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foreign [Music] [Music] day was a a girl that lived in Seaside in about 1981. she disappeared what do you mean she
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disappeared she disappeared off the face of the Earth [Music] I just knew something was wrong in the
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house Mary days my sister [Music] one day Mary was in California and then she was gone
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[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
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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
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you know go and try to find her [Music] a very hard case to deal with other than the family nobody knew she
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was gone didn't seem to really concern them [Music] I've never seen a case like this
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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
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[Music] I started believing she was murdered the dogs went into the backyard we just had an indication from the
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cadaver dogs that there was a human remains there and our guys started digging and uh my
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heart was pounding we were looking for a little girl's body and we found a little girl's shoe
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[Music] William told me that he didn't kill Mary day but his wife told him that he was
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possessed that night in that he had a demon inside of him I've never heard anybody say that before
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[Music] this is a crazy case [Music] Mary disappeared no trace of her for 22 years and then what happens and then I
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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
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they uh they found Mary day and I'm like oh this case just gets weirder and weirder
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foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] California Detective Joe bertina first
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heard the name Mary Louise day back in 2002 he'd been asked to lead the investigation into her disappearance
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the case was rectangle of weeds that went all different directions Mary we Ary was old when she vanished in 1981
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seemingly Without a Trace there was no evidence that she was alive [Music] Joe's boss
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got a trace of her as an adult no social security record of her having a job getting welfare benefits we have nothing
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on this person's idea she didn't exist she didn't exist Mary's existence came close to being
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completely erased there's no record that her stepfather William Houle or her mother Charlotte had ever reported her
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missing it's hard to believe allowing a child to walk away or a child go missing
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and it's not reported I can't remember a time when a child was not reported by the parents
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thank you [Music] I couldn't understand how a mother could not go to the ends of the Earth to find her
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child [Music] it was this woman Sherry calgaro Mary's sister who finally got authorities on
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the case I wanted to know what happened to my sister Mary was 10 when Mary went missing
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adult she filed a missing about Mary's troubled childhood the information we have through the sisters
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is that it was a very dysfunctional household in their early days Mary day middle
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sister Kathy and Sherry were in and out of a foster home their mother could not take care of them
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Sherry was adopted by the Foster family we were separated when I was six years old
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and Kathy with their mother Charlotte by this time Charlotte had married William Houle and the couple had two
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kids of Their Own [Music] fool was a soldier the family moved around a lot from Base
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to Base at one point detectives say Mary's stepfather had been reportedly physically abusing her
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children's Protective Services had taken custody of Mary she was eventually turned back over to the family in my
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opinion the system failed at the time Mary disappeared who was assigned to Fort Ord on the California
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coast north of Monterey they were living in Seaside which is kind of a military town at that time and
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that's where she was last seen [Music] Sherry who kept in touch with her birth family later visited them
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when I went to visit my family I asked them what had happened to my sister Mary Kathy I was like
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don't say anything we're not allowed to talk about Mary but say her mother Charlotte told them Mary
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had run away at the time I wasn't sure what I thought except that it did make sense to me when
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Sherry grew up she filed that missing person's report by the time Seaside Police launched its
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investigation in 2002 there was little to go on the neighbors barely recalled the family
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living there nobody really knew this family and they sure didn't know Mary day Mary had never been enrolled in school
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in California and her parents never told anyone she was gone where China says they had at least one
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reason to keep quiet Mary had been getting government checks because her birth father had died in an
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accident they were taking on Mary's Social Security checks cashing out detective retainer it's March 3rd 2003
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well camera bird China went to the seaside home Mary's last known whereabouts he brought Kathy with him
