FL AMY BILLIG: Missing from Coconut Grove, FL - 5 March 1974 - Age 17

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The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)

By bringing people, information, forensic science and technology together, NamUs helps resolve cases.

www.namus.gov

Amy Billig was last seen hitchhiking along Main Highway in Coconut Grove, Florida on March 5, 1974. She was headed to her fathers workplace but never made it.

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Amy Billig - WSVN 7News | Miami News, Weather, Sports | Fort Lauderdale

It was 1974. Amy Billig was a 17-year-old girl living with her family in Coconut Grove.Josh Billig: “She was just sort of a young, kind<a class="excerpt-read-more" href="https://wsvn.com/news/amy-billig/">Read More</a>

wsvn.com

It was 1974. Amy Billig was a 17-year-old girl living with her family in Coconut Grove.

Josh Billig: “She was just sort of a young, kind of hippy-ish girl.”

On that March day nearly 40 years ago, Amy decided to hitchhike to her father’s art store in the Grove. Some workers were the last to see her.

Josh Billig: “We used to hitchhike a lot in those days, and they saw her get in a van.”

Police started searching. A call came in from a tipster.

Josh Billig: “Said, ‘Your daughter is with these bikers. You’ve got to, for her sake, get her out of there.'”

Detectives now believe that Amy was picked up by members of the Pagan’s motorcycle gang, seen here in YouTube videos.

Detective Jack Calvar: “They were not your regular motorcycle club; they were hard core.”

Detectives searched for four decades. Also searching was Susan Billig, Amy’s mother.

Susan Billig, Aug. 8, 1996: “I’m just a mother. I’m not amazing; everybody would do this. You don’t give up.

Then in 1996, it seemed like Miami detectives got a break when a woman claimed her husband, one of the Pagan’s bikers, made a deathbed confession to her. Detective Calvar interviewed her

Detective Jack Calvar: “They drugged her with heroin and they raped her and they kept pumping drugs into her system and she overdosed. They decided to chop her up and throw her out in the Everglades.”

Detectives thought the woman was telling the truth, but the case was not labeled ‘solved.’

Detective Andy Arostegui: “I would need verification that she is dead in ways of physical evidence, say, if someone found a bone.”

In June 2005, Susan Billig died without ever knowing exactly what happened to her daughter, without knowing where her daughter was buried, and so she asked Josh to never give up, to keep trying to get the answer.

Josh Billig: “That’s partly why I’m talking to you. It’s always worth trying to keep it, the word out.”

Josh will never give up. Neither will the Miami detectives who keep trying to solve the old case.

Detective Andy Arostegui: “It could happen, absolutely it could very well happen. I have never, ever, ever in my mind said, ‘This is a waste.'”

Forty years have passed. A lot of detectives have searched for answers. One family is still searching for some answers. Someone has them.

Detective Andy Arostegui: “There’s people out there who know. If the story we heard was true, then there was a lot of people there.”

Maybe Amy was killed by the bikers. Maybe it was someone else. A simple phone call can end a nearly 40-year-long search. If you have any information give Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers a call at 305-471-TIPS, and if you have lost a loved one and never want people to forget you are still Out for Justice, give us a call. Patrick Fraser, 7News.

 

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Amy Billig

Real Name: Amy Billig Nicknames: Last name sometimes misspelled "Billing" or "Bilig" Location: Coconut Grove, Miami, Florida Date: March 5, 1974 Date of Birth: January 9, 1957 Height: 5' 5" Weight: 110 lbs. Marital Status: Single Characteristics: White female with brown hair and brown eyes. Amy...

unsolvedmysteries.fandom.com

Details: At around 12pm on March 5, 1974, seventeen-year-old Amy Billig came home from school for lunch. She planned to go out with friends later and called her father, Ned, asking to borrow some money. She vanished while hitchhiking to his office. A few days later, sixteen-year-old twins Charles and Larry Glasser claimed to have kidnapped her and asked for a $30,000 ransom, but the police discovered this was a ruse and arrested them for extortion.

Investigators interviewed Amy's family, friends, and neighbors, but could find no trace of her. They did not think that she vanished voluntarily. Shortly after she vanished, her camera was found at the Wildwood exit on the Florida Turnpike and surrendered to the police. Many of its photos were overexposed, and the few decent ones had no further clue to her whereabouts. Twelve days later, Amy's mother, Susan, received tips that she might have been kidnapped by a motorcycle gang called "The Outlaws" and taken cross-country. She learned that a chapter of them had come through Coconut Grove at the time of Amy's disappearance.

