What Ever Happened to Mary Day?

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Detective Joe Bertina

Mary Louise Day was a girl that lived in Seaside. In about 1981. She disappeared.

Interviewer/Investigator

What do you mean she disappeared?

Detective Joe Bertina

She disappeared off the face of the earth.

Sherry Calgaro (Mary's Sister)

I just knew something was wrong in the house. Mary Dais, my sister. One day, Mary was in California and then she was gone. Laying in bed one night with Kathy. I asked her, you know, I was like, what happened with Mary? You know? And she was like, shh, don't say anything. We're not allowed to talk about Mary. When I was 18, and I was like, now I can, you know, go and try to find her.

Detective Joe Bertina

It was a very hard case to deal with. Other than the family, nobody knew she was gone. Didn't seem to really concern them.

Charlotte Houle (Mary's Mother)

She started running away. You turn around, she was gone. You turn around, she was gone.

Detective Joe Bertina

I've never seen a case like this.

Sherry Calgaro (Mary's Sister)

My mother told me that there were a lot of places in California that you could bury a body and they'd never be found. I started believing she was murdered.

Detective Joe Bertina

The dogs went into the backyard. We just had an indication from the cadaver dogs that there was human remains there. And our guys started digging, and my heart was pounding. We were looking for a little girl's body, and we found a little girl's shoe.

Detective or Investigator (possibly Joe Bertina or colleague)

William told me that he didn't kill Mary Day, but his wife told him that he was possessed that night

Charlotte Houle (Mary's Mother)

and

Detective or Investigator (possibly Joe Bertina or colleague)

that he had a demon inside of him.

Detective Joe Bertina

I've never heard anybody say that before. This is a crazy case. Mary disappeared, no trace of her for 22 years.

Narrator

And then what happens?

Detective Joe Bertina

And then when I got a phone call, he told me, hey, captain, he says, you sitting down? He said, gotta let you know that. They say that they. They found Mary Day. And I'm like, oh, this case just gets weirder and weird.

Narrator

Seaside, California. Detective Joe Bertina first heard the name Mary Louise day back in 2002. He'd been asked to lead the investigation into her disappearance.

Detective or Investigator (possibly Joe Bertina or colleague)

The case was a tangle of weaves that went all different directions.

Narrator

Mary was 13 years old when she vanished in 1981, seemingly without a trace.

Detective or Investigator (possibly Joe Bertina or colleague)

There was no evidence that she was alive.

Narrator

Joe's boss at the time was Steve Cercone.

Detective Joe Bertina

Not a trace of her as an adult. No Social Security record of her having a job, getting welfare benefits. We have nothing on this person's identity.

Interviewer/Investigator

She didn't exist.

Detective Joe Bertina

She didn't exist.

Narrator

Mary's existence came close to being completely erased. There's no record that her stepfather, William Houle, or her mother, Charlotte, had ever reported her missing.

Interviewer/Investigator

It's hard to believe allowing a child to walk away or a child go missing and it's not reported.

Detective Joe Bertina

I can't remember a time when a child was not reported by the parents.

Sherry Calgaro (Mary's Sister)

I couldn't understand how a mother could not go to the ends of the earth to find her child.

Narrator

It was this woman, Sherry Calgaro, Mary's sister, who finally got authorities on the case.

Sherry Calgaro (Mary's Sister)

I wanted to know what happened to my sister mary.

Narrator

Sherry was 10 when Mary went missing as an adult. She filed a missing persons report and told the police about Mary's troubled childhood.

Detective Joe Bertina

The information we have through the sisters is that it was a very dysfunctional household.

Narrator

In their early days. Mary Day, middle sister Kathy and Sherry were in and out of a foster home. Their mother could not take care of them. Sherry was adopted by the foster family.

Sherry Calgaro (Mary's Sister)

We were separated when I was six years old.

