I must confess, this isn’t a tale I’m eager to tell, but it’s one that demands to be heard. It’s about the night everything shattered—the night my family lost Christine and the world lost Vanessa. It’s about the chilling, relentless search for truth and the heartbreaking silence that still echoes. I am one of the family members, reliving the agony of that December week.

The Day After Thanksgiving, My Sister’s Windows Were Open, the Cold Was Rushing In, and the Silence Was Deafening:

How a Missed Workday Unlocked a Murder Scene and Launched a Nationally Viral Hunt for a Missing One-Year-Old—A Mother’s Last Hug and the Chilling Lies of the Last Man to See Them.

The Deep Cold of December 2nd

The world was just easing back into the rhythm of work after the long, gluttonous sigh of the Thanksgiving weekend. For me, December 2nd, 2019, started like any other Monday—a mundane return to reality, a slight drag after the holiday break. But for our family, that day would quickly descend into a nightmare that we are still fighting to wake up from.

I was home in Ansonia, Connecticut, five minutes from my sister, Christine Holloway’s apartment. I remember my husband, Stephen, calling me from work. His voice was laced with an unusual anxiety.

“My mom called,” he said, the words slightly clipped. “Chrissy’s job left her a voicemail. She didn’t show up to work.”

The news hit me with a jolt that had nothing to do with the freezing weather outside. Christine never missed work. Never.

She was a dedicated daycare teacher; her passion was caring for children. She was responsible, predictable, and always, always in contact. For her to simply vanish was less likely than snow in July.

I felt a cold knot tighten in my stomach, a primal, gut-deep certainty that something was deeply, fundamentally wrong inside that apartment on Myrtle Avenue.

The First Knock

Police had already been there for a welfare check after her boss called. They found the front door locked, no answer. They left. They saw nothing “out of line.” But they weren’t family. They didn’t know Chrissy.

I raced over.

When I walked up, a fresh layer of snow covered the ground. I immediately saw footprints. Someone had been there. I was knocking, then pounding on the door, screaming her name. I stood there, straining to hear anything—a muffled sound, a television, a baby’s cry. Nothing. The silence was absolute, a crushing blanket that smothered any hope.

Chrissy’s daughter, Vanessa Morales, was only one year old. Where was the baby? A one-year-old doesn’t just go silent. The alarm bells were now deafening.

A Shifting Story: Jose’s Alibi

Christine was in an on-again, off-again relationship with Vanessa’s father, Joseé Morales. Naturally, he was the first person we thought of. He was supposed to have spent the weekend with them.

We drove to New Haven, to his parents’ house, desperate for information. We knocked. Joseé acted like he had no idea what was happening. He was calm. Too calm. He didn’t seem like a man whose girlfriend was missing and whose one-year-old daughter was unaccounted for. This lack of concern was the first thread that unraveled the whole sickening tapestry.

I called the Ansonia PD back, frantic. They managed to get Joseé on a recorded call.

The first officer asks him when he last saw Christine.

“I saw in the morning and that’s about it,” Joseé says. He claims they both left the apartment Monday morning, Christine in her car with the baby, and he went to work.

“That’s a lie,” I told the officer minutes later, explaining that Joseé didn’t even have a job.

But the story shifted rapidly, even in his brief conversation with the police. Within two minutes, he contradicts himself. He went from, “I saw her leave this morning,” to, “Well, I didn’t see her. I spoke to her very briefly over the phone.”

My heart hammered against my ribs. That’s a lie. We were watching the lie solidify in real-time. Why the sudden, minute-by-minute change? The wheels of suspicion, already turning for the police, now began to spin dangerously fast.

The Moment the World Stopped

That night, everything changed. Police returned to the apartment, a deeper, more urgent welfare check this time. The front door was still locked, but they noticed something odd: a couple of windows were open on the second floor, despite the freezing weather. An officer goes in and announces their presence.

“Police department. They enter the apartment. Some things are out of turn.”

The radio traffic—clipped, urgent—was everything we feared. Then, a sickening discovery.

