http://www.doenetwork.us/cases/18dffl.html

The powerful book that Sue wrote about Amy's disappearance, about the h**l that she went through trying to find her only daughter: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/038081413...glance&n=283155

It's an amazing read. There's a lot of information in the book that isn't mentioned anywhere online (that I'm aware of) but it's stuff that should be mentioned.

Susan and I came to know each other well when I lived in Miami. She was always a lady, and a true crusader. RIP, my friend! Keeping the Porchlight on for your Amy!

I have read the book and posted a lot of info from it in Amy's Charley Project casefile. http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/b/billig_amy.html

Thank you for the extra information Meggily.

I noticed when I posted the link for DN's page about Amy that 95% of the information that was on the page (from the book) is now gone. I wonder why that is... :(

Yeah, gone from the case information part of the page. They did have a paragraph about the A&E interview and a lot more things.

Thank you for doing that, meggily. The information is important and Susan was tireless in working to gather it.

It is a shame, b/c Sue's work deserves to be mentioned. :( She's one of my heroes.

You're extremely lucky to have known her. I would've loved to have met her, and just spent a little time with her. :)

Whoa! Who deleted it?

EDIT: Amy is a beautiful girl too. She has always been one that caught my attention and not just because of her story. You know what I mean. Some just do that to you.

Susan was a real trooper, so dedicated and so quietly determined. I admired her greatly. I bore a slight resemblance to Amy (though I am shorter) and was stopped by police in miami several times after Amy went missing. I met Susan early on and then many times over the years.

You do. I can see it in the first picture on her profile... And you are right.. A lot of the info isn't there... What's their deal? PM Database gone...info from profiles gone... How are people supposed to reasearch without any information?

I can only speak for myself in this matter, and I've had problems occasionally with posting all the info that I do on the Charley Project. Three people have threatened to sue me. (I called them kidnappers on my site. They are kidnappers. One of them admitted to having done everything I said she'd done, and another was actually in jail when her lawyer contacted me.) It never got beyond threats though.

Another time a kid's mom was upset because of some info I posted about how his parents had sent him to live with another relative due to family problems, and suicide was considered a possibility in the boy's disappearance. She was kind of hurt and seemed to think I was implying she was a bad parent or something, I think -- she contacted me though a third party and asked me to remove the info, which I did, with an apology. I wish she had spoken to me directly about it. I wasn't trying to make her look like a bad mom, I was just reporting the info I knew.

Another time -- and this was completely insane -- someone contacted me having gone absolutely berserk because I posted her relative on the Charley Project without asking her permission. She accused me of exploiting missing people and demanded that I remove her relative's case file. I did so, but I still can't see what she was so angry about -- most people are happy to have their loved one listed on as many sites as possible. She was very angry and bad-mouthed me to some other people, I heard about it later. It made me very sad, this was shortly after I set up the Charley Project and I wondered if I should take it down, I didn't understand what I had done that was so wrong.

These are all the problems I've had, and were quite minor annoyances, but might offer some clue to why Doe posts such minimal info. Perhaps they've had similar problems.

I use Charley Project more than any other missing person's site. I can see how you would occasionally have conflicts but I find your site so informative.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0506/13/lol.03.html

...
A Florida family is all too familiar with the kind of relentless search that we're seeing in this case. After her teenage daughter disappeared in 1974, a mother spent her whole life looking for answers. We get the story from CNN's Susan Candiotti.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Susan Billig is a woman who never gave up trying to learn the truth with about her missing daughter, who vanished without a trace 31 years ago.

JOSHUA BILLIG, AMY BILLIG'S BROTHER: I mean, relentless. I mean it in that same way. Her passion was relentless and deeply rooted and driven.

CANDIOTTI (on camera): On march 5, 1974, police say 17-year-old Amy Billig left her house, nestled behind this old banyan tree in Coconut Grove, Florida. Her family says she was on her way to her father's art gallery, located just about half a mile way. Some people think she might have been hitchhiking. It would not have been unusual then. And others think they saw her get into a van. But none of it could ever be verified.

(voice-over): The attractive teenager was never found.