Narrator

Mary and Kathy were returned to their mother, Charlotte. By this time, Charlotte had married William Houle and The couple had two kids of their own. Hoole was a soldier. The family moved around a lot from base to base. At one point, detectives say, Mary's stepfather had been reportedly physically abusing her.

Detective Joe Bertina

Children's Protective Services had taken custody of Mary. She was eventually turned back over to the family. In my opinion, the system failed.

Narrator

At the time Mary disappeared, Houle was assigned to Fort Ord on the California coast north of Monterey.

Detective or Investigator (possibly Joe Bertina or colleague)

They were living in Seaside, which is kind of a military town at that time, and that's where she was last seen.

Narrator

Sherry, who kept in touch with her birth family, later visited them.

Sherry Calgaro (Mary's Sister)

When I went to visit my family, I asked them what had happened to my sister Mary. Kathy was like, shh, don't say anything. We're not allowed to talk about Mary.

Narrator

But Kathy did say her mother, Charlotte, told them Mary had run away.

Sherry Calgaro (Mary's Sister)

At the time, I wasn't sure what I thought, except that it did make sense to me.

Narrator

When Sherry grew up, she filed that missing persons report. By the time Seaside police launched its investigation in 2002, there was little to go on.

Detective Joe Bertina

The neighbors barely recalled the family living there. Nobody really knew this family, and they sure didn't know Mary Day.

Narrator

Mary had never been enrolled in school in California, and her parents never told anyone she was gone. Bertina says they had at least one reason to keep quiet. Mary had been getting government checks because her birth father had died in an accident.

Detective or Investigator (possibly Joe Bertina or colleague)

They were taking Mary's Social Security checks, cashing them.

Narrator

Detective Vertina. It's March 3, 2003. Raw camera. Vertina went to the Seaside home, Mary's last known whereabouts. He brought Kathy with him.

Kathy (Mary's Sister)

Pictures used to be there of all of us.

Narrator

Kathy was just 11 when she last saw her sister.

Kathy (Mary's Sister)

That day lives in my head a lot. It feels like you're opening up a scab. You're opening up, and it hurts. Mrs. Mary's in mine.

Detective or Investigator (possibly Joe Bertina or colleague)

Mary was at home along with Kathy when the rest of the family went out. They came home later that evening, and while they were gone, the dog became sick and was dying in the kitchen area. When William saw that, he immediately accused Mary of poisoning the dog.

Kathy (Mary's Sister)

He started yelling at us, and I got scared. All hell broke loose. This is the corner where he was hitting her, and the fight was back here. I can hear her yelling. There's nothing we can. We can do.

Interviewer/Investigator

He hit her.

Kathy (Mary's Sister)

Last time I saw her, she had the blood coming down her mouth.

Narrator

Kathy said after Mary disappeared, her parents ordered the kids to stay away from one particular area of the backyard.

Detective or Investigator (possibly Joe Bertina or colleague)

You weren't supposed to come over here. Who told you that?

Kathy (Mary's Sister)

My father.

Narrator

The clues were adding up, and detectives felt they could be dealing with something much more sinister than a runaway teenage girl. They brought in a team of cadaver dogs, dogs trained to find human remains.

Detective Joe Bertina

As the dogs went into the backyard, they each hit on one particular spot near a tree. We started to dig. As a father, my heart was pounding and as we dug, I saw a little girl's shoe. My heart started pounding even more

Additional Investigator or Narrator

and

Detective Joe Bertina

I thought, here we are, we found her.

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Narrator

In 2003, the Missing Persons case of Mary day was quickly becoming a homicide investigation, with police facing the grim task of digging in the dirt where the cadaver dogs alerted.

Detective Joe Bertina

And we kept digging, and there was no body. I said, well, it must be here and then. And they kept digging.

Narrator

They were sure that a body had been there.

Detective Joe Bertina

They were positive. They said, you know, our dogs don't lie. And four of them independently hitting on the same spot. Before we dug, the dog handlers said, it's been moved. At this time, there was no question that the parents were the suspects in the possible homicide of a little girl from 1981. We knew that we had to find the parents.