“And then they go to the bathroom. Oh. Oh, dude. Holy.”

I was with my husband when the call came. He heard the details, and I saw his face drain of all color, his body physically slump. I collapsed in the lobby, screaming, “No, no, no, no, no!”

“She’s gone,” he whispered.

“Stop saying that! We don’t know what’s going on!” I argued, fighting him, fighting the reality.

He grabbed my hands, looked me dead in the eye, and said the words that would haunt me forever: “She’s gone.”

Christine was found in the bathtub. The scene was gruesome. This was no accident. The medical examiner would later confirm at least eight blows to the head—a vicious, brutal attack that had nothing to do with slipping in a tub.

Where’s the Baby?

As the horrific news washed over me, a second wave of pure terror hit.

“Wait a minute, they said Chrissy, but where’s Vanessa?” I ran back into the room where the detectives were.

“Where’s the baby? Our niece, Vanessa, where the hell is she? She’s only one years old. She should have been there!”

The two detectives looked at each other, their faces grim. “What baby?”

That’s when the true, unique horror of this case began. A mother murdered, and her one-year-old daughter vanished. The paramount concern shifted immediately: We’ve got to find the baby.

The house was searched again. No baby. No sign of struggle outside, but definite signs of violence throughout the apartment, and, more chillingly, signs that someone had gone to great lengths to clean it up and cover the crime.

The Empty Space in the Airport

The night was spent doing the unthinkable: driving to my mother-in-law’s house to tell her that her oldest daughter was gone, and her granddaughter was missing. No one should ever have to do that.

Meanwhile, a massive search was launched. I was joined by other family, who flew home immediately. All I did at the airport was stare at every single child, all the way back to Connecticut, my mind screaming, Is that Vanessa?

We immediately put out the plea. “It is imperative that we find Vanessa. She’s a one-year-old child who is wholly dependent on others for their care and well-being.”

Christine, our golden child, was gone. We remembered her big, infectious laugh, her motherly love for all her siblings. She called Vanessa her “little butterfly.” That day, an enormous bright orange butterfly, random but perfect, flew near us as we gathered.

A sign, we desperately hoped, that Chrissy was still with us, and a vow that we would find her little butterfly.

The Interview: Detachment and Lies

The police zeroed in on Joseé Morales. They interviewed him, a key technique being that they did not tell him Christine’s body had been found. They wanted to see his spontaneous reaction, to hear his story before he knew the full extent of what they knew.

Joseé, who had a history of police run-ins and drug use, acted strangely distant, almost detached. He was in an interview, free to leave, not an interrogation.

“Why what I came here for? To talk to you about what?” he asks the detective.

“We’re trying to find Christine or your kid.”

“All right. We That’s That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to I’ve been trying to call her, too.”

His stories kept fracturing. The initial claim of seeing them Monday morning. Then the phone call claim. Now, his stepfather says he saw Joseé leave with Christine on Friday. Joseé denies he even saw them Friday. The inconsistencies were mounting into a mountain of suspicion.

When confronted about the discrepancies, Joseé deflects and dismisses the relationship. But the true telling sign was his reaction when asked about Vanessa.

“The whole right here, you didn’t talk about a one-year-old daughter that’s missing. I don’t get that.”

He pushes back, defensive, aggressive. “That’s my daughter. Yeah. I That’s We want to find her.”

“So, where is she?” the detective asks.

“I don’t know. She’s with Christine. That’s all I know.”

But they knew. A father whose daughter is missing doesn’t act like this. He doesn’t spend an entire interview discussing everything but the one-year-old child. His folded arms, his body language—he shut down. He was hiding something, and the police knew it. They were trying to force him to confess, to use his desperation to find the baby against him. But Joseé played the game: I don’t know anything.

The Community Scramble and the Evidence Trail

The family’s appeal went viral. The community of Ansonia erupted in support, putting up flyers on every corner, every store. We were getting tips all hours of the night. The Amber Alert spread Vanessa’s picture onto highway billboards. This public pressure was a driving force.

