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The mysterious disappearance of Mary Day
In 1981, 13-year-old Mary Day disappeared from her Seaside, Calif., home, with no sign of her anywhere. It would be 22 years before she reappeared, bringing along more questions than answers.
Mary Louise Day was born on February 19, 1968, to Charlotte Pressler and Charles Day in Little Falls, New York.
The Day girls
Within the next three years, the Day family grew with the birth of Mary’s sisters, Kathy, left, and Sherrie, center. Mary is pictured on the right
A difficult childhood
Life wasn’t always easy for the family. Mary, right, Kathy, center, and Sherrie, left were in and out of a foster home.
A new stepfather
While the girls were in foster care, Charlotte divorced Charles Day and married William Houle, who enlisted in the Army soon after.
Sherrie adopted
In 1976, Charlotte retained custody of daughters Mary and Kathy Day, but Sherrie, right, was adopted by the foster family, separating the sisters.
A new family
While Mary and Kathy Day were still in foster care, Charlotte and William Houle had two children of their own – Billie Jean and William Jr. In 1978, William Sr. was assigned to a base in Hawaii and the family moved together
The inheritance
A few months after the Houles moved to Hawaii, Charles Day passed away and left an inheritance to his daughters, Mary and Kathy. According to Kathy, she and Mary used a secret code word when talking about the inheritance: “Mohawk.”
William and Mary
Mary Day ended up in protective custody in December 1980 while in Hawaii. Detectives say that her stepfather, William Houle, had been reportedly physically abusing her.
Off to California
In January 1981, the Houle family, without Mary, moved to Seaside, California, when William Houle was reassigned to Fort Ord. But a few months later, Mary, pictured in red at at left, was released from protective custody and moved back in with the Houles.
The last night
One night in 1981, the Houles went out for dinner but left Mary at home. When they returned, William Houle’s beloved dog was sick. Believing Mary poisoned the dog, William beat her, he admitted to police.The next morning, according to Kathy, Mary was gone.
Where’s Mary?
According to Kathy, she asked her mother, Charlotte, where Mary was.Charlotte told Kathy that Mary ran away and to never ask about her again.
A sister’s concern
Sherrie Calgaro told “48 Hours” that when the Houles relocated to New York, she went to visit them. When she asked about Mary, Charlotte told her Mary ran away. Kathy told Calgaro, “We’re not allowed to talk about Mary.” Sherrie, who was 10 when Mary disappeared, was concerned. As an adult, she filed a missing persons report in 1994.
The search for Mary
Seaside Police launched their investigation when they received the case in 2002. An age progression photo was generated through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Back to the house
Seaside Police Detective Joe Bertaina was asked to lead the investigation into Mary Day’s disappearance. In 2003, he took Kathy back to the Houles’ home in Seaside: Mary’s last known whereabouts. Kathy Pires showed the detective a corner of the backyard where she said her parents told her not to play.
A girl’s shoe found
Seaside Police Department
Detective Bertaina’s captain, Steve Cercone, brought in a team of cadaver dogs to search the backyard. All four dogs alerted on the specific corner where Kathy says she was not allowed to play. When the team started to dig, they found a little girl’s shoe.
Charlotte Houle speaks
Police tracked down Charlotte and William Houle in Kansas. Charlotte agreed to speak to local detectives about the case. Throughout the interview, she maintained Mary had run away.
Phoenix Mary
After finding the shoe and speaking with Charlotte and William Houle, detectives thought they had a homicide on their hands. Then, the case took an unexpected turn. Nine months after interviewing the couple, a woman in Phoenix, Arizona, was pulled over during a routine traffic stop. Police said it was Mary Day.
Mary’s story
In his interview with “48 Hours,” Detective Bertaina spoke about traveling to Phoenix to meet Mary in person. He recalled the awful memories Mary had, but it was the memories Mary could not remember that he found troublesome.
The DNA test
In his interview with “48 Hours,” Steve Cercone said he wasn’t fully convinced this person was the real Mary Day. He thought she might be an imposter, but a DNA test was ordered and the results came back positive
Sisters reunite
With DNA proving Mary’s identity and the case closed, Sherrie Calgaro invited Mary to move in with her in North Carolina. In this photo, sisters Sherrie, Kathy, center, and Mary were reunited.
