Going West: True Crime - Amy Billig // 388

Episode Date: March 8, 2024

In March of 1974, a 17-year-old girl in Coconut Grove, Florida, headed to her father’s workplace to collect a few dollars of lunch money. Last seen hitchhiking next to a major highway, she vanished before she made it to either of her destinations. What ensued was a relentless search by her mother, countless harassing phone calls from her alleged kidnapper, and rumors of a motorcycle gang abduction. This is the story of Amy Billig. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on, True Crime fans? I'm your host Heath and I'm your host Daphne and you're listening to Going West. Hello everybody, today's case was recommended by Jessica and we thank you so much for showing us Amy's story. I mean Heath said it best to me earlier this story is like a movie. It is one of the most heartbreaking cases. I know that every case is heartbreaking but this one really sticks out to me. Yeah this one it actually made me cry just because of like you said the heartbreak and the pure determination that's involved in this. Like this case will definitely stick with me and you guys, I'm sure for a very long time it is special and it's mystifying. So thank you again, Jessica,

and thank you to each and every one of you for listening to this case. And also make sure you share this episode. Alright guys, this is episode 388 of Going West, so let's get into it. In March of 1974, a 17-year-old girl in Coconut Grove, Florida headed to her father's workplace to collect a few dollars of lunch money. Last seen hitchhiking next to a major highway, she vanished before she made it to either of her destinations. What ensued was a relentless search by her mother, countless harassing phone calls from her alleged kidnapper, and rumors of a motorcycle gang abduction. This is the story of Amy Billig was born on January 9, 1957 in Oyster Bay, which is situated on the Long Island

Sound on Long Island, New York. Amy joined parents Susan and Nathaniel, or Ned, he goes by Ned, later becoming a big sister to a brother named Joshua. When Amy was in middle school, the family decided to move away from the bustle of living on the outskirts of New York City and headed south to Coconut Grove, Florida, which is an affluent and very picturesque pocket of Southwest Miami.

And ironically, they left New York hoping for more safety and found their worst nightmare in a supposedly safe and idyllic enclave of southern Florida. They were a family of artists and creatives. Her father Ned owned an art gallery and her mother Susan was an art dealer and an interior designer. And Amy was no exception. Susan described her daughter warmly as spirited and a flower child. Creatively inclined like her parents, Amy played the flute and the guitar. She loved to sing and wrote poetry,

frequently penning entries into her journal. One which was later scrutinized by police as potential evidence that she had not in fact, opted to disappear. And that read, there is too much for me and I want to know it all. Feel it, smell it, touch it, taste it, jump right into it, roll around in it and say, I love you to everyone I see. And then just lay back and feel the sun on my body and smile. Amy was also a lover of nature and animals. She was a strict vegetarian and a dolphin trainer

at the Miami Sea Quarium in her spare time. But she was kind of toying with the idea of becoming an actress after finishing high school. So just altogether, she had this really great life. I mean, I'm very jealous of the fact that she gets to live in Miami and she's a dolphin trainer. That's so cool

She's got two awesome creative artistic parents. Yeah life was just beautiful for her. Yeah She is a multifaceted young gal. She's you know seemingly loving life. She's she's having fun She has great friends and amazing family and Speaking of her amazing family the billy eggs were affectionate and tight-knit, especially Amy and her mom. Like they were extremely close. Susan once said of her daughter, quote, what did I do to deserve such a beautiful thing?

In the very late winter of 1974, Amy was a senior in high school, finishing up her final year, attending the Adelphi Academy of Coral Gables and set to graduate at the end of March, which is right when spring was rolling around. On Tuesday, March 5th, 1974, Amy caught a ride home from school and returned to an empty house. Her brother Josh was still out, her dad was still at work, and her mom and grandma, who was visiting from New York, were spending the day at a nearby beach called Tahiti Beach.

