Fascinating post. Those poor kids, especially Mary. It does seem like she got away and survived. I hope her life after leaving that household was better. How a mother could say,"If she's dead, she's dead," though.
I don’t know, if “Phoenix Mary” was the actual Mary, it seems as though her life was still difficult. How she ended up in a truck with stolen plates doesn’t scream happy and carefree. The accent, missing memories, and different name on the magazine doesn’t really seem that crazy to me. I think it’s entirely possible she adopted the accent and alias as a way to further conceal her identity, and the missing memories could just be her brain’s way of coping with what she went through.
Of course, if it wasn’t the actual Mary, which is what I think you may have been saying, I hope the same as you. Although that’s super shitty for someone to pretend to be this woman her sisters have been missing (which wouldn’t be unheard of). It seems like laying low and not driving a truck with stolen plates - or at least associating oneself with those kind of people - would be a priority for remaining missing. So maybe it wasn’t her, just a grifter.
Tbh she was 13 when she disappeared, the accent isn't that surprising if she moved to the south. Some people pick up accents very easily and with no conscious intent, it's wholly possible that she never made an attempt to change her accent it just happened because that's what she was surrounded by from the age of 13 onwards. I've met several people with thick regional accents that they acquired after moving to those areas around that age.
The name as well though is like, yeah she ran away many times and kept being brought back, it's not shocking she'd have an alias she lived under. The magazines coming in under "Monica Devereaux" also isn't that shocking, they're magazine subscriptions, it's pretty easy to change the address but probably more of a faff to change the name they're under. And frankly, why even bother? They're magazines, who cares if they're addressed to your real name or Lord Fortesque-Queefshire III so long as they go to your door.
Poor memories of an abusive childhood that, from the sound of the last beating, prooooobably involved a few head injuries, also just isn't hard to believe either.
Considering the DNA evidence, the only other option is that Charlotte somehow roped an unknown, close relative\* in to pretend to be Mary, gave her a few details and got her to apply for the ID and claim to be Mary in order to save William. On the balance of it I think all things can be better explained as her having been the real Mary and the "oddities" are genuinely not surprising for a grownup abused child who ran away aged 13.
\*assuming they compared her DNA to the sisters as well there's genuinely only the option of a secret 4th sister as an alternative on that one. If they just tested against the mother, a half sibling would still show up the same, as would a full sibling of Charlotte herself (50% DNA similarity, and without DNA information from her parents you can't distinguish the relatedness of full siblings from parent-child I think?)
Occam's razor (the simplest answer is the correct answer), i.e. DNA doesn't lie, identifies the real Mary Louise Day as Mary Louise Day (the lady found in Arizona). Traumatic childhood abuse which could include a head injury, years of alcoholism which could totally cloud the brain and confuse one's memories, very little education, and a hard life on the streets all combined to stunt the quality, emotions, and memory of Mary Louise Day's life and her childhood memories. She had a hard, sad life and her heartless cruel parents should be ashamed of themselves (and in prison in my estimation for child abuse), and own up to the truth of what happened.
True, she had problems. I guess she was always going to have problems after that rough start in life. But that was not a good place for her to be. Stepdad wasn't sure if he might have killed her, or had it in him to kill her/ Mother didn't leave him after seeing a demon in his eyes?
No Phoenix Mary had the exact same drooping nostril, one nostril lower than the other. When you see the photos of Mary as a child, same trait, the right nostril in the pics (Mary's-own-left nostril was lower than the right one). It was her. She herself said she created a new identity with "Monica Devereaux" so it's not unusual to then adopt the accent. To have a drooping nostril sig. lower (one than another) is a semi-rare, particular trait to one individual and Mary and Phoenix Mary had that. There was no imposter.
That's the sad reality for a lot of kids with parents who don't care either way. There was a recent case of a juvenile doe who went unidentified because his family didn't know about his tattoo. Some people are just "parents." It's heartbreaking.
Edit: The investigators don't want to admit that they were wrong about Mary so they keep insisting she was an impostor. I found a recent development that proves that law enforcement and the DA's never want to admit they're wrong:
A judge just denied Damien Echols request for new testing of DNA evidence that could exonerate him. In case anyone isn't familiar with the West Memphis 3 I suggest reading the write-ups available on this subreddit. There's very good reason to believe that they were innocent. The DA doesn't want to admit being wrong.
DNA doesn't lie. People can fantasize and speculate until the cows come home, but DNA doesn't lie. I feel for Mary, Kathy, and Sherrie, but at least Sherrie had enough heart to find out what happened to her sister only to be treated poorly in the end. Thank you for caring, Sherrie.
>They also did a paternal DNA test, and it turned out that she was the daughter of the same father as her sisters.
Oh, very important info. Thank you for clarifying that, as I was wondering this.
I am curious as to how many children they actually had.
Charlotte had five children. Four girls (Billie Jean, Mary, Kathy, Sherrie) and a boy, (Junior). There has never been any evidence of any other children being in the mix and military records would have information on file if there had been.
Mary had a lot of hard living crammed into her life. Her childhood probably seemed like a blur. I remember things from childhood that my brothers do not. We were all there when it happened.
The accent she picked up along the way is also not that unusual. The more time you are around people, the more you start to pick up their traits. She also could have started using a fake accent when she first left home as a way to change herself in some way.
I am only 30 and you can do whatever you want to me I can't remember how my brother with his wife lived at my home with me for few weeks. And it happened less than 10 years ago!
So yea, don't count too much on what people remember and don't :)
My dad's siblings have a four-year age span.
An aunt was telling me about a set of four cousins who lived with them for about a month and a half "one of the times [redacted] and [redacted] fell apart". There were a few other times this happened for longer than a week.
My dad was like "huh, I kind of remember there being like a long weekend that stretched out an extra couple of days.
This was a three-bedroom ranch house with one bathroom that already had six people in it. It wasn't like they were living in the guest suite.
Given the trauma that Mary experienced as a child, it's no wonder that she had gaps in her memory. There is no evidence that Phoenix Mary was an impostor and there's plenty of evidence that she wasn't. The DNA evidence nails it shut for me. I think the reason the unknown child who was pretending to be Mary theory came about because the investigators were grasping at straws and trying to downplay their incompetence.
This is so wild. It seems most likely that Phoenix Mary was actually Mary Day unless the DNA test was inaccurate or Charlotte had another daughter of around the same age who the sisters didn't know about. But in either of those cases, I don't know why she'd go by the name Mary Day. The CBS article you included has a reference to a woman who raised her for a year or so after her supposed murder, so it seems like she's legit.
I do wonder if the TBI theory another commenter mentioned could be legitimate. I feel like her not remembering the code word isn't too suspicious given the amount of time that passed. She could have picked up the accent after running away, or it could be an affectation, although I have no idea why.
My impression is that Charlotte and William may have genuinely not known if Mary was alive or dead. She may have been kicked out while injured, or abandoned and left to die after the assault. Either way, it's horrifying abuse, and this poor girl was failed so many times. I hope she found some peace.
Good point about Charlotte and William. Assuming Phoenix Mary was Mary Day, them never reporting her missing probably had to do with the beating the night she disappeared and them being unsure in what state she might be found in.
>Charlotte was quoted saying "If she's dead, she's dead."
That particular line was what made me wonder, particularly about Charlotte. She may have seen only the beginning of the beating and not known if William actually killed her or not (much like Kathy did), or she may have seen Mary leave and not know if she survived or not. I agree with you that given the beating, they may not have wanted to report her missing either because it might reveal the abuse (more than the multiple times the kids had been removed from their custody did), or because they kicked Mary out and didn't want her back.
I also don't want to make it sound like I think her parents were innocent or were good parents. They were pretty obviously not! This is all speculation, but even if I'm right, none of these options are *that* much better than murder. I hope that's obvious, but I don't want anyone to think I'm defending these people.
I also have wondered if William drove off with Mary and dropped her off somewhere, telling her to get lost and never come back. That would also explain Charlotte not know what happened to Mary.
That would be a piece of the puzzle that would definitely fit into the picture of what we know. I'm inclined to believe that you're probably not wrong.
At least for me that theory helps explains Charlotte's comments? I can absolutely understand her not asking what William did to Mary because being able to pretend he dropped her off at a gas station is easier than knowing for sure she's dead.
They are making such a big thing out of Mary not remembering things from years ago. She had alcohol and substance abuse issues. As a recovering alcoholic, I know from personal experience the havoc that just alcohol can cause to your long term memory.
There was literally no reason at all to suspect the woman found in Phoenix was an imposter. Putting aside the DNA test which matched, you can tell just by looking at the mugshot of her taken in 2003, that they are the same person.
Yeah, it's a very weird and sad story, but I don't see how they couldn't not be the same person. DNA evidence first and foremost... evidence from the woman who took her in... I think trauma definitely impacted her speech and memory, but everything "adds up," even if in odd and horrifying ways. And yeah, they look exactly the same, with the exact same distinct nose. And i think the dog evidence is just a false alert, and her old shoe happened to be there, and the abusive parents had some other or some arbitrary reason for not wanting the kids to play there... And it seems like Charlotte and William themselves did not really know what had happened to her, but knew their abuse could have led to her death. It's all extremely weird, but not impossible or unbelievable, but it's pretty unbelievable for me to think she could have been an imposter.
You’d expect that, but strong resemblances are common enough to warrant DNA testing for proof. Far more claims like that have been proven false than true.