Doubts remain
After Mary moved in, Sherrie Calgaro started to have doubts over whether this was her sister. This Mary had a southern accent, which Sherrie and detectives found unusual for someone who didn’t grow up in the south. Calgaro also found her sister’s magazines that were addressed to someone named Monica Devereaux.
Kathy’s doubts
Kathy Pires had her own doubts. She claims that this Mary didn’t remember that their birth father, Charles Day, had left them an inheritance. Phoenix Mary also didn’t remember their code word for it, “Mohawk.”
Case is reopened
In 2008, cadaver dogs, in an unrelated search, alerted near a home in Fort Ord where the Houles moved to shortly after Mary’s disappearance. Steve Cercone, by then the Police Chief, hired Mark Clark, pictured, a retired homicide detective, to look into the case. Clark told “48 Hours” correspondent Maureen Maher he was convinced there was a murder, and that Phoenix Mary was an impostor.
A new look
In 2017, with Mary’s health failing, Judy Veloz, then acting chief of the Seaside Police Department, took a look at the case. Veloz told “48 Hours” she traveled to Mary’s home in Missouri to speak with her face to face.
Mary’s teen years
Mary told Judy Veloz about a woman she stayed with not long after she ran away – Morie Kimmel. Kimmel says Mary won her heart and she took care of Mary for a year, before she ran away again.
Unseen photograph
While Judy Veloz continued to track down the details of Mary’s life after vanishing, one of Morie Kimmel’s relatives had a photo that would help turn the case around:a photo of Mary taken at least a year after the alleged murder, seen here in the middle. With this photo, Veloz submitted her report and closed the Mary Day investigation for good.
Finding closure
In 2017, ’48 Hours” was there when Sherrie Calgaro, who still had doubts, visited Phoenix Mary in Missouri. Calgaro was still in search of answers. After the meeting, Calgaro told correspondent Maureen Maher that she found her answer – that the mysterious woman is her sister, Mary. Not long after this visit, Mary passed away.
Feeling torn
After reading Judy Veloz’s report, Mark Clark admits that it made him second-guess his investigation. But even though he can’t prove his imposter theory, he can’t quite shake his old hunch.
Who is buried there?
Steve Cercone leans towards the identity of Phoenix Mary being the actual Mary Day after reading Judy Veloz’s report. Still, he wonders about the cadaver dogs and asks if that was not Mary buried in the backyard, who was?
Former President Donald Trump meandered Saturday through a list of grievances against Vice President Kamala Harris and other issues during an event intended to link his Democratic opponent to illegal border crossings.
A day after Harris discussed immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border, Trump spoke to a crowd in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, about immigration. He blamed Harris for migrants committing crimes after entering the U.S. illegally, alleging she was responsible for “erasing our border.”
“I will liberate Wisconsin from the mass migrant invasion,” he said. “We’re going to liberate the country.”
The Republican nominee also intensified his personal attacks against Harris, insulting her as “mentally impaired” and a “disaster.”
“Joe Biden became mentally impaired,” Trump said. “Kamala was born that way. She was born that way. And if you think about it, only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country. Anybody would know this.”
The personal attacks have been something of a trend for Trump since Harris entered the race. In July, Trump falsely questioned Harris’ racial identity during a panel with the National Association of Black Journalists.
“I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black,” Trump said at the time. “So I don’t know, is she Indian, or is she Black?”
When asked in an interview with CBS News last month if he believes the personal attacks will hurt him with voters, he responded, “No, I don’t think so.”
Trump, meanwhile, hopes frustration over illegal immigration will translate to votes in Wisconsin and other crucial swing states. The Republican nominee has denounced people who cross the U.S.-Mexico border as “poisoning the blood of the country” and vowed to stage the largest deportation operation in American history if elected. And polls show Americans believe Trump would do a better job than Harris on handling immigration.
Trump shifted from topic to topic so quickly that it was hard to keep track of what he meant at times. He talked about the two assassination attempts against him and blamed the U.S. Secret Service for not being able to hold a large outdoor rally instead of an event in a smaller indoor space. But he also offered asides about climate change, Harris’ father, how his beach body was better than President Biden’s, and a fly that was buzzing near him.
“I wonder where the fly came from,” he said. “Two years ago, I wouldn’t have had a fly up here. You’re changing rapidly. But we can’t take it any longer. We can’t take it any longer.”
