I Didn't Know I Was Missing: The Story of Baby Holly and The Christ Family Cult
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People don't join cults, at least not knowingly. People join what are called New Religious Movements or NRMs. Contrary to popular belief, followers are often middle-class individuals with some education. From a psychological standpoint, they're young people who've satisfied the need for safety and psychological well-being. Now, they seek love, affection, and belonging.

Cults have a way of fulfilling those needs. They masquerade as stable lifelines during life's transitional phases. Few people know they're joining a cult when they sign up. Those lucky enough to deprogram can warn others of the telltale signs. Sadly, many die believing they are doing God's work. Dean and Tina Klaus were part of the unlucky sect.

He was 21, she was 17. They were new parents searching for a fresh start. When Dean landed a new carpentry gig, they moved from Florida to Texas with their infant daughter, Holly Marie.

But somewhere along the way, they crossed paths with one of America's lesser-known cults, the Christ family. They wore white robes and diapers on their heads. They walked around barefoot and refused to eat or use animal products. They smoked marijuana, claiming it was God's gift. They refused to work traditional jobs, as they were already employed by God.

They were a nomadic troop traveling between California, Texas, Arizona, and Florida. They attended rallies in Washington, D.C., and they slept on army bedrolls in whatever park would take them. They were led by a man who called himself Jesus Christ Lightning Amen. His real name was Charles Franklin Hughes, a drug smuggler from California.

He claimed to be the second coming of Christ. He forbade sex, materialism, and alcohol. He forced his followers to sell their worldly possessions and donate all funds to a single bank account, one that only he controlled. But most importantly, he demanded their undivided attention. Children were the largest distraction of all.

Lightning Amen forced his followers to abandon their babies, though he didn't mind their teenage daughters. If Dean and Tina wanted salvation, they'd have to give up baby Holly. Put yourself in their shoes. They truly believed this man was the second coming of Jesus Christ. He was telling them to sacrifice their child, as he sacrificed himself 2,000 years ago. The choice was obvious. Baby Holly had to go.

Their sacrifice was not rewarded. Dean and Tina were murdered in late 1980. Their bodies were discovered but never identified. That is until 2021, when breakthroughs in genealogy cracked one of Texas' longest cold cases. They were Jane and John Doe for over 40 years. Their identification left Houston area police with more questions than answers. Who killed Dean and Tina?

Was the Christ family cult involved? And what happened to baby Holly? Part 1: Texas Bound Harold Klaus grew up in New Smyrna, Florida, a beach town about 15 miles south of Daytona. His parents called him Junior. Everyone else called him by his middle name, Dean. Dean was a bright kid with good grades, according to his mother. He always saw the best in people, which often got him into trouble.

His sister didn't appreciate how Dean would pick up hitchhikers on his way home from school. As smart as he was, Dean wasn't the best decision maker. In the mid-1970s, Dean ran off to join a cult. It's unclear if this cult was the Christ family. They were active and operating in Florida at the time. According to his older sister, Dean escaped the cult and moved back home.

That's when he fell head over heels for Tina Lynn. Tina was Dean's sister-in-law. Both had a penchant for rash decision-making. One day, they surprised the whole family when they walked in and announced their courthouse marriage. Baby Holly Marie was born shortly after the spontaneous wedding. Dean and Tina doted over baby Holly.

Dean did whatever he could to provide for his family. If that meant picking up extra carpentry shifts, so be it. Meanwhile, Tina carried a baby book everywhere they went. She documented every moment of Holly's first year through pictures. In 1980, Dean told his family about a new job opportunity in Texas. His bosses wanted to hire Dean for a full-time position in Houston. The job paid well.

Dean could give baby Holly the real life he always dreamed of. His mother sold Dean her car, a 1978 two-door burgundy AMC Concord. He and Tina packed everything they had and headed west for Texas. They wrote to their respective families on occasion. Then, in October of 1980, the letters suddenly stopped. A few months later, Dean's mother got a call from a man claiming to be Los Angeles law enforcement.