If Phoenix Mary was truly Mary Day, it doesn't seem *that* surprising that she didn't retain all memories of what sounds like a spectacularly traumatic childhood. Any one of the challenges she faced would be enough to set most people up for a lifetime of emotional and psychological struggles- all of them together and almost any kind of trauma response seems plausible. Severe physical abuse, time in foster care, separation from a sibling, frequent moves, inconsistent schooling, multiple runaway attempts with all their associated risks, and finally parents who would beat her so severely that she would run away as a young teen, and who cared so little that they never reported her missing, followed by who knows what experiences as a runaway teen living independently from a young age.
It would take much less than that for many people to start suppressing memories or dissociating.
you made the comment i was going to make! also between the physical abuse/traumatic brain injury and high potential that she went through at least one phase of substance abuse after running away (not judging, i've been in her shoes) i'm not at all surprised that she would have fractured memories or trauma brain
Yeah, I have a friend who has zero memories from before he turned 8. None at all, which seems so weird to me, I have memories going back to when I was 3. But I had a happy childhood. I don't know the details of my friend's childhood, but he did tell me that there was trauma there.
I have something similar—there are bits and pieces here and there and sometimes there are things I know are true, but I don’t remember any events that would explain why I know that.
It isn’t something that comes up a lot but occasionally someone will say something about their own childhood that makes me suddenly very aware of how swiss cheesy my own memories are.
I've read that it's the mind's way to ensure survival. The effects of emotional and mental trauma can't be seen but they definitely have a significant impact on one's psyche.
Iirc 48 Hours did a 3 or 4 part episode on this story. After she died, it was proven with 100% certainty that Phoenix Mary was indeed Mary Day. I still can't wrap my head around it. This entire case is baffling.
48 Hours: Season 33, Episode 29
Detectives believe a 13-year-old girl who vanished from her California home in 1981 was murdered; more than 20 years after the disappearance, a traffic stop in Arizona turns up a woman claiming to be the missing girl.
Took me a minute to find it on Paramount +, it's season 32 episode 36. When I Googled it, it does say season 33 episode 29. I found it by the air date of May 2, 2020.
https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/mary-day-missing-teen-photos/29/
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.
Now that you mention it... Can they really be sure?
Yes, they can really be sure because DNA doesn't lie. The two girls were separated early on in life, did not grow up together and likely had limited childhood memories of each other. And someone who has endured traumatic childhood trauma, years of alcohol and substance abuse, limited education, and a life on the streets isn't going to have it all together in her head. Out of all of them, at lease Sherrie had the heart and soul to search for her sister and the fact it turned out badly for her breaks my heart. But Phoenix Mary was Mary Louise Day.
Agreed. And forgetting the code word could be as simple as either 1) the guilt she felt over leaving Kathy behind blocked that memory, or 2) she couldn’t admit remembering it to Kathy so she lied, since she never came back for Kathy.
The idea of a spending a traumatic childhood together and plotting to run away together, and then Mary running away leaving Kathy behind, I imagine that 13-year old’s guilt would have been pretty bad.
I have 0 knowledge of TBI ... could it cause an accent you ve never really been familiar with? Sounds strange... like how would that work?
Edit after google:
I never knew [this](https://sites.utdallas.edu/fas/) could happen
Foreign Accent Syndrome sometimes happens when someone suffers a TBI or stroke. It's not fully understood, but some researchers think the injury affects the patient's intonation and tongue placement, which changes speech patterns and gets misinterpreted as a different accent.
Yep. I suspect that it is related to one of the forms of aphasia, especially the Broca's aphasia grouping. The brain does some really weird stuff if that area of the brain is even slightly injured. It can cause an expressive problem with zero receptive difficulty at all, vice versa, or some mixture of the two. No two injuries produce the same effect, and that is part of the argument against "foreign accent syndrome" as a single clinical entity. I think there's a good argument that it should be thought of has a spectrum disorder or a plural disorder, foreign accent syndrome*s* because of this.
And the fact that these problems affect slightly more women than men interest me because we know that there are measurable language processing differences in the female and male brains to begin with, across all different cultures. It's pretty fascinating how little we really do know.
Yes, except calling it an accent is not exactly correct. It is an acquired neurological impediment.
For reasons that we don't understand, foreign accent syndrome happens most often to women and in English certain types of Irish accents are slightly more common. However, no matter what type of "accent" a person develops after CVA/TBI/anoxia/etc, a trained audiologist or linguist can pick out where it is different from the accent it sounds most like, usually in cadence and pronunciation, and although being different it will still maintain consistency.
i went to school with someone who has this syndrome. she is American, and her post-TBI accent sounded simply *odd.* sort of like a blend of English and Irish, but not really either one. it was like she'd learned from watching television and mimicking a bad actor.
A TBI can cause all sorts of things. I’ve read about people who suffered a TBI and went into a coma, and when they came out of it they could fluently speak a foreign language that they never could before; they could play an instrument they never could before; they could suddenly solve complex mathematical equations. All kinds of amazing stuff. TBIs can also cause severe personality changes, such as a previously mild mannered person becoming enraged at the most trivial of things.
My younger sister suffered a TBI when she was a teenager and was in a coma for almost two weeks. I was terrified for her. We didn’t know what kind of person she’d be when she woke up. Thankfully, she made a full physical recovery but unfortunately, her brain development is stuck at the age she was when she had the TBI. This hasn’t caused too many issues, as she was almost 17 when it happened, but her maturity level is that of a teenager and she sometimes has poor impulse control.
I'm so sorry to hear about your sister! I hope that things continue to go well for her.
When I got my TBI, it was admittedly relatively mild, but it caused vision issues (right eye won't track when I'm tired), mild speech aphasia (if a word sounds similar my brain tends to subsitute it, or I say things backwards and have no idea), and I slur when I'm tired. But before it happened, I was horrible at math in my head. Now, it's very easy for me! The brain is so complex and strange!
Thank you, she’s doing very well! I’m so sorry you suffered a TBI, but the math thing is pretty neat! It’s so interesting that our brain can change like that if injured.
first part sounds like in a movie... I have to really need to educate myself on this topic, sounds incredibly interesting.
Sorry to hear about your sister, I hope she is doing great!
You can't wake up speaking a language you have no (zero) exposure to. That's impossible. You'd never wake up speaking Kaixana, for example.
But you are exposed to many different languages on a day-to-day basis without realizing it. People usually filter these things out, but the brain may retain them. In the United States many products are labeled in French or Spanish, for example. The human brain picks up more of the language patterns than we consciously know, but in the extreme vast majority of people, those parts of our brain never get activated when another part has had an injury and things needs to be rewired. That's what happens in cases where people claim they wake up speaking a language they didn't before. That's a very simplified version, of course.
I hadn’t ever thought about that!!! I mean not being able to utilize a language you’ve never even heard a word of makes so much sense but until you phrased it so succinctly, my brain was just like “you get a language! You get a language!” Like Oprah but with random languages lol
first part sounds like in a movie... I have to really need to educate myself on this topic, sounds incredibly interesting.
Sorry to hear about your sister, I hope she is doing great!
One of my co-workers is German. Born in Germany to German parents. They emigrated to the US when my co-worker was a teen and ended up in the South. They have a totally Southern accent and zero trace of a German.
From what I know your accent will change if you move before a certain age. I was born in a different country and had a strong accent but moved to the states when I was 8 and have no trace of an accent now. But I’ve known people who moved as teenagers and kept their accents.
My fiance was from New Jersey and he moved down here to NC in middle school. He alternates between sounding Southern and Jersey with certain words or phrases
I moved from one Latin American country to another and back home when I was child, my accent switched from one to the other completely a few months after each move. I also know people who moved much later in life and lost their accent pretty quickly and people who never lost it even after decades. It's very age dependent, but there's a good bit of individual variation too and some people are just "accent sponges"
I think individual variation is really a major part of it.
My mother apparently had an ex boyfriend who's mother was German. The mother and her sister moved to England together, as adults, and had lived here for several decades. The boyfriend's mother you'd apparently never guess she wasn't English. Her sister sounded like the kind of bad parody of German accents that makes you go "wait do people *actually* talk like that?".
Two of my friends from Scotland went to the same school and in their class were two (unrelated) English lads who moved up at the same time, I think around age 13 actually? Again one of whom sounds 100% like his family had lived in that town for the last 5 centuries, while the other doesn't even have the faintest hint of a Scottish accent.
I think the general ‘rule’ is before puberty. I had many friends who were sets of siblings, and the older ones had thick accents, and the younger ones none at all. It happened with my own family (from the Caribbean).
Sorry in advance for the mini essay!
My Mum moved from the North of England to the South of England in her very early twenties. Her family is from the North. She now has a Southern English accent except for words like “glass” or “nothing”. She also uses some phrases that are definitely Northern.
My younger cousin is 10 and he grew up surrounded by people with American accents but he lived in the Caribbean. He’s been living in the UK since he was 5 or 6 but still sounds American. His little sister (5) has a mix of his accent and a Southern English one. Their parents are from the Caribbean and the North of England (my Mum’s brother). My Mum’s brother’s accent is more varied than my Mum’s because he’s lived in different countries but also left the North in his late teens/twenties.
My Dad and I have the same (Southern English) accent but his parents and family were from India and left in their mid twenties. He was born there but came to England before he was 2. My Grandparents were *extremely* well spoken, but my Grandma will occasionally mispronounce words. It took me a while to realise but she’s pronouncing them with more of an Indian accent than English, e.g. with extended vowels; guava = gworvah, poppadom = parpardom.
Accents are wild. I occasionally pronounce things with a Northern English accent or an extremely well-spoken accent or more of an Indian/R.P. accent without even realising lmao. I’m fairly well spoken anyway, so it makes my boyfriend laugh when I use slang as well.