Narrator

They found them in Kansas. It was more than 20 years after Mary disappeared. Her stepfather, William houle, had left the army and was now at a Kansas prison working as a corrections officer. He and Charlotte were still together. She agreed to talk with local detectives about the daughter who vanished so long ago.

Charlotte Houle (Mary's Mother)

You don't have whips and chains, do you?

Detective or Investigator (possibly Joe Bertina or colleague)

Oh, absolutely not.

Detective Joe Bertina

I remember watching the interview and realizing that she had something to tell us.

Charlotte Houle (Mary's Mother)

You know, life is full of regrets. If you go back and forth, say, you know, if I had did this and this and this.

Detective Joe Bertina

Her body language and then her sinking down in her chair and saying words to the effect of, you know, sometimes you do things in your past and it comes back. I knew that there was something there.

Detective or Investigator (possibly Joe Bertina or colleague)

When's the last time you heard from Mary?

Charlotte Houle (Mary's Mother)

81. Last time she ran away.

Narrator

Charlotte said Mary running away was no big deal. She did it all the time.

Charlotte Houle (Mary's Mother)

Oh, what a mess. It was like trying to get a night crawler out of a wormhole. Just grabbing it. It was gone. Grabbing it was gone. I mean, how many times did she run away? You know, all these questions I can't answer.

Detective Joe Bertina

Okay, when you was back in California, did you guys take any kind of steps to find her?

Charlotte Houle (Mary's Mother)

We should have. We should have.

Detective Joe Bertina

But you didn't.

Charlotte Houle (Mary's Mother)

My husband said we filed a police report with the Salinas police department. If we did, I don't remember.

Narrator

There is no record of a report.

Detective Joe Bertina

I couldn't understand a parent, number one, not reporting their child as runaway, but number two, treating this case, the status of their missing daughter as basically no big deal. It didn't seem to really concern them. They were not really, really surprised at us being there.

Narrator

Detective bertina later questioned Mary's stepfather, William.

Detective or Investigator (possibly Joe Bertina or colleague)

I just asked him, tell me about the last time that you saw Mary. He told me that, well, he was going room to room checking on the kids, and he discovered Mary wasn't in the bedroom. He told charlotte, she panics. He panics to call the police. And he knew I wasn't buying that. I said, william, she runs away all the time. Why did you panic? I never got a good response.

Narrator

The detective pressed houle and brought up the story of the sick dog.

Detective or Investigator (possibly Joe Bertina or colleague)

And he said five or six times, you know, she did. She poisoned my dog. And I was really angry. She tried to run out of the house. I didn't want her to go. So I caught her before she got out of the front door. She was kicking me, punching me. So I pushed her. And when he's doing this, he's making a choking. Yeah. Gesture. He's. Yeah, with his hand. And it's like a hand strike that I've seen before. It's a martial art technique. So I asked him, where did you hit her with that? And he said, well, in the upper chest. I said, could it have been the throat? He said, well, it may have slipped off and hit Mary in the throat. I wanted to know on a scale of 1 to 10, his anger when he had done this, when he had struck mary. He said, on a scale of 1 to 10, I was a 15. I said, you're this angry, I think you may have killed her. And he looked at me and said, no, I didn't kill her. But the next day, my wife Charlotte told me that that night she saw satan in my eyes, and she said I was possessed by a demon. And then it dawned on me that he's admitting, but not admitting that he killed her. Then I said, okay, william, I believe you. You didn't kill her. But what about that demon inside of you? Could that demon have killed mary? And he looked at me and said, yes, the demon could have killed her.

Interviewer/Investigator

When he walked out, did you think you were letting a killer go?

Detective or Investigator (possibly Joe Bertina or colleague)

Yeah. Yeah.

Detective Joe Bertina

Joe said, yeah, we don't have a body. But he said this. This guy came so close to confessing that it was as close as he's ever had anybody come.

