What Ever Happened to Mary Day? | Full Episode | Forensic Files

foreign [Music] [Music] day was a a girl that lived in Seaside in about 1981. she disappeared what do you mean she
disappeared she disappeared off the face of the Earth [Music] I just knew something was wrong in the
house Mary days my sister [Music] one day Mary was in California and then she was gone
[Music] laying in bed one night with Kathy I asked her you know I was like what happened with Mary you know and she was
like shh don't say anything we're not allowed to talk about Mary when I was 18 and I was like oh I can
you know go and try to find her [Music] a very hard case to deal with other than the family nobody knew she
was gone didn't seem to really concern them [Music] I've never seen a case like this
my mother told me that there were a lot of places in California that you could bury a body and they'd ever be found
[Music] I started believing she was murdered the dogs went into the backyard we just had an indication from the
cadaver dogs that there was a human remains there and our guys started digging and uh my
heart was pounding we were looking for a little girl's body and we found a little girl's shoe
[Music] William told me that he didn't kill Mary day but his wife told him that he was
possessed that night in that he had a demon inside of him I've never heard anybody say that before
[Music] this is a crazy case [Music] Mary disappeared no trace of her for 22 years and then what happens and then I
get a phone call he told me uh hey Captain he says you sitting down he said gonna let you know that they say that
they uh they found Mary day and I'm like oh this case just gets weirder and weirder
foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] California Detective Joe bertina first
heard the name Mary Louise day back in 2002 he'd been asked to lead the investigation into her disappearance
the case was rectangle of weeds that went all different directions Mary we Ary was old when she vanished in 1981
seemingly Without a Trace there was no evidence that she was alive [Music] Joe's boss
got a trace of her as an adult no social security record of her having a job getting welfare benefits we have nothing
on this person's idea she didn't exist she didn't exist Mary's existence came close to being
completely erased there's no record that her stepfather William Houle or her mother Charlotte had ever reported her
missing it's hard to believe allowing a child to walk away or a child go missing
and it's not reported I can't remember a time when a child was not reported by the parents
thank you [Music] I couldn't understand how a mother could not go to the ends of the Earth to find her
child [Music] it was this woman Sherry calgaro Mary's sister who finally got authorities on
the case I wanted to know what happened to my sister Mary was 10 when Mary went missing
adult she filed a missing about Mary's troubled childhood the information we have through the sisters
is that it was a very dysfunctional household in their early days Mary day middle
sister Kathy and Sherry were in and out of a foster home their mother could not take care of them
Sherry was adopted by the Foster family we were separated when I was six years old
and Kathy with their mother Charlotte by this time Charlotte had married William Houle and the couple had two
kids of Their Own [Music] fool was a soldier the family moved around a lot from Base
to Base at one point detectives say Mary's stepfather had been reportedly physically abusing her
children's Protective Services had taken custody of Mary she was eventually turned back over to the family in my
opinion the system failed at the time Mary disappeared who was assigned to Fort Ord on the California
coast north of Monterey they were living in Seaside which is kind of a military town at that time and
that's where she was last seen [Music] Sherry who kept in touch with her birth family later visited them
when I went to visit my family I asked them what had happened to my sister Mary Kathy I was like
don't say anything we're not allowed to talk about Mary but say her mother Charlotte told them Mary
had run away at the time I wasn't sure what I thought except that it did make sense to me when
Sherry grew up she filed that missing person's report by the time Seaside Police launched its
investigation in 2002 there was little to go on the neighbors barely recalled the family
living there nobody really knew this family and they sure didn't know Mary day Mary had never been enrolled in school
in California and her parents never told anyone she was gone where China says they had at least one
reason to keep quiet Mary had been getting government checks because her birth father had died in an
accident they were taking on Mary's Social Security checks cashing out detective retainer it's March 3rd 2003
well camera bird China went to the seaside home Mary's last known whereabouts he brought Kathy with him
pictures [Music] Kathy was just 11 when she last saw her sister that day lives in my head a lot it feels
like you're opening up a scab you're opening up and it it hurts because Mary's in mind
[Music] Mary was at home along with Kathy when the rest of family went out they came home later that evening and
while they were gone the dog became sick and was dying in the kitchen area when William saw that he immediately
accused Mary of poisoning the dog and the point was back here foreign he hit her
last time I saw her she had the blood coming down her mouth [Music] Kathy said after Mary disappeared her
parents ordered the kids to stay away from one particular area of the backyard and that's what's called as far you
