Mary Louise Day

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Mary Louise Day
Born	Mary Louise Day (1968-02-19)19 February 1968 Little Falls, New York, US
Disappeared	15 July 1981 (aged 13) Seaside, California, US
Status	Found
Died	2017 (aged 48–49)
Parents	Charles Day (father) Charlotte Houle (mother)

Mary Louise Day (born February 19, 1968)^[1] was a teenaged girl who mysteriously disappeared from her home in Seaside, California in 1981.

Childhood[]

Day was born in Little Falls, New York on February 19, 1968, to her mother, Charlotte (Pressler) Day and her father, Charles Day. She was the oldest to her two sisters, Kathy and Sherrie. Day and her two sisters did not have an easy childhood. They were constantly in and out of a foster home since their mother couldn't care for them in their early years.^[2]

At some point while the girls were in foster care, Charlotte divorced from Charles and married a man named William Houle. Houle enlisted in the United States Army and Charlotte managed to regain custody of Mary and Kathy in 1976 and permanently took them out of foster care. The family moved to Hawaii due to Houle's status in the army in 1978.^[1]

By this time, Sherrie was legally adopted by her foster family, separating her from her two sisters. Charlotte gave birth to two more children, Billie Jean and William Jr. Charles Day was killed in an accident sometime afterwards and left an inheritance to Mary and Kathy. They would discuss it as their escape plan and used the code word "Mohawk" when discussing it.

In December 1980, Mary was removed from her mother and stepfather's care and taken into protective custody. It was discovered that William was physically abusing Mary. The family was still living in Hawaii at the time of the alleged abuse. The family then moved to Seaside, California, following a change in William's base. Mary was left in protective custody in Hawaii as a result.

A few months later, Mary was taken out of protective custody and sent to live with the rest of her family in California. When Mary was in Seaside, she frequently attempted to run away from her home but would always be brought back.

Disappearance[]

At some point in July 1981, Mary mysteriously disappeared from her home in California. Her parents did not report her missing and almost no one besides her family knew she was gone. In 1994, Sherrie Calgaro filed a missing persons report but by then 13 years had passed and an investigation did not start at the time. Mary's photograph and information was sent to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children afterwards. They created an age-progressed image of how Mary might look at age 31 in 1999.^[1]

Sherrie spoke to police regarding Mary's troubled life before her disappearance such as their time in foster care. An official investigation into Mary Day's disappearance was opened in 2002, investigators found no trace of Mary after 1981. Her family were the only ones who knew about her disappearance. Their neighbors could barely recall the family and they certainly did not remember Mary. She wasn't enrolled in school while living in the Seaside area either.^[2]

According to Kathy, Mary went missing one night in 1981. She and Mary were left home while William, Charlotte, and the other two children went out to dinner. When they returned, William's beloved dog became sick and appeared to be dying in the kitchen area. He was extremely angry and immediately accused Mary of poisoning the dog, and he began to beat Mary. During a 2003 interview, Kathy says William began to yell, which caused fear in her and all hell broke loose. She said she remembers the fight between Mary and William and could recall Mary yelling. Kathy says the last time she saw Mary, she had blood coming out of her mouth. She never saw her sister again after that.^[2]

The next morning, Kathy said Mary was gone without a trace. When she asked her mother what happened to Mary, Charlotte said Mary ran away and to never mention her name again. Her existence began to fade and it almost seemed as though Mary Day never actually lived there. After Mary went missing, the family moved to New York where Sherrie visited. She noticed Mary wasn't with them and asked Charlotte where she was. Charlotte again said Mary was a runaway. When she attempted to ask Kathy about it, Kathy said they weren't allowed to speak about Mary. Sherrie told police she remembered her mother talking about hiding bodies in California and that there were certain places one could hide one and it would never be found. She began to believe her sister was murdered.^[3]

Investigation[]

After interviewing Kathy and Sherrie, investigators also began to believe Mary was murdered in 1981. In addition to Kathy and Sherrie, investigators were able to track Charlotte and William Houle down to Kansas and have them interviewed by local police about Mary. Charlotte seemed to not remember many of the facts regarding her missing daughter. She said the last time she saw her daughter was in 1981 when she ran away and admitted she and William should have taken steps to actually try and locate her after her initial disappearance. She even said that she thought William filed a runaway report with the Salinas Police department, but there's no record of anyone reporting her missing until 1994.^[4]

It is possible that Charlotte and William chose to not report their daughter missing because they were cashing her Social Security benefits at the time of her disappearance. However, investigators and Mary's siblings thought they were hiding something sinister about Mary's disappearance. Charlotte even said in her interview, "If she’s dead, she’s dead." Police also questioned William Houle about the case. He initially claimed that he was checking each bedroom and noticed Mary had disappeared from the house. He said he and Charlotte panicked and contacted police. This was incorrect, however, and William would later admit to beating Mary on the night she was last seen. He said he was extremely angry over what happened to his dog and viciously beat her. He said that Mary attempted to leave the house and that he used a martial arts technique to try and subdue her. It was a choking type technique and he might have hit her throat.^[2]

The next morning after Mary went missing, Charlotte told William she saw "Satan" in his eyes that night. It was like he was possessed by a demon. When asked if he could have killed Mary, he said no. He was additionally asked if the demon inside of him could have killed her and he said yes. Kathy told investigators that shortly after Mary went missing, William told the children to not go in a specific corner of the homes backyard. Investigators brought her back to the old home in 2003 and she directed them to the spot. Cadaver dogs were brought in and they detected the scent of human remains in the area. When police dug, they found a small child's shoe. The shoe appeared to be a tennis shoe of some type and Kathy said they wore that type of footwear.^[1]

Investigators felt they had something and began to compile a homicide case against Mary's parents. Before any actions were taken, a break in the case came after a traffic stop in the state of Arizona. This break brought more questions than answers in Mary's missing persons case.

Reappearance[]

On November 25, 2003, a routine traffic stop likely cracked the whole mystery. The stop showed the pickup truck had stolen plates and police ran the IDs of the passengers. One of the passengers was a woman named Mary Day. She showed an Arizona state identification card that bore the name, date of birth, and total statistics that the missing Mary had. When interviewed, the woman who is dubbed commonly as "Phoenix Mary" claimed she ran away from her home to avoid abuse from Charlotte and William Houle. Investigators were skeptical as to her accounts. They noticed Mary had a thick southern accent which was odd since Mary did not have such an accent when she was a child. Police also discovered the Arizona ID had been issued 3 weeks before she was arrested in November; this was when the homicide investigation was ongoing.^[5]

Investigators initially theorized she was an imposter and wanted to prove she was lying about who she was. The DNA proved that the woman was a biological child of Charlotte Houle and the mystery was solved. The DNA results closed the investigation into Mary's disappearance and her two sisters invited her to live with them in North Carolina. Despite the match, her two sisters had doubts of her true identity due to her southern accent. Sherrie also noticed that the woman's magazines were shipped to the name "Monica Devereaux". Kathy did not believe the woman since she didn't remember much from her childhood, including the inheritance and the codeword "Mohawk".

This woman died in 2017 and there was no funeral.^[2][6]

See also[]

• List of solved missing person cases

References[]