Narrator

Is that a enough to go to

Interviewer/Investigator

a prosecutor and say, I don't know if we're ever going to get the body, but we.

Narrator

We have a lot of the pieces of the puzzle.

Mary Louise Day / Phoenix Mary

Yeah.

Detective Joe Bertina

The d. A. Wasn't ready to file at that time.

Narrator

Did you think there was enough?

Detective Joe Bertina

I thought there was probably enough. I was not worried, really, because I thought we are building the case here.

Narrator

And then just as the detectives came, confidence was growing. The case took an unexpected turn. Remember, police had no record of Mary Louise Day as an adult. There were no credit cards, no driver's license or ID recorded anywhere. There hadn't been a trace of Mary in more than two decades until police in Phoenix, Arizona made a traffic stop.

Detective Joe Bertina

I got a phone call. I was at home, I left work and he told me, hey, Captain, he says, you sitting down? I said, what happened? He said, no. He says, I just gotta let you know that Phoenix Police Department in Arizona pulled over a car and they say that they found Mary Day.

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Narrator

November 2003. Phoenix, Arizona. It was a routine traffic stop. A pickup truck with stolen plates. When Police ran the IDs of the passengers, one of them hit a woman named Mary Day.

Detective or Investigator (possibly Joe Bertina or colleague)

He said, joe, guess what? Mary Day has been found. And I, I was stunned.

Narrator

Investigators had put Mary Day into a missing person's database long ago.

Detective or Investigator (possibly Joe Bertina or colleague)

She identified herself with a Phoenix identification card or Arizona State identification card.

Narrator

Back in California, Detective Joe Bertina felt like a ghost had just appeared.

Charlotte Houle (Mary's Mother)

In.

Narrator

In his mind, Mary Day had been murdered more than 20 years earlier at the home of her parents.

Interviewer/Investigator

You talked to William and Charlotte in April of 2003.

Narrator

And then seven months later or so,

Interviewer/Investigator

a woman named Mary Louise Day just falls out of the sky.

Detective or Investigator (possibly Joe Bertina or colleague)

I was stunned.

Narrator

His boss, Steve Cercone, could not believe it.

Detective Joe Bertina

Joe went down there and he met her, and he sent a picture of her. And we went.

Sherry Calgaro (Mary's Sister)

What?

Detective Joe Bertina

Wait a minute. No. All right, all right. It looked like it could be her. And I said, wait a minute. All these other bits of circumstantial evidence.

Interviewer/Investigator

The father almost confessing to suicide, almost

Detective Joe Bertina

confessing to the murder of a little

Narrator

girl, and now here was this woman 700 miles away with a valid Arizona state I.D. strangely, that I.D. had been issued only three weeks earlier, while the homicide investigation was underway.

Interviewer/Investigator

Well, you must have found the timing awfully suspicious.

Detective Joe Bertina

Yes, it was very suspicious.

Narrator

When detective Britaino went to Phoenix, the woman he was sure had been murdered told him she had run away from her mother, Charlotte, and stepfather William when she was a teenager. She'd basically lived under the radar and was by her wits ever since. But she seemed hesitant, and her story seemed sketchy. Later, in a phone call, Mary told Bertina she had some awful memories.

Interviewer

Did you want to talk about what happened that last night?

Mary Louise Day / Phoenix Mary

It hurt.

Interviewer

I'm sure it does. But what happened that last night?

Mary Louise Day / Phoenix Mary

I'm so confused anymore. I don't know what's real or not. I was angry. You stick around in my head. Into the tub.

Interviewer

Is that when you started bleeding?

Mary Louise Day / Phoenix Mary

I was already bleeding, and he hit my head under the coffee table. I think I blacked out. Maybe that's why I can't put it all pieces together.

Narrator

But she didn't remember anything about the sick dog.

Interviewer/Investigator

Was that troublesome to you?

Detective or Investigator (possibly Joe Bertina or colleague)

That was, yeah.

