Investigation Discovery just dropped a new episode of its series The Curious Case Of…, focusing on ‘The Girl Who Died Twice’, Mary Louise Day.
The new docu-series is a spinoff to ID’s The Curious Case of Natalia Grace, with six episodes set to examine six cases that take unexpected twists and turns.
Episode 1 centered on Bam Margera and the controversies surrounding his former legal guardian Lima Jevremovic, which the Jackass alum has since responded to with a shocking confession.
Now, it’s the turn of the “mind-blowing” case of Mary, who disappeared without a trace in 1981 from her home in Seaside, California, only to seemingly show up decades later. Warning: some may find this content distressing.
Where is Mary Louise Day now?
In 2017, a woman who claimed to be Mary Louise Day died from cancer at age 49 in Missouri. Although she was ruled to be the missing girl, to this day both investigators and relatives believe she died much earlier.
To understand this true crime case, you need to go back to the beginning. Mary was born in Little Falls, New York, on February 19, 1968, to Charlotte Day and her husband Charles Day. The couple later had two more daughters, Kathy and Sherrie.
All three of the children had a troubled upbringing and they were in and out of foster care. Charlotte went on to have an affair with William Houle, who had enlisted in the US Army, and the pair got married.
Charlotte and William were able to obtain full custody of Mary and Kathy, leaving Sherrie behind in foster care. As Sherrie reveals in The Curious Case Of…, she hated her birth mother and protested being taken away from her new carers, the Walts family.
So, Charlotte left her behind in New York with the Walts, who later legally adopted her.
In the late ‘70s, Charlotte, William, and their kids moved around depending on where William was stationed. Together, the couple had a daughter named Billie Jeanne and a son named William Jr.
Life didn’t get much easier for Mary – not only did her biological father Charlie Day die in an accident but she was placed into protective custody in 1980 due to her stepfather’s abuse.
She was returned to them a few months after they had moved to Seaside, California. According to accounts shared with detectives, Mary repeatedly tried to run away from home due to William’s physical abuse but police would always bring her back.
Things came to a head in July 1981 when Mary vanished. One of the many shocking details examined in the new true crime series is that Charlotte and William didn’t report Mary missing… for years.
It wasn’t until 1992 that Sherrie reported the case to the police. “When I got old enough, I started looking,” Sherrie said.
By this point, so many years had passed that an official investigation wasn’t launched until 2002.
According to Sherrie, Charlotte told her Mary had run away, which she initially believed. However, her suspicions were raised when she asked her mom for pictures of Mary and she allegedly replied saying Mary had “burned them.”
Kathy was able to give the authorities more information. In a conversation with detective Joe Bertaina, she explained that on the night of Mary’s disappearance, she and Mary had been looking after William’s sick dog while Charlotte, William, and their biological kids went out.
When they returned home, William allegedly accused Mary of poisoning his dog and flew into a rage. Kathy said she saw William beating Mary to the point where she had blood coming out of her mouth.
The following morning, Mary was gone. She asked her mom what happened to her sister, and Charlotte reportedly told her she’d “run away” and “we’re not to talk about her anymore.”
Although they moved around after that, detectives paid a visit to their Seaside home and Kathy showed Bertaina a spot in the garden where she was allegedly told by William not to play after Mary’s disappearance.
Cadaver dogs were brought to the garden and all four of them alerted to the same spot. As they dug it up, they found a young girl’s shoe and a belt buckle.
Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates on Esports, Gaming and more.
Retired Seaside detective Steve Cercone says in the documentary, “William Houle likely murdered Mary Louise Day, and buried her in the backyard, possibly with the help of Charlotte.”
However, there was no body, leading officials to theorize it had been moved. Investigators believed they had enough evidence to move forward with homicide charges… until November 25, 2003.
An unexpected twist in the Mary Louise Day case
On this day, a pickup truck with stolen license plates was pulled over by police in Phoenix, Arizona. One of the passengers was a woman whose ID had the name Mary Day on it, as well as the missing girl’s birth date and other information.
When detectives took her in for questioning, she claimed she had run away from home to escape the abuse of Charlotte and William Houle.
Initially, officers were skeptical, not least because of her thick Southern accent and the fact that she was unable to recall key details about her childhood.
Additionally, her ID had been issued just a few weeks prior, around the same time the investigation started. Officers speculated whether she was an imposter and took a DNA sample from the woman, dubbed Phoenix Mary.
Shockingly, it was a match, but this didn’t prove it was Mary – it just showed she was the biological daughter of Charlotte’s.
Sherrie invited Phoenix Mary to stay at her home and her angry behavior left her even more unconvinced that this woman wasn’t her sister. “I really did think she was crazy. Mentally ill,” Sherrie says.
A leading theory is that Charlotte had given birth to more children that the siblings didn’t know about, and that she convinced Phoenix Mary to take on Mary’s identity to avoid facing homicide charges.
Another theory is that Mary had multiple personality disorder from the trauma, causing holes in her memory.
Eventually, Mary left Sherrie’s home and headed back to Arizona, where she went on to get married and move to Missouri. In 2017, Seaside chief of police Judy Veloz got a call from a woman claiming to be the younger sister of Mary Day.
Veloz was told that Phoenix Mary was in a hospice following a cancer diagnosis. During this time, she admitted she was still unsure about the details of the case.
When Mary died, Sherrie had no choice but to accept the woman as her sister, while Veloz said, “There was nothing we could do but close the case again.”
As for Charlotte and William, to this day they maintain their innocence and they have never been charged in the case.
In The Curious Case Of…, Sherrie visits her mom with the hope of getting answers, but “she denied everything. Everything, and all of it.”
Text across the screen reads, “Sherrie’s mother, Charlotte, declined to be interviewed for this documentary.”
It later adds, “William Houle has denied any wrongdoing in the disappearance of Mary Day. He did not respond to producers for comment.”
Viewers at home have been left shocked by ‘The Girl Who Died Twice’, with one even suggesting it’s the most “mind-blowing” doc they’ve ever seen.
“If you want your brain to be blown to smithereens, have to watch the Curious Case of Mary Louise Day,” they said on X/Twitter. “My mind hasn’t been blown that hard by a doc ever.”
The Curious Case Of… Episodes 1-2 are streaming on Max now. For more true crime news, read about ID’s Diddy documentary, Hulu’s Ruby Franke doc, and the true story behind I Am a Killer’s Candie Dominguez.