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pictures [Music] Kathy was just 11 when she last saw her sister that day lives in my head a lot it feels
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like you're opening up a scab you're opening up and it it hurts because Mary's in mind
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[Music] Mary was at home along with Kathy when the rest of family went out they came home later that evening and
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while they were gone the dog became sick and was dying in the kitchen area when William saw that he immediately
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accused Mary of poisoning the dog and the point was back here foreign he hit her
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last time I saw her she had the blood coming down her mouth [Music] Kathy said after Mary disappeared her
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parents ordered the kids to stay away from one particular area of the backyard and that's what's called as far you
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weren't supposed to come over here who told you that my father the clues were adding up
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detectives felt they could be dealing with something much more sinister runaway teenage girl
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they brought in a team of cadaver dogs train Ed Trey find human remains as the dogs went into the backyard
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they each hit on one particular spot near a tree we started to dig as a father my heart was pounding
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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
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foreign [Music] the missing persons case of Mary day was quickly becoming a homicide
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investigation police facing the Grim task of digging in the dirt were the cadaver dogs
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alerted [Music] and we kept digging and there was no body I said well we must be here and then and they kept
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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
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independently hitting on the same spot before we dug the dog handler said it's been moved
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at this time there was no question that the parents were the suspects in the possible homicide of a little girl from
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1981. we knew that we had to find the parents [Music] more than 20 years after Mary
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disappeared stepfather William Poole had left the Army and was now at a Kansas prison
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working as a corrections officer he and Charlotte were still together she agreed to talk with local detectives
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about the daughter who vanished so long ago [Music] I remember watching the interview had
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realizing that she had something to tell us you know only you know if I did this and this
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her body language and then her sinking down in her chair and saying words to the effect of you know sometimes you do
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things in your past and it comes back I knew that there was something there much
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less I've heard from Eric anyone my instruction right away Charlotte said Mary running away was no
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big deal she did it all the time it was like trying to get a night crawler out of a wormhole just grabbing
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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
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answer okay when you was back in California did you guys take any kind of stuff to find her
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we should have we should have which did my husband said we filed a police report with the
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Salina's Police Department we did I don't remember there was no record of a report
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couldn't understand a parent number one not reporting their child's runaway but number two treating this
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case the status of their missing daughter has basically no big deal it didn't seem to really concern them
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foreign they were not really really surprised at us being there britaina later questioned Mary's
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stepfather William I just asked him tell me about the last time that you saw Mary he told me that
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well he was going room to room checking on the kids and he discovered Mary wasn't in there
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bedroom he told Charlotte she panics he panics call the police and he knew I wasn't buying that I said
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William she runs away all the time why did you panic I never got a good response
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active press tool and brought up the story of this any he said five or six times you know
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she did she poisoned my dog and I was really angry she tried to run out of the house
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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
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so I pushed her and when he's doing this he's making a choking yeah I guess you're he's yeah
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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
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did you hit her with that and he said well in the upper chest I said could it have been the throat he
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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
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anger when he had done this when he had struck Mary and he said on one a skull of one to ten
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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
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I didn't kill her but the next day my wife Charlotte told me that that night she saw Satan in my
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eyes and she said I was possessed by a demon and then it dawned on me that he's admitting but not admitting
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that he killed her and I said okay William I believe you you didn't kill her but what about that demon inside of