Narrator

Investigators say it was hard to pin down much of anything about her past two decades. They began to wonder if the woman with the freshly minted ID was really who she claimed to be.

Interviewer/Investigator

You refused to call her Mary Louise Day?

Detective Joe Bertina

We called her Phoenix Mary.

Narrator

In phone conversations, Phoenix Mary was sounding increasingly frustrated.

Mary Louise Day / Phoenix Mary

Can I go to one place? To Natchez, if you don't mind.

Interviewer

Go ahead. Mary.

Mary Louise Day / Phoenix Mary

If you would have found my body, how were you going to be able to prove who the hell I was?

Interviewer

DNA.

Mary Louise Day / Phoenix Mary

Also sometimes still alive. Y' all can't prove who I am.

Interviewer

There's no record of you ever being anywhere. It's like you haven't existed up until now.

Mary Louise Day / Phoenix Mary

Beat her off. If I'm just dead. And then Y' all can do the detecting from there.

Detective Joe Bertina

I said, all right, let's get a DNA test on this woman. Let's let her prove that she's the daughter of Charlotte. We're going to disprove that she's Mary, of course, because there's no way that her DNA is going to match.

Narrator

Except it did match.

Detective Joe Bertina

I nearly fell on the floor. I couldn't believe it. The DNA came back positive to being a daughter of Charlotte.

Narrator

The case was closed. Sherry invited her long lost sister to move in with her. In most cases, that would be the end of the story, but not in this case.

Interviewer/Investigator

So now DNA matches, case closed.

Detective Joe Bertina

Yeah. Well, if it were that simple, right?

Narrator

Once Phoenix Mary moved in, Sherri started to have her own doubts.

Sherry Calgaro (Mary's Sister)

The first thing I noticed was she. It sounded like she had some weird Midwestern Southern accent. It's weird to me.

Narrator

The detectives had noticed that, too.

Interviewer

That's an interesting dialect you have, Mary. What?

Mary Louise Day / Phoenix Mary

Do you mind?

Interviewer

I don't know if I've ever quite heard that particular manner of speaking.

Mary Louise Day / Phoenix Mary

Hey, y'.

Detective Joe Bertina

All.

Mary Louise Day / Phoenix Mary

Still trying to prove who I am, huh?

Interviewer

Yes, ma', am, we are, Phoenix.

Narrator

Mary also said she never used her real name.

Mary Louise Day / Phoenix Mary

Nobody's known me as Murray. I gave that name up years ago.

Interviewer

What name would they know you by?

Mary Louise Day / Phoenix Mary

Monica Devereaux.

Narrator

It's a name she said she made up.

Sherry Calgaro (Mary's Sister)

I did notice that she had magazines in the name of Monica Devereaux.

Narrator

Sherry's sister Kathy was also unnerved.

Kathy (Mary's Sister)

No, that's not Mary.

Mary Louise Day / Phoenix Mary

Why?

Interviewer/Investigator

What makes you so sure?

Kathy (Mary's Sister)

Something's off.

Interviewer/Investigator

You're telling me that your gut is saying it's not her?

Kathy (Mary's Sister)

My gut?

Narrator

She says the woman claiming to be Mary didn't even remember that their birth father left them an inheritance they could collect at age 18. It was their shared escape plan, and they had a code word for it.

Interviewer/Investigator

Was there a code word or some sort of secret between you and Mary?

Kathy (Mary's Sister)

Yeah, it was. It was called Mohawk.

Interviewer/Investigator

Mohawk was your secret word?

Kathy (Mary's Sister)

Yep.

Narrator

And Mary did something else strange. She wrote a note to Detective Bertina.

Detective Joe Bertina

She emailed Joe, and her email said something to the effect of, I've been lying to you about who I am. And that was new information. Oh, my God. I said, oh, this is a whole new ballgame.