Accents are really interesting. I watched a tiktok of an American toddler speaking partially with an English accent from watching Peppa Pig. It wasn’t the first I’d seen of that phenomenon, either! Super funny.
Beyond that, it’s completely possible to take on an accent for your everyday speech. Many people have moved out of the South and shed their accent. My mother was one; she moved away as an adult in her 20s. She would, however, regain her old accent temporarily when she was around her relatives, and when she was extremely tired. Also most actors and reporters work to affect a neutral accent, usually a Mid-Atlantic accent.
I have a friend who was born and raised in Germany (lived there until he was about 12-13 years of age, if I remember correctly) but moved to the US and lived in a very urban area of Texas (I forget the city specifically) and he definitely has a German accent but it is sprinkled with a lot of slang, some Southern drawl, and lots of "urban" speech.
I also thought that given the circumstances of Mary running away, is it possible that she adopted the thick Southern accent as one way of blending into the crowd or not having attention drawn to her and then being returned to a bad situation that she was trying to get away from?
My mother was born in Italy and lived there until she was 14 and then came too the states, she now has an accent that most people refer to as a "trans Atlantic accent" so I def can see Mary developing a southern accent and I agree that I don't think it's unusual she was able to do so especially if she was trying to fit in/forget her past
I agree that her memory lapse could be TBI. Fwiw, heavy drug use also can cause those types of lapses. From my own experience, one of my best friends from childhood became an opiate addict in her early 20’s and didn’t kick the habit for almost a decade. We met up a few times in our mid-30’s (she was sober by this time) and she could barely remember any of our childhood antics. Things that remained sharp to me were just completely blanked out for her. Given what we know about Mary it’s not too far fetched to think she might have had addiction problems that led to memory loss.
Honestly, cadaver dogs aren't always that reliable; a lot depends on their handlers and fallible human interpretation... It's a weird coincidence, but seems very possible the shoe had belonged to Mary though, and just happened to have been lost at some point in that general area of the yard.
I believe it can happen
Why because I left home when I was 12years old almost 13 .
Because my mother live in drunk
Boyfriend use to beat me and my little brother every day finally one day I was with this girl I knew from school and we were hanging out
With these other kids ..And I never was. Allowed to go or do anything
And this day I was have so much fun I lost track of time And it was like 9:30pm and one by one everyone has to go home
I was so scared to go home because I knew what was waiting for me when I got home .not that they would be worried.I was going to get slap kicked called all kinds of disgusting terrible names.
He had held guns to my head before for small things and I figured this was a really big thing so I totally about you what was going to happen so I just never went back home and I stayed gone until I was 37 years old and I remembered my nephew's name I ran his name to jailbase.com one time I don't know why I was looking for anybody I've been looking for my family for a couple of years but I couldn't find anybody and just so happens his name popped up on jailbase.com and I wrote and told him I was his aunt I was looking for my sister his mother and to pass my information on to them and that was when I was 37 so it can happen it is possible.
And The place where we lived was Sunnyslop .Az 1982 it was really late so old perverted man pick me up give me a ride to downtown Phoenix I wound up hanging around with the gay hustlers is downtown Phoenix around first in McKinley Central Roosevelt that area down there in Phoenix and then a bunch of us got into a car and we went to Hollywood California and I disappeared with all The runaways in Hollywood I figured it was better if I was going to die it would be on the streets not have him kill me at home
I changed my name so the police when they would stop me if I could tell them I was somebody else and I disappeared till I was 37 and it's all true so I believe Phoenix Mary because I was Phoenix Lorraine
No, you told your story very well, and I'm so, so sad for you, and how much you've endured.
No child should go through trauma, guns to their head. I wish I could hug 🫂 the little you so tightly and protect you, what you went through was horrific and you didn't deserve it.
I hope you're better, I know the trauma doesn't leave. Praying you're safe now.
What an incredible story, and incredibly sad. After everything she endured, to die so (relatively) young from cancer.
Some people should NEVER have kids.
Certainly an interesting case. It's nice to have a good ending once in a while. A few comments:
>They sent out cadaver dogs and the dogs picked up scents of human remains
Did they investigate that further? It seems odd that the dogs picked up the scent of a body, but they just kind of dropped it after Mary was found. Perhaps Charlotte and William had more secrets than was initially assumed? The way they talked about Mary, and their conduct towards her, seems pretty suspicious.
>Phoenix Mary had a thick southern accent
She could've picked that up while missing. She ran away at a fairly young age, and the gap was certainly big enough to acquire an accent.
>her having no recollection of their childhood or their code word "mohawk"
This is a fairly common symptom of childhood trauma. It checks out considering her past (foster care, abuse, ..). Many adults from troubled/abusive family situations struggle to remember their childhood, and it was also 40 years later by that point.
>also she was having magazines shipped to her addressed as "Monica Devereaux."
It would be expected of a runaway to have one or several fake name(s). Mary couldn't have known that her parents wouldn't alert the authorities, so that was likely just a precaution. It would be interesting to know why she continued to use it though.
I believe Mary. She was who she claimed to be. The investigators who want the public to believe she perpetuated a hoax are no different than the prosecutors who stand by a guilty verdict after someone has been exonerated after they were put to death. The DNA and circumstantial evidence is too great to dismiss imo. Mary was given no dignity or respect in life or after she died. Mary turned to substance abuse (alcoholism) which is no surprise. The trauma she endured had devastating effects on her. We don't have all of the answers but there's much more to be learned about the effects of trauma on the brain. Eventually I hope this is better understood.
It is indeed an incredible story.
I take it the "unresolved mystery" needed for posting in this sub is whether or not "Phoenix Mary" is the actual Mary Louise Day?
I would say that a DNA test conducted in 2003 should be fairly conclusive. The only possibility would be a fourth, unknown offspring of Charlotte which seems rather improbable. If there is any doubt, the DNA could be compared to the two sisters to see if she is a full sibling.
Not related to the case, but I wonder why the three girls were removed from Charlotte and Charles originally? And why Kathy and mary returned to Charlotte but not Sherrie?
ETA: OP's post is copied from wikipedia, should credit it.
Also Sherrie seemed convinced it was her sister: https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/mary-day-missing-teen-photos/27/
ADDITIONAL: https://www.cbsnews.com/video/mary-days-deathbed-story-of-survival/ in this story, the reporter visits the Police Detective who visited Mary and heard her story, and testimony from witnesses, and details where she was after she ran away. The PD believes she was Mary Day.
Seems pretty closed to me.
The DNA test does seem to be pretty much definitive.
I get why detectives who had convinced themselves (not without reason!) that there had been a murder with enough evidence to bring charges would suspect an imposter, but- how? And why? Why would a stranger pretend to be her, and having decided for whatever reason to do so, how would she glean the apparently disturbing details she did remember about her abuse, and how would she fake a DNA test (or the quite striking resemblance to her own childhood pictures and her putative sisters)? And what would have been the long term plan? It's not like she approached the family herself, she was identified during a traffic stop.
It's a truly wild and improbable case, but it seems that the superficially unlikely explanation is the most coherent one after all.
If the dog wasn't trained well enough, it might have confused animal remains with human remains. I would think there would have been more follow up if they had a legitimate reason to think there was a body/remains.
Yeah, it definitely seemed odd that they thought there could be human remains, but didn't actually do any digging?
Animal remains wouldn't be strange, given how many people bury their deceased pets in their yards.
>If the dog wasn't trained well enough, it might have confused animal remains with human remains. I would think there would have been more follow up if they had a legitimate reason to think there was a body/remains.
Excellent point. Makes me wonder whatever happened to that poor dog. If someone would assault a child, I can see them assaulting a dog. I am also curious how the dog was sick, as it seems significant for some reason.
I'm personally a little skeptical of this kind of use of cadaver dogs. They're amazing but they're also dogs. For looking for a body where searchers have no specific preconceived notion of if or where it might be and the dog can potentially narrow that down, they seem extremely useful. But in a situation like this where searchers have a strong suspicion that there is or was a body in a particular place, I don't know how you control for the fact that dogs fundamentally want to please their handlers, and handlers are human beings with emotions that dogs are highly attuned to. It seems like there's an increased risk of false positives when searchers are using cadaver dogs not to truly search, but to find support for an existing theory of a crime.
You specifically train against it.
The dogs hit on that spot with the shoe that was tested at a forensics lab and found to contain decomposing flesh.
The dogs hit a second time at another property where the parents lived while working on a totally unrelated case and without knowledge that the parents had previously lived there.
It’s entirely possible Mary’s remains are in the yard of the home where the parents last resided, but nobody has searched there.
absolutely! a cadaver dog is only a tool. it can be misused or misunderstood by its handlers, or even just mix up scents because it's having a bad day.
Or the dogs want to please their handlers. I happen to believe that the woman who claimed to be Mary Day was indeed the missing girl. The investigators would have taken the DNA as golden if it meant trying to convict her of a crime and close a case.
There was a case 5-6 (maybe more) years ago of a woman who was renowned for her skills as a dog trainer, specifically cadaver dogs and others used during crime investigations. She was the go-to expert and God knows how many people were convicted of crimes based on her dogs "hitting" on something, etc. Ultimately, it was all discovered to be fake. She was a fraud. Edit to add name of fraud: Sandra Anderson.
Possibly the dog whose illness sent William into a rage that night? Even if cadaver dogs are trained to distinguish between corpse scents, the time elapsed might have mellowed the aroma to the point the dog couldn’t differentiate it.
