who delivered Holly to safety.
The women were wearing white robes and were barefoot when they dropped off the child, authorities said. They also indicated that their religious beliefs included separating male and female members, as well as not wearing leather goods, officials said.
At the time of Tina and Harold’s murders, and of Holly’s disappearance, there was a boom in religious cults. “There were dozens, maybe hundreds, of new Jesus movements in the early ‘70s that were just springing up all over the place,” cult expert Joe Szimhart told Inside Edition.
He said the description of the women who left Holly at a church may fit a cult called the Christ Family.
“They were Nomadic, they wandered, mostly stayed around the southwest—it all seemed to fit for me,” he said.
Members of the Christ Family wore white robes, adhered to a vegetarian diet, walked barefoot and gave away their worldly possessions. Their leader was Charles McHugh, or “Lightning Amen,” who encouraged his followers to abandon their families.
“They would pick out scripture, ‘if you don’t hate your family and love Jesus more, you're not worthy of the kingdom of heaven,’” Szimhart said.
Before marrying Tina, Harold, who was known as Dean, had experimented with cult-like groups. Dean’s mother Donna and his sister Debbie said that in 1980, after Dean and Tina disappeared, someone reached out offering to deliver Dean’s car to them for $1,000.
Three women in robes got out of the car and told Donna that Dean had renounced his family and wanted nothing more to do with them.
There is no evidence linking a cult, including the Christ Family, with the deaths of Tina and Dean, and there is no known history of violence associated with members of the Christ Family.
The cult’s leader, McHugh, is dead and his group disbanded in the 1980s. Police hope the surviving members can provide information that may help solve the 42-year-old mystery of who killed Tina and Dean and who left Holly at a church.
Tina and Dean's bodies were not positively identified until 2021 through the work of forensic genealogists.
Holly was found "alive and well" more than four decades after the killings of her parents.
"I prayed for more than 40 years for answers and the Lord has revealed some of it... we have found Holly," Holly's biological grandmother Donna Casasanta said in a statement released by the office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