A family friend who had done legal work for the Outlaws arranged a meeting between Susan, Ned, and two of the gang members. Although the men claimed to have not seen Amy personally, they confirmed that other gang members have kidnapped and sold young women in the past. Surprisingly, some women (called "old ladies") would be sold merely for a credit card or a bike. The men promised to ask other members about Amy, but they never were able to provide any information. Susan soon heard from a woman named Gina Andrew who had been abducted by a biker gang at the age of twelve; she escaped five years later. She claimed that she had been sold for money, motorcycles, and even leather chaps.

Three months after Amy's disappearance, Susan tracked the Outlaws to Orlando, 160 miles away. She questioned dozens of people in the area. A convenience store manager remembered seeing Amy being escorted by at least two bikers. The manager remembered that she always bought vegetarian vegetable soup. This was important because she had been a committed vegetarian. Susan was certain that that was her.

However, a year-and-a-half would pass before Susan received another lead. On January 9, 1976, a biker named "Dave" contacted her after seeing a picture of Amy in the newspaper. He claimed that he had actually owned Amy at one time. He agreed to talk to her, but only at his house. He acted nervous while she was there, believing that they had been followed. When shown a clearer picture of Amy, he was certain that the girl he owned was her. He described her as quiet, like a "mute". He also described a hidden scar on her body, which Susan had never divulged publicly. This made her certain that the abducted girl was Amy.

Dave agreed to try and contact the person who he believed had Amy. A few weeks later, he contacted Susan and claimed that she was in Tulsa, Oklahoma. They met there and tried to search for her. In June 1976, they arrived at a tavern where he claimed Amy would be delivered to them. While there, a fight broke out and he was injured. Susan was whisked away and placed in a cab by one of the other bikers. She never saw Dave again. He did tell her attorney that Amy was in Seattle.

In November 1977, Susan traveled to Seattle, even though she had suffered a heart attack a few months earlier. She frequented bars, tattoo parlors, and motorcycle shops. Several people recognized photographs of Amy, describing her as "always quiet" and "like mute". However, she once again could not find her daughter. Eighteen months later, in the winter of 1979, an anonymous male caller told Susan that Amy was at a remote truck stop outside of Reno, Nevada, and that she desperately needed help. FBI agents learned that a biker gang had been there briefly, but there was no way to verify if Amy was with them. Years passed; then in 1992, Susan was contacted by private investigator Virginia Snyder. She and a British investigator were working on a case when they received a tip about Amy. The investigator was in a post office in Falmouth, England, when he was approached by an American biker. He said that he had a girl that he wanted to sell to him. He said that she was American, from Oyster Bay, and was "mute". The description seemed to match Amy. However, he left without showing a picture of her. Susan felt certain that that was Amy. However, she was unable to find any trace of her. Tragically, the British investigator passed away a year later.

Virginia believes that Amy is still alive, if she was able to survive the first few years. However, investigators do not believe that she is alive after all of this time. Susan would like to know what happened to her. Sadly, Ned died of lung cancer in 1992. To date, no trace of Amy has ever been found.

Suspects: For years, Susan believed that a biker gang was responsible for Amy's disappearance. She followed up on hundreds of leads, which took her to various parts of the United States and even England. Unfortunately, she was never able to find Amy or the people who may have been responsible.

Extra Notes: This case first aired on the January 26, 1994 episode. It was also profiled on America’s Most Wanted. Susan wrote a book called Without A Trace: The Disappearance of Amy Billig with Greg Aunapu in 2001.

Results: Unresolved. Following Amy's disappearance, her family received multiple harassing phone calls from a man who claimed that she was being held captive by members of a sex ring. He tormented Susan for over twenty years, often calling her through pay phones. However, in 1995, he used a cell phone to make the harassing calls. FBI agents were finally able to trace the call to a man named Henry Johnson Blair, who worked for the U.S. Customs Department. He claimed that his obsessive-compulsive disorder and alcoholism caused him to harass Susan. He later claimed to never know Amy. He was sentenced to a two-year prison term for harassment and lost a suit to Susan, who received a five-million-dollar settlement.

However, despite claiming to not know Amy, he is considered a person of interest in the case. In one of Amy's photos, there is a white van that is identical in color and model to one that he owned in 1974. Also, in her diary, she described a man named Hank who wanted to take her to South America at the same time Blair's job as a customs agent was sending him to Argentina. Interestingly, his nickname is Hank. Officially, he has not been positively linked to her disappearance and he proclaims his innocence.

In a death bed confession in December 1997, Paul Branch, a former member of the Outlaws, claimed that she had been drugged, raped, and killed at a "party" within hours of being abducted. He claimed that her body was then thrown into the Florida Everglades. Police were able to verify several details of his account. Her camera was found near Wildwood, which would have been on the route the Outlaws took traveling north. Despite the confession, her remains have yet to be found. Some, however, believe that the confession was made up by Branch's wife for publicity and money. Amy's brother, Josh, has also doubted the story's credibility.

