Without a Trace: The Disappearance of Amy Billig -- A Mother's Search for Justice Read online

  WITHOUT

  A TRACE

  THE DISAPPEARANCE

  OF AMY BILLIG --

  A MOTHER'S SEARCH FOR JUSTICE

  GREG AUNAPU

  &

  SUSAN BILLIG

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  Published by New-Media Gurus LLC

  Originally published by AVON BOOKS

  An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

  WITHOUT A TRACE is a journalistic account of the disappearance of Amy Billig in Coconut Grove, Florida, in 1974, and the investigation that followed. The events recounted in this book are true, although some of the names have been changed and identifying characteristics altered (where noted in the text) to safeguard the privacy of those individuals. The personalities, events, actions, and conversations portrayed in this book have been constructed using Susan Billig's contemporaneous personal notes, court documents, including trial transcripts, extensive interviews, letters, personal papers, research, and press accounts.

  Copyright © 2001 by Greg Aunapu and Susan Billig.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  (Version-1-03-18)

  To Amy Billig

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26 Photographs

  Acknowledgments

  The authors wish to thank the many people who devoted their energy and compassion to the search for Amy over the years.

  Thanks to law enforcement investigators around the country; detectives Ina Shepard and Jack Calvar of the Miami Police Department; Special Agent Harold Phipps of the FBI; and Miami-Dade Assistant State Attorneys Andy Hague (now Judge Hague) and Harold Rosen, whose efforts are detailed in these pages.

  Thanks to the news organizations who kept the case in front of the public eye; the Miami Herald and its reporters, especially Edna Buchanan and Meg Laughlin, whose fine work over the years helped in the research of this book.

  Susan Billig wishes to express her special appreciation to Judge Michael Samuels; Frank Rubino; Rex Ryland; and her family—especially her late husband, Ned; her son, Josh, and his wife, Michelle McGonigal—without whom she could not have endured.

  Author’s Note

  As a freelance reporter for Time and People magazines during the past decade, I certainly covered my share of bizarre crimes and criminals. Yet, the strange disappearance of Amy Billig and the subsequent story of her mother Susan's courageous search for her missing daughter is one of the most compelling tales I've ever heard—and one of the few stories that's ever made me think, “Somebody has to write a book about this!”

  Besides the high drama and unbelievable personalities, including one of the most twisted criminals I've ever investigated, the case holds special interest to me because, unique from any other journalist who has reported on the case, I knew Amy. In 1973, when I first met her, she was a vivacious, delightful sixteen, but, alas, she was three years older than I was—decades when you're that young.

  My father had anchored our live-aboard schooner off Key Biscayne, where we volunteered at the Dolphin Project, an organization which hoped to release two captive dolphins back into the wild. Amy was also a volunteer. She sang and played guitar and flute for the dolphins, helped babysit them and feed them.

  I used to live for those moments when she arrived because she was a genuine light, a charismatic, wonderful girl who seemed destined for great things. My memories might be the mere recollections of a boy with a crush on an "older woman" if so many other people, male and female, didn't remember Amy in the same way.

  My mother and I then spent a year traveling in Central America. When we returned, Amy had disappeared. Her absence became a small void in the back of my mind which always gnawed at me. For her family, and for the village of Coconut Grove, where Amy had lived the best part of her life, the void was much greater—a wound that would stay unhealed until the mystery of her disappearance was solved.

  In my mind, Sue and Amy's story is about much more than crime, mystery, and punishment. It's about courage, hope, and faith in the face of our darkest nightmares, taking place on the panoramic stage of the last quarter of our changing century.

  I admire Sue Billig not just for her fortitude and courage, but simply for not losing faith in humanity and the universe. After the many permutations of evil that Sue has been subjected to, she is still the sweetest, most caring person I know. This book has been written with her complete support, and access to her personal diaries, audio tapes, and thoughts, much of which has never been divulged until now.

  Greg Aunapu

  Coconut Grove, Florida

  -1-

  M arch 5, 1974, was one of those pristine Florida days. The sky glowed with unknowable depths of blue, and sunlight dripped like honey through the branches of the grand old banyan trees that shaded the historic village of Coconut Grove. The Grove, a quaint neighborhood of boutiques, art galleries, and sidewalk cafés, was Miami's most popular hangout for tourists, artists, and musicians.

  But 250 miles north, in Daytona Beach, Bike Week was scheduled to begin. All day long motorcycle clubs roared through town. Many had driven up from the Florida Keys, where they had followed the artery of AIA north across the mosaic waters and mangroves to the mainland. There, they had hooked up with Old Cutler Road, which ran past old coral rock estates and mango orchards—and finally through the heart of Coconut Grove.