J. BILLIG: Looking for my sister really did consume her, all of her time, for quite a while.

CANDIOTTI: Her son vividly remembers photo taken on a busy street shortly after his big sister's disappearance.

J. BILLIG: I mean, I see her -- obviously, her anguish. I see that she's really scared and she's desperate. And she just wants to do anything she can to find her daughter.

CANDIOTTI: And Susan Billig did. She spent years crisscrossing the country, tracking down tips her daughter was kidnapped by a motorcycle gang. In 1996, a deathbed confession from a biker, who claimed Amy was snatched the day she disappeared, then raped, drugged, murdered and dumped in the Florida Everglades. Police say it was probably true, but could not confirm it.

For two decades, Susan Billig endured cruel phone calls from a man who turned out to be a U.S. customs agent, claiming he had information about Amy. He was caught and convicted.

SUSAN BILLIG, MOTHER OF AMY BILLIG: I'm very hurt. I'm very angry this man has taken my life apart for 21 years. CANDIOTTI: At a city park, Amy's brother remembers his sister at a Bayside bench he made in her honor. To this day, Miami Police officially classify Amy's case as a missing person. This week, at age 80, Amy's mother Susan Billig died of cancer, to the end unconvinced of her daughter's fate.

J. BILLIG: I think she went back to her hope that maybe some -- there was -- maybe that she was alive or at least that we hadn't uncovered the whole story.

CANDIOTTI: Susan Billig will be buried next to her husband. And on the tombstone between her parents, Amy, joining them, at least in name.

Susan Candiotti, CNN, Miami.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

http://www.felicity.com.au/crimefiles.htm

Amy Billig and the Bikers.

© Mark Owen, 2002. [Revised 2002. First published 1992].

Over the years many young women have become slaves to bikies, willingly in many cases but unwillingly in others. This enslavement of women by riders is an activity that has been going on for decades. Many stories never see the light of day as the girl concerned more often than not has knocked about with the bikers anyway. She may be quite a willing 'slave', although often hooked on drugs and kept in line. And, once again, fear of consequences will stop many complaining. Whippings are a favourite form of punishment for girls stepping out of line, and sometimes worse....

In a well-known 1967 case in the USA an 18-year-old bikers' girl, Christine Deese, was literally nailed by both hands to a tree as a punishment by members of the Outlaws bikie gang. Five bikers attended the 'punishment ceremony' which was ordered when the girl failed to account for $10 belonging to the club. And this was only one case of crucifixion. Others have undoubtedly occurred but many girls thus punished might eventually end up dumped in the Everglades or some such remote region, and never be heard from again.

The girl, passive, like so many of her kind, was afterwards taken to hospital for treatment but at first she claimed she had been injured falling on a plank with two nails in it. A suspicious sheriff wondered at the fact that the holes were in exactly the same position in each hand. Questioned alone Christine admitted the truth. Of special interest is the response the sheriff gave when a reporter questioned him as to whether the girl had struggled during her ordeal.

'These female club members seem to blindly follow any direction from the men,' commented the sheriff. 'She apparently just stood where they told her, and they just nailed her to the tree.'

Such girls may be enslaved slowly, as they move about with the bikers, until they lack any will to escape or, it is believed, on occasions, simply snatched off the street and 'trained' to serve a master. Girls like these may be traded about among the groups, the most desirable being sold as payment for a new motorcycle. Or one might be swapped with another girl slave. Such girls often bear the marks of beatings and other ill-treatment. But they seldom complain, even in situations where they could receive help.

FORCED INTO SLAVERY

But others are forced into slavery. Betty Darlene Callahan had the misfortune to be the girlfriend of a young man who owed money to the Outlaws for drugs they'd supplied him. When he didn't pay up they killed the boyfriend, kidnapped Betty and raped her, then forced her to work for them as a prostitute in Chicago, eventually turning her over to the Mafia, to work in turn for them. Eventually Betty testified in a Federal court case. She was lucky; she lived. Many haven't.

A constant trade in girls takes place across North America, especially back and forth over the Canadian-US border. A girl might be sold for as little as a few hundred dollars or for two or three thousand. Many end up in the white slave trade and eventually fade from view, broken and worn out with sex and drugs at an early age.

