Ned and Sue Billig were hopeful the awful ordeal was nearing an end on March 8, 1974, when they received a phone call at their home in Coconut Grove, Florida, a section of Miami. Two males were on the line saying they had kidnapped their daughter, Amy, and would release her if a $30,000 ransom were paid. It was the first hope the Billigs had since their seventeen-year-old daughter’s disappearance three days earlier. Their prayers were soon dashed, however, as the call was a hoax, made by two teenage brothers who had read about Amy’s disappearance in the newspaper.

Five days later, the Billigs received another call regarding their missing daughter. This caller’s claim seemed outlandish, saying Amy had been abducted and forced into a violent subculture. Similar calls, however, came in over the following months, and reported sightings of Amy from across Florida and then the country seemed to support the caller’s contentions. These sightings stretched into years and the years into decades, but none could be confirmed, and Amy never came home.

Amy Billig had aspired to be an actress, but she instead became the unwilling feature of a real-life saga, still unsolved after half-a-century.

Amy Billig

On March 5, 1974, Amy came home from school before a lunch date with friends. Needing money, she planned to first stop at Ned’s art gallery less than a mile away. She often hitchhiked through the neighborhood and she was seen doing so along the Main Highway, but she never arrived at her father’s gallery, nor did she rendezvous with her friends.

By nightfall, with still no word from Amy, her parents called the police.

No Amy

On March 13, eight days after Amy’s disappearance, a woman phoned the Billig home. Nothing could have prepared Ned and Sue for the bombshell the caller dropped. In a nervous tone, the anonymous woman claimed Amy had been abducted by a motorcycle gang and forced into prostitution.

With the phony phone call from three days before still fresh in their minds, the Billigs thought the claim bizarre and dismissed it as another, more cruel, hoax. They received several subsequent calls, however, repeating the claim.

Police proved the March 8 call was a prank, but determined the claims of Amy Billig being abducted by bikers, as outlandish as they sounded, were possible.

More Phone Calls

In the 1970s, renegade motorcycle gangs crisscrossed America wreaking havoc. Two such clubs, The Outlaws and The Pagans, had been in Coconut Grove at the time Amy disappeared.

The bikers did not believe in the equality of the sexes. Women and girls were generally referred to as “old ladies” or “bitches.” It was an established practice for gang members to kidnap young women and then to swap or sell them to fellow bikers. Women were considered property rather than people and were often traded for motorcycles, or even items as small as leather chaps or credit cards.

Motorcycle Gangs In The Area

In the months after Amy’s apparent abduction, several sightings were reported of a young woman resembling her in Orlando, two-hundred-thirty miles north of Coconut Grove. The woman was always accompanied by bikers and the sightings seemed promising as convenience store clerks recalled her often asking for vegetarian soup. Amy was a dedicated vegetarian.

All the sightings were investigated, but the woman could not be found and it could not be confirmed that she was Amy Billig.

Alleged Sightings Of Amy

After seeing a picture of Amy in the newspaper in January 1976, nearly two years after her disappearance, Pagan “enforcer” Paul Branch contacted Sue. He told her he kidnapped and “owned” Amy for several months after her abduction. Even after he had “sold” her, Branch claimed he continued to see her at Pagan events.

In June, Branch contacted Sue again with more specific information, saying he heard Amy and her current owner were in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Was Amy Abducted By Bikers?

Branch agreed to take Sue to a biker tavern in Tulsa where he believed Amy may be. While there, an argument between him and another biker escalated into a fight in which Branch’s knees were broken. Afterwards, other bikers whisked Sue out of the bar and into a cab, telling her not to return to the tavern.

Branch refused to help Sue any further. If Amy was at the bar that day, Sue did not see her and never learned who supposedly controlled her.

Sue Did Not See Amy

Sue traveled nationwide to scores of other biker hideouts, sleazy bars, gentlemen’s clubs, and even prisons in desperate efforts to find her daughter. She often found people who said they had seen a woman resembling Amy at biker events, but she could not locate her.

Sue’s Harrowing Searches

More sightings of Amy were reported over the following years stretching into the first and second decade after her disappearance. She was always in the company of bikers at traditional hangouts such as bars, parties, and strip clubs. The  sightings were reported from across America; the most frequent locales where she was believed seen were Reno, Nevada; Seattle; Detroit; Baltimore; New Jersey; and even overseas in England.  Among the names she was referred to by bikers were “Mute,” “Mellow Cheryl,” “Little Bits,” and “Sunshine.”

Then came the supposed deathbed confession of the gangbanger who said he once owned her.