Sadly, Susan passed away on June 7, 2005, at the age of eighty. She had searched for Amy for over thirty-one years.

 

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AMY’S ONLY HOPE

“It’s so funny you called,” Susan Billig says. “I was starting to get the feeling people in Florida had forgotten we have a missing child.” The child is her daughter, …

www.sun-sentinel.com

Article dated December 19, 1993

AMY'S ONLY HOPE

"It's so funny you called," Susan Billig says. "I was starting to get the feeling people in Florida had forgotten we have a missing child."

The child is her daughter, Amy, who apparently was abducted from a sidewalk in Coconut Grove when she was 17. Amy is 36 now - if she is alive. Susan Billig devoutly believes she is, even as she faces a 20th Christmas without her daughter.

"I know she is alive," she told a reporter in 1979, five years after Amy disappeared on March 4, 1974. "I know it. I would feel it if she was dead."

Nothing that has happened in the intervening years has changed her mind.

Amy's father Ned has died, her brother Joshua has grown up and given Susan Billig a granddaughter. Susan herself, now 68, has been diagnosed with lung cancer and has not only outlived her doctor's longevity predictions by a year, but still works as an interior designer. "I suffered a bigger death losing her than I ever could with this cancer," she told a reporter. "I only feel alive when I'm searching for Amy."

By 1979, after five years of searching, tracking down every rumor, every tip, every lead, Susan had concluded that Amy had been abducted, beaten, raped and enslaved by members of the Outlaws motorcycle gang - and she still believes that today.

In most conversation, Susan is bold, salty and animated, but her voice is quiet, dry, almost rote when describing her perception of Amy today.

"She has no idea who she is," says Susan, imagining Amy's mental state. "She doesn't speak."

The reality is, no one who's saying anything knows Amy's real condition.

"People say, 'She's at a better place,'" Susan says. "They're trying to comfort me, but they're saying my daughter is dead! People ask me, 'Wouldn't you rather have a finality, know that she's dead?' I say, no, dead is forever. I'd rather have my child. Whatever she's been through, she's still my child."

Almost from the beginning, when the posters and flyers went up on walls and telephone poles all over Coconut Grove, Susan's devotion was regarded by some as an obsession. Her conviction can be persuasive. Edna Buchanan, the crime novelist who followed the case as a reporter with the Miami Herald, says, "Common sense tells you Amy must be dead, but Susan convinces you she could be alive."

SUSAN BILLIG IS SEATED AT THE dining table of a large, comfortable house near The Falls shopping center in Cutler Ridge? Kendall?, speaking to various parties on a portable phone. The interior designer is working on a house gutted by Hurricane Andrew. A housekeeper bustles from room to white-tiled room as Susan, punching out another series of numbers on the phone, resumes discussing chandeliers, oval bowls and "something nice" for the dining table.

Her voice is bold and assertive. She knows what she wants and wants it her way, but she ends each conversation brightly, with the words, "I love you." Her eyes are startlingly blue. Her hair gray-white and cropped. She has a realistic, tough-minded demeanor that, some say, deserts her only when the subject is Amy.

In the late '40s, Susan was a jazz singer. Her future husband, Ned, who died last March, played jazz trumpet. They were married in New York and wanted children from the start. But they were unlucky. They tried for 10 years. Susan had four miscarriages before Amy was born in Long Island on Jan. 9, 1957. Joshua followed on Valentine's Day the next year. The family moved to Coconut Grove in May 1969, "because of the violence" in New York, and opened an art gallery called Dimensions on Commodore Plaza. It was the first gallery of contemporary art in the Grove, and it did well.

The Billigs were New Yorkers, creative people who knew Greenwich Village, Provincetown in the summer, Key West in winter. When they moved to the Grove, they brought that New York sophistication with them.

But their daughter Amy was innocent. "They were a wonderful family, smart and creative, steeped in that freedom of openness of those times in the Grove," says a family friend.

Susan and Ned were regulars at the Taurus bar and restaurant on Main Highway where the patrons were boaters and arts people and the music was folk and jazz. Their teenage daughter was musical too. Amy played the flute at a local concert the night before she disappeared.

Amy Billig had warm brown eyes under dark brows, a mane of brown hair, very white teeth and an open, wide smile. At 5 feet 5 inches and 102 pounds, the 17-year-old vegetarian was slim and leggy. She wrote poetry and admired Sylvia Plath. A senior at Adelphi Academy in Coral Gables, she read voraciously. She played guitar as well as flute. She loved babies and animals. She volunteered her time with the Dolphin Project. She was a happy girl who knew she was loved, and as a result, she was filled with trust. She would smile and say: "Mosquitoes don't bite me because they know I love them."

