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Sister Susan's Cult · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

• 0:38
  Dean Klaus Junior and Tina Lynn had the whirlwind romance that most of us only
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  read about him books or see on the Hallmark Channel during the holidays. In
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  nineteen seventy eight New Smyrna Beach, Florida. Dean was nineteen and Tina was
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  fifteen years old when they stepped into each other's lives and changed them forever.
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  Less than a year later, the young couple rushed to the Lucia County Courthouse
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  and officially tied the knot, becoming mister and Missus Klaus. Nine months after
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  that, a honeymoon baby made the family complete. Little Holly Marie was born
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  on January twenty fourth, nineteen eighty, and even though they were only young
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  parents themselves, both Dean and Tina were determined to do everything they could to
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  give Holly the life they thought she deserved. They loved her, and those
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  around them described Dean and Tina as deeply devoted parents, but they were just
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  starting out in life and there wasn't much to go around to make inns meet.
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  The young family moved in with Tina's sister, Sherry Lynne, but it
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  was only that summer that opportunity came a knockin' Dean was a talented cabinet maker,
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  and he also sensed an opportunity. Dallas, Fort Worth, and Texas
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  was developing quickly with a huge boom in the construction industry. There there was
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  bound to be a need for cabinet makers, especially one that could churn out
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  high quality items. The young Klouses made the decision to move to Texas.
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  Dean borrowed his mother's car and the family moved to Lewisville in the hopes that
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  they were about to make a very comfortable life for themselves. Dean found work
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  with a home building company, and the family moved in to live with Dean's
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  cousin as they saved up money to find their own place. There was a
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  good thing for them to wait too. They had only just moved and work
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  wasn't always steady. Sometimes the money flowed, and sometimes there was barely enough
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  to go around, but the young couple never seemed to feel like they were
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  going without, and despite their financial situation, Dean and Tina seemed to be
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  ginning on better than ever. That was one of the reasons why their families
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  were so shocked and confused when they suddenly disappeared around October of that year,
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  only a few short months after moving to Texas. After months of trying to
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  reach them, Dean's mother reported them as missing, only to get a lackluster
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  response from law enforcement. The police argued that Dean and Tina were young adults
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  and if they cut off ties with their families back home, it was probably
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  because they wanted to. Time dragged on, and still there was no word
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  from neither of them. In a desperate attempt to pick up any traces of
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  their missing family members, both families continued to spread the news around their communities
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  and even asked the Salvation Army to keep an eye out for them in their
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  databases. All leeds came to a dead end, and difficult, hard hitting
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  questions went unanswered for decades. Fast forward to the year twenty twenty. Over
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  forty years later, things began to change. Forensic genealogists Misty Gillis and Alison
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  Peacock were given the herculean task of identifying the over forty thousand unidentified remains within
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  the cold case system of the US, and with that came some startling discoveries.
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  Within days of testing samples taken from John and Jane Doe, known within
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  the department as Romeo and Juliet, Misty and Allison, found themselves on a
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  world wind journey of their own. The young couple had been found in northern
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  Harris County, Texas, back on January twelfth, nineteen eighty one. It
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  looked like the two had been the victims of foul play out in the secluded
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  marshy woodland, and even the discovery of the remains had been the result of
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  a truly gruesome turn of events. A man out walking his dog that winter
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  in nineteen eighty one let his dog off the leash and the dog darted into
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  the forest, but when it came back, it was carrying the decomposing remains
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  of a human arm The man immediately alerted the police, who came down to
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  the area, only to find that there was so much more. A young
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  man and a young woman had been brutally killed out in the wilderness, and
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  it looked like the male victim had been the last to go. From the
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  evidence that was left at the scene, investigators were able to piece together that
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  the woman had been strangled to death. The man had been bound, gagged,
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  and beaten until he died too he'd probably been beaten because he'd been trying
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  to protect and save the woman. Both victims had died at the scene,
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  and their remains had been left to slowly decompose only a few feet away from
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  each other, and autopsy revealed that they had probably been killed somewhere between a
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  week to a few months before they had been discovered. Attempts to identify the
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  couple, including through facial reconstructions, came back empty handed, and it was
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  only forty years later that the truth was finally revealed. Dean and Tina Claus
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  had died in the forests of Harris County back in nineteen eighty, and they
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  had been too new to the community for anyone to know them or even noticed
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  that they were gone. They were buried as John and Jane Doe in Harris
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  County Cemetery. It was only when DNA tests of their remains came back with
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  some hits decades later that the fate of this young couple came closer to the
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  light. Dean Klaus's DNA was a close match to several others within the forensic
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  databases in Kentucky following the family tree, Misty Gillis and Alison Peacock then made
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  a call to Debbie Brooks and asked if she had any family members go missing
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  back in the eighties. It turned out that Debbie Brooks was Dean's sister.