Trump repeatedly brought up Harris’ Friday event in Douglas, Arizona, where she announced a push to further restrict asylum claims beyond Biden’s executive order announced earlier this year. Harris denounced Trump’s handling of the border while president and his opposing a bipartisan border package earlier this year, saying Trump “prefers to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.”
“I had to sit there and listen” to Harris last night Trump said, eliciting cheers. “And who puts it on? Fox News. They should not be allowed to put it on. It’s all lies. Everything she says is lies.”
Trump professed not to understand what Harris meant when she said he was responsible for taking children from their parents. Under his administration, border agents separated children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border in a policy that was condemned globally as inhumane and one that Trump himself ended under pressure from his own party.
Harris, at a rally in San Francisco, told supporters there were “two very different visions for our nation” and voters see it “every day on the campaign trail.”
“Donald Trump is the same old tired show,” she said. “The same tired playbook we have heard for years.”
She said Trump was “a very unserious man.”
“However the consequences of putting him back in the White House are extremely serious,” she said.
The Harris campaign Saturday again challenged Trump to a second debate, this time in the form of a football-themed television ad. Following his Wisconsin rally, Trump traveled to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to attend the Alabama-Georgia football game Saturday evening, and the Harris campaign premiered the ad during the game.
“Champions know its anytime, anyplace, but losers, they whine and waffle,” the ad’s narrator said.
Kendy Howard was found dead in her bathtub. While dispatched as a suicide, clues at the scene made Kootenai County authorities suspicious. Here’s a look at the case:
A 26-year marriage
Brian Wilkins
Dan and Kendy Howard had been married since 1994. By 2021, Dan Howard had gone from working as an Idaho State Trooper to working in the Alaskan oil fields for three weeks at a time.
Kendy seeks divorce
Brian Wilkins
On Jan. 28, 2021, just five days before she died, Kendy Howard picked Dan Howard up from the airport and told him she wanted a divorce. She described Dan’s reaction to a friend as having been “not good.”
Dan Howard’s call to 911
Kootenai County Prosecuting Attorney
On the night of Feb. 2, 2021, at 10:43 p.m., Dan Howard called 911, screaming Kendy had shot herself. “She’s in the bathtub dead …”
The call was dispatched as a suicide.
Dan Howard at the scene
Kootenai County District Court
Kootenai County Sheriff’s Deputy Miranda Thomas was one of the first officers to arrive. Thomas said she witnessed Dan Howard screaming, crying and gagging.
Kendy Howard found in the bathtub
Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office
Caption: Kendy Howard was found dead, naked in the bathtub of her home, with a gunshot wound to her head. Kendy’s gun was submerged in the bathwater.
A packed duffle bag
Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office
Thomas noticed a duffle bag with what she said seemed to be women’s clothing packed inside.
A clue on the dryer
Kootenai County District Court
Kootenai County Sheriff’s Detective Jerry Northrup said that in the dryer he observed “bathmats and towels … and they were still somewhat warm,” which he said led him to question when the cycle had been started.
How did Kendy Howard really die?
Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office
Kendy Howard’s gun was found in the bathtub. Investigators said they would have expected to see a lot more blood in the bathtub if she had been alive when she was shot.
Kendy’s daughter accuses Dan Howard
CBS News
When Dan Howard called his stepdaughter Brooke Wilkins with the news of Kendy’s death, investigators said they could overhear Wi accuse Dan of killing her mother. Despite their suspicions, detectives said there was not enough evidence at the scene to arrest Dan.
Dan Howard arrested
Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office
It took two years for prosecutors to build their case. In July, 2023, Dan Howard was arrested and charged with Kendy Howard’s murder.
Dan Howard on trial
Pool
On March 4, 2024, the trial of Dan Howard began. The prosecution claimed Dan had killed Kendy by putting her in a carotid restraint hold – a maneuver he had learned in his law enforcement training. The defense maintained that Kendy’s death was a suicide. After 10 days of testimony, 62 witnesses, and just over eight hours of deliberations, a verdict was reached.
Dan Howard found guilty
On March 19, 2024, the jury found Dan Howard guilty of second-degree murder and domestic battery.
Life in prison
Pool
At Dan Howard’s sentencing hearing in May 2024, Judge Lamont Berecz told him, “You killed a mother. You killed a grandmother. You killed a sister … You snuffed that out because of your own pride, greed, and anger.” Dan Howard was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
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