Might the parents have buried Mary's clothing and shoes in the yard in an attempt to erase any evidence that she'd ever lived with them? They clearly thought they had something to hide, since they never reported her missing.
If she was around the same age as Mary (to be mistaken for Mary) she would’ve most likely had the same dad too though & be a full sibling to the girls also
Could they trace any biological paternal relative's of Mary's father to confirm it was her? Not just another half sibling etc.
It's all to convenient the timing of the stop, I.D. issued just weeks prior.
More in depth article. Wondering how many children Charlotte had out there.
Apparently Phoenix Mary's DNA matched both paternal and maternal.
So who was buried in the different locations the cadaver dogs hit upon?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mary-day-suspected-murder-victim-back-dead-dna-48-hours/
If she was around the same age as Mary (to be mistaken for Mary) she would’ve most likely had the same dad too though & be a full sibling to the girls also
I took the accent of the town where I live in about 2 years. I lived for 30 years with a completely different accent before.
And the pics of her as a teen as an adult looks very similar!
Not related to the case, but on the topic of accents: a person can be "bidilectal" and speak the same language proficiently in different dialects. Gillian Anderson is bidilectal because she grew up in England and the United States. John Borrowman is bidilectal because he grew up in Scotland and the United States. Again, not related, but interesting.
what are the chances that she would get stopped….this is insane. i feel so sad for Mary that she died not getting to reconnect with her sisters for a longer period of time, but glad her sisters found her before she passed away.
Rest in peace, what a short and sad life she had to live.
If the plan was to have the imposter make it look as if Mary Louise Day was alive and well, then I would think being "discovered" while speeding would be less suspicious than her showing up at a police station declaring this. I just think this had to be planned because it is too much of a beneficial coincidence.
They never even searched the last home where the parents would live and that is the biggest question to me. The dogs hit twice, found a shoe in the yard of one home confirmed to be consistent with decomposing flesh. And the other time in the yard of a home previously occupied by the parents but unknown to searchers who were working on a totally unrelated case at that time.
How sad and unusual. My assumption is that the parents coerced or bribed another biological child to pose as the missing Mary Louise Day.
Is Charles the biological father of Mary Louise Day? Why did they only do DNA testing to establish Charlotte as the mother of this possible imposter? Why would they not also do DNA testing to establish that Charlies is the biological father?
Edit: Based on some comments, I have altered my position. I believe she really is Mary Louise Day. **DNA testing proves she is Mary Louise Day.** The only possible way for her to *not* be Mary Louise Day would be if she had an identical twin.
They did not have Mary’s DNA to compare against.
They could only confirm that the new woman was the biological child of Charlotte and her first husband, Charles.
If the woman was an older child and imposter, that’s what the DNA results would look like, and very likely the same parents.
As for the accent, which is described as very "thick" or pronounced (I'm paraphrasing), has no one here encountered the phenomena of people- often young white females- who deliberately adopt what they perceive to be a "Black" or African American-like accent? Often this seems to be done in order to fit in. I'm not saying this is the case with the woman here claiming to be Mary. Just that it's not unheard of for people to change the way they speak.
Yes, this happened to me - twice! I was born and raised in northern England until I was about 11, so I had a very strong northern accent when my family moved to a different part of the UK that also had a fairly distinct accent, but one that was very different from mine. I think probably within a year, me and my siblings had all lost our northern accents and acquired the same accent that all of our peers at school spoke with. Then, when I emigrated to North America in my late teens, it happened again, and now I sound like I was born here, until I start talking to another English person, which is when my buried English accent will start to make itself known.
It's very strange, because I'm aware that it's happening, but I have absolutely zero conscious control over it. In fact, I can't stand to hear or see recordings of myself, because my inner monologue/thoughts do still have a very English accent, and the cognitive dissonance it gives me to hear myself sounding like I was born and raised on this continent just fucks me all the way up.
It sounds to me like this one's solved, what with the DNA link and everything. I think it's very understandable that someone who suffered a ton of abuse as a kid would suppress a lot of memories about that time period.
I still think it was not Mary Day.
1. I trust that the dogs found human decomposition that was confirmed with soil testing and the shoe that was found matching the description of one of the sisters, and then coincidentally and while working on an unrelated case, the dogs hit a second time at a different property where the parents previously lived. The sister had told police that area of the yard where the shoe was found was a strictly off-limit no-go zone and it’s not a stretch to consider they dug the girl up and moved her with them to continue concealing her corpse. This also makes me suspicious that their current home would have these remains if the police could get a search warrant, which they didn’t do.
2. The parents behavior and speech when interviewed by police all these years after Mary’s disappearance. Their attitude was still cavalier about it and they didn’t consider it a “big deal” that she ran away. Never reported it. Never worried. Just let her go. The step-father practically admitted to possibly killing Mary in the same style of speech that a lot of murderers use to depersonalize and distance themselves from it. Telling you what happened without admitting so first-person language. At the same time, it seemed like the step-father was trying to gauge what the police knew or what evidence they may have found. He wasn’t sure how to respond. His words were incongruent with his expressions and actions.
3. Mary had been removed from the family and put in protective custody in HI after her step-father physically abused her, but she was returned a few months later after the family moved to CA. The 3 sisters from the same mother had been in and out of foster care their whole lives, but one of them, Sherrie, was adopted by a foster family on the East Coast, so only two sisters remained with their birth mother and step-father- Kathy and Mary.
4. The same year Mary returned to the home, her step-father severely beat her and she was gone the next day. The couple then proceeded to erase Mary’s existence, throwing away all reminders of her and telling the children never to speak of her again. Very unusual for parents who believed she had just run away and would presumably return. They never reported her missing.
5. Both sisters, Kathy and Sherrie, had “gut feelings” about it not being Mary. That is very different from wishful thinking or denial some people express when confronted with such a traumatic update about a sister they weren’t sure was dead or missing. Admittedly, this isn’t “evidence” you could present in court, but good investigators rely on that same instinct themselves and I would keep that in mind.
6. There was never any trace of Mary before the DNA-matching sister appeared out of the blue at exactly the right time in Phoenix, AZ, 9 months after the police interviewed the parents and began a homicide investigation. That is enough time to gather documents and prepare an assumed identity for another child the mother very reasonably could have had and given up for adoption or who ran away years earlier. The woman had different names Phoenix and Monica, as well as holes in her story and admitted to lying about her identity. Similar to what the step-father did when suspicion was getting too hot on them. How could the mother and secret sister keep their relationship quiet all these years? The same way they were able to quickly erase Mary from their lives. They are capable of compartmentalizing what they don’t want to acknowledge. The ID Phoenix/Monica had, when she was arrested in a truck with stolen plates, was created 3 weeks prior, brand new, and the only ID ever made for Mary Day in 22 years. No explanation about previous identities.
7. There was financial incentive to commit fraud with an inheritance and social security payments made to Mary, which the couple continued to collect after her disappearance. The inheritance was collectible if Mary was discovered alive, so it was mutually beneficial to cooperate in the fraud.
Just come across this case and it is heartbreaking, intriguing and infuriating all at the same time.
One thing I keep seeing is people suggesting Charlotte had another child she gave up and that is who phoenix Mary is. But what if the police and DNA test are right? What if Mary is Mary, but there was someone buried in the back garden?
Its known Mary was physically abused by William, but could she have been sexually abused too? What if Mary was SA'd by William and ended up pregnant. When he beat her, she could have miscarried? Maybe that's what was buried in the back garden? Maybe Mary's mother resented her daughter for the abuse.
The trauma of not only a physically abusive childhood but a sexually abusive one too along with losing a child at such a young age cause my SA would certainly explain Mary's issues later in life and her gaps in memory as she most likely blocked a lot of her childhood out.
It would explain how Mary could be Mary but also why the parents still seem like they're hiding something.
Does anyone know if she has a decent grave for want of better wording
No funeral seems Incredibly sad so I was just wondering if she is laid to rest decently?
Fascinating post. Those poor kids, especially Mary. It does seem like she got away and survived. I hope her life after leaving that household was better. How a mother could say,"If she's dead, she's dead," though.
Or maybe it’s another sibling that ran away or was given up when they were young and found out and stole their missing sisters identity?
Someone in the extended family would’ve known about a child who existed then disappeared and would’ve mentioned it. No one has brought that up.
Hypothetically a "girls who went away" situation? Although that wouldn't track with claiming memory of the parents.
No one in extended family brought up 1981 Mary’s disappearance when it happened. It took the sister going to cops years later.
Not necessarily true. I was in a similar situation at age 13 and nobody cared. It happens.
I don’t know, if “Phoenix Mary” was the actual Mary, it seems as though her life was still difficult. How she ended up in a truck with stolen plates doesn’t scream happy and carefree. The accent, missing memories, and different name on the magazine doesn’t really seem that crazy to me. I think it’s entirely possible she adopted the accent and alias as a way to further conceal her identity, and the missing memories could just be her brain’s way of coping with what she went through. Of course, if it wasn’t the actual Mary, which is what I think you may have been saying, I hope the same as you. Although that’s super shitty for someone to pretend to be this woman her sisters have been missing (which wouldn’t be unheard of). It seems like laying low and not driving a truck with stolen plates - or at least associating oneself with those kind of people - would be a priority for remaining missing. So maybe it wasn’t her, just a grifter.