He said he had Dean's car and offered to drive it back for $1,000. She tried to get more information about her son, but the man on the other line seemed cagey. He said three women would drive the car back. Dean's mother was to meet them near the racetrack in Daytona Beach. Sure enough, three women in white robes arrived at the meeting place. They were barefoot and looked like they just walked out of the Bible.

Dean's mother begged for more information, but their leader, Sister Susan, wouldn't talk. All she said was that Dean and Tina had joined their religious order and didn't want anything to do with their families. They'd given up their worldly possessions, which included the car. The women were gone as quickly as they came. Dean and Tina's parents never heard from them again. All they could do was wait, wonder, and hope.

Little did they know Dean and Tina had fallen in with the cult, headed by a bearded fanatic who believed he was the second coming of Christ.

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His real name was Charles Franklin McHugh. According to his mother, he left his California home in 1973 to help people and return them to Christ. Two marriages ended in divorce. His painting business failed miserably. It sounded more like Charles was running from his problems. His mother never heard from him again.

As the story goes, Lightning Amen wandered the Mojave Desert for 40 days and 40 nights. When he emerged, he was no longer Charles McHugh. He was Christ reincarnated. He lived by what he called the three keys to heaven. No killing, no sex, and no materialism. Lightning believed heavily in the separation of the sexes.

He prevented his male and female followers from interacting, which was obviously hard for married couples like Dean and Tina. But, according to reports, Lightning was allowed all the female company he desired. There are multiple allegations levied against him for sexual assault and child abuse. Christ's family numbered about 2,000 strong by the 1980s.

They were a nomadic bunch, meaning they never stayed in one place. They "moved like the wind," as they called it. They weren't hard to spot, either. Christ's family members wore white robes and walked barefoot wherever they went. They carried olive-colored army blankets to sleep on. They picked food out of trash cans and liked to argue about religion. Members assumed the surname "Christ."

Some changed their first names to sound more religious. Abraham Christ, Michael Christ, and Jacob Christ are just a few examples. But for the most part, Christ's family stayed out of the headlines until 1980 when they attended the Washington for Jesus rally in Washington DC. Washington for Jesus was a prayer rally organized by John Jimenez, a Pentecostal evangelist and a TV preacher.

It's credited for giving rise to the modern Christian conservative, with the first rally being held in late April of 1980. Conservative Christians from across the country united against homosexuality, teenage pregnancy, abortion, divorce, and the women's liberation movement. You could say that Lightning Amen and the Christ's Family Cult were among the most liberal people in the audience. They forbade drinking, but praised tobacco and marijuana.

To them, both plants were God-given herbs. According to police in Florida, California, and Arizona, the group was strange but harmless. They stuck to strict vegan diets and didn't wear shoes because leather was the product of captive animals. But perhaps the most important tenet of the Christ family cult was that children were strictly forbidden. Kids were a distraction. They were a hindrance to the cult's nomadic lifestyle.

Mothers stopping to breastfeed and caring for babies would only slow them down. It's believed that Dean and Tina joined Christ's family in late 1980, sometime around October, when the letters stopped coming in. If they wanted to stay in the cult, they'd have to get rid of baby Holly. Luckily for them, a priest in Yuma, Arizona was happy to take her in. Part Three: The Priest

Yuma, Arizona is a large city near the Mexican border. In 1980, it was home to about 42,000 people, including a pastor who'd been praying for a little baby girl. Philip McGoldrick was the pastor at a Seventh-day Adventist church in Yuma. He and his wife already had a daughter, but wanted one more. They prayed to God, asking him for a baby. As they say, the Lord works in mysterious ways.

It was November 8th, 1980, about a month after Dean and Tina joined Christ's family. Pastor Philip was late for a meeting when he heard a knock on the parish door. He peered out the window to see three women in white robes. One of them was holding a baby. Philip opened the parish door and asked if they needed money for food or gas. They didn't. All they needed was for someone to take this child.