At 11.50 AM, she called her dad at his art gallery, just asking if she could stop by and maybe borrow two bucks so that she could go meet some friends, Kirk and Kathy, for lunch. So, her plan that day was to hitchhike her way to her father Ned's art gallery, which was less than a mile or about one kilometer away from her home to pick up the money. She would then hitchhike to a restaurant to meet her friends. And Amy's mom Susan later reflected, quote, Not a good habit, but everybody does it.

All the kids here hitchhike. We fought with Amy about it. We told her of the dangers. We even made her look at documentaries about it, but she paid no attention to us. She just kept on hitchhiking. So Amy left her home ready to stop at her dad's and then the restaurant. But she never made it to either destination. Her brother Josh who was 16 at the time returned home a few hours

later and was met with silence in the home. One of Amy's friends later called the Billig House, puzzled that her friend had never arrived for their lunch date and as the hours passed the rest of the family started returning home and it wasn't until dinner time was upon them that they grew concerned. So in a state of utter shock Susan called the Miami police that evening to report her daughter missing. Susan remembered police telling her, wait and see, you'll hear from her, and she responded, no I won't.

Amy would never do a thing like that, we're too close, and especially with her grandmother visiting. Now almost immediately, sightings of Amy came in from that afternoon. There were reports of her getting into a yellow Cadillac, a green Jeep, a van, and even a pickup truck. Which are all pretty specific vehicles that are very different from the next, so like which is it if any? Well construction workers and motorists alike supposedly spotted her waiting at the corner of

Point Sienna Avenue and Main Highway just a few minutes from her dad's studio. Then days later now convinced of the abduction after the innumerable alarming sightings and tips that were coming in Miami police went back on their original stance and finally announced, quote, we are seriously concerned because the girl would not have gone off by herself. In the immediate aftermath of Amy vanishing, police focused their efforts on running down the list

of local hospitals, morgues, and police departments around the state. Eventually, when that didn't yield any answers, they checked in with other police departments around the state. Eventually, when that didn't yield any answers, they checked in with other police departments all over the country. And perhaps because they cast such a wide net, Amy's case became more rife with false tips, extortion attempts, and opportunists

trying to take advantage of the victim's family than most cases we've ever seen. In the two weeks after Amy's disappearance, both police and the Billig family home phone were flooded with tips, some credible and some not. But one of them, fielded by Susan herself, stood out. It was an attempt to collect a ransom and her supposed kidnappers were demanding $30,000.

Amy's self-proclaimed abductors phone three times and each time politely but firmly demanded $30,000 in cash. Susan called the man on the phone young, articulate and intelligent sounding, but he also warned that if his request was not heated, quote, you'll have to wipe up your daughter with a sponge. On one call, Susan could hear a young woman's voice in the background pleading, Mama, Mama, please. So convinced that this was a credible lead, the billy scrambled to put together $30,000 with the help of a wealthy family friend.

On a sunny Saturday morning, two weeks after her daughter vanished, Susan entered into the lobby of the Fontainebleau Hotel, armed with a briefcase of $30,000 in small bills as the caller requested. Though the man had warned not to contact law enforcement, Susan had done just that. They lined every exit and entrance to the hotel, and one female plain clothes officer accompanied Susan, claiming to be a neighbor who had driven her there

because she had been so nervous. Susan was instructed to dress in red, white, and blue, so she did, and she and the detective accompanying her, whose name was Ines Shepard, strode into the lobby of the hotel and sat down on the couch. To their surprise, a young man greeted them, dressed in a green baseball hat and glasses, sporting long black hair and resembling a teenager.

Susan later described, quote, this ratty kid with a hat on with long hair tied back and mirrored glasses came up to me. Then he said flatly, quote, we're ready for the money, give me the money and Amy will be home by six. Susan demanded assurance that Amy was safe before she handed over the briefcase, but the man countered that he could prove that he was holding Amy hostage and offered to take the women upstairs to the fifth floor. There they met the other supposed captor, who happened to be this young man's identical twin brother. But the two were stalling, not only did they not seem to have Amy or know anything about

her, but they didn't even seem to have a room at the hotel. When Susan posed questions about her daughter's appearance or the state that she was in, they couldn't offer anything more descriptive than what was printed on the missing poster, describing Amy as quote, not skinny, but not fat. Ina, growing frustrated this undercover officer, revealed herself to be a police officer and placed the both of them under arrest as backup officers burst forth through the stairwells to assist. Amy's supposed captors were 16-year-old Miami Beach twins Charles and Larry Glasser.