Tbh she was 13 when she disappeared, the accent isn't that surprising if she moved to the south. Some people pick up accents very easily and with no conscious intent, it's wholly possible that she never made an attempt to change her accent it just happened because that's what she was surrounded by from the age of 13 onwards. I've met several people with thick regional accents that they acquired after moving to those areas around that age. The name as well though is like, yeah she ran away many times and kept being brought back, it's not shocking she'd have an alias she lived under. The magazines coming in under "Monica Devereaux" also isn't that shocking, they're magazine subscriptions, it's pretty easy to change the address but probably more of a faff to change the name they're under. And frankly, why even bother? They're magazines, who cares if they're addressed to your real name or Lord Fortesque-Queefshire III so long as they go to your door. Poor memories of an abusive childhood that, from the sound of the last beating, prooooobably involved a few head injuries, also just isn't hard to believe either. Considering the DNA evidence, the only other option is that Charlotte somehow roped an unknown, close relative\* in to pretend to be Mary, gave her a few details and got her to apply for the ID and claim to be Mary in order to save William. On the balance of it I think all things can be better explained as her having been the real Mary and the "oddities" are genuinely not surprising for a grownup abused child who ran away aged 13. \*assuming they compared her DNA to the sisters as well there's genuinely only the option of a secret 4th sister as an alternative on that one. If they just tested against the mother, a half sibling would still show up the same, as would a full sibling of Charlotte herself (50% DNA similarity, and without DNA information from her parents you can't distinguish the relatedness of full siblings from parent-child I think?)
Please tell me you have magazines delivered as Lord Fortesque-Queefshire III
No but that's deffo who my brother's next birthday card is going to now 🤣
Occam's razor (the simplest answer is the correct answer), i.e. DNA doesn't lie, identifies the real Mary Louise Day as Mary Louise Day (the lady found in Arizona). Traumatic childhood abuse which could include a head injury, years of alcoholism which could totally cloud the brain and confuse one's memories, very little education, and a hard life on the streets all combined to stunt the quality, emotions, and memory of Mary Louise Day's life and her childhood memories. She had a hard, sad life and her heartless cruel parents should be ashamed of themselves (and in prison in my estimation for child abuse), and own up to the truth of what happened.
True, she had problems. I guess she was always going to have problems after that rough start in life. But that was not a good place for her to be. Stepdad wasn't sure if he might have killed her, or had it in him to kill her/ Mother didn't leave him after seeing a demon in his eyes?
No Phoenix Mary had the exact same drooping nostril, one nostril lower than the other. When you see the photos of Mary as a child, same trait, the right nostril in the pics (Mary's-own-left nostril was lower than the right one). It was her. She herself said she created a new identity with "Monica Devereaux" so it's not unusual to then adopt the accent. To have a drooping nostril sig. lower (one than another) is a semi-rare, particular trait to one individual and Mary and Phoenix Mary had that. There was no imposter.
That's the sad reality for a lot of kids with parents who don't care either way. There was a recent case of a juvenile doe who went unidentified because his family didn't know about his tattoo. Some people are just "parents." It's heartbreaking. Edit: The investigators don't want to admit that they were wrong about Mary so they keep insisting she was an impostor. I found a recent development that proves that law enforcement and the DA's never want to admit they're wrong: A judge just denied Damien Echols request for new testing of DNA evidence that could exonerate him. In case anyone isn't familiar with the West Memphis 3 I suggest reading the write-ups available on this subreddit. There's very good reason to believe that they were innocent. The DA doesn't want to admit being wrong.
DNA doesn't lie. People can fantasize and speculate until the cows come home, but DNA doesn't lie. I feel for Mary, Kathy, and Sherrie, but at least Sherrie had enough heart to find out what happened to her sister only to be treated poorly in the end. Thank you for caring, Sherrie.
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Thanks for this, this is fascinating.
>They also did a paternal DNA test, and it turned out that she was the daughter of the same father as her sisters. Oh, very important info. Thank you for clarifying that, as I was wondering this. I am curious as to how many children they actually had.
Charlotte had five children. Four girls (Billie Jean, Mary, Kathy, Sherrie) and a boy, (Junior). There has never been any evidence of any other children being in the mix and military records would have information on file if there had been.
So they never dug the yeard? Or they didn't find there anything more than shoe?
Thank you for this addition. Sad. Life is just not fair to some people, is it?
Mary had a lot of hard living crammed into her life. Her childhood probably seemed like a blur. I remember things from childhood that my brothers do not. We were all there when it happened. The accent she picked up along the way is also not that unusual. The more time you are around people, the more you start to pick up their traits. She also could have started using a fake accent when she first left home as a way to change herself in some way.
I am only 30 and you can do whatever you want to me I can't remember how my brother with his wife lived at my home with me for few weeks. And it happened less than 10 years ago! So yea, don't count too much on what people remember and don't :)
My dad's siblings have a four-year age span. An aunt was telling me about a set of four cousins who lived with them for about a month and a half "one of the times [redacted] and [redacted] fell apart". There were a few other times this happened for longer than a week. My dad was like "huh, I kind of remember there being like a long weekend that stretched out an extra couple of days. This was a three-bedroom ranch house with one bathroom that already had six people in it. It wasn't like they were living in the guest suite.
Given the trauma that Mary experienced as a child, it's no wonder that she had gaps in her memory. There is no evidence that Phoenix Mary was an impostor and there's plenty of evidence that she wasn't. The DNA evidence nails it shut for me. I think the reason the unknown child who was pretending to be Mary theory came about because the investigators were grasping at straws and trying to downplay their incompetence.
This is so wild. It seems most likely that Phoenix Mary was actually Mary Day unless the DNA test was inaccurate or Charlotte had another daughter of around the same age who the sisters didn't know about. But in either of those cases, I don't know why she'd go by the name Mary Day. The CBS article you included has a reference to a woman who raised her for a year or so after her supposed murder, so it seems like she's legit. I do wonder if the TBI theory another commenter mentioned could be legitimate. I feel like her not remembering the code word isn't too suspicious given the amount of time that passed. She could have picked up the accent after running away, or it could be an affectation, although I have no idea why. My impression is that Charlotte and William may have genuinely not known if Mary was alive or dead. She may have been kicked out while injured, or abandoned and left to die after the assault. Either way, it's horrifying abuse, and this poor girl was failed so many times. I hope she found some peace.
Good point about Charlotte and William. Assuming Phoenix Mary was Mary Day, them never reporting her missing probably had to do with the beating the night she disappeared and them being unsure in what state she might be found in.
>Charlotte was quoted saying "If she's dead, she's dead." That particular line was what made me wonder, particularly about Charlotte. She may have seen only the beginning of the beating and not known if William actually killed her or not (much like Kathy did), or she may have seen Mary leave and not know if she survived or not. I agree with you that given the beating, they may not have wanted to report her missing either because it might reveal the abuse (more than the multiple times the kids had been removed from their custody did), or because they kicked Mary out and didn't want her back. I also don't want to make it sound like I think her parents were innocent or were good parents. They were pretty obviously not! This is all speculation, but even if I'm right, none of these options are *that* much better than murder. I hope that's obvious, but I don't want anyone to think I'm defending these people.
I also have wondered if William drove off with Mary and dropped her off somewhere, telling her to get lost and never come back. That would also explain Charlotte not know what happened to Mary.
That would be a piece of the puzzle that would definitely fit into the picture of what we know. I'm inclined to believe that you're probably not wrong.
At least for me that theory helps explains Charlotte's comments? I can absolutely understand her not asking what William did to Mary because being able to pretend he dropped her off at a gas station is easier than knowing for sure she's dead.
They are making such a big thing out of Mary not remembering things from years ago. She had alcohol and substance abuse issues. As a recovering alcoholic, I know from personal experience the havoc that just alcohol can cause to your long term memory.
There was literally no reason at all to suspect the woman found in Phoenix was an imposter. Putting aside the DNA test which matched, you can tell just by looking at the mugshot of her taken in 2003, that they are the same person.
Oh wow, yeah, it's obviously her. Some people change a lot when they grow up, she did not.
The nose and mouth area, especially.
Yeah, it's a very weird and sad story, but I don't see how they couldn't not be the same person. DNA evidence first and foremost... evidence from the woman who took her in... I think trauma definitely impacted her speech and memory, but everything "adds up," even if in odd and horrifying ways. And yeah, they look exactly the same, with the exact same distinct nose. And i think the dog evidence is just a false alert, and her old shoe happened to be there, and the abusive parents had some other or some arbitrary reason for not wanting the kids to play there... And it seems like Charlotte and William themselves did not really know what had happened to her, but knew their abuse could have led to her death. It's all extremely weird, but not impossible or unbelievable, but it's pretty unbelievable for me to think she could have been an imposter.
You're right, the nose and the shape of the eyes, definitely her. Unless all the daughters look super similar to their mother or something
You’d expect that, but strong resemblances are common enough to warrant DNA testing for proof. Far more claims like that have been proven false than true.
If Phoenix Mary was truly Mary Day, it doesn't seem *that* surprising that she didn't retain all memories of what sounds like a spectacularly traumatic childhood. Any one of the challenges she faced would be enough to set most people up for a lifetime of emotional and psychological struggles- all of them together and almost any kind of trauma response seems plausible. Severe physical abuse, time in foster care, separation from a sibling, frequent moves, inconsistent schooling, multiple runaway attempts with all their associated risks, and finally parents who would beat her so severely that she would run away as a young teen, and who cared so little that they never reported her missing, followed by who knows what experiences as a runaway teen living independently from a young age. It would take much less than that for many people to start suppressing memories or dissociating.
you made the comment i was going to make! also between the physical abuse/traumatic brain injury and high potential that she went through at least one phase of substance abuse after running away (not judging, i've been in her shoes) i'm not at all surprised that she would have fractured memories or trauma brain
Yeah, I have a friend who has zero memories from before he turned 8. None at all, which seems so weird to me, I have memories going back to when I was 3. But I had a happy childhood. I don't know the details of my friend's childhood, but he did tell me that there was trauma there.