AMY WAS LAST SEEN IN COCONUT grove around noon on Tuesday, March 4, 1974. She was wearing a short blue-denim skirt and cork platform sandals. Her grandmother, Susan's mother, was visiting from New York. After Amy drank a glass of orange juice and went off to school, Susan and her mother straightened up the house and went to lie in the sun at Tahiti Beach, now a housing development on Biscayne Bay.

Amy came home shortly before noon and found no one there. She telephoned her father at the gallery and asked to borrow $2 so she could go to lunch with friends. Ned told her to stop by the shop. Amy changed her blouse, ate some yogurt and then walked to the gallery, which was less than a mile away, just a block down Poinciana to Main Highway, then about half a mile to Commodore Plaza in Coconut Grove's village center.

"I think she was standing on the corner of Poinciana and Main Highway and somebody gave her a lift," Susan Billig speculates. "A biker."

Dozens of bikers had rumbled through the Grove that day, five abreast, on their way to the motorcycle races at Daytona Beach. Would Amy have trusted a biker for a ride?
"She trusted everyone," Susan says. "She was a flower child."

Adds a family friend, "I have a vivid recollection of this little angel child who used to hitchhike around the Grove in a micro-miniskirt. It looked very enticing, a serious advertisement for someone on two wheels to be attracted to. Yes, I think some bikers came by and she hopped innocently on the back for a ride and has been on that ride ever since."

If someone saw her hop onto a Harley, no one has come forward. Ned Billig thought Amy had changed her mind when she didn't show up at the gallery. She never met her friends for lunch. She didn't come home for dinner, and she didn't call. That was unlike her. At 8 p.m., her mother called Mike Gonzalez, a family friend who was a homicide detective with the Miami Police Department.

He told the Billigs not to panic, that 99 percent of missing children return home safely. He said to call him in the morning if Amy had not returned. At 6 a.m., Susan called Gonzalez again.

"I am very resentful to this day that they didn't do a more in-depth investigation," Susan has said about the Miami Police. "I wanted helicopters in the sky. I wanted policemen walking hand in hand through vacant lots."

Instead, the Billigs and their friends walked vacant lots, searched in every alley and under every shrub in Coconut Grove looking for Amy. As the implications of her disappearance sank in, the search broadened. Commercial pilots and flight attendants placed posters in airports across the country. The Billigs each reacted differently to Amy's disappearance. Josh, Amy's brother, was 16 at the time. "Josh became very quiet, inward," Susan recalls. "He changed his friends. He seemed not to want to be with people who knew us. Ned and I went into therapy - Band-Aid therapy - just to keep us alive day to day."

Susan coped with the pain by continuing to search for her daughter. Tips about bikers and Amy focused her investigation. Twelve days after Amy's disappearance, a tipster claimed members of the Outlaws had abducted her. Two Outlaws, bristling with hair and jingling with chains, came to the Billig house with a bail bondsman whose daughter went to school with Amy, and their leader promised Susan, "If she is in the Outlaw Nation, we'll return her."

 

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Part 2:

A few days later, the bikers called again and told Susan to forget the whole thing. Sixteen days after Amy's disappearance, Susan received a ransom demand by phone. Take $30,000 to the lobby of the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach, she was told. As she listened, she heard a faint voice in the background: "Mama, Mama, please ..." When Susan arrived at the hotel, the borrowed, scraped-up money in a briefcase, she was approached by a pimple-faced teenager wearing a ponytail and a green baseball cap.

"Give me the money and Amy will be home at 6 o'clock," he told her.

But the boy could not describe Amy, and on the fifth floor of the hotel police were apprehending the boy's twin brother. The boys were Charles and Laurence Glasser, 16, Miami Beach high-school students who lived with their divorced mother. After the Fontainebleau fiasco, the Billigs refocused their attention on the bikers. "We were on the right track and (the Glassers) pulled us away," Susan said at the time. A Baltimore lawyer reported to police that there was talk among the Pagans, another motorcycle gang, that a girl had been abducted from Miami and was in the hands of the Outlaws. A Hell's Angel whom Susan had been in contact with, told her if that were true, her daughter probably was being "traded" among the bikers.

"They trade women for another girl, money, a credit card, a car, a bike," the Hell's Angel said.

But the tip went nowhere.

Susan's cries for help reached President Richard Nixon, but they elicited only a terse letter from FBI Director Clarence Kelly that read in part: "There has been no evidence indicating your daughter was abducted and ... the FBI cannot conduct an active investigation to locate her ... My prayers are with you ..."

Meanwhile, the biker rumors persisted.