Narrator

Still, the case remained closed. But then, in 2008, Steve Sercone, now Seaside's police chief, got a phone call from investigators at the army base in Fort Ord. Another set of cadaver dogs had been working on an unrelated matter and had found something.

Detective Joe Bertina

Fort Ord was a huge place. And he said, look, we brought the cadaver dogs out here, and they went over hundreds of homes. And he said, we got a hit on one of the homes. You'll never believe who was living in this house. He said, William Houle and his family lived in this house.

Narrator

In 2008, cadaver dogs alerted near a second home where the Hools had lived, the house they had moved to shortly after Mary disappeared. So what are you thinking?

Interviewer/Investigator

That a body has been moved by this family from one location to another?

Mary Louise Day / Phoenix Mary

Yeah.

Narrator

Once again, police dug, and once again, they came up short.

Detective Joe Bertina

Was Mary moved twice? Was this little girl who may have been killed back in 1981, was her body moved twice?

Narrator

Although the case had been closed, Sercone felt something was seriously wrong.

Detective Joe Bertina

I don't know. I don't know, but we have to investigate this.

Narrator

He hired Mark Clark, a retired homicide detective from nearby Salinas, California.

Mark Clark (Retired Homicide Detective)

Absolutely the most bizarre case I've ever come up against.

Narrator

Reviewing the evidence collected over the years, Clark was convinced there was a murder and missed opportunities.

Mark Clark (Retired Homicide Detective)

There's so many parts about this thing that could have solved this case back then that is really frustrating.

Narrator

He believes they let the parents off the hook too soon.

Mark Clark (Retired Homicide Detective)

Mom and dad say she ran away. Don't ever talk about her again. They tore up her pictures, threw away her clothes, and that was it.

Narrator

Most damning, he says, are Williams own words.

Mark Clark (Retired Homicide Detective)

His comment was, I couldn't have killed Mary. My body would have done it, but

Detective Joe Bertina

it wouldn't have been me.

Mark Clark (Retired Homicide Detective)

It would have been that demonic personality because I blacked out.

Narrator

Clark says he would have arrested William Houl.

Mark Clark (Retired Homicide Detective)

You just admitted Tanamot to homicide and

Detective Joe Bertina

would've let him go.

Narrator

Clark also focused on that shoe detectives found. Another detective asked Kathy about it.

Mark Clark (Retired Homicide Detective)

I first asked, did you guys ever wear canvas tennis shoes? And Kathryn said, Keds. And she said, yes. And he pulled out the shoe, and it's pretty, but you can tell that it's a tennis shoe with a canvas body to it. And she said exactly that.

Narrator

And he consulted with the Body Farm, a renowned research facility that studies what happens when bodies decompose. He says they found soil samples consistent with a body being buried. What do you think happened to Mary Louise?

Mark Clark (Retired Homicide Detective)

She was killed in 1981 and probably around July.

Narrator

Clark believes the woman now claiming to be Mary Day is an imposter.

Mark Clark (Retired Homicide Detective)

There's just too many things that point to Phoenix, Mary Day being somebody else.

Narrator

But what about that DNA test showing she's Charlotte Houl's daughter? Well, Mark Clark has A theory that he says explains it all, even if it is a little far fetched. He says Charlotte Hool had another daughter, a secret daughter born before Mary and given up at birth. Clark believes Phoenix Mary is that secret daughter. So you think Phoenix Mary is the

Interviewer/Investigator

actual sister of Mary Louise Day who goes missing back in 1981?

Mark Clark (Retired Homicide Detective)

Yes.

Narrator

He looked into Charlotte's background.

Mark Clark (Retired Homicide Detective)

There's some circumstantial evidence that Charlotte had a couple of marriages where she would be involved in extramarital affairs and become pregnant from those affairs.

Narrator

Clark says the ghouls could have reached out to Charlotte's secret daughter when they felt they were in trouble.

Mark Clark (Retired Homicide Detective)

I believe she was somehow sought out by Charlotte and William to pose as Mary Day to avoid prosecution.

