Amy Billig was a 17-year-old high school student from the U.S. who went missing on March 5, 1974.
She was hitchhiking to her dad’s art studio in Coconut Grove, Florida when she disappeared.
Investigators believe Amy's disappearance was not voluntary.
While there's no clear evidence about what happened to her, some unconfirmed tips suggest she might have been kidnapped by a motorcycle gang, possibly The Pagans.
They believe she could have been drugged, raped, and killed.
Even with all the media attention and numerous efforts to find her, whether alive or dead, Amy's disappearance is still an unsolved mystery.
Her case is still active and is one of Florida's longest-running missing persons cases.
 |
| Amy Billig |
Background
Amy Billig was born on January 9, 1957, in Oyster Bay, New York.
She was the first of two children of Nathaniel Solomon and Susan Billig.
Her father owned an art gallery, and her mother was an interior designer and art dealer.
The family practiced the Jewish faith.
Susan Billig described her only daughter as a friendly, "spiritual" teenager and a "flower child" who was very interested in nature.
Amy enjoyed playing the flute and guitar, as well as reading and writing poetry.
She was close to her mother and also trained dolphins at the Miami Seaquarium.
Worried about crime in New York, the Billig family moved from New York City to Coconut Grove, Florida, in May 1969.
Both Amy and her younger brother, Joshua, went to local private schools.
At the time of her disappearance, Amy was 17 years old.
Disappearance
By 1974, Amy was thinking about becoming an actress after she graduated from Adelphi Academy of Coral Gables.
Since she didn't have a car, she frequently hitchhiked around her neighborhood, but never for long distances.
On the afternoon of March 5, 1974, Amy came home from school, and had some yogurt.
She then called her father to ask for $2 to pay for a lunch she had planned with friends at nearby Peacock Park.
Her father agreed, so Amy changed her blouse and started hitchhiking to her father’s art gallery on Commodore Plaza to get the money.
She planned to meet her friends for lunch afterward.
In the early afternoon, construction workers saw her hitchhiking at the corner of Poinciana Street and Main Highway in Coconut Grove, near her family home.
This was the last confirmed sighting of Amy, as she never reached her father's art gallery.
By the evening of March 5, Amy's mother and brother were worried because she hadn't come home.
Their concern began when Amy's friends called to ask Susan why Amy didn’t show up as planned.
Their worries turned to panic when her father came home and said Amy hadn’t arrived at his workplace to get the lunch money.
When they called the local police to report her missing, they were told an investigation would start if Amy hadn’t returned by morning.
By 6 a.m., a worried Susan Billig reported her daughter missing again to the Miami Police Department.
This time, an official investigation was launched.
Investigation
After Susan’s phone call on March 6, the police quickly started investigating Amy's disappearance.
Both parents, along with family and close friends, were actively involved in the search.
Despite questioning Amy’s friends and searching her usual spots in the days following her disappearance, no leads were found.
Since Amy had very few personal belongings with her when she disappeared, investigators quickly determined that her disappearance was not voluntary.
After learning that Amy frequently hitchhiked around her neighborhood, investigators believed she likely got into a vehicle willingly before being abducted.
The only piece of physical evidence found in connection with Amy's disappearance was her Instamatic camera.
A hitchhiking college student found it on March 18 in a grassy area near the Wildwood exit on Florida's Turnpike, about 250 miles northwest of Miami.
Processing the camera film did not help the investigation, as most of the photos were overexposed.
However, one of the photos showed a light-colored pickup truck parked in front of a vine-covered building.
Another photo showed a white van.
Investigators could not find either vehicle or identify the building.
In addition to their own search efforts for Amy, Susan and Nathaniel Billig hired a private investigator.
However, this investigator was unable to find any conclusive leads.
The family printed and distributed hundreds of missing persons posters across Miami-Dade County in hopes of generating new leads.
A $1,000 reward was offered for information about Amy’s whereabouts.