Susan got word that Amy had been seen with bikers at a bar in Fort Lauderdale. When she went to the bar, the owner said the bikers she was asking about were Outlaws from the Orlando area. They had been making trouble and he'd bounced them out of the bar at gunpoint. Following up on this lead, Susan drove to Orlando, and then to nearby Kissimmee, where a convenience-store manager said a girl who resembled Amy often came in with two bikers and bought Campbell's vegetarian vegetable soup. At last a clue, Susan thought, knowing her daughter was a vegetarian.

She located the Outlaws' abandoned clubhouse in a rural area near Kissimmee. In the filth and clutter, she found old phone bills and noted one frequently called number. And there were long, dark hairs in a hairbrush that looked like Amy's. She collected samples and the phone numbers and returned to Miami. It had now been five months since Amy's disappearance. The police, though they had promised to come and dust Amy's room for prints, had never done so. Susan went to headquarters to complain about their lack of cooperation and finally a lab man was sent. But he could get no usable prints from Amy's belongings. To this day, no single perfect fingerprint of Amy exists.

While the police were of little help, they did continue to notify Susan whenever a body was found, until one day she endured a vivid description of a skull unearthed in the Florida Keys and asked them not to call again unless they were certain they had found Amy.

Next, Susan dialed the telephone number she'd found at the Outlaws' clubhouse, and got Big Jim Nolan, the leader of the Outlaws, who in 1986 was indicted along with 11 other Outlaws on federal racketeering charges. Eleven of the 12 were convicted, including Nolan. He is serving 50 years in prison for his role in leading the Outlaws on a 15-year binge of crime that included an estimated 40 murders, rape, extortion, kidnapping and prostitution.

She went to his house in Hollywood, "an awful place," she says, where she saw more bikers, girls, big dogs, and Nolan, a long-haired giant who promised to help her. But it proved a false promise, like so many others.

As the years passed, various bikers, snitches, informers, detectives, jailbirds and ex-cops were willing to tell Susan Billig what she wanted most in her heart to hear. Susan and Josh both consulted psychics, who told them that Amy was still alive. According to Susan, two former cops accepted $1,500 from her and promised to search for Amy. But they never called back. By now the Billigs had spent all their savings on the search. Ned, preoccupied and depressed about Amy, had virtually ignored the gallery, and it had gone under. They sold their house and moved to a smaller place.

And still not a word from Amy. Psychiatrists who insisted she was still alive suggested Amy had not contacted her family because she was traumatized, possibly she had lost her memory. But those baseless claims only compounded the Billigs' pain.

Just the sight of young women hitchhiking would bring tears to Susan's eyes. She'd pull over and beg them not to take rides.

"Everybody's not nice," she would warn. "People are evil."

 

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Part 3:

Inexplicably, she began to have a recurring nightmare about an empty baby carriage. Then there was Paul, yet another biker who had seen Amy's picture in the newspaper. He called Susan and said he had "bought" Amy from another biker and then lost her when he was arrested. She'd been beaten and drugged, he said. He described her in detail, including a tiny scar the Billigs had kept secret. Paul told Susan that Amy was in Oklahoma, and she felt he was telling the truth. She bought all new linens for Amy's bedroom, then flew to Tulsa, where she had agreed to meet Paul. But Paul never showed. Five days later he phoned Susan's hotel and told her to get ready for Amy. Susan waited five weeks. Paul didn't call again.

Susan spent the time haunting biker bars and motorcycle-repair shops, showing Amy's picture and asking questions, without results. Depressed and discouraged, she finally returned home.

That's when she heard from Paul again. He phoned to say Amy was now in Seattle. "She's burned out, looks old," he said. "Don't look for anybody who looks under 30."

What else could she do? Susan flew to Seattle. The police were of no help, so she went off on her own and located some Outlaws on the outskirts of the city. "Why do you want her back?" a biker asked. "She's not like you anymore. She's like us."

But Susan persisted, and finally they agreed to help. Everybody searched. Susan found herself in topless bars, watching drug deals and brawls, showing her daughter's photo to hookers and bartenders. She had Thanksgiving dinner at the Outlaws' headquarters, then flew back to Miami. In 1979, Susan received yet another mysterious phone call. A low, calm voice said, "Do you want to see your daughter?" The voice (Susan was uncertain if it was a man or woman) described Amy, said she was posing for an artist, and gave Susan an address in Fort Pierce. She and Ned got into the car and drove for hours up the coast only to discover the address did not exist. They knocked on every door on the street, but Amy wasn't there.

THERE IS ANGUISH IN MIKE GONzalez's voice when the retired homicide detective and family friend is asked about Susan Billig's relentless pursuit of her daughter. "She's been through hell on earth, the most terrible, terrible time," he says.

Gonzalez doesn't believe any bikers have Amy.

"I've always had my doubts about that," he admits. "I could give you my reasons. I don't really believe anybody can be held captive that length of time. There's some evidence she was abducted. But I always thought she was probably killed."