  First came their rumble from blocks away, vibrating like thunder from an angry earth—an impossible quake in sunny Miami. The rumble became a roar, rattling eardrums as the point men for a horde of Harley-Davidson bikers heaved into view. Riding the hunks of metal were burly guys wearing tattered jeans and black leather jackets patched with skulls and swastikas. Their massive arms bulged with the combination of fat and muscle peculiar to beer-drinking fighters, and were tattooed with snakes, devils, and nasty images of death. Behind them rode gangs of jackbooted buddies, sometimes up to fifty at a time, armed with chains, knives, and guns. Many were vets who had learned to kill in the jungles of Vietnam, and, with impressive rap sheets for violence, drug dealing, extortion, and second-degree murder, could easily do so now.

  If you were driving, you'd better pull your car onto a side street and pray they didn't follow. If you were standing on the sidewalk, you'd better disappear through a doorway.

  Paul Branch was nasty as they came. At six-two, he could hold his own in any barroom brawl. He had reddish hair, a short beard and mustache, fair skin, and tattoos running up both arms—half he couldn't remember getting. Some he
had erased forever with battery acid, leaving scarred skin behind. He barreled along in the midst of a gang called the Pagans. A full-fledged member, his proper place was near the front of the second wave, but recently a few loudmouthed underlings had challenged him and his coveted position in the biker food chain. With his skin still showing a fresh jailhouse pallor, he rode under the lofty trees of Coconut Grove and wondered how he could add some green to the few grimy dollars in his pocket and maintain his power in the gang.

  You had to be careful during Bike Week. If anything was going to happen, if anyone was going to pick a moment to stand up to you, cut you, take away your girl, your face, it would be there, all liquored up and full of shit. The pine forests around Daytona were littered with body parts. Yeah, Branch thought, it was time to do something drastic.

  This particular day, with its blue skies, honey sun, and rumbling Harleys, should have been as innocuous as any, just an entry in the diaries of high school girls who had met a new guy, or a date on an old Miami newspaper found wrapped around glasses in an attic a few decades later, or someone's birthday. Instead, this day would be remembered forever by the Billig family.

  Susan Billig recalls that it was a school day. "Just like any other day," she says. "Not the slightest ominous omen to warn us."

  Her daughter Amy, seventeen, had stayed up late the previous evening at a friend's house to watch one of their group, a comedian, debut on a television show. She hadn't come home until three-twenty in the morning, which, understandably, provoked a small spat with her mother, who had been worried—especially since school started at eight A.M. Amy arrived late to breakfast and did not look too tired to begin a day at school. She had never been much of an early riser, anyway.

  Amy preferred sunsets over sunrises, and often wrote poetry about that special time of day. She liked rain and rainbows, shade and trees and the freedom of birds, and the blue of that day's sky.

  I am enjoying the most wondrous

  fresh, clean lovely rain

  It brings out the earthy smell

  in the plants and trees.

  I love it!

  More! More!

  The flowers are so thirsty these days,

  and the birds and possums.

  Rain is especially pretty

  when the sun is shining and

  The drops of water sparkle on the leaves

  And blades of grass and petals of flowers.

  Happy rain

  Life rain

  Feels so good on my skin.

  —Amy

  She was five-five, 102 pounds, with luxurious dark hair and long, lanky legs. Her cherubic, oval face, combined with dark mischievous, almond eyes and an easy smile, caused dozens of whiplash cases on any given day. Amy planned to spend the summer in Manhattan— after she graduated from her private high-school— where she would visit a friend who played in the hit Broadway show Hair, and perhaps determine if she should attend drama school.

  Amy already played the guitar and was a classically trained flutist. She loved Judy Collins and Joni Mitchell and had cultivated her own folksy sound. She played for friends and for the two dolphins, Florida and Liberty, at the Dolphin Project, where she volunteered as often as she could. The dolphins had once been part of a scientific research project and now were being taught to survive again in the wild. Amy could swear the dolphins listened and reacted to her when she sang. She'd miss the carefree sea creatures and the great group of people there once the dolphins were given their freedom.

  Last night

  Dolphin Project

  Red sun going down into the ocean horizon

  While a beautiful full moon

  With a yellow haze around it

  Crept up into the night sky

  Guitar riffs

  Friends

  Mosquitoes everywhere

  Fine time

  —Amy

  Amy inherited her musical talent from her parents. The family—Ned and Sue, Amy, and younger brother Josh—had moved to Coconut Grove from New York to "get away from all the crime." In Manhattan, Ned, a WWII vet with a Purple Heart, was a well-known trumpet player who played in smoky Greenwich Village nightclubs. Sue was an accomplished singer who had met Ned on a gig. Sue's father had been a concert pianist.

  Amy was Ned and Sue's "miracle child," who blessed the couple after ten years and five miscarriages. Josh followed a year later. On a trip to Coconut Grove in 1968, Sue remembers, “I just fell in love with the place. The art galleries, the cafés. The trees, the peace. I called Ned back in New York and said, 'Honey, we're moving here.”