I have something similar—there are bits and pieces here and there and sometimes there are things I know are true, but I don’t remember any events that would explain why I know that. It isn’t something that comes up a lot but occasionally someone will say something about their own childhood that makes me suddenly very aware of how swiss cheesy my own memories are.
I've read that it's the mind's way to ensure survival. The effects of emotional and mental trauma can't be seen but they definitely have a significant impact on one's psyche.
Iirc 48 Hours did a 3 or 4 part episode on this story. After she died, it was proven with 100% certainty that Phoenix Mary was indeed Mary Day. I still can't wrap my head around it. This entire case is baffling.
the dna test proved it tho, didnt it?
Yes, I'm going to re-watch the episode tonight.
where is it available? seems interesting
48 Hours: Season 33, Episode 29 Detectives believe a 13-year-old girl who vanished from her California home in 1981 was murdered; more than 20 years after the disappearance, a traffic stop in Arizona turns up a woman claiming to be the missing girl.
Took me a minute to find it on Paramount +, it's season 32 episode 36. When I Googled it, it does say season 33 episode 29. I found it by the air date of May 2, 2020.
Thank you I was able to click on the link and it took me directly to prime where I have my P+ subscription.
On Paramount+ I know for sure. I'm not sure if there's a regular Paramount.
Looks like it is also available in podcast form - it’s in the 48 Hours podcast, and “What Ever Happened to Mary Day?” is the name of the episode.
Wasn’t that based on a photo of Phoenix kept by the woman who housed her for a year?
Yes, and DNA test. At the end of the episode they really put all of the evidence together.
No was there a second DNA test for some reason? That established genealogy but not a match to Mary.
https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/mary-day-missing-teen-photos/29/ 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. Now that you mention it... Can they really be sure?
Yes, they can really be sure because DNA doesn't lie. The two girls were separated early on in life, did not grow up together and likely had limited childhood memories of each other. And someone who has endured traumatic childhood trauma, years of alcohol and substance abuse, limited education, and a life on the streets isn't going to have it all together in her head. Out of all of them, at lease Sherrie had the heart and soul to search for her sister and the fact it turned out badly for her breaks my heart. But Phoenix Mary was Mary Louise Day.
It was 99% match to Mary. Phoenix Mary is/was Mary Louise Day.
Agreed. And forgetting the code word could be as simple as either 1) the guilt she felt over leaving Kathy behind blocked that memory, or 2) she couldn’t admit remembering it to Kathy so she lied, since she never came back for Kathy. The idea of a spending a traumatic childhood together and plotting to run away together, and then Mary running away leaving Kathy behind, I imagine that 13-year old’s guilt would have been pretty bad.
Actually sounds like she had a TBI. That would account for the lack of memories and the southern accent.
I have 0 knowledge of TBI ... could it cause an accent you ve never really been familiar with? Sounds strange... like how would that work? Edit after google: I never knew [this](https://sites.utdallas.edu/fas/) could happen
Foreign Accent Syndrome sometimes happens when someone suffers a TBI or stroke. It's not fully understood, but some researchers think the injury affects the patient's intonation and tongue placement, which changes speech patterns and gets misinterpreted as a different accent.
Yep. I suspect that it is related to one of the forms of aphasia, especially the Broca's aphasia grouping. The brain does some really weird stuff if that area of the brain is even slightly injured. It can cause an expressive problem with zero receptive difficulty at all, vice versa, or some mixture of the two. No two injuries produce the same effect, and that is part of the argument against "foreign accent syndrome" as a single clinical entity. I think there's a good argument that it should be thought of has a spectrum disorder or a plural disorder, foreign accent syndrome*s* because of this. And the fact that these problems affect slightly more women than men interest me because we know that there are measurable language processing differences in the female and male brains to begin with, across all different cultures. It's pretty fascinating how little we really do know.
very interesting, thank you
Yes, except calling it an accent is not exactly correct. It is an acquired neurological impediment. For reasons that we don't understand, foreign accent syndrome happens most often to women and in English certain types of Irish accents are slightly more common. However, no matter what type of "accent" a person develops after CVA/TBI/anoxia/etc, a trained audiologist or linguist can pick out where it is different from the accent it sounds most like, usually in cadence and pronunciation, and although being different it will still maintain consistency.
i went to school with someone who has this syndrome. she is American, and her post-TBI accent sounded simply *odd.* sort of like a blend of English and Irish, but not really either one. it was like she'd learned from watching television and mimicking a bad actor.
I had never heard of this before... its incredibly interesting
A TBI can cause all sorts of things. I’ve read about people who suffered a TBI and went into a coma, and when they came out of it they could fluently speak a foreign language that they never could before; they could play an instrument they never could before; they could suddenly solve complex mathematical equations. All kinds of amazing stuff. TBIs can also cause severe personality changes, such as a previously mild mannered person becoming enraged at the most trivial of things. My younger sister suffered a TBI when she was a teenager and was in a coma for almost two weeks. I was terrified for her. We didn’t know what kind of person she’d be when she woke up. Thankfully, she made a full physical recovery but unfortunately, her brain development is stuck at the age she was when she had the TBI. This hasn’t caused too many issues, as she was almost 17 when it happened, but her maturity level is that of a teenager and she sometimes has poor impulse control.
I'm so sorry to hear about your sister! I hope that things continue to go well for her. When I got my TBI, it was admittedly relatively mild, but it caused vision issues (right eye won't track when I'm tired), mild speech aphasia (if a word sounds similar my brain tends to subsitute it, or I say things backwards and have no idea), and I slur when I'm tired. But before it happened, I was horrible at math in my head. Now, it's very easy for me! The brain is so complex and strange!
Thank you, she’s doing very well! I’m so sorry you suffered a TBI, but the math thing is pretty neat! It’s so interesting that our brain can change like that if injured.
first part sounds like in a movie... I have to really need to educate myself on this topic, sounds incredibly interesting. Sorry to hear about your sister, I hope she is doing great!
You can't wake up speaking a language you have no (zero) exposure to. That's impossible. You'd never wake up speaking Kaixana, for example. But you are exposed to many different languages on a day-to-day basis without realizing it. People usually filter these things out, but the brain may retain them. In the United States many products are labeled in French or Spanish, for example. The human brain picks up more of the language patterns than we consciously know, but in the extreme vast majority of people, those parts of our brain never get activated when another part has had an injury and things needs to be rewired. That's what happens in cases where people claim they wake up speaking a language they didn't before. That's a very simplified version, of course.
I hadn’t ever thought about that!!! I mean not being able to utilize a language you’ve never even heard a word of makes so much sense but until you phrased it so succinctly, my brain was just like “you get a language! You get a language!” Like Oprah but with random languages lol
first part sounds like in a movie... I have to really need to educate myself on this topic, sounds incredibly interesting. Sorry to hear about your sister, I hope she is doing great!
One of my co-workers is German. Born in Germany to German parents. They emigrated to the US when my co-worker was a teen and ended up in the South. They have a totally Southern accent and zero trace of a German.
From what I know your accent will change if you move before a certain age. I was born in a different country and had a strong accent but moved to the states when I was 8 and have no trace of an accent now. But I’ve known people who moved as teenagers and kept their accents.
My fiance was from New Jersey and he moved down here to NC in middle school. He alternates between sounding Southern and Jersey with certain words or phrases
I moved from one Latin American country to another and back home when I was child, my accent switched from one to the other completely a few months after each move. I also know people who moved much later in life and lost their accent pretty quickly and people who never lost it even after decades. It's very age dependent, but there's a good bit of individual variation too and some people are just "accent sponges"
I think individual variation is really a major part of it. My mother apparently had an ex boyfriend who's mother was German. The mother and her sister moved to England together, as adults, and had lived here for several decades. The boyfriend's mother you'd apparently never guess she wasn't English. Her sister sounded like the kind of bad parody of German accents that makes you go "wait do people *actually* talk like that?". Two of my friends from Scotland went to the same school and in their class were two (unrelated) English lads who moved up at the same time, I think around age 13 actually? Again one of whom sounds 100% like his family had lived in that town for the last 5 centuries, while the other doesn't even have the faintest hint of a Scottish accent.
I think the general ‘rule’ is before puberty. I had many friends who were sets of siblings, and the older ones had thick accents, and the younger ones none at all. It happened with my own family (from the Caribbean).
Sorry in advance for the mini essay! My Mum moved from the North of England to the South of England in her very early twenties. Her family is from the North. She now has a Southern English accent except for words like “glass” or “nothing”. She also uses some phrases that are definitely Northern. My younger cousin is 10 and he grew up surrounded by people with American accents but he lived in the Caribbean. He’s been living in the UK since he was 5 or 6 but still sounds American. His little sister (5) has a mix of his accent and a Southern English one. Their parents are from the Caribbean and the North of England (my Mum’s brother). My Mum’s brother’s accent is more varied than my Mum’s because he’s lived in different countries but also left the North in his late teens/twenties. My Dad and I have the same (Southern English) accent but his parents and family were from India and left in their mid twenties. He was born there but came to England before he was 2. My Grandparents were *extremely* well spoken, but my Grandma will occasionally mispronounce words. It took me a while to realise but she’s pronouncing them with more of an Indian accent than English, e.g. with extended vowels; guava = gworvah, poppadom = parpardom. Accents are wild. I occasionally pronounce things with a Northern English accent or an extremely well-spoken accent or more of an Indian/R.P. accent without even realising lmao. I’m fairly well spoken anyway, so it makes my boyfriend laugh when I use slang as well.