weren't supposed to come over here who told you that my father the clues were adding up
detectives felt they could be dealing with something much more sinister runaway teenage girl
they brought in a team of cadaver dogs train Ed Trey find human remains as the dogs went into the backyard
they each hit on one particular spot near a tree we started to dig as a father my heart was pounding
and as we dug I saw a little girl's shoe my heart started pounding even more and I thought here we are we found her
foreign [Music] the missing persons case of Mary day was quickly becoming a homicide
investigation police facing the Grim task of digging in the dirt were the cadaver dogs
alerted [Music] and we kept digging and there was no body I said well we must be here and then and they kept
digging they were sure that a body had been there they were positive they said you know our dogs don't lie and for them
independently hitting on the same spot before we dug the dog handler said it's been moved
at this time there was no question that the parents were the suspects in the possible homicide of a little girl from
1981. we knew that we had to find the parents [Music] more than 20 years after Mary
disappeared stepfather William Poole had left the Army and was now at a Kansas prison
working as a corrections officer he and Charlotte were still together she agreed to talk with local detectives
about the daughter who vanished so long ago [Music] I remember watching the interview had
realizing that she had something to tell us you know only you know if I did this and this
her body language and then her sinking down in her chair and saying words to the effect of you know sometimes you do
things in your past and it comes back I knew that there was something there much
less I've heard from Eric anyone my instruction right away Charlotte said Mary running away was no
big deal she did it all the time it was like trying to get a night crawler out of a wormhole just grabbing
it it was gone grabbing it was gone all right how many times did she run away you know all these questions I can't
answer okay when you was back in California did you guys take any kind of stuff to find her
we should have we should have which did my husband said we filed a police report with the
Salina's Police Department we did I don't remember there was no record of a report
couldn't understand a parent number one not reporting their child's runaway but number two treating this
case the status of their missing daughter has basically no big deal it didn't seem to really concern them
foreign they were not really really surprised at us being there britaina later questioned Mary's
stepfather William I just asked him tell me about the last time that you saw Mary he told me that
well he was going room to room checking on the kids and he discovered Mary wasn't in there
bedroom he told Charlotte she panics he panics call the police and he knew I wasn't buying that I said
William she runs away all the time why did you panic I never got a good response
active press tool and brought up the story of this any he said five or six times you know
she did she poisoned my dog and I was really angry she tried to run out of the house
I didn't want her to go so I caught her before she got out of the front door she was kicking me punching me
so I pushed her and when he's doing this he's making a choking yeah I guess you're he's yeah
with his hand and it's like a hand strike that I've seen before it's a martial art technique so ask him where
did you hit her with that and he said well in the upper chest I said could it have been the throat he
said well it may have slipped off and hit her hit Mary in the throat I wanted to know on a scale of one to ten is
anger when he had done this when he had struck Mary and he said on one a skull of one to ten
I was a 15. I said you're this angry I think you may have killed her and he looked at me and said no
I didn't kill her but the next day my wife Charlotte told me that that night she saw Satan in my
eyes and she said I was possessed by a demon and then it dawned on me that he's admitting but not admitting
that he killed her and I said okay William I believe you you didn't kill her but what about that demon inside of
you could that demon have killed Mary he looked at me and said yes the demon could have killed her when he
walked out did you think you were letting a killer go yeah yeah Joe said yeah we don't have a body but
he said this this guy came so close to confessing that it was as close as he's ever had anybody come is that enough to
go to a prosecutor and say I don't know if we're ever going to get the body but we we have a lot of the pieces of the
puzzle yeah uh the D.A wasn't ready to file at that time did you think there was enough I thought that was probably
enough um I was not worried really because I thought we are building the case here
foreign just as the detective's confidence was growing the case took an unexpected turn
remember police had no record of Mary Louise day as an adult there were no credit cards no driver's license or ID
recorded anywhere there hadn't been a trace of Mary in more than two decades until police in Phoenix Arizona made a
traffic stop I got a phone call I was at home I left work and he told me hey Captain he says
you sitting down and I said what happened he said no he says it's just going to let you know that Phoenix
Police Department in Arizona pulled over a car and they say that they uh they found Mary day
you make of William and Charlotte's stories here's Charlotte's unusual response to
police searching for her missing daughter on Facebook at 48 hours [Music] foreign