Ultimately, police found that the boys had never met Amy and had nothing to do with her disappearance. They were simply just bored kids hoping to profit off of opportunism. It's just insane to me. I mean, not only, I mean, in general, to do this to somebody is so messed up, like a grieving mother two weeks after her daughter disappears, but to say on the phone, you'll have to wipe up your daughter with a sponge

and you're lying about it? Yeah, it's insane and things are gonna get so much worse in this case, and it honestly kinda makes you lose a little bit of hope and humanity, just everything that Susan had to go through. But luckily these two idiots weren't let off that easy, as the boys were sent to juvenile detention and were ordered to pay a fine. Shortly after Amy's disappearance, her beloved camera was discovered on the side of a road

and turned over to police. And that story goes about 12 days after Amy vanished, a young man named David Fleming, who was also hitchhiking along Florida's highways, recovered her camera and the weeds off of the Wildwood exit on Florida's turnpike. But alarmingly, the camera was found nearly five hours in northwest of Coconut Grove where Amy was living.

And this was the last link that either law enforcement or her family had to Amy. So how had it gotten there? Had she tossed it out of a moving car as a clue? Why had she brought it with her in the first place if she hadn't even brought her purse with her that day? Well, law enforcement hurried to develop the film inside, but they found that it didn't offer any clues as to Amy's whereabouts. Only one photo was able to be developed, which featured a light-colored pickup truck or van parked in front of a vine-covered wall.

The majority of the photographs were completely overexposed, so it's unknown whether Amy had the camera when she disappeared, but it might've disappeared before she did. About 10 days after Amy's disappearance, so a couple days before this camera was found, Susan received another anonymous call at home

from someone who claimed to be a member of a motorcycle gang. So the family received tips about two different biker gangs, and we're gonna talk about them throughout the story, but basically there were the outlaws, which founded in Illinois in 1935, are the oldest motorcycle gang in the world. And then there were the Pagans who were founded in Maryland in 1957.

So police tapped two members of the outlaws to meet with Susan and potentially share any sightings or information that they had. And according to Susan, the men claim that they had not seen her daughter and didn't have any leads to share. But they did admit that some of their members would abduct girls to apparently pass around or sell within the community. They would then essentially keep the girls captive, forcing them into stripping, stealing or sex work,

all while taking the money that they were bringing in. The two men claim that they would report back to Amy's parents if they found any information about her within the confines of their gang, but they never did. So Susan, gripping tightly to their first tangible lead, set out to infiltrate the gang herself. She tracked them to Orlando and started asking around at local businesses

and establishments the gang was known to frequent. And she even visited the dilapidated building that they used as their clubhouse during their tenure in Orlando. At one gas station, a cashier claimed that she recognized Amy's picture and that she remembered her purchasing a cup of vegetarian soup. And since Amy was a vegetarian, that was all the confirmation that Susan needed that she had located her daughter.

But what would follow was 30 years of grueling, unwavering searching, as well as endangering herself in order to infiltrate the menacing criminal underworld of America's biker gangs. The Block is about building community around black music. Music that shapes culture. With beats that feed our hearts. Melodies that make our memories and rhythms that shape our lives. They say you are what you hear and when you hear the block you know that you belong. Join me, Angelin Tedueo on the block.

Weeknights at 7 on CBC Music or anytime on the CBC Listen app. you listen at. About three weeks after Amy's disappearance, her fellow classmates, the senior class of Adelphi Academy, graduated without Amy. She was honored by teachers and peers at the ceremony, held just weeks after her disappearance on March 31st, 1974, allowing her to graduate in absentia. The following day, Coconut Grove held what they called Amy Billig Day, raising money and selling donated goods from local businesses and artists which would go towards a reward fund and even more comprehensive search efforts for Amy.