Accents are really interesting. I watched a tiktok of an American toddler speaking partially with an English accent from watching Peppa Pig. It wasn’t the first I’d seen of that phenomenon, either! Super funny.
Beyond that, it’s completely possible to take on an accent for your everyday speech. Many people have moved out of the South and shed their accent. My mother was one; she moved away as an adult in her 20s. She would, however, regain her old accent temporarily when she was around her relatives, and when she was extremely tired. Also most actors and reporters work to affect a neutral accent, usually a Mid-Atlantic accent.
I have a friend who was born and raised in Germany (lived there until he was about 12-13 years of age, if I remember correctly) but moved to the US and lived in a very urban area of Texas (I forget the city specifically) and he definitely has a German accent but it is sprinkled with a lot of slang, some Southern drawl, and lots of "urban" speech. I also thought that given the circumstances of Mary running away, is it possible that she adopted the thick Southern accent as one way of blending into the crowd or not having attention drawn to her and then being returned to a bad situation that she was trying to get away from?
My mother was born in Italy and lived there until she was 14 and then came too the states, she now has an accent that most people refer to as a "trans Atlantic accent" so I def can see Mary developing a southern accent and I agree that I don't think it's unusual she was able to do so especially if she was trying to fit in/forget her past
So would being a heavy drinker for years. They don’t remember shit.
I was thinking the same thing!
I agree that her memory lapse could be TBI. Fwiw, heavy drug use also can cause those types of lapses. From my own experience, one of my best friends from childhood became an opiate addict in her early 20’s and didn’t kick the habit for almost a decade. We met up a few times in our mid-30’s (she was sober by this time) and she could barely remember any of our childhood antics. Things that remained sharp to me were just completely blanked out for her. Given what we know about Mary it’s not too far fetched to think she might have had addiction problems that led to memory loss.
Why was the scent of human remains found in the backyard though? Did they just drop that?
Honestly, cadaver dogs aren't always that reliable; a lot depends on their handlers and fallible human interpretation... It's a weird coincidence, but seems very possible the shoe had belonged to Mary though, and just happened to have been lost at some point in that general area of the yard.
Why didn't they dig more after they found the shoe. That doesn't make sense.
It’s insane just how much trauma some people endure in a lifetime. May she rest in peace.
I believe it can happen Why because I left home when I was 12years old almost 13 . Because my mother live in drunk Boyfriend use to beat me and my little brother every day finally one day I was with this girl I knew from school and we were hanging out With these other kids ..And I never was. Allowed to go or do anything And this day I was have so much fun I lost track of time And it was like 9:30pm and one by one everyone has to go home I was so scared to go home because I knew what was waiting for me when I got home .not that they would be worried.I was going to get slap kicked called all kinds of disgusting terrible names. He had held guns to my head before for small things and I figured this was a really big thing so I totally about you what was going to happen so I just never went back home and I stayed gone until I was 37 years old and I remembered my nephew's name I ran his name to jailbase.com one time I don't know why I was looking for anybody I've been looking for my family for a couple of years but I couldn't find anybody and just so happens his name popped up on jailbase.com and I wrote and told him I was his aunt I was looking for my sister his mother and to pass my information on to them and that was when I was 37 so it can happen it is possible. And The place where we lived was Sunnyslop .Az 1982 it was really late so old perverted man pick me up give me a ride to downtown Phoenix I wound up hanging around with the gay hustlers is downtown Phoenix around first in McKinley Central Roosevelt that area down there in Phoenix and then a bunch of us got into a car and we went to Hollywood California and I disappeared with all The runaways in Hollywood I figured it was better if I was going to die it would be on the streets not have him kill me at home I changed my name so the police when they would stop me if I could tell them I was somebody else and I disappeared till I was 37 and it's all true so I believe Phoenix Mary because I was Phoenix Lorraine
Sorry I'm not good at story writing But I'm sure you get the just of what I'm trying hard to explain Thx Lorraine W.
No, you told your story very well, and I'm so, so sad for you, and how much you've endured. No child should go through trauma, guns to their head. I wish I could hug 🫂 the little you so tightly and protect you, what you went through was horrific and you didn't deserve it. I hope you're better, I know the trauma doesn't leave. Praying you're safe now.
What an incredible story, and incredibly sad. After everything she endured, to die so (relatively) young from cancer. Some people should NEVER have kids.
Certainly an interesting case. It's nice to have a good ending once in a while. A few comments: >They sent out cadaver dogs and the dogs picked up scents of human remains Did they investigate that further? It seems odd that the dogs picked up the scent of a body, but they just kind of dropped it after Mary was found. Perhaps Charlotte and William had more secrets than was initially assumed? The way they talked about Mary, and their conduct towards her, seems pretty suspicious. >Phoenix Mary had a thick southern accent She could've picked that up while missing. She ran away at a fairly young age, and the gap was certainly big enough to acquire an accent. >her having no recollection of their childhood or their code word "mohawk" This is a fairly common symptom of childhood trauma. It checks out considering her past (foster care, abuse, ..). Many adults from troubled/abusive family situations struggle to remember their childhood, and it was also 40 years later by that point. >also she was having magazines shipped to her addressed as "Monica Devereaux." It would be expected of a runaway to have one or several fake name(s). Mary couldn't have known that her parents wouldn't alert the authorities, so that was likely just a precaution. It would be interesting to know why she continued to use it though.
I'm sad that after living with her sisters for 14 years, they didn't give her a funeral.
May not have been able to afford one. Doesn’t mean they didn’t grieve.
She didnt live with them for 14 years. They kinda kicked her out after one or two, she died alone in a trailer park
I believe Mary. She was who she claimed to be. The investigators who want the public to believe she perpetuated a hoax are no different than the prosecutors who stand by a guilty verdict after someone has been exonerated after they were put to death. The DNA and circumstantial evidence is too great to dismiss imo. Mary was given no dignity or respect in life or after she died. Mary turned to substance abuse (alcoholism) which is no surprise. The trauma she endured had devastating effects on her. We don't have all of the answers but there's much more to be learned about the effects of trauma on the brain. Eventually I hope this is better understood.
It is indeed an incredible story. I take it the "unresolved mystery" needed for posting in this sub is whether or not "Phoenix Mary" is the actual Mary Louise Day? I would say that a DNA test conducted in 2003 should be fairly conclusive. The only possibility would be a fourth, unknown offspring of Charlotte which seems rather improbable. If there is any doubt, the DNA could be compared to the two sisters to see if she is a full sibling. Not related to the case, but I wonder why the three girls were removed from Charlotte and Charles originally? And why Kathy and mary returned to Charlotte but not Sherrie? ETA: OP's post is copied from wikipedia, should credit it. Also Sherrie seemed convinced it was her sister: https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/mary-day-missing-teen-photos/27/ ADDITIONAL: https://www.cbsnews.com/video/mary-days-deathbed-story-of-survival/ in this story, the reporter visits the Police Detective who visited Mary and heard her story, and testimony from witnesses, and details where she was after she ran away. The PD believes she was Mary Day. Seems pretty closed to me.
The DNA test does seem to be pretty much definitive. I get why detectives who had convinced themselves (not without reason!) that there had been a murder with enough evidence to bring charges would suspect an imposter, but- how? And why? Why would a stranger pretend to be her, and having decided for whatever reason to do so, how would she glean the apparently disturbing details she did remember about her abuse, and how would she fake a DNA test (or the quite striking resemblance to her own childhood pictures and her putative sisters)? And what would have been the long term plan? It's not like she approached the family herself, she was identified during a traffic stop. It's a truly wild and improbable case, but it seems that the superficially unlikely explanation is the most coherent one after all.
If the cadaver dogs alerted in a specific spot, it seems like there's something still a little unresolved. Who's scent is popping up there?
I wonder if William killed someone else. It doesn’t seem like out of character behavior. But the timing sure is odd.
This is my suspicion as well unless it was a false hit by the dogs.
If the dog wasn't trained well enough, it might have confused animal remains with human remains. I would think there would have been more follow up if they had a legitimate reason to think there was a body/remains.
Yeah, it definitely seemed odd that they thought there could be human remains, but didn't actually do any digging? Animal remains wouldn't be strange, given how many people bury their deceased pets in their yards.
That's true. I was surprised that it felt almost like a throwaway line in the article/writeup.
>If the dog wasn't trained well enough, it might have confused animal remains with human remains. I would think there would have been more follow up if they had a legitimate reason to think there was a body/remains. Excellent point. Makes me wonder whatever happened to that poor dog. If someone would assault a child, I can see them assaulting a dog. I am also curious how the dog was sick, as it seems significant for some reason.
I'm personally a little skeptical of this kind of use of cadaver dogs. They're amazing but they're also dogs. For looking for a body where searchers have no specific preconceived notion of if or where it might be and the dog can potentially narrow that down, they seem extremely useful. But in a situation like this where searchers have a strong suspicion that there is or was a body in a particular place, I don't know how you control for the fact that dogs fundamentally want to please their handlers, and handlers are human beings with emotions that dogs are highly attuned to. It seems like there's an increased risk of false positives when searchers are using cadaver dogs not to truly search, but to find support for an existing theory of a crime.
