In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, Cheryl Clouse also revealed how her brother -Holly’s father- joined a Christian cult as a teenager but left two weeks later and returned home “barefoot” in a robe.
Holly is the daughter of Harold Dean Cluj and Tina Gale Lynn, a married teenage couple who disappeared in 1980 after moving from Florida to Texas when Holly was less than a year old. For decades, Cheryl and the rest of her family believed they had left the network with a religious group. Last year, they learned the couple had been murdered 40 years ago and their bodies dumped in the woods in Houston.
It was the result of a genealogical discovery by a team of scientists who wanted to identify a couple known as “The Houston Does”, whose bodies were found by a dog in 1981.
While her parents were murdered, Holly was abducted by a group of women wearing white robes and traveling as a religious group. She was left unharmed in a church in Arizona and happily raised by a foster family, only to discover last week that her parents who had been born had been brutally murdered.
Speaking this weekend, Cheryl, a 62-year-old nurse living in Alabama, said of the moment she, her sisters and her mother discovered that their beloved “Junior”, as they called her brother, had been killed – and to their surprise they learned that his daughter may still be alive.
“It’s such an amazing miracle that we found her. The whole family is so happy and relieved. Our hearts are still healing, but we are so, so happy to have found her. And that she is alive, has a family, and survived. Nothing terrible happened to her. “Alleluia and Amen … we have Holly”, he said.
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“Baby Holly” is 42 (left) and lives in Oklahoma. She appears holding a photo of her parents, taken shortly before she was murdered in 1980. Cheryl Clouse’s aunt rightly spoke to DailyMail.com about the family’s emotional reunion and how they now hope to find the cult killers responsible for breaking up family
They had their first Zoom call as a family this week and Cheryl hopes to meet in person in the future.
‘It was exciting. I had a lot of stress. My heart was pounding, it was nice to meet her and we all took turns informing her who we were in the family.
“Mom went first saying she was her grandmother. It was exciting to talk to her and see her.
“She looks like her mother. She has a nose, chin, lips, a smile and then when I heard her voice, she sounded like Tina. It is very exciting.
“We hope to meet Holly up close and allow our family to get to know and love her and be a member of her family. We want to throw love on her, she needs it “.
. Our hearts are still healing, but we are so, so happy to have found her. And that she is alive, has a family, and survived. Nothing terrible happened to her. Alleluia and Amen … we have Holly
The family also hopes that Dean and Tina’s killers will be found and brought to justice.
“There is a very good chance these people are still alive. This is my prayer. “Maybe not all of them, but at least one or two of them and that justice is being done,” he said.
The family’s hope of being alive was fueled for years by a mysterious interaction in 1981 with a cult member calling herself Sister Susan, several months after the family stopped listening to their news.
Susan called Cheryl and Dean’s mother in California, telling them that they had all joined a cult and no longer needed their car. He offered to drive it back to Florida for $ 1,000, but said he would never hear from Dean or Tina again.
They believed her because it was not Dean’s first experience with religious groups. years earlier, before he married Tina, he had disappeared with a cult for several weeks.
Harold Dean Cluj and Tina Gail Lynn met as teenagers. They married when Tina was 15 and pregnant in Holly, then moved to Texas before she was old enough for Dean to find a better-paying carpenter job. Cheryl says they were both “sweet”, polite, but overconfident with strangers
Holly appears as a 10-month-old baby in one of the last photos Tina sent to the Cluj family before she was murdered.
“There were times when he was a young adult who left for days.
“I can not remember how long he was gone as a teenager and associated with these members of the cult, but I vividly remember when he came home because I was out at home in Florida.
He did not talk much about it, he just said that it was a group that was learning about Jesus and the faith and something that he wanted to investigate. “She never explained to me why she decided to leave. I know it would be rough. They traveled around, took their food begging … He was happy for me at home. He was only 15 or 16 years old
Cheryl Clouse, for her brother’s involvement with a cult as a teenager
“I looked at the street and I could not understand that it was him until he came closer to me. He was a young man walking in a long robe. He was barefoot or had sandals, I think he was barefoot.
“As he approached, I realized, ‘Oh my God, this is Junior!’ I went to call him and he came back.
“I was very surprised and surprised that he would do that, he just left and became a member of this team. He did not talk much about it, he just said that it was a group that was learning about Jesus and the faith and something that he wanted to investigate.
“She never explained to me why she decided to leave. I know it would be rough. They traveled around, took their food begging … He was happy for me at home. “He was only 15 or 16 years old, so he was very young, but he liked helping people and he liked adventure and he was confident,” he said.
Cheryl told of another incident when Dean was a teenager when he brought three homeless and neglected worship members to their family home.
“My mom was very upset when she got home.
“He was a man and a woman and a child. The way everything turned out … but my brother just said “mom is okay, they just do not have their luck”. Let’s give them some peanut butter sandwiches and they will be on their way. That’s what he did and they left. ”
Cheryl believes that her brother and Tina – who was a family friend and often visited their home – trusted strangers too much.
She says that her brother became involved in worship after members approached him on the street.
Dean (center) was eight when this photo was taken a year after his father died in 1967. Cheryl (bottom left) was a year younger. Their mother Donna (right) raised five of them alone after her husband died of organ failure caused by a wolf. He remarried later and had another child
Dean appears, in the center, as a teenager. His sister says he took on the role of protector after his father’s death and “went up” to care for the women of the family before joining a cult when he was 15 years old. He returned home one day after he had been missing for weeks and was ‘barefoot’.
In 1980, they moved to Texas after a gun wedding when Tina was pregnant in Holly. Dean was a carpenter and was offered a better paid job. Holly was just eight months old at the time. They kept in touch for the first few months and, in October 1980, stopped writing.
“Tina wrote a letter to my mom and sent some pictures of little Holly Marie. He was 10 months old.
“They lived with an uncle on my father’s side and then they had an apartment in Leesville. We were all very worried [when the contact] he stopped and wondered why there were no other letters; there was great concern. They did not call or write or write anything.
Cheryl cried as she told DailyMail.com about the “crash” when she learned that her brother had been killed. He had hoped for 40 years that he was alive and would return home
“They had cut off contact with their uncle as soon as they moved into their apartment. Mom never got any phone calls from her uncle saying she had not seen them φυσικά over time of course we were more and more worried.
“Every year, my mom would try to get someone to check their Social Security number to see if it was ever used.”
In 1981, her mother received a call from her sister, Susan, who offered her the car back.
“He said he had Dean and Tina’s car and would return it to Florida. He said that it was their family now, that they had joined their worship and did not want to have anything to do with us. They had given up their worldly possessions and can never speak to us again.
“My mother arranged for them to bring the car, they wanted to meet at midnight and my mom was very suspicious. He was also her friend. They wanted $ 1,000 to bring the car back. They arranged the meeting and her friend called the police. They met them that night. ”
At that meeting, the policeman asked the members of the cult, but he had to let them go because, as he said, there was nothing to hold them suspicious.
Susan seemed to be no older than 30, he said, and had two much younger girls with her.
“No foul was suspected at the time, so there was no reason to keep them.”
For the next 40 years, the family maintained the hope that all three were alive. Once their bodies were identified last year, they discovered that Dean and Tina had been dead for decades.
“It simply came to our notice then [a cult] before, we thought maybe that was true. We always thought that the three of them were out there and that they would return home as they always did. When we were told they were recognized, that hope was dashed. It is still difficult. The whole family is still being treated. “It was such a brutal way to get through.”
Dean Donna’s mother appears to be visiting his Texas forest corpse (left) and visiting his Texas grave last year (right). Every year for forty …
