Mary Louise Day


Mary Louise Day is 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 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.
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.
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 stepfathers 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.
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.
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, Williams 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, 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.
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 and 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.

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 her 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.
It 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.
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 children shoe. The shoe appeared to be a tennis show of some type and Kathy said they wore that type of footwear.
Investigators felt they had something and began to compile a homicide case against Mary's parents. Before any actions was 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 which bore the name, DOB, 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.
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. 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". Investigators also seemed to question her identity after Phoenix Mary net an email to a detective saying she's been lying about who she is. The case remained closed for a few years.

Revisiting a cold case

In 2008, the investigation into Mary Day's disappearance was reopened following a strange revelation in the missing persons investigation. Apparently police who were using cadaver dogs in an unrelated case said the dogs got a hit at a house. The house belonged to William Houle and it was the home that he and the family moved into shortly after Mary's disappearance. They did dig but found nothing. Soil samples from there and the old family home showed signs a body was once buried there at some point. Marys photograph and information was reentered into missing persons databases once again in 2010. A homicide detective was assigned to the case and believes Mary was murdered back in July 1981.
The detective, Mark Clark, believes that the woman posing as Mary is an imposter. He believes the woman is a secret daughter that Charlotte gave up before Mary was born in 1968. There was probable evidence that Charlotte had extramarital affairs in the past and he assumed the child might have been this woman. He believes William and Charlotte realized they were going to get pinned for murdering Mary in 1981 and had this woman pose as Mary to avoid prosecution. Phoenix Mary would've gotten money by using Mary's identity since the inheritance her father left her was still awaiting her. The investigation continued for nine years after that.

Doubt

In 2017, detectives became determined to solve the mystery of who and what happened to Mary Louise Day in 1981. The murder theory began to fade as recent DNA tests proved that the woman claiming to be Mary was a child of both Charlotte and Charles Day. Mary was also interviewed about her own case and was able to fill in the gaps of her mysterious disappearance. Mary stated that she ran away from her home in Seaside to avoid being harmed by her stepfather and lived on her own most of the time. A detective, Judy Veloz, was able to determine that Mary traveled from city to city and worked small cash jobs like washing dishes in order to survive. She also changed her name from Mary Louise Day to "Monica Devereaux" to avoid being returned home to her parents by police.
To detectives, Mary sounded like a survivor. To confirm she was in fact Mary, she led investigators to a woman named Morie Kimmel. Morie was a woman that Mary sought help from during her early days of being a runaway. By that time, Mary started using the name Monica and that's what Morie knew her by. Morie also had two daughters of her own who really liked Mary and she won Morie's heart. Mary stayed with the woman for a year until she ran away again, this is likely the one happy time Mary had in her life. In 2017, a relative of Morie was able to produce a photograph which showed a girl who strongly resembles Mary. The photo was dated a year after Mary's disappearance. Facial recognition proved the girl in the photo was a 99% match to Mary Louise Day. With that, Judy submitted her report and closed the investigation into Mary's disappearance.
After a visit, Sherri Calgaro was convinced the mysterious woman was in fact her long lost sister. She said it felt like a weight was lifted from herself and that it was the end of the story. Kathy still remain confident her sister is still missing and was likely murdered. It's entirely possible Mary couldn't remember much since she struggled with alcoholism since her teenage years. She was vividly able to remember William abusing her that night but could not remember the inheritance. As for the newly attained ID in 2003, Mary needed to use her real identity to gain state aid. She needed to get a surgery to get her gallbladder removed so she could properly attain a drivers license. She asked a non profit organization to track down her real birth certificate. Mary Louise Day passed away in 2017 at the age of 49. She suffered from last stage cancer at the time. Some detectives have questioned the outcome of Mary’s case and still believe she was murdered in 1981. But the DNA match showed it was very likely Mary who turned up in 2003..