What Ever Happened to Mary Day? is an episode of CBS 48 Hours that studies the disappearance of Mary Day and her reappearance long after she was believed to be dead. The episode will air on Saturday, December 23, at 10/9c on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.
Mary Day was 13 when she disappeared from her home in California in July 1981. Mary’s family lived in Seaside and strangely, her parents did not report her disappearance, a rare case as reported by investigators. In 2002, Sherrie Calgaro, Mary’s sister, who grew up under the assumption that Mary was murdered, reported her sister’s disappearance.
Mary was born on February 19, 1968, in New York, to Charlotte and Charles Day. Mary, along with her younger sisters Kathy and Sherrie, reportedly had unstable childhoods. They used to go in and out of foster homes frequently because of Charlotte’s reported negligence. Charlotte then married William Houle, who had full custody of Kathy and Mary, while Sherrie remained in foster care.
Did Mary run away from home?
In December 1980, William was found to be physically abusing Mary. This led to her being taken by Child Protective Services. However, she was returned home, something Sherrie calls a failure on the part of the system. After that, Mary tried to run away from home multiple times but was always returned home by the police. When she disappeared in 1981, William and Charlotte did not report it. They would never even talk about her, making her sisters confused as to what happened to her.
Although the official investigation only began in 2002, the disappearance of Mary Day became a legend that was being talked about around Monterey. Ever since the 1990s, those around the area have talked about a girl who went missing from her home near an old Army base at Fort Ord. This was witnessed by two whole generations of homicide detectives but nothing materialised until Calgaro approached the police.
Mary Day’s disappearance: Has she been found?
Charlotte and William were the first to be suspected when the investigation began. William reportedly claimed to have had a huge fight with Mary right before she disappeared. He asserted that he did not kill her but “the demon in him could have.” Charlotte, on the other hand, was entirely reluctant and had no interest in finding her daughter.
The sisters claimed that William instructed them not to go to a particular corner of their backyard after she disappeared. They led the investigators to the location, which was then dug up. A child’s shoe, which was identified as one they wore frequently as children was found in the location. Except that, there was no trace of the child in the house, no IDs or old possessions or anything that could hint at Mary’s existence.
While it looked very obvious to investigators who had enough evidence to build a homicide case against Charlotte and William, Mary Day reappeared in Arizona in 2003. She had valid ID proofs and told the police she was indeed Mary Day. A DNA test proved that she was indeed Charlotte’s daughter. However, Kathy and Sherrie reported that this woman did not remember important details from their childhood. Moreover, her speech was disjointed, which made authorities suspect that she suffered from some kind of dissociation.
Although Sherrie came to terms with the fact that this lady might indeed be her sister, suspicions grew stronger after Mary Day’s death, when no funeral was held and Sherrie wasn’t allowed near her family either.
