TEXAS, USA — It’s a cold case you’d see in a movie. Tina and Dean Clouse were a young couple- 17 and 21-years-old when they were murdered in the woods near Houston.
For 41 years, they were gone without a trace.
“This beautiful young couple in the prime of their life, just starting their lives out died at a time when there are no records left behind,” Allison Peacock from Longview said.
She's the forensic genetic genealogist who helped break the cold case.
Growing up, Peacock has always been curious.
“Every time that we get off the school bus in Maxi acres where I lived, you know, it's a lot of the schools. I don't know if the school bus would run down my driveway and get to the World Book Encyclopedias," Peacock said.
She was the one to call the Clouse family and tell them their loved ones were identified.
Peacock had no idea 10-month-old Holly was with her parents when they were murdered. She said cult members abandoned Holly at a church in Arizona. It is unclear if the Clouses were involved with the cult.
"People representing themselves as being in a cult planted the seeds and told lies about Dean and Tina and Holly. So, we can only think that there must have been involved in this murder," Peacock said.
The cult members were in contact with the Clouse family long before they learned Tina and Dean were murdered. The family said the cult returned Dean's missing car to his mother in Daytona Beach about a month after he was murdered.
"The people that killed them, not only did they kill this couple, they went to the families and created all this subterfuge. It's one thing to kill somebody and disappear. Nobody knows who did it. But they actually called them up and said, 'Hey, we found your son's car, let us bring it back to you. He doesn't want it anymore. He's in our cult, and don't try to find him. They don't want to have anything to do with you.' That's horrible," Peacock said.
With more digging, investigators found Holly at her place of work. She’s married now with five kids.
“I thought what an amazing open, you know, resilient woman that she gets the shock of her life and she's ready to meet her family. I mean, that's crazy," Peacock said.
Who murdered Holly’s parents is still under investigation.
There are 25 cold cases in Tyler and Peacock wants to solve those too.
She also revealed there are 1.1 million unmatched profiles in the FBI’s DNA databases.