The case was considered a cold case: in the early 80s there was suddenly no trace of “Baby Holly” and her parents. Now investigators have tracked down the baby from back then.

In the United States, entire teams of criminalists and DNA experts have partially solved an ancient, mysterious criminal case: A baby who disappeared in the early 1980s has now been found. The little girl from back then is now a mother and even a grandmother – and until now she had no idea that her life story is closely linked to a criminal case that was considered almost unsolvable for decades.

This Thursday, the Attorney General’s office in Texas announced details of this cold case, the solution to which is still partly unclear – and on which investigators and scientists from several US states are working. “Baby Holly”, as the little one was called, was found, according to the Texas authorities. The baby from back then is now 42 years old. According to media reports, she lives in Oklahoma, has five children and now even has two grandchildren.

In the past week, she has contacted members of her birth family via online chat and even met her grandmother this way. A real family reunion is set to take place in the not too distant future with the help of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, writes the Daily Mail.

The case of “Baby Holly” and her parents became a cold case

For more than 40 years, the family of “Baby Holly” lived in complete ignorance as to what became of the infant from back then and whether Holly was even still alive. The fate of the parents was also completely in the dark for a long time.

According to media reports, “Baby Holly’s” parents moved from Florida to Texas in 1980 in search of work. A short time later, the young couple had heard nothing more. Mother Tina Gale C. was 17 at the time, father Harold Dean C. 21 years old. The couple were newly married at the time of the mysterious disappearance.

It was October 1980 when contact with the relatives in Florida was completely lost, according to the reconstructions of the case. Tina and Harold’s family were very concerned. Then, in late 1980 or early 1981, a woman contacted the families in Florida. She is said to have said that the young couple had joined a sect and wanted nothing more to do with their own families.

But was that true? Little did Tina and Harold’s families know the body was found in Texas at the time. Two bodies were discovered in a forest in January 1981. Murder victims, that much was certain. But the police could not clarify the identity of the dead at the time. Nobody knew it was Tina and Harold.

For four decades it remained unclear who the two bodies from the forest were. That only changed last year when the remains were identified with the help of the organization “Identifinders International” and state-of-the-art DNA technology and genetic genealogy, which can be used to trace relatives through DNA analysis: It was Harold and Tina. But when the scientists and investigators looked at the files from back then, they discovered that the couple also had a baby. So what had happened to the little one?

It took months for the mystery to be solved and for the infant from back then to be located. This year the time had finally come: investigators tracked down the “Baby Holly” from back then and found out that it was alive and doing well.

It is not known exactly how the employees of the cold case unit in Texas found the woman who had been missing as “Baby Holly” for 40 years. The investigators did not want to give some details out of consideration for the families involved.

Unknown woman once dropped off “Baby Holly” at a church

The case began to move after the bodies of “Baby Holly’s” parents were identified a few months ago and the Florida families also tried to find out more about the murder of the young couple 40 years ago.

“Baby Holly” grew up with a foster family, according to investigators. She was given up by an unknown woman in a church in Arizona in the early 1980s and later came to her foster family. The woman who gave the baby to the church posed as a member of a sect. She was described as barefoot with white robes.

Now that the mystery of the whereabouts of the infant from back then has been solved, the investigators also hope to get further in the murder case involving their parents. The family that raised “Baby Holly” is not suspected of having anything to do with the crime, investigators said.

Quellen: Identifinders International, Sky News, “Daily Mail”, Missingkids.org,