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you could that demon have killed Mary he looked at me and said yes the demon could have killed her when he
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walked out did you think you were letting a killer go yeah yeah Joe said yeah we don't have a body but
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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
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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
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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
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enough um I was not worried really because I thought we are building the case here
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foreign just as the detective's confidence was growing the case took an unexpected turn
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remember police had no record of Mary Louise day as an adult there were no credit cards no driver's license or ID
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recorded anywhere there hadn't been a trace of Mary in more than two decades until police in Phoenix Arizona made a
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traffic stop I got a phone call I was at home I left work and he told me hey Captain he says
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you sitting down and I said what happened he said no he says it's just going to let you know that Phoenix
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Police Department in Arizona pulled over a car and they say that they uh they found Mary day
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you make of William and Charlotte's stories here's Charlotte's unusual response to
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police searching for her missing daughter on Facebook at 48 hours [Music] foreign
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November 2003 Phoenix Arizona it was a routine traffic stop pickup truck with stolen plates when
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police ran the IDS of the passengers one of them hit a woman named Mary day he said Joe guess
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what Mary day's been found and I I was stunned investigators had put Mary day into a
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missing person's database long ago she identified herself with a phoenix identification card
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or Arizona state identification card back in California Detective Joe bertina felt like a ghost had just appeared
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his mind Mary day had been murdered more than 20 years earlier at the home of her
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parents you talked to William and Charlotte in April of 2003. and then seven months
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later or so a woman named Mary Louise day just falls out of the sky I was stunned
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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
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what wait a minute no all right all right it looked like it could be her and I said I said wait a
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minute all these other bits of circumstantial evidence the father almost confessing almost confessing to
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the murder of a little girl and now here was this woman 700 miles away with a valid Arizona state ID
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strangely that ID had been issued only three weeks earlier while the homicide investigation was underway well you must
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have found the timing awfully suspicious yes it was very suspicious when detective retina went to Phoenix
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the woman he was sure had been murdered told him she had run away from her mother Charlotte and stepfather William
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when she was a teenager she'd basically lived under the radar and by her wits ever since but she seemed hesitant and
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her story seemed sketchy later in a phone call Mary told bertina she had some awful memories did you
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already talked about what happened that last night it hurt I'm sure it does but what
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happened that last night I'm so confused anymore I don't know what's real or not
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I remember you stick around in my head you know when you started bleeding foreign
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but she didn't remember anything about the sick dog was that Troublesome to you that was
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yeah investigators say it was hard to pin down much of anything about her past two
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decades they began to wonder if the woman with the freshly minted ID was really who she claimed to be you refused
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to call her Mary Louise day he called her Phoenix Mary in phone conversations Phoenix Mary was sounding increasingly
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frustrated go ahead Mary if you would have found my bike how are you going to be able to
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prove you the hell I was DNA also sometimes still alive y'all can't prove who I am
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there's no record of you ever being anywhere it's like you haven't existed up until now
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[Music] foreign I said all right let's get a DNA test on this woman let's let her prove that
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she's the daughter of Charlotte we're going to disprove that she's married of course because there's no way that her
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DNA is going to match except it did match he fell on the floor I couldn't believe
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it the DNA came back positive to being a daughter of Charlotte the case was closed
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Sherry invited her long-lost sister to move in with her most cases that would be the end of the
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story but not in this case so now DNA matches case closed yeah well if it were that simple right
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once Phoenix Mary moved in Sherry started to have her own doubts duh first thing I noticed was she it sounded like
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she had some weird Midwestern southern accent weird to me the dialect you got married
