Mary Day

Case background and investigation

Mary Louise Day was born on February 19, 1968 in Little Falls, New York. According to CBS News, her mother, Charlotte, married William Houle, a soldier whose posting took the family to Hawaii in 1978; Mary's father died later that year. In December 1980 Mary was placed in protective custody there after a finding of physical abuse. The Houles moved to Seaside, California, near Fort Ord, in January 1981, and Mary rejoined them that summer.

She disappeared from the Seaside home later in 1981, at age 13. Her parents did not report her missing. CBS News reports that her younger sister Kathy told investigators years later that Mary had been beaten by her stepfather the night before she was last seen, and that her mother said she had run away. Accounts differ on the exact date, and no police record was made at the time.

Another sister, Sherrie, who had been adopted by a different family, filed a missing persons report as an adult in the early 1990s; sources give the year as 1992 or 1994. Seaside police opened a full investigation in 2002, led by Detective Joe Bertaina. In 2003 cadaver dogs alerted in the backyard of the former family home and a child's shoe was found, but no remains were recovered. The Houles were interviewed in Kansas. According to CBS News, detectives believed at that stage that Mary had been killed. No charges were filed.

In November 2003 police in Phoenix, Arizona, stopped a pickup truck carrying stolen plates. One passenger had a recently issued Arizona identification card in the name of Mary Day with the matching birth date. Seaside's police chief at the time, Steve Cercone, told CBS's 48 Hours he suspected an impostor. A DNA test showed the woman was the biological daughter of Charlotte Houle.

Doubts continued for years. CBS News reports that the woman spoke with a Southern accent, could not recall parts of her childhood, and gave inconsistent accounts of where she had been; she said she had run away and had lived under other names. A retired detective brought in later, Mark Clark, suggested she might be a different daughter of Charlotte Houle. Cadaver dogs alerted again in 2008 at a second former Houle residence at Fort Ord, and again nothing was found.

In 2017 Acting Chief Judy Veloz reviewed the case and interviewed the woman in Missouri. CBS News reports that a photograph showing Mary alive after 1981, together with a facial comparison, led the department to conclude that she was Mary Louise Day and to close the case. She died nine days after the interview.