A case of this kind appears to have occurred in Florida when 17-year-old Amy Billig simply disappeared from the street. It was March 4, 1974 when Amy went missing without a hint being left behind of what happened to her. All expert opinion agrees that Amy was no runaway but there is much evidence to indicate that she was taken by a bikie gang and enslaved. Although her distraught family have searched for her ever since and followed up the most improbable leads, Amy has never been found, to the best of my knowledge.

But in her search, Amy's mother, Susan, had many contacts with bikers and reports reaching her through them indicated that Amy had been sighted on a number of occasions, always in the company of bikers, her demeanour being described as 'very quiet.' It was said that at one stage she had been sold from one group, the Outlaws, into another, the Pagans.

And Amy is only one such girl. It is believed there have been many similar cases, girls abducted from the streets and forced to work for an 'owner' or even a whole group of 'owners'. Their takings are dutifully handed over to their jailers. In return they get drugs, a little food and a bit of loving. That's all.

Probably the most definite contact Amy's mother had was with a biker who claimed he had 'owned' Amy at one time. She had been bought by him and when he had taken her over she was badly beaten and drugged. He had later been arrested on another matter and the girl had gone while he was in jail. Was it Amy? The man recognized the girl in a photo he was shown, but one final fact seemed to confirm his story: he knew of a small scar which had been kept secret by the family so as to have a positive means of identification. Beyond these tantalizing bits of information, nothing further has ever come to light.

http://www.felicity.com.au/crimefiles.htm
IP: ----------

http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19475

http://www.thegrovefirst.com/SueBillingobit.html

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 OVALLE
dovalle@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.
31 Year Quest: Over the years Susan Billings knocked on doors and passed out fliers like the one above.

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.


Family Photo

Vanished: Amy Billing, shown in 1974 mysteriously disappeared at 17.

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 disappearance 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.

Copyright 2005 Knight Ridder


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/11839787.htm

AMY BILLIG
Missing

Age:17 (DOB 1/9/57)
Sex:Female
Race:White
Height:5'5"
Weight:110 lbs
Eye Color:Brown
Hair Color:Long brown
Scars:on her abdomen
Tattoos:on her abdomen

According to the FBI, 17-year-old Amy Billig disappeared from Coconut Grove,
Florida on March 5, 1974. Witnesses say they saw Amy hitchhiking along Main
Highway around noon. She was never seen again.
Immediately, Sue Billig, Amy's mother, received leads that her daughter had been
kidnaped by a motorcycle gang, possibly "The Outlaws." Evidently, a group of
bikers was seen roaring through Coconut Grove about the same time Amy
disappeared. Investigators could never prove the gang was involved, but the
rumors sent Sue on a cross country odyssey in search of her daughter. She even
went to England chasing down leads.
While Sue was pursuing the motorcycle gang angle, another lead in the
investigation turned the tables on her. Days after Amy vanished, Sue began
receiving phone calls from a mysterious man claiming know Amy's fate. He stalked
Sue with sadistic phones calls for the last 21 years. Agents say that every call
the guy made was from an untraceable pay phone, so finding him was almost
impossible.
Finally in 1995, the FBI was able to track the caller when he started using a
cell phone. His name is Henry Johnson Blair and he was charged with aggravated
stalking. Blair says he didn't know Amy and that an obsessive-compulsive
disorder - along with alcohol abuse - lead him to make the calls for all those
years.
The latest development in this 25-year-old story is a death-bed confession by a
"Pagan's" motorcycle gang member named Paul Branch. In 1996, Branch said Amy had
been killed the very day she disappeared from Coconut grove. Sue doesn't believe
the story and won't give up her search until she knows the real story behind
what happened to Amy -- whether she is dead or alive.

Data from the FBI/GA
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ColdCases/message/40

Vital Statistics at Time of Disappearance

Missing Since: March 5, 1974 from Coconut Grove, Florida
Classification: Non-Family Abduction
Date Of Birth: January 9, 1957
Age: 17 years old
Height and Weight: 5'5, 110 pounds
Distinguishing Characteristics: Brown hair, brown eyes. Amy has a two-inch scar on her abdomen from an appendectomy. She may have a tattoo. She has a high-stepping gait.
Clothing/Jewelry Description: A denim miniskirt and cork platform sandals.