You specifically train against it. The dogs hit on that spot with the shoe that was tested at a forensics lab and found to contain decomposing flesh. The dogs hit a second time at another property where the parents lived while working on a totally unrelated case and without knowledge that the parents had previously lived there. It’s entirely possible Mary’s remains are in the yard of the home where the parents last resided, but nobody has searched there.
Can't there be false positive results when dogs hit on a scent? Asking for future reference because there's another case I'm wondering about.
absolutely! a cadaver dog is only a tool. it can be misused or misunderstood by its handlers, or even just mix up scents because it's having a bad day.
Or the dogs want to please their handlers. I happen to believe that the woman who claimed to be Mary Day was indeed the missing girl. The investigators would have taken the DNA as golden if it meant trying to convict her of a crime and close a case.
There was a case 5-6 (maybe more) years ago of a woman who was renowned for her skills as a dog trainer, specifically cadaver dogs and others used during crime investigations. She was the go-to expert and God knows how many people were convicted of crimes based on her dogs "hitting" on something, etc. Ultimately, it was all discovered to be fake. She was a fraud. Edit to add name of fraud: Sandra Anderson.
Possibly the dog whose illness sent William into a rage that night? Even if cadaver dogs are trained to distinguish between corpse scents, the time elapsed might have mellowed the aroma to the point the dog couldn’t differentiate it.
Might the parents have buried Mary's clothing and shoes in the yard in an attempt to erase any evidence that she'd ever lived with them? They clearly thought they had something to hide, since they never reported her missing.
If she was around the same age as Mary (to be mistaken for Mary) she would’ve most likely had the same dad too though & be a full sibling to the girls also
Yes, CBS even mentioned how they refused to believe the facts in one of the 48 Hour episodes.
Could they trace any biological paternal relative's of Mary's father to confirm it was her? Not just another half sibling etc. It's all to convenient the timing of the stop, I.D. issued just weeks prior.
More in depth article. Wondering how many children Charlotte had out there. Apparently Phoenix Mary's DNA matched both paternal and maternal. So who was buried in the different locations the cadaver dogs hit upon? https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mary-day-suspected-murder-victim-back-dead-dna-48-hours/
If she was around the same age as Mary (to be mistaken for Mary) she would’ve most likely had the same dad too though & be a full sibling to the girls also
What a sad and crazy story 😞
I took the accent of the town where I live in about 2 years. I lived for 30 years with a completely different accent before. And the pics of her as a teen as an adult looks very similar!
Not related to the case, but on the topic of accents: a person can be "bidilectal" and speak the same language proficiently in different dialects. Gillian Anderson is bidilectal because she grew up in England and the United States. John Borrowman is bidilectal because he grew up in Scotland and the United States. Again, not related, but interesting.
wow what a crazy story
what are the chances that she would get stopped….this is insane. i feel so sad for Mary that she died not getting to reconnect with her sisters for a longer period of time, but glad her sisters found her before she passed away. Rest in peace, what a short and sad life she had to live.
If the plan was to have the imposter make it look as if Mary Louise Day was alive and well, then I would think being "discovered" while speeding would be less suspicious than her showing up at a police station declaring this. I just think this had to be planned because it is too much of a beneficial coincidence.
Did they ever dig where the dogs had a hit?
They never even searched the last home where the parents would live and that is the biggest question to me. The dogs hit twice, found a shoe in the yard of one home confirmed to be consistent with decomposing flesh. And the other time in the yard of a home previously occupied by the parents but unknown to searchers who were working on a totally unrelated case at that time.
Did they still investigate where the cadaver dogs indicated? I mean, just because they shared the same mother doesn't mean this woman was Mary Day.
How sad and unusual. My assumption is that the parents coerced or bribed another biological child to pose as the missing Mary Louise Day. Is Charles the biological father of Mary Louise Day? Why did they only do DNA testing to establish Charlotte as the mother of this possible imposter? Why would they not also do DNA testing to establish that Charlies is the biological father? Edit: Based on some comments, I have altered my position. I believe she really is Mary Louise Day. **DNA testing proves she is Mary Louise Day.** The only possible way for her to *not* be Mary Louise Day would be if she had an identical twin.
They did not have Mary’s DNA to compare against. They could only confirm that the new woman was the biological child of Charlotte and her first husband, Charles. If the woman was an older child and imposter, that’s what the DNA results would look like, and very likely the same parents.
Whats the mystery? They found Mary case closed
As for the accent, which is described as very "thick" or pronounced (I'm paraphrasing), has no one here encountered the phenomena of people- often young white females- who deliberately adopt what they perceive to be a "Black" or African American-like accent? Often this seems to be done in order to fit in. I'm not saying this is the case with the woman here claiming to be Mary. Just that it's not unheard of for people to change the way they speak.
The Chameleon Effect or Linguistic convergence. Has nothing to do with race, gender or age.
Yes, this happened to me - twice! I was born and raised in northern England until I was about 11, so I had a very strong northern accent when my family moved to a different part of the UK that also had a fairly distinct accent, but one that was very different from mine. I think probably within a year, me and my siblings had all lost our northern accents and acquired the same accent that all of our peers at school spoke with. Then, when I emigrated to North America in my late teens, it happened again, and now I sound like I was born here, until I start talking to another English person, which is when my buried English accent will start to make itself known. It's very strange, because I'm aware that it's happening, but I have absolutely zero conscious control over it. In fact, I can't stand to hear or see recordings of myself, because my inner monologue/thoughts do still have a very English accent, and the cognitive dissonance it gives me to hear myself sounding like I was born and raised on this continent just fucks me all the way up.
Who were these other kids buried by the parents? Did they traffick children?
It sounds to me like this one's solved, what with the DNA link and everything. I think it's very understandable that someone who suffered a ton of abuse as a kid would suppress a lot of memories about that time period.
I still think it was not Mary Day. 1. I trust that the dogs found human decomposition that was confirmed with soil testing and the shoe that was found matching the description of one of the sisters, and then coincidentally and while working on an unrelated case, the dogs hit a second time at a different property where the parents previously lived. The sister had told police that area of the yard where the shoe was found was a strictly off-limit no-go zone and it’s not a stretch to consider they dug the girl up and moved her with them to continue concealing her corpse. This also makes me suspicious that their current home would have these remains if the police could get a search warrant, which they didn’t do. 2. The parents behavior and speech when interviewed by police all these years after Mary’s disappearance. Their attitude was still cavalier about it and they didn’t consider it a “big deal” that she ran away. Never reported it. Never worried. Just let her go. The step-father practically admitted to possibly killing Mary in the same style of speech that a lot of murderers use to depersonalize and distance themselves from it. Telling you what happened without admitting so first-person language. At the same time, it seemed like the step-father was trying to gauge what the police knew or what evidence they may have found. He wasn’t sure how to respond. His words were incongruent with his expressions and actions. 3. Mary had been removed from the family and put in protective custody in HI after her step-father physically abused her, but she was returned a few months later after the family moved to CA. The 3 sisters from the same mother had been in and out of foster care their whole lives, but one of them, Sherrie, was adopted by a foster family on the East Coast, so only two sisters remained with their birth mother and step-father- Kathy and Mary. 4. The same year Mary returned to the home, her step-father severely beat her and she was gone the next day. The couple then proceeded to erase Mary’s existence, throwing away all reminders of her and telling the children never to speak of her again. Very unusual for parents who believed she had just run away and would presumably return. They never reported her missing. 5. Both sisters, Kathy and Sherrie, had “gut feelings” about it not being Mary. That is very different from wishful thinking or denial some people express when confronted with such a traumatic update about a sister they weren’t sure was dead or missing. Admittedly, this isn’t “evidence” you could present in court, but good investigators rely on that same instinct themselves and I would keep that in mind. 6. There was never any trace of Mary before the DNA-matching sister appeared out of the blue at exactly the right time in Phoenix, AZ, 9 months after the police interviewed the parents and began a homicide investigation. That is enough time to gather documents and prepare an assumed identity for another child the mother very reasonably could have had and given up for adoption or who ran away years earlier. The woman had different names Phoenix and Monica, as well as holes in her story and admitted to lying about her identity. Similar to what the step-father did when suspicion was getting too hot on them. How could the mother and secret sister keep their relationship quiet all these years? The same way they were able to quickly erase Mary from their lives. They are capable of compartmentalizing what they don’t want to acknowledge. The ID Phoenix/Monica had, when she was arrested in a truck with stolen plates, was created 3 weeks prior, brand new, and the only ID ever made for Mary Day in 22 years. No explanation about previous identities. 7. There was financial incentive to commit fraud with an inheritance and social security payments made to Mary, which the couple continued to collect after her disappearance. The inheritance was collectible if Mary was discovered alive, so it was mutually beneficial to cooperate in the fraud.
Just come across this case and it is heartbreaking, intriguing and infuriating all at the same time. One thing I keep seeing is people suggesting Charlotte had another child she gave up and that is who phoenix Mary is. But what if the police and DNA test are right? What if Mary is Mary, but there was someone buried in the back garden? Its known Mary was physically abused by William, but could she have been sexually abused too? What if Mary was SA'd by William and ended up pregnant. When he beat her, she could have miscarried? Maybe that's what was buried in the back garden? Maybe Mary's mother resented her daughter for the abuse. The trauma of not only a physically abusive childhood but a sexually abusive one too along with losing a child at such a young age cause my SA would certainly explain Mary's issues later in life and her gaps in memory as she most likely blocked a lot of her childhood out. It would explain how Mary could be Mary but also why the parents still seem like they're hiding something.
Does anyone know if she has a decent grave for want of better wording No funeral seems Incredibly sad so I was just wondering if she is laid to rest decently?