Mary Louise Day was born Feb. The couple also had daughter Kathy in , after which Charlotte had an extramarital affair that produced Sherrie Calgado in , as Sherrie detailed in Investigation Discovery's The Curious Case of The Girl Who Died Twice. Later, Sherrie continued, Charlotte met William Houle βwho was barely 18 and ended up enlisting in the Armyβand left Charles. Sherrie recalled she and her sisters spending time in a foster home before their mother married William.
Charlotte eventually regained custody of her children and she and her third husband came to pick them up, Sherrie said, but she purposely peed on her mother in the car as they were all driving away. So, Sherrie added, they turned the car around and dropped thenyear-old Sherrie back off with the foster family, who ended up adopting her. Sherrie said in the ID show that she remained in touch with her sisters for several years until "one day it just stopped. She was 12 when she got a letter from Kathy postmarked from New York, indicating the Houles had moved back there, and her adoptive parents took her to visit.
That's when Charlotte told her that Mary had run away from Seaside, Sherrie said. She also recalled Charlotte saying that she didn't have any pictures of Mary anymore, that she'd burned them all. In , Sherrie took it upon herself to report Mary missing. It's unclear why it took a decade for Seaside Police to open an investigation, but once they did in , the trail soon ran cold. Joe Bertaina , who worked the case, said in the ID show. And I thought that was very unusual. Mary hadn't been enrolled in school at the time of her disappearance, either, but she was receiving her deceased father's social security, Charles Day having died in an accident in the late s.
One reason the Houles may not have reported Mary missing, Bertaina surmised to 48 Hours in , was that "they were taking Mary's social security checks and cashing them. On the ID show, Bertaina detailed that Kathy told him during his investigation that on June 15, βthe day before Mary disappearedβshe and her sister were home while their mom and stepdad were out, and their family dog, Bubba Brown, got sick.
When William and Charlotte got home, he accused the girls of poisoning the dog, the detective continued, and when a "defiant" Mary "argued back," Charlotte told Kathy to go to her room and close the door.