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I don't know if I've ever quite heard that particular manner of speaking hey you guys
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yes ma'am we are Miss Mary also said she never used her with me I gave that name up years ago
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what name would they know you by Monica Deborah it's a name she said she made up I did
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notice that she had magazines in the name of Monica Devereaux Sherry's sister Kathy was also unnerved
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no that's not Mary why what makes you so sure something's off [Music] you're telling me that your gut is
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saying it's not her my gut she says the woman claiming to be married didn't even
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remember that their birth father left them in inheritance they could collect at age 18. he it was their shared Escape
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Plan and they had a code word for it was there a code word or some sort of secret
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between you and Mary yeah it was it was called mohawk Mohawk was your secret word yep
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[Music] Harry did something else strange put a note to Detective bertina she emailed Joe and her email said
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something to the effect of I've been lying to you about who I am and that was new information oh my God I
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said oh this is a whole new ball game still the case remained closed [Music] but then in 2008 Steve Cercone now
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seaside's police chief got a phone call from investigators at the army base in Fort Ord
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another set of cadaver dogs had been working on an unrelated matter and had found something
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Fort Ord was a huge place and he said look we brought the cadaver dogs out here and they went over hundreds of
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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
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William Hull and his family lived in this house [Music] [Music] in 2008 cadaver dogs alerted near a
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second home where the holes had lived the house they had moved to shortly after Mary disappeared so what are you
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thinking that a body has been moved by this family from one location to another yeah
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once again police dog and once again they came up short was Mary moved twice was this little girl who may have been
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killed back in 1981 was her body moved twice although the case had been closed sir
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cone felt something was seriously wrong I don't know I don't know but we have to
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investigate this he hired Mark Clark a tired homicide detective from nearby Salinas California
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absolutely the most bizarre case I've ever come up against the evidence collected over the year
00:28:20
Clark was a murder and missed opportunities there's so many parts about this thing
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that could have solved this case back then that is really frustrating he believes they let the parents off the
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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
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clothes and that was it most damning he says are Williams own words his comment was I
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couldn't have killed Mary my body would have done it but it wouldn't have been me it would have been
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that demonic personality because I blacked out Clark says he would have arrested William Hall you just admitted
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Panama to a homicide and were letting him go Clark also focused on that shoe detectives found another detective asked
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Kathy about it like first asked did you guys ever wear canvas tennis shoes and Catherine said
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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
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with a canvas body to it and she said exactly that [Music] and he consulted with with Body Farm
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bodies come he says they found soil samples consistent with a body being buried [Music]
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what do you think happened to Mary Louise day she was killed in 1981 and probably around July Clark believes the
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woman now claiming to be Mary day is an imposter there's just too many things that point to Phoenix Mary day being
00:30:03
somebody else but what about that DNA test showing she's Charlotte hoole's daughter well Mark Clark has a theory
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that he says explains it all even if it is a little far-fetched he says Charlotte hoole had another daughter a
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secret daughter born before Mary and given up at Birth Clark believes Phoenix Mary is that secret daughter so you
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think Phoenix Mary is the actual sister of Mary Louise day who goes missing back
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in 1981 yes he looked into Charlotte's background there's some circumstantial evidence
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that Charlotte had a couple of marriages where she would be involved in extramarital Affairs and become pregnant
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from those affairs Clark says the ghouls could have reached out to Charlotte's Secret daughter when
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they felt they were in trouble I believe she was somehow sought out by Charlotte
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and William to pose as Mary day to avoid prosecution it was an elaborate plot he
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says the holes knew that police were investigating Mary's disappearance and they asked her secret sister to assume
00:31:20
her identity circone says the hole said the wherewithal to do it what if they took the birth certificate
00:31:28
of Mary which they probably had and the social security card from Mary what if they gave those cards to the other
00:31:38