Narrator

It was an elaborate plot. He says the Hools knew that police were investigating Mary's disappearance and they asked her secret sister to assume her identity. Serkan says the Hools had the wherewithal to do it.

Detective Joe Bertina

What if they took the birth certificate of Mary, which they probably had, and the Social Security security card for Mary? What if they gave those cards to the other sister and said, you're now Mary?

Narrator

Mark says the scheme put an end to the investigation and also put money in Phoenix Mary's pocket.

Detective Joe Bertina

There was an inheritance. We thought the motivation would be the inheritance because she could collect that in with accrued interest.

Narrator

That inheritance was now worth roughly $60,000. Sherry helped Mary get her cut. We reached out to William and Charlotte Houle through a relative. They said they had no comment. Mark says the imposter theory accounts for a lot of inconsistencies. For example, Mary's odd Southern accent.

Mark Clark (Retired Homicide Detective)

The accent was really thick. Sherry and Catherine both said that Mary Day never had an accent.

Detective Joe Bertina

She has a Southern accent. It's a pronounced Southern accent.

Mary Louise Day / Phoenix Mary

Can I go one place next, if you don't mind?

Interviewer

Go ahead, Mary.

Mary Louise Day / Phoenix Mary

If you would have found my body, how were you gonna be able to prove who the hell I was?

Narrator

Mary did claim that she had spent some time in the south as an adult, but was only their brain briefly as a child. When experts say it would have given her that accent.

Mark Clark (Retired Homicide Detective)

I let four separate Southern dialect experts listen to the interview, and they all concluded that it would have taken living her formative years up to nine or 10 in the south to acquire this Southern accent.

Narrator

And there was that email that Phoenix Mary sent saying she wasn't who she claimed to be. After about a year of living with Sherry, Mary moved out on her own. But the mystery just wouldn't die. Another detective was about to Take a crack at the case.

Additional Investigator or Narrator

We have to be very careful, all of us in law enforcement, not to make our story fit our ideas or what we believed happened.

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Detective Joe Bertina

I'll be moving in.

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Let's get started.

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Carvana Announcer

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Detective Joe Bertina

I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it.

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Narrator

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Narrator

In 2017, Sherry Calgaro still wanted answers about the woman claiming to be her sister.

Sherry Calgaro (Later Interview)

Basically, everyone that's ever met her has a lot of doubts. I have my own doubts.

Narrator

We took Sherry to visit Phoenix Mary in Missouri, where she'd been living for a few years.

Sherry Calgaro (Later Interview)

I'm hoping that she will admit she will confess to us who she really is.

Narrator

Okay, good luck. Bye bye. Mary was living here and suffering from late stage cancer. She wasn't up for any more visitors that day. As Mary's help was failing. The new acting chief of Seaside police was determined to solve the case once and for all. Judy Velaz chipped away at the idea that Mary Day was murdered. For starters. Additional tests showed Mary's DNA matched not only Charlotte, but also the birth father. And then there was that little girl's shoe.

Additional Investigator or Narrator

I put it in the palm of my hand and I mean, it fit in the palm of My hand, it was very small. I had a hard time believing that a 13 year old would have to be. I mean, I saw her stature in the picture. She wasn't that short.

Narrator

Velaz also traveled to Mary's home. She says Mary herself filled in the gaps.

Additional Investigator or Narrator

She wanted to convince us she was Mary, and it seemed sincere.

Narrator

Mary said she began calling herself Monica when she ran away because she didn't want police to take her back home. Mary also mentioned a new name, Maury, a woman she knew in those early days on her own in California. Melaws tracked down Maury Kimmel. I got her when she was 15. Very naive innocence about her. Almost like childlike. At the time, Maury had two young daughters of her own. She just won my heart and my girls loved her.

Interviewer/Investigator

You know, that that may have been the only and the best family life she ever had in her entire life.