Computer-Aged Image of Amy

To Approximately Age Thirty-Eight

Paul Branch’s wife, Teresa Reeves, says he recanted his claims of owing Amy Billig to her shortly before his death in December 1996. In his deathbed confession, Teresa says he told her that he and fellow Pagan gang members instead abducted Amy from Coconut Grove’s Main Highway and took her to a Pagan party that evening. There, Amy was drugged and raped by approximately twenty gang members. As she fought, they continued to drug her, and she ultimately died of an overdose. The gang members then “tossed it [Amy’s body] to the alligators” in the Everglades.

Most investigators believe Branch’s claim, but some are less certain, saying his account of events has inconsistencies. Skeptics believe Teresa made up the deathbed confession in an effort to financially profit. They also point to another suspect.

 A Debated Deathbed Confession

Claims An Awful End For Amy

For twenty-one years following Amy’s abduction, the Billigs received harassing and threatening phone calls from a man saying he was holding Amy as his sex slave. The calls were made using payphones until 1995 when the caller began using his cell phone; they were ultimately traced to Henry Blair.

Blair was one of the last people who would be suspected of making the phone calls. He was a decorated United States Customs Special Agent in charge of intercepting drug smuggling rings on the Miami River. In addition, he was also among three Customs agents awarded Spain’s highest civilian honor by King Juan Carlos for recovering a seventeenth-century Peter Paul Rubens painting stolen from a Spanish museum.

Nonetheless, Blair admitted making the phone calls, saying he was an alcoholic with an obsessive-compulsive disorder. He was sentenced to two years in prison. The by-then widowed Sue Billig settled a lawsuit against him for $5 million.

Blair’s actions focused attention on a name Amy referenced in her journal shortly before her disappearance. She wrote she was considering running away to South America with a man named “Hank.” Like many people named Henry, Blair was often referred to as Hank.

In addition, Blair’s job with the Customs Department had sent him to South America around the time Amy specified in her journal. Furthermore, a photo developed from a roll of film in Amy’s camera found along the Wildwood exit on the Florida Turnpike shortly after her disappearance showed a white van similar in model and color to a van Blair drove in 1974.

Henry Blair

Despite the similarities between Henry Blair and the man mentioned in Amy’s diary, investigators found no evidence that he knew her and do not believe he was involved in her disappearance.

Many teenage girls fantasize about running way to a foreign land, but few actually do so. Authorities found no evidence suggesting Amy was in South America, and they do not believe she disappeared of her own volition.

Foreign Fantasies?

The majority involved in the investigation accept Paul Branch’s widow’s claim of the deathbed confession that Amy Billig was repeatedly raped before being killed at a Pagan party during the evening of March 5, 1974, the day she was last seen. If Branch’s claim of dumping Amy’s body into the Florida Everglades is true, there is virtually no chance of her remains being recovered.

I could not find a picture of Paul Branch.

Never Found

Some, however, are not as quick to dismiss the reported sightings of Amy from across America in the years after her abduction. If she was making money for biker gang members through drugs, sex, prostitution, and topless dancing, they contend it is possible she could have survived. With the passage of a half-century, however, her use in the latter three of those nefarious activities would likely have ceased being profitable years ago.

The chances of Amy Billig being alive are minuscule, but she has not officially been confirmed deceased and her case remains open.

What Happened To Amy?

Ned Billig died in 1993.  In 2001, Sue wrote a book entitled Without a Trace: The Disappearance of Amy Billig: A Mother’s Search for Justice. She died in 2005 without getting that justice.

No Closure

Amy Sue Billig has been missing since March 5, 1974, when she was seventeen-years-old. At the time of her disappearance, she was five-feet-five-inches tall and weighed one-hundred-ten pounds. Her eyes and hair were brown, and she had a two-inch appendectomy scar on her abdomen. She walked with a pronounced high-stepping gait. When last seen, Amy was wearing a denim miniskirt and cork platform sandals.

Amy Billig would today be sixty-seven-years-old. If you believe you may have information relating to her disappearance, please contact the Miami Police Department at 305-579-6530.

Computer-Aged Image Of Amy Billig

To Approximately Age Fifty-Six

Charles and Larry Glasser, the sixteen-year-old twin brothers who tried to extort a $30,000 ransom from the Billigs three days after Amy’s disappearance, were given probation.

Charles and Larry Glasser

With Mother, Maryon

Sources:

• America’s Most Wanted
• Channel 7 News Miami
• The Charley Project
• Doe Network
• Miami Herald
• National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
• People Magazine
• New York Times