Details of Disappearance

Amy was last seen hitchhiking along Main Highway in Coconut Grove, Florida on March 5, 1974. She was headed to her father's office to borrow money from him so she could meet friends later in the day. Amy never arrived at the office and her friends never saw her that evening. She has never been heard from again. Amy enjoyed playing the flute and guitar, as well as reading and writing poetry, at the time of her 1974 disappearance, and was considering becoming an actress. She often hitchhiked through her neighborhood.
Charles and Larry Glasser, sixteen-year-old twin brothers, called Amy's family a few days after her disappearance and claimed to have kidnapped her. They said they were holding her for $30,000 ransom. The Glassers turned out to be lying; they did not know Amy and had nothing to do with her disappearance. They were subsequently charged with extortion. A photograph of the Glasser twins at the time of their arrest is posted below this case summary.

Amy's mother, Susan Billig, began investigating her daughter's case in addition to law enforcement's attempts immediately after Amy disappeared. A photograph of Susan at the time of Amy's disappearance is posted below this case summary. Susan began receiving tips from numerous individuals who claimed that Amy had been abducted by members of The Outlaws or The Pagans, both motorcycle gangs that traveled through the Coconut Grove area of Florida in 1974. Some people claimed that Amy was alive and others maintained she had been killed; these tips led Susan on a cross-country chase through the US and even into Great Britain through the years. Sometimes Susan would come within days of finding her daughter, but Amy was never located. She may have used the aliases "Mute," "Sunshine," "Little Bits," and/or "Mellow Cheryl" while with the bikers.

Paul Branch, a member of The Pagans, initially told Susan in the late 1970's that Amy was alive and being held by Pagan members in the U. S. Branch's widow claimed he recanted this statement on his deathbed in the late 1990's; he then said that Amy had attended a party thrown by The Pagans in Florida on the night of her disappearance and died of a drug overdose, and that her body had been taken to the Florida Everglades by gang members and tossed to the alligators. His widow relayed this information to Susan.

Amy's camera was located at the Wildwood exit on Florida's Turnpike shortly after Amy's disappearance. It was turned in by a man who had heard she was missing. Wildwood would have been on the route the biker gangs took traveling north. Nobody knows if Amy had the camera when she disappeared, however; it might have disappeared before she did. The film inside, once developed, revealed no clues as to her whereabouts. The majority of the photographs were completely overexposed.

Another sidenote to Amy's disappearance involved harassing phone calls that Susan began receiving shortly after Amy vanished in 1974. A then-unidentified male caller informed Susan that Amy was abducted by members of an illicit sex ring organization and being held captive. The caller tormented Susan for 21 years until 1995, when FBI agents were able to trace a call the man made using his cellular phone. Until that time, the caller always used a pay phone to harass Susan, making him difficult to apprehend. The caller was identified as Henry Johnson Blair, who worked for the US Customs Department. A photograph of him is posted below this case summary. Blair claimed that he was an alcoholic and had an obsessive-compulsive disorder which caused him to harass Susan; he also stated that he never met Amy and knew nothing about her disappearance. Blair was sentenced to a two-year prison term for harassing Susan and has since been released. Susan settled a lawsuit against him for five million dollars.

The addition of Blair into this case focuses renewed attention on to a man Amy described in her journal. Amy wrote that she was considering running away to South America with a man she called "Hank." Blair's nickname is Hank. A photo developed from a roll of film in Amy's camera showed a white van which was identical in color and model to a van Blair drove in 1974. Blair's job with the Customs Department required him to relocate to South America around the time Amy specified in her journal. Blair has not been positively linked to Amy aside from his incarceration for the harassment of her mother, however.

The A & E Network aired a program about Amy's case on its Investigative Reports series in 1998. The documentary shows elements of Susan's decades-long search for her daughter with law enforcement and also provides footage of Susan's meeting with Branch's widow. Susan accepts his widow's statement at the program's end, but authorities believe that his widow was lying about his confession in an effort to financially profit from Amy's disappearance. Amy's father died of lung cancer in the early 1990s.