Police, meanwhile, began their painstaking work: the digital sweep. Ring door cameras, gas station footage, business surveillance. Video surveillance became the unseen witness. Detectives were able to track Joseé’s car driving to and from locations—inconsistent with his statements.

Then, a crucial call. A local charity called the police. In a donation bin, they found items with blood on them, a small Croc, and a bottle cap with “VM” on it. Bloody towels, a diaper bin, and a piece of mail addressed to Christine. Someone had tried to literally dump the evidence miles away. The surveillance video confirmed Joseé’s car was headed toward those bins.

This wasn’t enough for a murder charge yet, but it was enough to start the trap.

The Arrest and the Truth

A search warrant for Joseé’s home revealed something unexpected: illegal stun guns. This allowed the police to arrest him on unrelated gun charges, which did two critical things: it got him off the streets, and it bought investigators two months of precious time to build the case while he was held on a high bond.

During that time, they found the smoking gun: A cryptic, fragmented 911 call the day before Christine’s body was found. A muffled woman’s voice in the background: “Who are you talking to? What are you doing?” The call had been dismissed initially, but the timing was chilling.

The evidence stacked up: Phone data pinging his phone multiple times in Christine’s neighborhood despite his denials. Christine’s blood in a trash bag recovered from his car trunk. Hair found in her hand that matched Joseé. The blood evidence tying him to the scene was overwhelming.

In February 2020, Joseé Morales was finally charged with murder and tampering with evidence. We screamed, not in celebration, but in a release of pure, raw fury. “You a-hole, I hope you get what you deserve,” was the raw, guttural cry that escaped me.

The Trial: A Desperate Lie

The trial dragged on for five and a half years of agonizing limbo. We had to endure hearing the full, graphic details—the eight blunt impacts, the skull fractures, the brain injuries. “The most disgusting thing in the entire world.”

The prosecution laid out the facts: A murder committed, a body concealed, evidence scattered, and a missing child.

Joseé Morales made the desperate, high-stakes decision to testify. He tried to sell a completely new story: He was high on PCP, sitting on the toilet, when he saw two strangers enter the apartment. He claims he was hit on the face and then watched, paralyzed by the drug, as one intruder grabbed Vanessa and ran out, and the other beat Christine with a crowbar.

“I tried to scream stop,” he mumbled on the stand.

It was a flimsy, unbelievable lie. Why would home invaders who kidnapped a child leave behind a living, adult witness?

When the prosecutor challenged him, asking if he was the one who killed her, he simply said, “No, I did not kill Christine Holloway.”

But his own actions contradicted his words. He admitted to grabbing a garbage bag and putting stuff in it—the tampering with evidence he was charged with.

Justice Served, but the Puzzle Remains

After nine days of testimony and hours of deliberation, the jury returned a verdict.

“On the first count of the amended information charging the defendant Jose Morales with crime of murder. How do you find the defendant as the crime of murder?”

The word, solid and uncompromising, filled the room: “Guilty.”

They rejected his lies. They saw the truth in the evidence.

In July 2025, Joseé Morales was sentenced to 65 years in prison—60 for the murder of Christine Holloway, 5 for tampering with evidence.

The justice brought a small, necessary measure of closure for Christine. We spoke in court, telling the monster who took her how he destroyed our lives. “I hope that he stays in prison forever.”

But the sentence, though just, did not complete the puzzle. The one vital piece that remains missing is Vanessa.

From Friday to Monday, no one knows where Vanessa is. She is still a missing person. The only person alive who knows the answer is Joseé Morales, and he hasn’t said a word.

The most difficult part of navigating life now is still the same: Finding Vanessa. Bringing her home.

Years have passed. I no longer look for the baby she was, but the little girl she would be now. When I hear a child giggle in the grocery store, I still run to go see. I just want the world to remember Chrissy’s smile, her contagious laugh, and her faith. And I want everyone to look for her little butterfly, Vanessa Morales. The world is a little darker without them, but we won’t stop until we bring her home.