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  After forty years and only ten days of DNA investigation, Romeo had been identified
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  as Dean Klaus, and it was very shortly after that that Juliette was found
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  to be his wife Tina. Their families came out to Harris County, both
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  to visit Dean and Tina's grave and to see the place where they had been
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  murdered. It was only then that Dean's mother gave up hope that her son
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  was still alive. Now with their victims finally identified, a new investigation was
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  opened with the hopes of finally Dean and Tina's killers, but the detectives quickly
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  hit a snack. Still riding the high of providing a family who had gone
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  with nothing for over forty years with answers, Alison Peacock found herself stumped when
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  Debbie Brooks asked if anyone had found the baby what baby, Alison asked back.
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  It was only then that the authorities found out about Holly, and with
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  that came a fresh batch of startling and chilling questions. Whoever had killed her
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  parents killed Holly as well? Had her body maybe been snatched away and eaten
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  by wildlife in the forest. Has she been kidnapped and trafficked and lived the
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  life of misery and exploitation for the last forty years. A widespread effort and
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  search was put into place to find Holly. If she was still alive,
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  chances are that she would have no idea who she really was, or that
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  she had a family out there that were looking for her. Against all odds,
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  On June seventh, twenty twenty two, on Dean's birthday, Holly was
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  found. She was alive and well, and had been this whole time.
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  One of the clues came when the investigation was refused the right to see Holly's
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  birth certificate because she'd been adopted, which then led them to a church in
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  Oklahoma where Holly had been dropped off all those years ago. The pastor,
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  who would later turn out to be the man who'd adopted Holly, remembers two
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  young women barefoot and wearing white dresses, leaving Holly at the church that day
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  with her actual birth certificate. They also had with them signed documentation where Dean
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  had allegedly given over his parental rights, meaning that Holly was free to be
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  adopted. There was a similar story of women in white dresses abandoning a child
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  at a laundrymat as well. Holly had lived her life not knowing how the
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  women in the white dresses obtained her that day. But Dean's family had an
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  inkling. When Dean had been a teenager, he was interested in religious groups
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  colts more than likely being the more appropriate term. His mother had even come
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  home one time to find Dean sitting in the kitchen talking to two bearded men
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  in white robes who referred to each other as brothers. Sometimes Dean would go
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  off with these brothers, who supposedly belonged to a nomadic religious group who believed
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  in male female separation and vegetarianism, amongst other things. But the point was
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  that Dean always came home afterwards, and when Dean met Tina, he'd stop
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  going out with the brothers altogether. But back in December nineteen eighty, right
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  before Dean's mother reported the young family as missing, a woman calling herself sister
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  Susan reached out to Dean's family and said that she wanted to meet with them.
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  The meeting came with a lot of conditions. They were only to meet
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  at night, and even though there were several members in white robes present,
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  the family could only speak with Sister Susan. It was there that Sister Susan
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  told Dean's family that Dean and Tina had joined their religious group and they were
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  cutting ties with their worldly families. They wouldn't be reaching out again, and
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  if the family ever tried to contact either of them, they wouldn't be getting
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  an answer. To prove that Dean and Tina were serious about not wanting to
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  ever see their families again, they were returning the car that Dean had borrowed
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  from his mother. Both families were unconvinced and made several attempts to get law
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  enforcement to look into the situation more seriously, including trying to file missing persons
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  reports. It was decades later, on her biological father's birthday, that Holly
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  sat down on Zoom to speak with the people who had been holding on hope
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  of one day finding her. She has her mother's smile and her voice to
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  the tea. She's soft, yeah, very soft spoken. Dean's mother,
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  Donna, later told the press, I just wanted to get up and hug
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  her so bad. Holly and her remaining family got their wish a year later,
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  after fundraising efforts were able to sponsor trip down to Florida for Holly to
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  meet everyone in person. That's ten Minute Murder for today brief and bingeable true
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  crime. My name is Joe. I'm the host, and thank you so
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• 11:41
  me an email Joe at ten minute Murder dot com. And I've gotten a
• 11:46
  couple of emails recently basically asking the same question, and it's not exactly a
• 11:52
  normal question, so it makes me think they're probably from the same person on
• 11:56
  a couple of different accounts, which is cool. Might mean that they don't
• 12:01
  want their identity to be mentioned here, so I'm not going to say it,
• 12:03
  but they asked if they happened to see me out in public somewhere.
• 12:07
  Is it cool to come up to me and say hello? Now, Like
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  I said, it's not really a normal question because my instinct is like,
• 12:15
  yeah, of course, come say hi. However, because of the subject
• 12:18
  matter of this podcast, that might make me a little nervous. I talk
• 12:22
  about murders here, and who knows who I've pissed off in the process of
• 12:26
  doing that. So I'll say yes, but with this caveat, approach me
• 12:31
  like you would a stray animal, very slowly and low key. I might
• 12:35
  get skittish and run off in the woods if you come in hot. If
• 12:39
  I did a podcast talking about nearly anything else, it would be cool,
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  but no offense to any weirdos listening. There are some weirdos out there.
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  You just never know who's approaching you. So that's going to do it.
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  That's your episode for today. Thank you for listening to ten minute Murder,
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  and maybe have like a snack or something, a cup of coffee, that'd
• 12:58
  be great.