sister and said you're now married there was an inheritance we thought the motivation would be the inheritance
00:31:55
because she could collect that inheritance with the crude interest that inheritance was now worth roughly 6
00:32:01
sixty thousand dollars Sherry helped Mary get her cut we reached out to William and Charlotte
00:32:08
hoole through a relative they said they had no comment Mark says the Imposter Theory accounts
00:32:16
for a lot of inconsistencies for example Mary's odd southern accent the accent was really thick Sherry and
00:32:25
Catherine both said that Mary day never had an accent she has a Southern accent it's a pronounced southern accent
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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
00:32:39
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
00:32:48
only there briefly as a child when experts say it would have given her that accent and I let four separate Southern
00:32:55
dialect experts listen to the interview and they all concluded that it would have taken living her her formative
00:33:04
years up to nine or ten in the South to acquire this certain accent and there was that email that Phoenix Mary sent
00:33:13
saying she wasn't who she claimed to be after about a year of living with Sherry
00:33:18
Mary moved out on her own but the mystery just wouldn't die another detective was about to take a
00:33:28
crack at the case we have to be very careful all of us in law enforcement not to make our story
00:33:36
fit our ideas or what we believed happened [Music] in 2017 Sherry calgaro still wanted
00:34:03
answers about the woman claiming to be her sister basically everyone that's ever met her
00:34:08
has a lot of doubts I have my own doubts we took Sherry to visit Phoenix Mary in
00:34:14
Missouri where she'd been living for a few years I'm hoping that she will admit she will
00:34:20
confess to us who she really is okay good luck bye Mary was living here and suffering from
00:34:37
late stage cancer she wasn't up for any more visitors that day [Music] as Mary's Hope was failing the new
00:34:48
acting chief of Seaside Police was determined to solve the case once and for all
00:34:55
Judy the laws chipped away at the idea that Mary day was murdered for starters additional tests showed
00:35:03
Mary's DNA matched not only Charlotte but also the birth father and then there was that little girl's
00:35:11
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
00:35:18
had a hard time believing that a 13 year old would have to be I mean I saw her stature in the picture
00:35:25
she wasn't that short the laws also traveled to Mary's home she says marry herself filled in the
00:35:33
gaps she wanted to convince us she was Mary and it seemed sincere Mary said she began calling herself
00:35:41
Monica when she ran away because she didn't want police to take her back home Mary also mentioned a new name Mori a
00:35:51
woman she knew in those early days on her own in California the laws Tracked Down Maury Kimmel I got
00:35:59
her when she was 15. very naive and innocence about her almost like childlike at the time Mori had two young daughters
00:36:09
of her own she just won my heart and my girls loved her you know that that may have been
00:36:18
the only and the best family life she ever had in her entire I'm realizing that now you know I wanted to nurture
00:36:25
her you know but after about a year one day Mary was gone I was heartbroken [Music]
00:36:37
the laws discovered that Mary had moved around a lot City to City living on the margins
00:36:45
honestly when I talked to her she just seemed like a Survivor she also solved the mystery of why Mary suddenly
00:36:53
got that Arizona ID she needed state aid to pay for surgery she had her gallbladder taken out that led her to
00:37:01
obtain her proper driver's license or ID in the name of Mary Louise day a local non-profit had helped Mary track down
00:37:09
her real birth certificate the laws chalks up Mary's foggy memory to trauma and a lifelong battle with
00:37:17
alcohol those gaps in memory to me can be legitimate especially if someone's been an alcoholic from the
00:37:26
time they've been a teenager for that email Mary sent to detective vertina saying she'd been lying about
00:37:34
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
00:37:42
that email again from someone who is still a severe alcoholic in using in us came up with the Smoking Gun one of
00:37:51
mauri's relatives had a photograph the picture really did it it's Mary she says and it was taken at least a year
00:38:01
after the alleged murder we took the photo to True face see it I see this a state-of-the-art facial
00:38:10
recognition Company CEO Sean Moore so we're going to look at the results of our face matching algorithms on the
00:38:17
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
00:38:24
we're matching a young picture with one of the older pictures so if this is the same person correct it's a probability
00:38:29
that's the same person the top photo is Mary before she disappeared the other photo is the one that Judy velaz dug up
00:38:38
what are the numbers telling you and the numbers are telling us that it's the same person
00:38:42
he says that's a 99 probability with that photo Judy Villas submitted her report and closed the merry day
00:38:51
investigation this time for good after all these years the woman at the center of this case finally agreed to
00:39:04
meet with me this is the Mary that I met fragile but not feeble it was clear from seeing her
00:39:13
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
00:39:21
fact she said it's very frustrating trying to prove who you are when there is no proof
00:39:33
Sherry is finally at peace it was all of a sudden it felt like I had a weight lifted off of my
00:39:39
shoulders it was just like it's done this is her that's pretty much the end of that story
00:39:45
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
00:39:55
investigation even though he can't prove his theory he can't quite shake his old
00:40:00
hunch that Mary is an imposter do you believe that William cool murdered Mary Louise day at least on the evidence I've
00:40:09
found yes [Music] as for Steve Cercone I will admit that once I read Judy's report and I saw that
00:40:22
picture I definitely leaned towards the identity of Mary as being Mary Louise day the
00:40:31
little girl that we were looking for still he says he is certain of one thing those cadaver dogs were on to something
00:40:46
foreign they said you know our dogs don't lie they don't lie but who was buried in those grave sites
00:41:01
[Music] Mary day died nine days after Judy the laws interviewed her there was no
00:41:14
funeral do you believe that the woman claiming to be Mary day was really her hear more
00:41:20
about investigator Julie velaza's meeting with Mary at 48hours.com an aspiring towboat Captain a mysterious
00:41:31
death blood everywhere his girlfriend and friend say they found him police ruled
00:41:37
out Foul Play but there are troubling Clues it's a stage scene they let somebody get away with murder 48 Hours
00:41:43
next on CBS [Music]