This led to several public tips, but none of the reported sightings were confirmed.
Abduction By Motorcylce Club
Both the police and Susan Billig received several tips suggesting that Amy had been abducted by members of a Motorcycle club.
The tipster suggested that Amy had been abducted by either the Outlaws Motorcycle Club or the Pagans Motorcycle Club.
These rival motorcycle gangs had traveled through the Coconut Grove area on the day Amy disappeared.
The were heading to an annual bike festival in Daytona.
Both gangs are known for committing violence and abuse against women, including abduction, rape, and sex trafficking.
Amy's family and investigators considered this theory the most likely explanation for her involuntary disappearance.
On March 16, a girl who identified herself as "Susan Johnson" called.
She claimed that Amy had been abducted by the Outlaws Motorcycle Club.
Soon after, a family friend called Amy's parents, saying he had heard rumors from The Outlaws about a teenage girl recently "taken from Miami."
At Susan's request, two members of the motorcycle gang visited the Billig home to listen to her pleas for her daughter's return.
One of them promised that if Amy was with the gang, they would return her.
However, days later, they called Susan and told her to "forget the whole thing."
By June 1974, Susan learned from a convenience store manager in Orlando that a young woman he positively identified as her daughter had visited his store several times with two bikers.
However, this sighting was not confirmed but Susan Believed it.
Attempted Extortion
Sixteen days after Amy's disappearance, her family received a call claiming she had been kidnapped and was being held for a $30,000 ransom.
After receiving a follow-up call from someone she believed to be her daughter saying, "Mama, mama, please," Susan borrowed the money from friends.
A meeting was set up for Susan to deliver the money in a black attaché case at the Fontainebleau Hotel on March 22, 1974.
The caller was arrested after Susan refused to give him the money until he could prove he had Amy.
The extortion attempt was carried out by 16-year-old twin brothers Charles and Lawrence Glasser, who were not involved in Amy's disappearance.
Both brothers were arrested and charged with extortion, to which they pleaded guilty.
 |
| Amy Billig |
Unknown Stalker
Within months of Amy's disappearance, the Billig family started receiving hoax phone calls from an unknown male who identified himself as "Johnson."
This individual openly and repeatedly taunted Amy's family, especially her mother.
He described in graphic detail the abuse and torment he claimed to be inflicting on Amy.
The individual also claimed that Amy had been kidnapped by an organized sex ring.
He said she was being held captive, and that Susan would suffer the same fate.
Shortly after Susan was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1992, and she informed the caller of her illness.
She hoped that this would touch his conscience and either make him stop the harassment or, if he was Amy's abductor, release her.
Instead, the caller used this information to intensify his threats and taunts.
On two occasions, he agreed to meet Susan at a planned location but failed to show up both times.
Despite the many calls made to the Billig household, investigators initially couldn't identify the perpetrator.
Most of the calls were made from pay phones, and the caller often ended the conversations quickly, making them hard to trace.
Hoax caller identified
In October 1995, FBI agents identified the person who had harassed Susan Billig and her family for over twenty-one years.
The caller was 48-year-old Henry Johnson Blair.
He was a married father of two daughters who had worked for the United States Customs Service for twenty-four years.
Blair was arrested and formally charged with three counts of aggravated stalking.
At trial, Blair admitted that he derived some sexual pleasure from making the hoax calls but insisted he did not mean to cause distress.
He insisted he had never met Amy and that he actually knew nothing about her disappearance.
Susan expressed disbelief at Blair's actions, telling the press, "I just don't understand why he targeted me and Amy. There has to be a reason."
Six weeks before her disappearance, Amy wrote in her journal about a man she referred to as "Hank."
She said he had asked her to go with him to South America, but she had told him he was crazy.
Henry Blair's nickname was "Hank," which matched the name Amy mentioned in her journal.
His van also looked like one in a photo from Amy's Instamatic camera.
Additionally, his job required him to move to South America around the same time Amy mentioned in her journal.