The fundraiser featured live performances from area singers and bands and a local restaurant even donated refreshments. Friends and members of the community shared the Amy Billig fund, which peaked at $14,000 and the proceeds were used to put up billboards and also fund Susan's trips chasing down leads looking for her daughter. She even used $1,500 of it on a bribe for two former Miami police officers who claimed that they could hunt down Amy privately. But the really shitty part here is that these officers took the money and were

never heard from again. Again, like the fact that anybody could do this to her, this poor woman, but let alone two former police officers that are meant to help people, like it's just sick. It's truly disgusting. And it's so sad because this really is just the beginning of what Susan has to deal with like in cases that we cover You know sometimes we see people doing fake ransoms or calling or whatever, but I feel like Susan dealt with every possible Horrible roadblock and torture. Yeah, and we even see in cases where sometimes, you know, parents or family members of a victim end up stepping back and just kind of laying it on police and saying,

you know, listen, this is your job, like, go out there and do that. But Susan doesn't really have a lot of faith, especially when she's getting ripped off by two ex-police officers. She's like, I need to do this by myself. Well, Anne, she's hearing all these different things and if police aren't investigating these certain tips that she feels could actually lead to her daughter, she knows she's the only person that can do it. Which she shouldn't have to. Yeah, no, she really shouldn't. I mean, Susan even wrote to President Nixon, pleading for him to intervene in the investigation. And all he did was turn the request over to the FBI director at the time,

Clarence Kelly, who just wrote to Susan that she should have faith in her local authorities. Yeah, thanks, Nixon. So Susan claimed that she never felt that she had law enforcement on her side, understandably, bemoaning that it took them five months just to pull Susan's own fingerprints from her own bedroom. She also claims that they spent far too long toying with the theory that Amy may have been a runaway. When everyone in her life knew that that just wasn't the case. Which is pretty surprising especially because she's a minor. I do feel like police officers sometimes take cases like this more seriously if the person

is a minor and they don't spearhead the runaway theory too hard if they're under 18. Right, like if they're over the age of 18, they're like, well, the first theory is that they could have run away. Yeah, but they spent so long truly believing that she was, which was based on nothing. And you know, she's just a 17 year old girl who was super happy and her mom is like begging them to investigate her daughter's disappearance. She's just a 17 year old girl who was super happy and her mom is like begging them to investigate her daughter's disappearance.

Yeah, and you know, Susan, Ned and Joshua knew from the day that Amy vanished that she would have just never walked away from her life. But all the community awareness and donations still were just not enough to bring Amy home. So Susan continued to chase down leads, hearing tips from her biker gang Intel that Amy had been brought with them to the West Coast, Virginia, and New Jersey. So essentially all over

the US. And Susan chased down every single one of those leads to no avail. Yet tips trickled in for years. to no avail, yet tips trickled in for years. So Susan took to passing out flyers to flight attendants on her reconnaissance missions with the hope that they would be distributed locally, and the family also printed out and passed out missing posters in English and Spanish all over the world. Sightings came in from nearly every state in the country and as far as Europe and the Middle East, where Amy was supposedly engaged in sex work against her will. But as the months elapsed, the tips slowed down and search efforts halted. But as law enforcement backed off the case, Susan forged a head on her own determined to get answers.

And I mean, I totally get it because she is being told by so many people that her daughter is alive and out there and being used for sex trafficking, so she probably felt like she had no choice but to look on her own just thinking that every passing second, her daughter is out there suffering. Yeah, and potentially even getting further and further away from being found. Exactly. Well, two grueling years after her daughter's disappearance, Susan was contacted by a man who had seen Amy's picture and missing poster in the local newspaper. This man was a member of the Pagans motorcycle gang, and his name was Paul, and he called Susan claiming that he himself

had once been in possession of Amy Billig. He even agreed to speak with Susan but was staunch about his requirements. She must come alone, and he would pick her up himself with his motorcycle to drive her to his house to speak with her. Which obviously is very risky and super dangerous, but Susan agreed because she was truly willing to do anything to find Amy.