November 2003 Phoenix Arizona it was a routine traffic stop pickup truck with stolen plates when
police ran the IDS of the passengers one of them hit a woman named Mary day he said Joe guess
what Mary day's been found and I I was stunned investigators had put Mary day into a
missing person's database long ago she identified herself with a phoenix identification card
or Arizona state identification card back in California Detective Joe bertina felt like a ghost had just appeared
his mind Mary day had been murdered more than 20 years earlier at the home of her
parents you talked to William and Charlotte in April of 2003. and then seven months
later or so a woman named Mary Louise day just falls out of the sky I was stunned
his boss Steve Cercone could not believe it Joe went down there and he met her and he sent a picture of her and we went
what wait a minute no all right all right it looked like it could be her and I said I said wait a
minute all these other bits of circumstantial evidence the father almost confessing almost confessing to
the murder of a little girl and now here was this woman 700 miles away with a valid Arizona state ID
strangely that ID had been issued only three weeks earlier while the homicide investigation was underway well you must
have found the timing awfully suspicious yes it was very suspicious when detective retina went to Phoenix
the woman he was sure had been murdered told him she had run away from her mother Charlotte and stepfather William
when she was a teenager she'd basically lived under the radar and by her wits ever since but she seemed hesitant and
her story seemed sketchy later in a phone call Mary told bertina she had some awful memories did you
already talked about what happened that last night it hurt I'm sure it does but what
happened that last night I'm so confused anymore I don't know what's real or not
I remember you stick around in my head you know when you started bleeding foreign
but she didn't remember anything about the sick dog was that Troublesome to you that was
yeah investigators say it was hard to pin down much of anything about her past two
decades they began to wonder if the woman with the freshly minted ID was really who she claimed to be you refused
to call her Mary Louise day he called her Phoenix Mary in phone conversations Phoenix Mary was sounding increasingly
frustrated go ahead Mary if you would have found my bike how are you going to be able to
prove you the hell I was DNA also sometimes still alive y'all can't prove who I am
there's no record of you ever being anywhere it's like you haven't existed up until now
[Music] foreign I said all right let's get a DNA test on this woman let's let her prove that
she's the daughter of Charlotte we're going to disprove that she's married of course because there's no way that her
DNA is going to match except it did match he fell on the floor I couldn't believe
it the DNA came back positive to being a daughter of Charlotte the case was closed
Sherry invited her long-lost sister to move in with her most cases that would be the end of the
story but not in this case so now DNA matches case closed yeah well if it were that simple right
once Phoenix Mary moved in Sherry started to have her own doubts duh first thing I noticed was she it sounded like
she had some weird Midwestern southern accent weird to me the dialect you got married
I don't know if I've ever quite heard that particular manner of speaking hey you guys
yes ma'am we are Miss Mary also said she never used her with me I gave that name up years ago
what name would they know you by Monica Deborah it's a name she said she made up I did
notice that she had magazines in the name of Monica Devereaux Sherry's sister Kathy was also unnerved
no that's not Mary why what makes you so sure something's off [Music] you're telling me that your gut is
saying it's not her my gut she says the woman claiming to be married didn't even
remember that their birth father left them in inheritance they could collect at age 18. he it was their shared Escape
Plan and they had a code word for it was there a code word or some sort of secret
between you and Mary yeah it was it was called mohawk Mohawk was your secret word yep
[Music] Harry did something else strange put a note to Detective bertina she emailed Joe and her email said
something to the effect of I've been lying to you about who I am and that was new information oh my God I
said oh this is a whole new ball game still the case remained closed [Music] but then in 2008 Steve Cercone now
seaside's police chief got a phone call from investigators at the army base in Fort Ord
another set of cadaver dogs had been working on an unrelated matter and had found something
Fort Ord was a huge place and he said look we brought the cadaver dogs out here and they went over hundreds of
homes and he said we got a hit on one of the homes you'll never believe who was living in this house he said
William Hull and his family lived in this house [Music] [Music] in 2008 cadaver dogs alerted near a
second home where the holes had lived the house they had moved to shortly after Mary disappeared so what are you
thinking that a body has been moved by this family from one location to another yeah
once again police dog and once again they came up short was Mary moved twice was this little girl who may have been
killed back in 1981 was her body moved twice although the case had been closed sir
cone felt something was seriously wrong I don't know I don't know but we have to
investigate this he hired Mark Clark a tired homicide detective from nearby Salinas California
