Mary Louise Day

The morning after Mary went missing, Charlotte told William she saw "Satan" in his eyes the night before and likened it to him being “possessed by a demon.” When asked if he could have killed Mary, he denied it. He was then asked if the demon inside of him could have killed her and he responded in the affirmative. Kathy told investigators that shortly after Mary went missing, William told the children to not go in a specific corner of the home’s backyard. Investigators brought her back to the old home in 2003 and she directed them to the corner. Cadaver dogs were brought in and they detected the scent of human remains in the area. When police dug there, they uncovered a small child's shoe. The shoe appeared to be a tennis shoe, and Kathy said they often wore that type of footwear as children. Investigators believed they had enough evidence to build a credible homicide case and began to compile one against Charlotte and William Houle.

On November 25, 2003, a pickup truck was pulled over as a routine traffic stop. The truck had stolen license plates, leading to the police collecting and examining the identifications of the passengers. One of the passengers was a woman whose Arizona state identification card bore the name Mary Day; this also contained the missing Mary’s birth date and other pertinent information. The woman was detained and when she was interviewed, she claimed she ran away from her home to avoid abuse from Charlotte and William Houle. Investigators were skeptical as to the credibility of her accounts, owing to the fact that she had a thick southern accent; Mary Day did not have such an accent. Police also discovered that her identification had been issued three weeks prior to her arrest, which is around the time the homicide investigation began.

Calgaro spoke to police regarding Day's disappearance and an official investigation was opened in 2002. Her family were the only ones who knew about her disappearance; their neighbors were unable to recall them and did not recognize pictures of Day, who had not been enrolled in school while living in Seaside.

On or around July 15, 1981, Day disappeared from her home in California. Her parents did not report her missing, and almost no one aside from them knew she was missing. In 1994, Sherrie Calgaro filed a missing persons report but by then thirteen years had passed and police did not launch an investigation. Calgaro sent information about Day and a photo of her to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in late 1999, at which point an image of how Day might have looked at the time was developed. This age-progressed image depicted her at age 31.

After interviewing both Kathy and Sherrie, investigators also began to believe that Mary had been murdered on the night of her disappearance. In addition to Kathy and Sherrie, investigators were able to track Charlotte and William Houle down to Kansas, where they were interviewed by local police. Charlotte reported not remembering many of the facts regarding her missing daughter’s disappearance, and that the last time she saw Mary was in 1981 when she ran away. She admitted that she and William should have taken steps to locate Mary after her initial disappearance. She went on to claim that William had filed a runaway report with the Salinas police department, but there was no record of anyone reporting her missing prior to 1994.

In December 1980, Mary was removed from her mother and stepfather's care and taken into protective custody after it was discovered that William was physically abusing her. The family then moved to Seaside, California following a change in William's base, but Mary was kept in Hawaii until a few months later, when she was sent to live with the rest of her family in California. While Mary was in Seaside, she frequently attempted to run away from her home but would always be returned by police officers.

At some point while the girls were in foster care, Charlotte divorced from Charles and remarried to a man named William Houle. In 1975 Houle enlisted in the United States Army, and Charlotte attained permanent and full custody of Mary and Kathy shortly thereafter. In 1978, the family moved to Hawaii due to Houle being stationed there. By this time, Sherrie had been legally adopted by one of her foster families (the Calgaros) and was thereby separated from her birth family.

Mary Louise Day (February 19, 1968 - 2017) was an American teenager who, at age 13 in 1981, mysteriously disappeared from her home in Seaside, California. She was found alive in 2003, a little more than twenty-two years after her disappearance.

Mary Day was born in Little Falls, New York on February 19, 1968, to Charlotte Day (né Pressler) and her husband Charles Day. She had two younger sisters, Kathy and Sherrie. Day and her sisters did not have easy childhoods; they were in and out of foster homes in their early years because their mother was often unable to care for them.