Because of these connections, some people think Blair might have been more involved in Amy's disappearance.
However, this theory is unproven.
 |
| Susan Billig |
Potential sighting in Tulsa
By January 1976, Susan's search had reached Oklahoma after receiving a tip from a gang member named David.
He contacted her personally and claimed to have recognized her daughter as a girl he had previously "owned."
This individual agreed to meet Susan at the family home.
When he arrived, he described a distinctive scar on Amy’s body that had never been disclosed to the media.
This detail convinced Susan that David's claims might be true.
David agreed to contact the person he believed had Amy.
Several weeks later, he informed the Billigs that Amy was in Tulsa.
Three weeks later, David called again to tell Susan that her daughter was now in Seattle working as an erotic dancer in a bar.
He also said it would be the last time Susan would hear from him because his gang considered him an informant and his life was under threat.
Susan traveled to Seattle to follow this lead, but she found no results.
Terri Ann Warner's theory
In August 1985, a 33-year-old man named Alex Courvier told Pennsylvania police that he had seen a missing persons flyer of Amy Billig.
He said he recognized her as a young woman named Terri Ann Warner.
Terri had died of natural causes in Texas in the summer of 1974, and her body had never been claimed.
To verify or disprove Courvier's theory, a Miami detective and a local dentist flew to Vernon, Texas, to examine the exhumed body.
They quickly determined from the dental records that the young woman was not Amy Billig.
 |
| Age progression photo of Amy |
Psychic revelations
In the mid-1980s, Miami Herald reporter Edna Buchanan was investigating the unsolved strangling murder of a Las Vegas banker.
She contacted a renowned Californian psychic known for accuracy to get information about the case.
During their conversation about the banker's murder, Edna Buchanan suddenly asked, "Where's Amy?" without giving more details.
The psychic responded, "Lost. Her bones are scattered across the sand,".
The psychic clarified that Amy Billig had been killed by a lone man during a rape, and the bones were underwater.
The psychic said Amy's murderer did not intend to kill her, but the struggle got out of hand.
In a fugue-like state, he then disposed of her remains underwater.
Deathbed confession
A former high-ranking member of The Pagans, Paul Branch, confessed before his death that his gang was responsible for Amy's abduction and murder.
According to Branch's confession, which his wife gave to investigators after his death, Amy was kidnapped and taken to a "party" in the Everglades.
Branch's posthumous confession said that Amy had insulted some gang members, which led to her being gang-raped by about two dozen of them.
To subdue her as she kept struggling, she was repeatedly injected with drugs until she overdosed and died.
Branch said Amy died within hours of being taken by the gang, and her body was quickly disposed of in a swamp.
Branch had been questioned by investigators many times in the months and years after Amy's disappearance but had always denied knowing anything about her whereabouts.
The lead detective on Amy's case, Jack Calvar, strongly believed Branch's posthumous confession.
He noted that many details Branch provided matched known facts of the case, some of which had never been publicly disclosed.
 |
| Joshua Billig |
Aftermath and Ongoing Efforts
The many leads Susan Billig received about her daughter's disappearance led her on an unsuccessful nationwide search for Amy.
As late as 1992, she even traveled to the United Kingdom in her search for her daughter, but she found no results.
Despite the ongoing setbacks, Susan refused to abandon hope of locating Amy.
Susan speculated that Amy might not have reached out because she was intimidated by her abductor(s).
She believes Amy might be held against her will or brainwashed.
By 1998, Amy's mother and brother had accepted that she was almost certainly deceased.
Sadly, Susan Billig died of a heart attack on June 7, 2005, at the age of 80, following a long battle with lung cancer.
Her son, Joshua, is alive, and he says his mom has told him to keep searching and stay hopeful.
As of 2024, Amy's disappearance remains an unsolved mystery, and her loved ones are still seeking answers for closure.
If you have any information, please contact the nearest police station.
Comments
Post a Comment