By bikers, or by somebody else?

"Somebody completely different, but I don't really know," he says, adding, "Listen, stories are a dime a dozen, and this woman (Susan) has been through hell. She's been hurt enough."

Susan's most recent lead came several months ago. A private investigator called Susan and said that her European operative was approached by bikers as he stood in the post office in Falmouth, England. The bikers offered to sell him a girl - an abducted American child from Oyster Bay, Long Island. (Amy had been born in Oyster Bay.)

The name Amy Billig was even mentioned in the conversation, Susan says. The Englishman called his detective contact in Florida to try to find out who the American girl might be. The detective then called the Miami police but was told there was no Amy Billig listed as missing.

Another lead had fizzled out, along with a little more hope of ever finding Amy. Nothing has changed since. Susan Billig may be experiencing something very like what families of American servicemen missing in action have endured, says a psychologist who specializes in grief and loss.

"You feel guilty if you give up trying, but if you do give up, you have to deal with the actual grief," the psychologist says. "If you don't, then you're dealing with this perpetual missing and longing. If you never give up the search, you can still be the mother, feel the daughter, love the daughter." Susan Billig still thinks about her daughter every day, and sometimes can't stop herself from crying.

"If I walk into a restaurant and see a woman with her daughter, I think about going out with Amy," she says. "Sitting in an airport, I look for her. In Europe, I look for her. I look for her everywhere."

Her worst time recently was when someone stole her purse from a chair at Green Streets Cafe in Coconut Grove. It contained her last small photos of Amy. She carried them everywhere.

"When my husband died, what I wished most was my daughter to be around for him - for me," Susan says. "I keep hoping that somebody who knows something will come forward while I'm still alive ... I've followed things as far as I can."

But, still clinging to what little hope remains, she adds, "I have a passport ready. I'll go anywhere."

-- JACK McCLINTOCK is a freelance writer who lives in Miami.

 

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Without a Trace: The Disappearance of Amy Billig-A Mother's Search for Justice: Aunapu, Greg, Billig, Susan: 9780380814138: Amazon.com: Books

Without a Trace: The Disappearance of Amy Billig-A Mother's Search for Justice [Aunapu, Greg, Billig, Susan] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Without a Trace: The Disappearance of Amy Billig-A Mother's Search for Justice

www.amazon.com

This book, which was co written by Amy’s mother Susan Billig is an excellent read. It covers pretty much all aspects of Amy’s disappearance and gives a compelling insight into the dangerous biker subculture of the 1970's. I highly recommend it.

It is co written by Amy's mother Susan Billig, a true definition of a '' Supermom'' Susan’s search for Amy spanned from Florida to Tulsa, OK to Seattle, WA to the United Kingdom. She searched ceaselessly for her daughter until she died in 2005. Susan did the heavy lifting and did the things that even the police were too afraid of doing. She put her life on the line and in the hands of the outlaw biker gangs multiple times in attempt to try and find her daughter.


An in-depth summary of the book:

Amy Billig disappeared while hitchhiking in her neighborhood of Coconut grove in Miami On March 5, 1974 - the same day that motorcycle clubs travelled down suburban Miami in celebration of their annual "Bike Week" in Daytona.

The bikers involved here were not regular biker gangs, they were career criminals who had rap sheets miles long ranging from everything from drug dealing, aggravated assault, extortion to murder. Many of them were mentally damaged veterans who learned how to kill in Vietnam and individuals who didn't fit into normal society. Each biker had a ‘’girl’’ which they called ‘’old ladies’’ the biker women were mere property, they were owned, bought and traded for credit cards or motorcycles. The biker women were also forced into prostitution to make money for the biker men. Some of these women came of their own volition, others were kidnapped. But regardless of how they became biker women they all eventually become hooked on drugs and stayed biker women until they were either sold off or died.

On the morning of March 5, 1974 Amy Billig left her home in Coconut Grove, a neighborhood in Miami with the intention of hitchhiking to her father’s art gallery to borrow some money so she could meet some friends at Grove's Peacock Park for lunch. Constructions worker saw Amy at the crossroads of Main Highway and Poinciana St as she stuck out her thumb. Amy never made it to her father’s art gallery or to her lunch date with her friends.

On March 16, Susan Billig received a phone call from a nervous caller stating that a friend of theirs travelled to Daytona Beach for bike week and that Amy was picked up while hitchhiking by the Outlaws motorcycle gang and is being held against her will. The caller also mentioned that another girl was also being held captive by the group. The caller was not interested Susan’s $1,000 reward. The Outlaws connection was later corroborated as police were tracking their movement and established that they had recently blazed through Coconut Grove, further supporting this theory Amy’s camera was found at the Wildwood exit on Florida's Turnpike, the route the bikers would have taken.