  Ned and Sue easily created a niche for themselves in the Grove. Ned opened a popular art gallery, Dimensions; Sue made a good living in interior design; and they soon collected a large group of friends in a town where most people knew each other intimately.

  Amy fell in love with the place, too. In a letter to a friend she wrote: New York is so ugly. Let me show you some of the prettiness of Coconut Grove. Old stone houses and fruit trees and blue waters and sunsets that will blow you away.

  Still, Sue thinks that Amy, graced with an intelligence, wisdom, and maturity beyond her years, "always missed the city—the museums, the theater, and the intellectual stimulation of city people. She was really looking forward to attending university up there."

  This was a strange time for our country balancing on the cusp of a new order: Society reverberated with echoes of disgrace after the Vietnam War; the Watergate scandal was making voters view their political leaders with a newly jaundiced eye; and Patty Hearst, heiress to one of the most American of families, had been kidnapped by revolutionaries. Yet despite such events that would reshape the way citizens perceived their country and the world, it was still a much more innocent and altruistic time.

  Murders and rapes were rare in Miami, especially in artsy, upscale Coconut Grove, where the Billigs never locked their door, habitually left the keys to their '54 Bentley in the car, and kids parked their bikes in front of the house. The Arab oil embargo was front page news, provoking quotas and long lines at gas pumps, so people often tried to ride together. Amy, and many others, never thought twice about hitchhiking. It was not only an accepted mode of transportation, it was actually a way you met new people. Many Europeans were still sightseeing America that way. While Sue often begged Amy not to hitchhike, the teenager was convinced that your life was just a reflection of your own attitude. If she saw only good in people, nobody would harm her.

  That morning, Amy ate lightly—just some toast with jam and a glass of orange juice—before hurrying off to school. Her horoscope said she should watch her finances. Ziggy was in traction in the hospital, and Charlie Brown was worried about his father's golf game.

  "Love you," Sue called as her lively daughter exited, making up with her for their early morning tiff. "Love you, too," Amy replied, never one to hold the slightest grudge. She pranced down the walkway with her particular high-gaited, skipping step to catch the bus to school.

  It was a lovely day. At noon Sue and a friend took off to their favorite nearby lagoon, Tahiti Beach, to enjoy the sun.

  About ten minutes after Sue left the house, Amy arrived home—driven from school by a friend—ate half a container of yogurt and made plans to meet some friends for lunch in the Grove's Peacock Park—where people often gathered to play music, and the Krishnas served free food every Sunday.

  Amy called her father at the Dimensions Art Gallery.

  "Dad, can I borrow a couple dollars for lunch?" she asked. "I'm supposed to meet Kirk and Cathy in the park, but I don't have a cent!"

  "Sure, no problem," Ned replied.

  There was nothing unusual about the request. The gallery was only a mile away in the village center, an easy walk down shady but well-traveled streets. It was a trip that Amy had made hundreds of times.

  But something unusual happened this day. At the crossroads of Main Highway and Poinciana Street, near where the family lived, Amy, already a little late for her lunch date, stuc
k out her thumb as she walked toward town. A group of construction workers building a house on the corner—whom Amy always greeted— remembered her walk by wearing a blue miniskirt and platform sandals.

  The throaty rumble of Harleys swept through the sleepy village—Pagans and Outlaws, rival gangs— running five abreast across the center of the road on their long "chopper" style bikes, "old ladies" or "bitches" clinging to their backs.

  The Outlaws wore black leather jackets sporting their "colors," called “Charlie," modeled after Marlon Brando's jacket in The Wild One. Stitched across the jackets were diamond-shaped patches commemorating their dead "brothers."

  The Pagans' colors featured a Norse fire god with the letters MC, which stood for Motorcycle Club, and patches with the letters PFFP, for "Pagans Forever, Forever Pagans."

  During the day, several groups thundered through town, where they would meet at the Grove's Dinner Key Marina before blasting northward in a mighty brigade toward the hellish time known as Bike Week in Daytona.

  The mid-seventies was the heyday for bikers, a decade before many groups were decimated by prosecutors wielding RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) laws originally codified to conquer organized crime. The three main bike groups had divided the country like the Mafia had once done before them. The most famous, the Hell's Angels, were centered in California and the West Coast up to Alaska.

  Florida was mostly Outlaw territory. But the Pagans, with a few clubhouses across the state—and undisputed control of Virginia, the Carolinas, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey—were tolerated in the Sunshine State, so that Outlaws, in turn, would be allowed unrestricted passage to their territories in Canada.

  Altogether, the clubs were making millions of dollars. They rented themselves out as muscle to the Mafia, manufactured and sold "crystal meth," an amphetamine, and ran drugs and guns from one place to another. Women were owned, bought, and sold like objects, traded for credit cards or a bike, often forced into prostitution or to dance in strip clubs to earn money for the men.