absolutely the most bizarre case I've ever come up against the evidence collected over the year
Clark was a murder and missed opportunities there's so many parts about this thing
that could have solved this case back then that is really frustrating he believes they let the parents off the
hook too soon mom and dad say she ran away don't ever talk about her again they tore up her pictures threw away her
clothes and that was it most damning he says are Williams own words his comment was I
couldn't have killed Mary my body would have done it but it wouldn't have been me it would have been
that demonic personality because I blacked out Clark says he would have arrested William Hall you just admitted
Panama to a homicide and were letting him go Clark also focused on that shoe detectives found another detective asked
Kathy about it like first asked did you guys ever wear canvas tennis shoes and Catherine said
Keds and she said yes and they pulled out the shoe and it's pretty chewed up but you can tell that it's a tennis shoe
with a canvas body to it and she said exactly that [Music] and he consulted with with Body Farm
bodies come he says they found soil samples consistent with a body being buried [Music]
what do you think happened to Mary Louise day she was killed in 1981 and probably around July Clark believes the
woman now claiming to be Mary day is an imposter there's just too many things that point to Phoenix Mary day being
somebody else but what about that DNA test showing she's Charlotte hoole's daughter well Mark Clark has a theory
that he says explains it all even if it is a little far-fetched he says Charlotte hoole had another daughter a
secret daughter born before Mary and given up at Birth Clark believes Phoenix Mary is that secret daughter so you
think Phoenix Mary is the actual sister of Mary Louise day who goes missing back
in 1981 yes he looked into Charlotte's background there's some circumstantial evidence
that Charlotte had a couple of marriages where she would be involved in extramarital Affairs and become pregnant
from those affairs Clark says the ghouls could have reached out to Charlotte's Secret daughter when
they felt they were in trouble I believe she was somehow sought out by Charlotte
and William to pose as Mary day to avoid prosecution it was an elaborate plot he
says the holes knew that police were investigating Mary's disappearance and they asked her secret sister to assume
her identity circone says the hole said the wherewithal to do it what if they took the birth certificate
of Mary which they probably had and the social security card from Mary what if they gave those cards to the other
sister and said you're now married there was an inheritance we thought the motivation would be the inheritance
because she could collect that inheritance with the crude interest that inheritance was now worth roughly 6
sixty thousand dollars Sherry helped Mary get her cut we reached out to William and Charlotte
hoole through a relative they said they had no comment Mark says the Imposter Theory accounts
for a lot of inconsistencies for example Mary's odd southern accent the accent was really thick Sherry and
Catherine both said that Mary day never had an accent she has a Southern accent it's a pronounced southern accent
another one question asked if you don't mind go ahead Mary if you would have found my body how are you going to be
able to prove you the hell I was Mary did claim that she had spent some time in the South as an adult but was
only there briefly as a child when experts say it would have given her that accent and I let four separate Southern
dialect experts listen to the interview and they all concluded that it would have taken living her her formative
years up to nine or ten in the South to acquire this certain accent and there was that email that Phoenix Mary sent
saying she wasn't who she claimed to be after about a year of living with Sherry
Mary moved out on her own but the mystery just wouldn't die another detective was about to take a
crack at the case we have to be very careful all of us in law enforcement not to make our story
fit our ideas or what we believed happened [Music] in 2017 Sherry calgaro still wanted
answers about the woman claiming to be her sister basically everyone that's ever met her
has a lot of doubts I have my own doubts we took Sherry to visit Phoenix Mary in
Missouri where she'd been living for a few years I'm hoping that she will admit she will
confess to us who she really is okay good luck bye Mary was living here and suffering from
late stage cancer she wasn't up for any more visitors that day [Music] as Mary's Hope was failing the new
acting chief of Seaside Police was determined to solve the case once and for all
Judy the laws chipped away at the idea that Mary day was murdered for starters additional tests showed
Mary's DNA matched not only Charlotte but also the birth father and then there was that little girl's
shoe I put it in the palm of my hand and I mean it fit in the palm of my hand it was very small
had a hard time believing that a 13 year old would have to be I mean I saw her stature in the picture
she wasn't that short the laws also traveled to Mary's home she says marry herself filled in the
gaps she wanted to convince us she was Mary and it seemed sincere Mary said she began calling herself
Monica when she ran away because she didn't want police to take her back home Mary also mentioned a new name Mori a
woman she knew in those early days on her own in California the laws Tracked Down Maury Kimmel I got
her when she was 15. very naive and innocence about her almost like childlike at the time Mori had two young daughters