According to Philip, one of the women mentioned doing this before. They'd left another baby with somebody at a laundromat. Philip was between a rock and a hard place. The answer to his prayers had literally arrived on his doorstep. But how could he just take somebody's kid? Where were her parents? Had she been kidnapped? The decision came easy when one of the women produced a note signed by Tina and Dean.

it relinquished custody of baby Holly and gave Pastor Philip full parental rights. To this day, Philip believes Tina was among those three women, though he can't know for sure. The women were gone like the wind. Philip was left staring into baby Holly's doe eyes. She had no idea how turbulent her short life had already been.

Philip and his wife put ads in the local paper regarding the baby. Their lawyers said if the parents didn't claim her after six months, the McGoldricks could legally adopt Holly as their own. Six months came and went. Holly was legally theirs. She learned to live with the mystery of what happened to her birth parents. Meanwhile, she watched her adoptive family crumble.

Philip divorced and remarried twice by the time Holly was a teenager. She watched her stepbrothers and half-sister grow up and fade into their own adult lives. She felt alone and abandoned once again. In 1993, when Holly was 13, she convinced herself that her birth parents died during the Branch Davidian siege in Waco, Texas. She knew that women in white robes had given her away to Pastor Philip.

While the word "cult" never came up in conversation, Holly could make reasonable assumptions. It was easier to believe they were dead than hope for a reunion she'd never have. By then, the family had moved to Manford, Oklahoma. Philip had recently remarried and was preparing to move with his new bride to Tulsa.

Holly didn't want to leave. She was 16 years old. She had a life in Manford and a new boyfriend. So she cut a deal with Philip. As long as she kept her grades up, she could stay behind and live with her boyfriend's family. Little did she know this boyfriend had been keeping a secret from her. He was a drug addict. Meth was his medicine of choice. One day, Holly found him in his room shooting meth into his arm.

She had a decision to make: walk away and never come back, or follow him to hell. The thought of losing someone else was too much to bear. Holly asked for the next hit. Just like everyone else, her boyfriend abandoned her too. Holly was left alone with a crippling drug habit. Her grades plummeted, she dropped out of school. She stole from Philip whenever she visited. She was arrested, released, and arrested once more.

On her 18th birthday, she moved to California with her new boyfriend, Troy. The drug problem came with her. It had gotten so bad that her final hit caused her vein to collapse. The pain was agonizing. Troy begged her to go to the hospital, but she resisted. She spent three days praying for the excruciating pain to pass. Then, by some miracle, it did. Holly's health improved, and she swore off drugs for good.

It was time for a major change. She and Troy moved to Arkansas, where they got clean and started a family. They were married in 1998 and welcomed their first child a few months later. Her birth parents abandoned her. Her adoptive father couldn't hold his family together. Holly wouldn't let that happen to her children. She'd give them everything she never had. Yet the thought of her birth parents always lingered.

Maybe they were still out there. Maybe they'd been looking for her all this time. Sadly, her original theory held the most water. The cult life had caught up to Dean and Tina. They were dead and buried in a potter's field near Houston, Texas. Part Four: The Tomb of the Unknown Parents The term "potter's field" refers to a cemetery full of unnamed graves.

It stems from biblical times when priests used excavated clay fields to bury criminals, the poor, and those who couldn't rest in Orthodox cemeteries. There are potter's fields all over the US and across the world. The largest is on Hart Island in New York. According to the New York DOC, it's the largest tax-funded cemetery in the world.

there are over 1 million people buried on Hart Island. Many have a story that'll never be told. On January 6th, 1981, a German shepherd ran up the driveway of a Houston family's home. Something was in its mouth, and it wasn't a stick or a dog bone. It was a decomposing human arm. Police arrived to search the area. Five or six days later, they found the remains of Dean and Tina,

She was strangled. He was bound and beaten to death. Their bodies were left to rot in the hot Texas sun for two months. But the police didn't know they were Dean and Tina Klaus. Despite their efforts, the bodies were too decomposed to identify.