Susan co-authored a book about Amy's disappearance in 2001 with Greg Aunapu, called Without A Trace: The Disappearance Of Amy Billig -- A Mother's Search For Justice. She died of a heart attack in 2005, at age 80. Amy's case remains unsolved.



Left: Henry Johnson Blair, circa 1996;
Center: Susan Billig, circa 1974;
Right: Susan Billig, circa 2005

Above: Larry and Charles Glasser, circa 1974



Investigating Agency
If you have any information concerning this case, please contact:
Miami Police Department
305-579-6530



Source Information
The National Center For Missing and Exploited Children
Child Protection Education Of America
The A & E Network
America's Most Wanted
WSVN TV-7
The Miami Herald
Without A Trace: The Disappearance Of Amy Billig -- A Mother's Search For Justice
By Susan Billig and Greg Aunapu
The Naples Daily News
The Doe Network



Updated 2 times since October 12, 2004.

Last updated January 13, 2006; two pictures added.

Charley Project Home
http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/b/billig_amy.html

http://z13.invisionfree.com/PorchlightUSA/...opic=1065&st=0&

Pembroke Pines event focuses attention on missing kids

By Kathleen Kernicky
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Posted May 22 2007


Maurice Jefferson told his grandmother he was heading to school for basketball practice. Instead, the 16-year-old student at Dillard High School walked out of the house in November 1983 and vanished.

"I've always said, `It's like the Earth opened up and swallowed him,'" said his grandmother, Ethel Mitchell, 74, who still lives in the Fort Lauderdale house she shared with Maurice before he disappeared that Monday afternoon. "What happened to him, we don't know."



LocalLinks

Maurice's family is still looking for him.

On Monday, Mitchell and a small group of parents, police and advocates gathered at The Church of Pembroke Pines for National Missing Children's Day. Posters and color photographs of the children filled a table in the back of the room. Many have been missing more years than their ages when they disappeared.

"I don't want anybody to have to wait that long," said Dinorah Perry, founder of Missing Children International Ministries, the Christian-based organization that puts together the annual event.

If he is alive, Maurice will turn 40 this year. Teresa Fittin, of Fort Lauderdale, was 18 when she vanished in 1975. Today, she would be 50.

So would Amy Billig, who was 17 when she vanished in 1974. Billig drew national attention when she disappeared from a Coconut Grove street corner, reportedly abducted by bikers. Her mother searched for 30 years until she died of cancer.

Maurice's case caused barely a stir. Under police guidelines at that time, his family had to wait three days for the investigation to begin, his grandmother said. There were never any strong clues or even sightings. The family hired a private investigator and turned up nothing.

Today, families have better odds of finding answers than they did 20 or 30 years ago. The Amber Alert publicizes information about missing children almost immediately. Fingerprints and DNA tests dramatically improve the ability to identify a body.

Currently, there are about 185 cases of missing children at the Broward Sheriff's Office and 93 cases of unidentified remains at the county Medical Examiner's Office. Twenty percent of the remains are those of children, said Dr. Reinhard Motte, associate medical examiner.

Motte encouraged the parents of missing children to submit their own DNA sample (a swab of saliva from the mouth). The results are kept in a DNA database.

"I think if they'd had these things years ago, many of these kids would be found," Mitchell said.

Maurice, nicknamed "Red," split his time between his grandmother's house in Fort Lauderdale and his mother's home in Alabama.

The day Maurice disappeared, he told his grandmother he was meeting a friend at school. He never showed up. No one was arrested.

"In the back of my mind, I kept telling myself, you have two other kids to live for, you might as well focus on them and move on," said Maurice's mother, Betty Bridges, 57, who now lives in Williston, S.C. "I have pictures in my house that I look at every day, look at them and wonder: `Where are you?'"

If you have information, contact the Missing Children International Ministries at 888-429-2272.