of her own she just won my heart and my girls loved her you know that that may have been
the only and the best family life she ever had in her entire I'm realizing that now you know I wanted to nurture
her you know but after about a year one day Mary was gone I was heartbroken [Music]
the laws discovered that Mary had moved around a lot City to City living on the margins
honestly when I talked to her she just seemed like a Survivor she also solved the mystery of why Mary suddenly
got that Arizona ID she needed state aid to pay for surgery she had her gallbladder taken out that led her to
obtain her proper driver's license or ID in the name of Mary Louise day a local non-profit had helped Mary track down
her real birth certificate the laws chalks up Mary's foggy memory to trauma and a lifelong battle with
alcohol those gaps in memory to me can be legitimate especially if someone's been an alcoholic from the
time they've been a teenager for that email Mary sent to detective vertina saying she'd been lying about
who she was the losses Mary sent a follow-up email writing quote I'm not sure myself what I was trying to say in
that email again from someone who is still a severe alcoholic in using in us came up with the Smoking Gun one of
mauri's relatives had a photograph the picture really did it it's Mary she says and it was taken at least a year
after the alleged murder we took the photo to True face see it I see this a state-of-the-art facial
recognition Company CEO Sean Moore so we're going to look at the results of our face matching algorithms on the
images that you all sent us okay and and it's it's trying to see what it's trying to see the probability that
we're matching a young picture with one of the older pictures so if this is the same person correct it's a probability
that's the same person the top photo is Mary before she disappeared the other photo is the one that Judy velaz dug up
what are the numbers telling you and the numbers are telling us that it's the same person
he says that's a 99 probability with that photo Judy Villas submitted her report and closed the merry day
investigation this time for good after all these years the woman at the center of this case finally agreed to
meet with me this is the Mary that I met fragile but not feeble it was clear from seeing her
in person that this was a woman who had not had an easy life still she didn't seem to be trying to hide anything in
fact she said it's very frustrating trying to prove who you are when there is no proof
Sherry is finally at peace it was all of a sudden it felt like I had a weight lifted off of my
shoulders it was just like it's done this is her that's pretty much the end of that story
it's not that simple for Mark Clark I've seen the report I'd be lying if it didn't make me second guess my
investigation even though he can't prove his theory he can't quite shake his old
hunch that Mary is an imposter do you believe that William cool murdered Mary Louise day at least on the evidence I've
found yes [Music] as for Steve Cercone I will admit that once I read Judy's report and I saw that
picture I definitely leaned towards the identity of Mary as being Mary Louise day the
little girl that we were looking for still he says he is certain of one thing those cadaver dogs were on to something
foreign they said you know our dogs don't lie they don't lie but who was buried in those grave sites
[Music] Mary day died nine days after Judy the laws interviewed her there was no
funeral do you believe that the woman claiming to be Mary day was really her hear more
about investigator Julie velaza's meeting with Mary at 48hours.com an aspiring towboat Captain a mysterious
death blood everywhere his girlfriend and friend say they found him police ruled
out Foul Play but there are troubling Clues it's a stage scene they let somebody get away with murder 48 Hours
next on CBS [Music]

A 13-year-old girl vanishes in 1981. Detectives believe she was murdered. Years later, a woman appears and claims to be the missing girl. Is she an impostor? "48 Hours" correspondent Maureen Maher reports. Watch more full episodes of "48 Hours" on Pluto TV.

Crime. Social justice. Impact. "48 Hours" investigates the most intriguing crime and justice cases that touch on all areas of the human experience including greed and passion. "48 Hours," which premiered in 1988, has developed a rich history of original reporting and impact journalism that has helped exonerate wrongly convicted people, caused cold cases to be reopened and solved, and along the way changed lives.

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Brief Summary

Mary Louise Day disappeared in 1981; her case reveals family secrets and a shocking twist when she was found alive in 2003.

Key points

Mary Day's Mysterious Disappearance. Mary Day vanished in 1981, leaving no trace for over two decades. Her family's silence raises questions.
The Shocking Discovery. After years of searching, police receive a call that Mary Day has been found alive.
DNA Confirms Identity. A DNA test reveals that the woman claiming to be Mary Day is indeed her, closing the case.
The Imposter Theory. Mark Clark presents a theory that the woman claiming to be Mary Day is actually her secret sister.
DNA Evidence. New tests show Mary's DNA matches both Charlotte and her birth father, complicating the case.
Final Meeting. After years of investigation, Sherry finally meets the woman claiming to be her sister.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This case just gets weirder and weirder.

3:26WatchNov 22, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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