When they arrived at his home, Paul claimed that he had purchased Amy from another member of the Pagans gang. He said that she had been drugged frequently to keep her submissive and described Amy as quiet and fearful, adding that her nickname was mute. The man was even able to identify the appendectomy scar on Amy's abdomen, which is a detail that Susan claimed

the family had not made public. So that made it feel like this guy, Paul Paul was telling the truth, or at least somewhat of the truth. Like how else would he know about that scar? And even though Susan was irated how casually they were speaking of this, she maintained her composure, knowing that she needed to kind of play along until her daughter was found. Well imagine how she's feeling. She's sitting with this guy who's essentially saying,

Oh yeah, I was in ownership of your daughter once to do whatever I wanted to her. Like, oh my God, I can't imagine how that felt to hear. She probably just wanted to get up and rip his face off. Totally. So she waited patiently as this gang member delivered on his promise to report back when he had located Amy. Finally, he called Susan with good news. She was allegedly in Tulsa, Oklahoma. So Susan met Paul there in a biker bar and he agreed to track Amy down.

So she went multiple states away just based on this tip that Amy is in Tulsa. Right, but while they were at this biker bar, a fight broke out and she was ushered out of the bar and into a cab. And the man helping her broke both of his knees in this altercation so this was a really big and bad fight. He later phoned her attorney and reported that he could no longer help Susan look for Amy with no further explanation. But he offered one last lead. He heard that Amy was in Seattle, Washington by that point, nowhere near Tulsa, Oklahoma, like he had previously claimed.

As you can imagine the stress of all the back and forth and daunting thoughts of what Amy was experiencing every passing second was more stress and heartbreak than anybody could handle. So, in September of 1977, Susan actually suffered a heart attack due to the stress that she was being put under searching for her daughter. She explained explained quote, something like this changes the whole fabric of your life. We have no social life. We used to go out a lot. Then we'd say, what are we doing here? People don't invite us out because we say no. People say we must live that life goes on. I don't even know my daughter is safe in death. That's a finality. She could be in pain or somewhere rain is falling on her body.

Even now, every time I go out, I keep looking for her. And that's the biggest issue again, because so many people are saying that she's alive and being used. Like, Susan can't rest. Yeah, she's unwilling to let any of this go. And know, and why would she? This is her daughter. So in November of 1977, just two months after her heart attack, Susan traveled to Seattle by herself in search of her daughter Amy. Susan again searched everywhere that she thought the gang members would frequent, and several people claimed that they had seen her daughter, remembering her every time as

mute, just like the gang member who claims to have known her said. Sadly Susan wasn't able to trace her daughter and she went back to Florida empty handed yet again, just like every other trip she took. Desperate for answers, Susan even tried bringing Amy's journal and a bracelet to a psychic, hoping for some sort of conclusion. And according to the psychic, a gang had taken her daughter and she had been beaten by her abductors and forced to take drugs to keep her quiet, which seemed to match up with what she heard from Paul.

The psychic went on to say that they took her to Pensacola, Atlanta, Louisville, Colorado, and then finally killed her and left her somewhere in the woods between Oregon, California, and Nevada. The psychic told Susan softly, quote, I'm afraid you'll never find your daughter. But a year and a half later in 1979, a caller claimed that he had seen Amy at a truck stop in Reno, Nevada. The report claimed that she had been strung out on drugs and beaten, and that she may have been in grave danger. So police actually canvassed the area as soon as the tip was passed along, but there was no sign of her there either, so it was hard to know if this tip was real or if someone was mistaking Amy for somebody else.