Three months later Susan traced the outlaws to Orlando, Florida where the manager of a convenience store stated that Amy came in several times in the past month always escorted by two bikers, she rememered the girl as she always bought vegetarian vegetable soup. This details fits as Amy was a strict vegetarian.

On November 30, 1975 Susan received a call from a biker named Paul Branch who informed Susan that he had previously 'owned' Amy and that she was his ‘old lady’ in Orlando for a short time. He agreed to meet with Susan but only at his own house, and only if he drove her there alone. Daringly, Susan met Paul Branch at a remote country road and hopped on the back of his motorcycle and went to his house. Branch insisted that he did not kidnap Amy, but instead got her from a biker called 'Bracket'' He stated she had been knocked around a lot by the time he got her and had bruises on her face and knots on her head. He told Susan she was different to the other girls he had in the sense she liked to read a lot, listened to Joni Mitchell and would sing when she was alone. He recalled she had a nice voice. Paul insisted he treated her well and didn't beat her.

Branch stated that when he went Miami to get a motorbike, he was arrested and thrown in jail. By the time he got out Amy had already been traded off. To Branch's knowledge Amy was last known to be living underground with some ''hippy chick'' and possibly now in the company of a biker called ''Dishrag Harry'' Branch was able to positively ID Amy by a two-inch appendectomy scar on her abdomen, information that Susan had kept secret and was never published in any news article or missing poster fliers.

Paul Branch agreed to help Susan find her daughter and became a source for Susan and would relay leads and information to Susan.

Branch and Billig went on a cross-country chase tracking down every lead and associate that might have seen or have knoweldge of Amy's whereabouts. This search led Susan into a dangerous underworld of biker gangs and hardcore criminals. She became a top expert in Dade County strip club joints, biker bars and biker hangouts in Florida as well as Tulsa, Oklahoma and Seattle, Washington. One man once involved in a long term investigation of the outlaw gang who is now in the witness protection program swore he saw Amy at a place called the Oasis Bar in Fort Lauderdale with some very dangerous bikers. One exotic dancer claimed she knew Amy when a biker used to bring their girls into the strip joint to ''work'' only to collect all their money after the shift ended.

Paul Branch was nearly killed by a bunch of other bikers who abducted him and drove him across the state border, busted both his kneecaps, and shot him twice in the abdomen, and left him for dead. Paul Branch gave Sue one last lead stating that Amy could be in Seattle, WA. Crippled, and in hiding, Susan had to go alone this time with a family friend without the assistance of Branch. In Seattle she canvassed local biker bars, biker parties and strip joints where Amy was reportedly working under the name ''Willow''' Susan came to find out that the woman fitting Amy's description was not her daughter. Susan met with the woman named ''Willow'' who admitted that she was a runaway and that her family didn't want her. Susan offered to pay the fare so that she could go back to her family. But the biker lady rejected the offer and told Susan if she had a mother life her, she never would have left.

At the end of the book when Paul Branch dies, His widow tells Susan about the the supposed death bed confession he gave about Amy being killed the day she disappeared and dumped in the Everglades. (This all occurred on film as the A&E Network who were producing a documentary about Amy's disappearance.) Paul's window admitted that the producers brought her into the car, and paid her two hundred dollars for her story. The authorities and Susan believe the widow lied about the supposed death bed confession to profit off of Amy's disappearance. So the supposed ''deathbed confession'' by Branch isn't credible information.

 

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Amy's story was featured on Unsolved Mysteries in 1994. Her case is discussed at the 2:30 minute mark.

 

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https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article161085109.html

Sue Billig reads the paper in her bedroom near a photo of her daughter Amy and the telephone. Photo: Candace Barbot; Miami Herald Staff

This is a good article describing the nightmare of Henry Johnson Blair. Blair worked for the U.S. Customs Department and tormented and harassed Amy's mother for 21 years with phone calls of horrific stories of what happening or was happening to Amy. He did absolutely despicable things to Susan, and even went as far as offering her a sick deal to be traded to one of the bikers that wanted a ''mother-daughter team''

 

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Henry Johnson Blair as he was found guilty.

 

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Amy was a talented musician who played both the guitar and the flute, she loved reading and writing poetry. The Billig's are originally from Oyster Bay, New York but moved to Miami in 1967 to ironically escape crime and violence in New York. The Billig's operated a successful Art Gallery called Dimensions on Commodore Plaza.

 

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Susan Chern Billig (1925-2005) - Find A Grave...

