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‘Baby Holly’ missing for 40 years is reunited with family

’God kept me safe and protected all these years, and I just wanted you to know that,’ Holly Miller told her grandmother in first meeting since her parents’ murder

Bevan Hurley
Monday 07 November 2022 20:16 GMT
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'Baby Holly' found alive four decades after her parents' murders

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A woman who vanished in mysterious circumstances after her parents were murdered in Texas more than 40 years ago has been reunited with her biological relatives.

Holly Miller, known as “Baby Holly”, was left at a church in Arizona after her parents’ murder in a wooded area outside Houston in 1981 and later adopted.

Her biological parents Tina Gail Linn Clouse and Harold Dean Clouse Jr were only identified in 2021 through a genealogy database.

Ms Miller was tracked by a specialist cold case unit and discovered to be a mother of five living in Oklahoma in June.

This week, she met in person with grandmother Donna Casasanta, and aunts Debbie Brooks and Tess Welch for the first time since her parents’ murders.

In a tearful reunion captured by Good Morning America, Ms Miller thanked her relatives for their prayers.

“God kept me safe and protected all these years, and I just wanted you to know that,” she told them.

Her grandmother Ms Casasanta said she repeated the three words she had said to herself during more than four decades: “Never give up.”

Holly Miller is reunited with her grandmother Donna Casasanta after 40 years
Holly Miller is reunited with her grandmother Donna Casasanta after 40 years (Michelle Sandberg / Polaris)
Parents Tina and Harold Clouse with ‘Baby Holly’.
Parents Tina and Harold Clouse with ‘Baby Holly’. (Identifiers International)

In a statement to ABC News, Ms Miller said: “I am so wonderfully blessed to have a loving, faithful family to embrace as we meet again after 41 years.

“My heart is overwhelmed with joy and sadness. Joy to get to know my parents’ family who have been praying and searching for me.”

In an interview with The Independent in June, Ms Casasanta said she felt at peace for the first time in 40 years after learning that her granddaughter had survived.

“I hadn’t slept the whole night in 42 years, and that’s the truth.”

In June, First Assistant Attorney General Brent Webster said at a press conference that Baby Holly had been turned in at an Arizona church by two women who identified themselves as members of a nomadic religious group.

Her adaptive parents are not suspects in the case.

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