Strangely, nearly 20 years after she went missing in 1992, a tip came in all the way from the United Kingdom. So a man there in Falmouth, who happened to be an investigator himself, reported that he had run into a man who looked like he belonged in a biker gang. The man had offered to sell him a young woman, claiming that her name was Mute and that she was an American born in Oyster Bay, New York. So Susan traveled abroad to investigate yet another possible sighting of Amy, but once again, flew home alone,

never able to confirm if it had actually been Amy or not. Over the years, Amy continued to be linked back to both the outlaws and the pagans, and her mother was told that she went by the aliases Sunshine, Mellow Sherrill, and Little Bits in addition to Mute. Susan's unrelenting quest to find her daughter took her to every single corner of the country and across the world. And she even took to attending the funerals of bikers who were known to be affiliated with gangs and asked around with Amy's picture, just hoping that that would prompt a tip or a confession.

Like she was looking for Amy like it was her full-time job. In addition to the biker gangs that Susan bravely infiltrated and chased down, she had a long standing rapport with a caller who threatened her for 21 years. And Heath, I think we can agree this is like the most frustrating part of this whole case. This detail of this case pisses me off to no end. Let's get into it.

So, three weeks after Amy disappeared, Susan received a call at home from someone that she assumed had a tip, as she did frequently in the immediate aftermath of her daughter vanishing. Now at first, the calls were silent, and Susan thought that they may be coming from Amy herself. So she pleaded with the caller to give her some semblance of an explanation, but they would just hang up every time.

Susan remembered later, quote, from the beginning, the calls tore my heart out. After five months of completely silent calls, the caller finally identified himself saying, I have her, this is Hal Johnson. The man said that Amy had been abducted, ushered into a sex trafficking operation like everybody else was saying, and was being held there against her will.

Police determined the origin of the call to be a pay phone booth in Kendall, Florida, just 10 miles or 16 kilometers southwest of Coconut Grove. And after determining this, police staged a stakeout, but they were never able to determine the identity of the caller. The calls, though continuing, then moved to a different pay phone location in Kendall, and then another, before transitioning into Coral Gables.

So police bemoaned that every time they were able to determine the location of the payphone booth of origin, the caller would move to a new one. So this mysterious caller who addressed himself as Hal would sometimes phone Susan as many as seven times in one night to just torment her. Unreal. Then she would go months without hearing from him. Hal would describe in grotesque detail what Amy had learned in her training and the sex

acts that she would perform in her work. Hal explained that she had been led from Coconut Grove to Fort Pierce, Florida before being transferred to Canada, the United Kingdom, and then Saudi Arabia. Susan pleaded for proof, but he never offered any. They even arranged meetups, but he stood Susan up every time. I literally hate this man. Yeah, he is such a piece of shit. And Hal made a point of calling each time Amy's name appeared in the news, adding insult to

injury when a family member died, Amy's birthday passed, or the anniversary of her disappearance came up. In 1993, 19 years after Amy's disappearance, Amy's father Ned sadly passed away after battling lung cancer. Before his death, Susan recalled that Ned told her, quote, I can't leave you. You'll be alone when that man calls. God, that's so sad. So sad. So on the day of his funeral, Susan received a call in which he said, quote, Hello

Susan, Ned's dead, isn't he? You're alone now, aren't you? You'd better watch out. It was that same year that he started using a cell phone, making him much harder to track. He also seemed to start targeting Susan herself, telling her that the illicit sex ring that had captured her daughter was coming for her next. He threatened that if she didn't comply, he would kill Amy. And he even started a countdown, sharing how long Amy had left. God, this guy is unrelenting. Yeah, it's just horrible.

So from 1974 when she disappeared until 1995 when this man was finally apprehended. So 21 years, he would call Susan and torment her with stories of Amy's misery. So when asked by prosecutors what they had talked about, Susan said quote, He wanted me to be a part of a mother-daughter sex team, asked if I had two breasts, all kinds of sexual things that I can't mention. I can't wake up in the morning and I can't sleep at night.