They were labeled Jane Doe, 701 and John Doe, 703. Both were buried in the Harris County potter's field where they remained for 30 years. Let's look back at the timeline to see when Dean and Tina were most likely killed. They left Florida for Texas in mid 1980. The last time anybody heard from them was October of the same year. In November, Tina allegedly arrives on Pastor Phillip's doorstep.

She gives him baby Holly and then leaves with the other women. Sometime between October and late December 1980, Dean and Tina are killed. Judging by the state of decomposition, late October or early November sounds about right. Remember, there's no proof that Tina is the one who gave baby Holly away. Pastor Philip couldn't have known what she looked like. Around the time the bodies were discovered in January, Dean's mother received a phone call regarding his car.

Christ's family cultists drove him back to Florida, claiming Dean and Tina had joined their order and didn't want anything to do with their families. As it stands, there's no hard evidence tying Christ's family to the murders of Dean and Tina Klaus. Everything police have or are willing to release is circumstantial. Did Christ's family kill Dean and Tina before heading to Yuma?

Were they killed while trying to escape the cult? Or did they get caught up in something entirely unrelated? Another intriguing fact is that their bodies were discovered in the swamplands north of Houston. The last time anyone saw them alive was 270 miles away at their home in Louisville, Texas. Were they killed on the road and dumped in the Houston area? Nobody knows for sure. Part 5: Holly Comes Home June 7th, 2022

The lunch crowd is filling into a local bar and grill in Cushing, Oklahoma. Baby Holly isn't a baby anymore. She's a 42-year-old mother of five working as a waitress at the bustling restaurant. She just put a batch of cookies in the oven when a detective and someone from the Texas Cold Case and Missing Persons Unit walked in. They asked to speak with Holly in private.

Holly sat across from them in a booth. They were investigating a double homicide from the 1980s, the murders of Dean and Tina Klaus. But Holly was just a baby in 1980. What could she possibly know about this double murder? She sat in stunned silence as she learned why the officers were there. They had reason to believe she was Dean and Tina's long-lost daughter. She had two other families who'd been waiting 40 years to see her again.

The officers slid a grainy family photo across the table. It was the first time Holly had ever seen her parents' faces. All she could ask was, "How did you find me?" DNA fingerprinting didn't exist when police found Dean and Tina's unrecognizable bodies. As technology improved, law enforcement agencies around the country began reinvestigating cold cases with the power of DNA.

Dean and Tina were among them. Their bodies were exhumed in 2011, and while scientists were able to collect DNA samples, they didn't have anything to compare those samples with. They'd have to wait another 10 years. In 2021, two genetic genealogists teamed up to identify Jane Doe 701 and John Doe 703.

Misty Gillies was combing through cases when she found this one from Harris County, Texas. She worked for a California-based firm called Identifiers International, a genetic genealogy company that works in tandem with law enforcement worldwide. Misty partnered with Allison Peacock, who ran her own genetic research company in Austin, Texas. They obtained the DNA sample taken in 2011. Now, they just had to find a close match.

The key was a website called gedmatch.com. GEDmatch is a genealogy website that lets users share their data with law enforcement agencies. It's similar to how the Golden State Killer and Brian Koberger, the Idaho student killer, were caught. Misty and Allison didn't need to find an exact match. All they needed was a relative, an uncle, niece, or nephew would do.

In Dean's case, a cousin in Kentucky closed the 40-year gap. Debbie Brooks was busy at work when her husband called. He said two genealogists were on the other line. She thought it was a scam, but took the call anyway. They asked Debbie a strange question. "Do you have a relative who disappeared a long time ago?" "Yes," Debbie said. "My brother, Harold Dean Klaus." Misty broke the news as best she could.