Narrator

I'm realizing that now, you know, I wanted to nurture her, you know. But after about a year, one day, Mary was gone. I was heartbroken. Velaz discovered that Mary had moved around a lot, city to city, living on the margins.

Additional Investigator or Narrator

Honestly, when I talked to her, she just seemed like a survivor.

Narrator

She also solved the mystery of why Mary suddenly got that Arizona id. She needed state aid to pay for surgery.

Additional Investigator or Narrator

She had her gallbladder taken out. That led her to obtain her proper driver's license or id, in the name of Mary Louise Day.

Narrator

A local nonprofit had helped Mary track down her real birth certificate. The loss chalks up Mary's foggy memory to trauma and a lifelong battle with alcohol.

Additional Investigator or Narrator

Those gaps in memory to me, can be legitimate, especially if someone's been an alcoholic from the time they have been a teenager.

Narrator

As for that email Mary sent to Detective Bertina saying she'd been lying about who she was. Vellas says Mary sent a follow up email writing, quote, I'm not sure myself what I was trying to say in that email.

Additional Investigator or Narrator

Again from someone who is still a severe alcoholic and using.

Narrator

And then Velaz came up with the smoking gun. One of Maury's relatives had a photograph.

Additional Investigator or Narrator

The picture really did it.

Narrator

It's Mary, she says, and it was taken at least a year after the alleged murder. We took the photo to Truface.

Additional Investigator or Narrator

See it?

Narrator

I see this. A state of the art facial recognition company CEO Sean Moore.

Sean Moore (Facial Recognition CEO)

So we're going to look at the results of our face matching algorithms on the images that you all sent us.

Interviewer/Investigator

Okay. And it's trying to see what.

Sean Moore (Facial Recognition CEO)

It's trying to see the probability that we're matching a young picture with one of the older pictures.

Interviewer/Investigator

So if this is the same person.

Sean Moore (Facial Recognition CEO)

Correct. It's a probability that it's the same person.

Narrator

The top photo is Mary before she disappeared. The other photo is the one that Judy Velaz dug up.

Interviewer/Investigator

What are the numbers telling you?

Sean Moore (Facial Recognition CEO)

And the numbers are telling us that it's the same person.

Narrator

He says that's a 99% probability. With that photo, Judy Velaz submitted her report and closed the Mary Day investigation. This time for good. After all these years, the woman at the center of this case finally agreed

Interviewer/Investigator

to meet with me.

Narrator

This is the Mary that I met. Fragile but not feeble. It was clear from seeing her in person that this was a woman who had not had an easy life. Still, she didn't seem to be trying to hide anything. In fact, she said, it's very frustrating trying to prove who you are when there is no proof. Sherry is finally at peace.

Sherry Calgaro (Later Interview)

All of a sudden, it felt like I had a weight lifted off my shoulders. It was just like it's done. This is hurt. That's pretty much the end of that story.

Narrator

It's not that simple for Mark Clark.

Mark Clark (Retired Homicide Detective)

I've seen the report. I'd be lying if it didn't make me second guess my investigation.

Narrator

Even though he can't prove his theory, he can't quite shake his old hunch that Mary is an imposter.

Interviewer/Investigator

Do you believe that William Houle murdered Mary Louise Day?

Mark Clark (Retired Homicide Detective)

Based on the evidence I've found, yes.

Narrator

As for Steve Cercone, I will admit

Detective Joe Bertina

that once I read Judy's report and I saw that picture, I definitely leaned towards the identity of Mary as being Mary Louise Day, the little girl that we were looking for.

Narrator

Still, he says he is certain of one thing. Those cadaver dogs were on to something.

Detective Joe Bertina

They were positive, positive, positive. They said, you know our dogs don't lie. They don't lie. Who was buried in those grave sites?

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Mary Day died nine days after Seaside police detective Judy Velas interviewed her.

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Narrator

Lots of them.

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Additional Investigator or Narrator

Okay, why is the donation bag cuter

Narrator

than my actual clothes?

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