Like that is honestly so weird, like do you have two breasts like what a fucking odd question Well, he's just a sick piece of shit. He's a freak I mean could you imagine being tormented like this for 21 years and the things that he's saying to her like it is beyond Unreal yeah, just I've never heard anything like this. I hate to keep harping on it, but it is just truly sickening I hate to keep harping on it, but it is just truly sickening. So though it took two years, Miami police were finally able to subpoena the wireless carrier of Hal's cell phone and traced it to a government building. They tracked its owner to the US Customs Branch and verified with his coworkers that the voice was a match to the person that they suspected. So, he was arrested at work, and guess who had

been calling her all these years? A 48-year-old government employee by the name of Henry Johnson Blair. And remember, he said his name was Hal Johnson, so kind of correct. But this dude just, he works for the government. Yeah, like that's the last person you would think would be terrorizing this poor woman. Yeah, he should know better. Absolutely. So Henry was described in the press as a quote, decorated US customs agent who had been married less than a month before he started making the phone calls. In the two decades in which he continued his ruse,

he had and raised two daughters, and advanced his career in good standing in the same community that Susan lived in and Amy disappeared from. And I think that is a really shocking detail here, is the fact that this guy has his own daughters, and he's not sympathetic or empathetic towards Susan at all, he's just terrorizing her. Like, that scares me, that this man has children.

Couldn't agree more, so flanged by his devoted wife, Cynthia, Henry arrived in court armed with the story that he and his lawyers had prepared. That he suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder, or OCD, and a dependence on alcohol. But this was of little explanation to Susan obviously because these calls had taken such a massive toll on her. I mean, he single-handedly destroyed her life for 21 years. Like she once cried to him, quote, Haven't I been through enough?

Have you no heart? How much more? How much more? Ultimately, Henry was sentenced to just two years in prison for the egregious act of aggravated stalking. However, Susan did level a lawsuit against him and she won $5 million. Strangely, though Henry maintained that he had never met Amy

and didn't know anything about her whereabouts, there were some coincidences in his story. So Henry, who was 27 years old when Amy went missing, meaning he was 10 years her senior, remember she was 17, often went by the nickname Hank. And after his arrest, Susan found herself pouring over Amy's journals once again. Inside, she discovered a passage that explained that a man named Hank asked her to go with him to South America. And around that same time, Henry was reportedly asked to transfer to South America for work,

which just feels a little too, little too coincidental for me. So he also drove a car similar to that in the picture of the truck or the van that was the last photo in the role of Amy's discarded camera. So is it possible that he really was connected or responsible? Absolutely. But in 1997, the girlfriend of Paul Branch, whom Susan had visited in Oklahoma back in 1976,

contacted Susan to let her know that Paul had succumbed to cancer on New Year's Eve, 1996. So the year prior, probably only a few months earlier, and that she had an update. So his girlfriend had received a deathbed confession that many believe is the most plausible explanation for Amy's disappearance. Paul's girlfriend contacted Susan after his death,

saying that he told her that Amy had been abducted by members of the Pagans that day in March of 1974, and taken her to a wild party thrown by the gang that night. Amy apparently died of a drug overdose at the party so the same night that she went missing. Wanting to cover the tracks of their crime of kidnapping Amy, members of the Pagans apparently threw her body into the swamp land of the Everglades

to be devoured by alligators. According to this story, she was never used for sex trafficking or taken around the world. She died mere hours after she vanished. Detective Jack Calver with the Miami police recalled quote, she got sassy with one of the bikers and it pissed him off. She fought back so they kept injecting her with drugs and she finally overdosed and died.

Then they took her body to the swamps. Now when Paul first spoke to Susan, he claimed that Amy had been his girlfriend, meaning that he bought her from another member of the Pagans, but that she was taken by another member. But nearing death, he said that he wanted to bring closure for Susan. Detective Calvar remarked, quote, when somebody pretty much knows he's going to die, he pretty much comes clean. He won't make up something when he could have just let it lie. Paul reportedly told his girlfriend

that there was no chance of ever finding Amy's remains. Though Paul's credibility is pretty questionable at this point, police were able to verify some details of his account, making it slightly more likely of a story than the broad range of sightings that had been reported for decades. But ultimately, we're still left unsure

of what became of Amy on that afternoon. I just wonder though, if that's true, which you know, you would hope to be true in a way because if Amy couldn't ever return home anyway, you would wanna know that she wasn't suffering and being used for years and years, but why would Paul ever lie to Susan to begin with? Like why not just say, oh, I heard she's dead?