They'd found Dean's body alongside an unknown woman. Debbie told them all about Tina. Sure enough, Allison tracked down their marriage records in Florida. They bore Tina's full name, allowing her to contact Tina's living relatives. DNA confirmed her identity as well. But just when Misty and Allison thought they'd cracked the case, Debbie asked a jaw-dropping question. "What about the baby?"

Now, it was Debbie's turn to blow Misty and Allison's mind. She told them about baby Holly, how Dean and Tina had moved to Texas with the child and were never seen nor heard from again. The first step was obtaining Holly's Florida birth certificate. Unfortunately, the records were sealed, indicating one of two things: she had a juvenile record or she was adopted. The only way to unseal them was through a court order.

Holly couldn't have committed a crime as an infant in Florida. The thought that she'd been adopted sparked a glimmer of hope in her family's eyes. Lo and behold, investigators found an adoption certificate when a judge unsealed the records. It pointed them to Philip McGoldrick and his ex-wife Constance.

Put yourself in the investigator's shoes. You have an adopted child whose parents were murdered under strange circumstances. You don't know anything about the Christ's family cult, Jesus Christ Lightning, or nomadic women in white robes. Who is your primary suspect? Thankfully, Pastor Phillip was only a suspect for about 15 minutes. They learned how Holly came into his care and that she was alive and well in Cushing, Oklahoma.

She was a 42-year-old mother of five who had no idea she'd been missing. Thanks to genetic genealogy and gedmatch.com, a 40-year-old missing persons case was closed in weeks. The murder of Dean and Tina Klaus, however, remains open. The leading theory is that Dean and Tina followed the Christ family to Arizona. Lightning Amen had a winter camp in Blythe, California, which was only 40 miles from Yuma.

It's unclear how long the couple stayed in Yuma or if they ever made it to Blythe. Because they were found together, investigators believe they were trying to leave. Tracking down former Christ family members proved to be extremely difficult. The group disbanded after Lightning Amen went to jail in 1987. Police found him with a loaded .45 caliber pistol, $30,000 in cash and several bags of methamphetamine. Two years prior,

10 Christ family members were arrested for growing nearly $1 million worth of marijuana on one of their ranches. It's unclear how long they spent in jail or if Lightning Amen was implicated in the growing operation. In 2001, Amen was charged with three counts of child molestation.

He pled guilty to one of them in exchange for 160 hours of community service. He was barred from having contact with the three girls, only identified by the letter Y for their surname. He died in 2010. Some followers are still active on various websites and online forums. Since Holly's discovery, Sergeant Rachel Kading of the Texas Attorney General's Office has been digging into the Christ's family cult.

she's looking for a woman in particular who went by the name Rosemary Garcia. There's reason to believe Rosemary was with Tina when they gave Holly to Pastor Philip. And while Rosemary is likely dead, her three daughters may still be alive. They were Jill, Joy, and Jan, known as the Three Jays to cult members.

They likely knew Tina and could fill in the gaps regarding what happened between October 1980 and January 1981. That said, Kaeding has found no evidence linking the cult to Dean and Tina's murders. If somebody from Christ's family did kill the Clauses, it was likely an outlier or someone who'd been traveling with the group but wasn't a part of it.

Dean and Tina could have easily been killed by some psychopath while hitchhiking between Texas and Arizona. Remember, Dean had a habit of picking up roadside strangers. In the blink of an eye, Holly's family tripled in size. She met with long-lost relatives over Zoom before flying to Florida to see them in person. Her children unlocked a batch of uncles and cousins they would have never known.

In April 2022, Holly visited the Potter Cemetery, where Dean and Tina are buried. They're the lucky few among a sea of unidentified graves in Harris County. In Texas alone, there are over 1,800 bodies that have never been identified. According to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, 4,400 unidentified bodies turn up every year.

As of 2024, there are over 14,500 Jane and John Does in the United States. Holly wants to make a difference. She's urging others to donate their DNA samples to GEDmatch. Doing so could help identify the remains of the nameless dead. It could help bring someone home who didn't know they were missing.