According to the Houston Chronicle, Harold Dean Clouse was a good-hearted guy who made the occasional bad decision. Dabbling with drugs and joining a cult are just two examples. Another decision — not necessarily a bad one, but perhaps an impulsive one — was when he arrived home one day and announced to his family that he and his girlfriend, Tina Gail Linn, had just gotten married at the local courthouse. Not too long after the couple welcomed their daughter, Holly.
Harold decided to his family from New Smyrna, Florida to Houston, Texas, where his bosses promised to hook him up with a job that paid well and where he could put his carpentry skills to use. They bought a car from Harold’s mom and were off to Texas. Once there they wrote letters back home until they stopped in 1980, and the Clouses were never heard from again.
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A few months after the letters stopped, Donna Casasanta — Harold’s mother — got a call from a woman who called herself Sister Susan, per ABC News. She said that said she had the Clouses’ car and would drive it to Florida from California for $1,000. Despite finding it to be highly unusual, Casasanta agreed and then contracted the police, who staked out the restaurant where she had agreed to meet the caller. That day, three women in religious-style robes emerged from her son’s car. They said they couldn’t answer questions about his whereabouts, but that he and his family had joined a religious group and that she wouldn’t be hearing from them.
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