Like he could have just said it like that? You know, say he heard a rumor so that he wouldn't be associated. I mean, why torture Susan with the hope that her daughter is alive and make up your own involvement saying you purchased her if that didn't happen at all? Yeah, I don't know. Maybe he felt some sort of guilt towards the end of his life, wanted to come clean and... I mean, it's... I don't find this guy very credible at all.

Um, just because of all the lies that he had told Susan over the years. But... I don't know, maybe it is true. Yeah, I mean just the fact that he did say, I heard she's in Tulsa, Oklahoma, I heard she's in Seattle. He gave Susan the run around for so many years, so maybe he was a sick dude and just wanted to mess with her. Like I don't know why he would want to do that. And then at the end of his life, his deathbed confession has to mess with her? Like, I don't know why he would want to do that. And then at the end of his life,

his deathbed confession has to do with this case, you know? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, is it credible or not? Nobody will really ever know. Well, Susan, who like her husband had battled lung cancer, had her fair share of health problems, but she never gave up searching for her daughter. Though she admitted that she would hope for Amy's safe return until the day she died, she and her son Josh both acknowledged that the most likely scenario was that Amy was deceased.

So in 1998, 24 years after Amy's disappearance, they held a memorial for her at Susan's house, finally allowing her friends and family to speak of their love for her and to acknowledge the tremendous loss. Susan later admitted that the service brought her an immense sense of peace. One attendee was Edna Buchanan, who is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who reported heavily on Amy's case, and got to know her family very well. And Edna said after the memorial quote, "'Susan has been through more than any other mother I've ever met in all those years of covering missing children and homicides.

She looks happier and more relieved than I've ever seen her look in the last 24 years. On June 7th, 2005, Susan Billig passed away at the age of 80 following another heart attack. She told her son before her passing never to give up hope of finding Amy. After her death, Amy's younger brother Josh said of Susan, quote, I don't think that she ever found peace. She took that as a really tough wound right to the grave. Four years before her death, Susan co-authored a book entitled, Without a Trace, The Disappearance of Amy Billig, A Mother's Search for Justice, detailing her relentless quest for answers for her daughter.

And it became a bestseller, so if you're interested in this story, go pick it up and check it out. In a corner of Peacock Park in Coconut Grove, set to bench made from coral bearing a plaque with Amy's name, constructed by her brother and dedicated to her memory. It's called Amy Billig's Meditation Garden, and the plaque reads quote, for a beautiful coconut grove girl who loved this park. It has now been 50 years since Amy vanished, and today, she would be 67 years old. Amy Billig was 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighed about 110 pounds. She was last seen wearing a denim mini skirt and cork platform sandals. She had brown hair and brown eyes and a two inch scarf from an appendectomy on her torso. If you have any information about the disappearance of Amy Billig, please call the Miami Crime

Stoppers at 305-471-8477. Thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode and on Tuesday we'll have an all new case for you guys to dive into. I just can't believe this story. I know you guys are probably in as much shock and frustration as we are. Like I feel like we held back a little bit. I feel like we could have gotten a lot more mad.

This story is just insane. It's one of those cases that makes you so, so mad. Yeah, it's infuriating. And like I said earlier, it's one of those cases that kinda makes you lose a little bit of hope and humanity just because of what all these people put Susan through. I mean, those-

So many people. Yeah, those teenagers, the police officers, Paul, fuckin', what's his name? Henry. Dickhead Johnson, you know? All these people just ruined this poor woman's life and all she wanted to do was find her daughter. Yeah, it is so sad. So thank you everybody for tuning in.

Big thanks once again to Jessica for recommending this case. Um, don't forget to share this one and we'll see you on Tuesday. Alright guys, so for everybody out there in the world, don't be a stranger. Thank you for watching! you