Mother's death ends quest to find child For more than 30 years, Susan Billig looked for her daughter, Amy. On Tuesday, the Coconut Grove woman passed away, never having found her. BY DAVID OVALLEdovalle@herald.com Susan Billig died without ever finding her daughter.The Coconut Grove woman –...

www.findagrave.com

Susan Chern Billig

Birth: 22 Apr 1925 Brooklyn, Kings County (Brooklyn), New York, USA
Death: 7 Jun 2005 (aged 80) Coconut Grove, Miami-Dade County, Florida, USA
Burial: Unknown
Memorial ID: 11356148

Mother's death ends quest to find child

For more than 30 years, Susan Billig looked for her daughter, Amy. On Tuesday, the Coconut Grove woman passed away, never having found her.

BY DAVID OVALLEdovalle@herald.com

Susan Billig died without ever finding her daughter.The Coconut Grove woman – whose 31-year quest to find her missing teenage daughter took her from drug dens to prisons across the country and even across the Atlantic – died Tuesday of complications from a heart attack. She was 80."I don't think she ever found peace," said her son, Josh Billig. "She took that as a really tough wound right to the grave."The story of Billig and her daughter Amy has reverberated in Miami for more than a generation. Some have forgotten the details over the intervening three decades, but not Billig, who remained a stoic figure undaunted by time.This much we all know: On March 5, 1974, 17-year-old Amy disappeared near the Billig's Coconut Grove home. She was on her way to her dad's art gallery in the Grove, then a Bohemian enclave.Some said Amy accepted a ride from a biker. Others said she got into a van or pickup truck. Clues were strewn across the state – her camera along Florida's Turnpike in Central Florida; her hairbrush at a convenience store in Kissimmee.And there was Susan Billig, knocking on doors, passing out fliers, calling police, holding news conferences. She painstakingly checked out the stories she was told: Amy was seen buying tea in Seattle; a biker was with her in Tulsa; she was a sex slave in Saudi Arabia.The years melted away and the twists turned tragic, but never hopeless.Her husband, Ned Billig, died of lung cancer in 1993. When he died, she was recovering herself – also of lung cancer.Ned's dying words to his wife: "I want to see Amy before I die."Over the years, Coconut Grove grew from a Bohemian haunt to a tourist magnet. Tips poured in. Some were crazies playing with her.Among them, Henry Blair, a former U.S. Customs agent who investigated the case. Blair had prank-called Billig, teasing her with false clues about her daughter's whereabouts. In 1996, Blair was sentenced to two years in jail and ordered to pay the family $5 million – as his income would allow.Susan's son, Josh Billig, grew up – she once said she wished she had spent more time with him. Josh Billig never held it against his mother."I tried to assure her that it wasn't a problem for me," Josh Billig said.He has two daughters now.Last year, on the 30th anniversary of Amy's disappearance, her mother spoke to The Herald: "Because I didn't know if she was dead, I couldn't forsake her and move on."Hers was a familiar story in the news. It was featured on shows such as Unsolved Mysteries and America's Most Wanted.No one wrote about Billig as tenderly as Edna Buchanan, now a novelist who covered the case for The Herald."I always feared that her husband, that Sue and that I would die without ever knowing what happened to Amy," Buchanan said Tuesday night."I think about it every day, every night of my life because the cases that haunt you are unsolved ones. She never gave up and endured risks that no one would ever take to try and find her daughter."Even a last major revelation did not convince Billig that her daughter was dead.In 1996, a woman in Virginia told the BBC that her husband, a biker named Paul Branch, told her on his deathbed that Amy was kidnapped and gang raped near the Everglades. Amy fought back, the widow said, then was drugged, cut up and left in a canal.In recent years, the family had come to doubt the credibility of the story, Josh Billig said. Amy's disappearence remained very much unsolved.Buchanan never bought the theory: If the biker's story were true, too many people would have known. The word would have gotten out."The biker chicks grow older. They become mothers themselves. They develop consciences," Buchanan said. "A lone serial killer – I still adhere to that theory."During the final years of Susan Billig's life, her son said, her search became less intense. The leads dwindled.In the last year, she suffered three heart attacks. The last one weakened her too much and left her in the hospital for more than two weeks.Billig resigned herself not to the fact that Amy was dead, but that she might not solve the mystery while alive, said Josh Billig, 47. Last year on a rainy day, Susan Billig went to Peacock Park in Coconut Grove, where her son built a coral rock bench to honor his sister."I've kind of almost lost the feeling that she's alive," she said at the time. "But not entirely. I can't stand to be that sad."She died at home surrounded by family. Plans have not been finalized for funeral services.Susan Billig is survived by her sister, Ray Scheckner, 87; her son, Joshua; and, she believed to the end, her daughter, Amy, who would today be 48.

 

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Amy's brother built a coral rock bench to honour his sister's memory, it stands in Cononut Grove's Peacock Park, the park Amy was supposed to meet up with friends the day she disappeared.