Kathleen Kernicky can be reached at 954-385-7907 or kkernicky@sun-sentinel.com.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/sou...-home-headlines

NCMEC Poster for Billig

http://missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet...earchLang=en_US

Miami Herald, The (FL)

April 24, 1988
Edition: BRWRD
Section: FRONT
Page: 1A


Topics:

Index Terms:
LOST FLORIDA JVENILE



SKETCH TECHNIQUE 'AGES' MISSING KIDS
Author: DON VAN NATTA Jr. Herald Staff Writer



To Robert Stewart, his daughter Jean Marie stopped growing the moment she disappeared from a Miami Lakes convenience store on March 25, 1980.

For eight years, his mind replayed images of a 16-year-old Jean Marie, a daughter lost to time.

Then last week Stewart saw an age-progression pencil sketch of a 25-year-old Jean Marie. A medical illustrator used a process, pioneered in 1985 by a pair of University of Illinois professors, to age Jean Marie's face by eight years.

"This is the greatest hope we've got," Stewart said of the sketch. "There is no way to bridge anything about her except this. We have had hope -- we'll always have hope -- and now we have this sketch, too."

For the first time ever, a national directory of 60 age- progressed drawings of missing children -- including six from Broward, Dade, Palm Beach and Collier counties -- will be distributed later this month to school systems in Florida, California and New England.

Besides Jean Marie Stewart, the five others are:

* Maurice "Red" Jefferson of Fort Lauderdale, a 16-year-old Dillard High School student who disappeared five years ago from a Franklin Park basketball court.

* Jason Townsend of Lauderhill, last seen in Fort Lauderdale in 1980. He was 3 1/2. In the sketch, he is 11. Broward sheriff's deputies suspect foul play. He was last seen by an acquaintance of his mother who was shot to death two days after Jason's disappearance in a struggle with police.

* Marjorie Christy Luna, who disappeared in Greenacres City in Palm Beach County as she walked the 500 yards between a convenience store and her house. In her last picture, Christy is 8. In the sketch, she is 12.

* Amy Billig, who was 17 when she disappeared in Coconut Grove in 1974. Amy's father told police he feared his daughter, who frequently hitchhiked, was the victim of foul play. Her composite was difficult; the illustrators aged her face 14 years.

* Kristan Taylor Sherwood, a 1 1/2-year-old boy with blond hair and blue eyes who was taken from a Naples nursery school by his father in 1981. He was aged seven years. Kristan's composite may have been the hardest of all. "Aging a baby is always hardest," said Scott Barrows, who helped develop the technique.

In the directory, the sketches appear side by side with the last photographs taken of the children, all of whom have been missing three years or more.

"We purposely chose to run the age progression drawing and the original photograph because research has shown that the likelihood that the child will be found will increase if both are included," said Denise Goros, the director of corporate communications for Consolidated Group, a Framingham, Mass.-based insurance company that donated $22,000 to publish 4,000 directories.

Hailed by police

The age-progression method is being hailed by law enforcement agencies, missing children organizations and parental help groups as a "revolutionary" technique.

A Metro-Dade police detective praised the method as a "breakthrough" to missing-children investigations.

"This is definitely something we need to investigate," detective Bob Sims said. "It sounds like it can help."

"When you have absolutely nothing else, a composite can trigger people's minds," said Naples police detective Siro Dominguez. "It gives us an extra lead. It opens more doors."

"This directory is like a dream come true. These kids are growing up, and now we have a pretty good idea what they look like," said Elaine Moriconi, the executive director of Society for Young Victims, a child protection organization in Billerica, Mass.

In February 1985, Barrows and Lewis Sadler, both professors at the University of Illinois in Chicago, developed the age- progression process. With the help of independent medical illustrator Julie Jordan Brown, the three have aged 75 children.

The illustrators study 65 different dimensions of a child's face -- the width of the eyes, the tip of the nose, the height of the cheekbones. Then they project what a child will look like several years later. It is more scientific than guesswork.

"One of your goals is (to) not deviate -- you want to predict what (a child) will look like, not create a generic child," said Brown, who learned the process from Barrows two years ago.

"They all grow at different times in a child's life," said Barrows."We base our projections on growth rates and statistical data from plastic surgeons."

Remarkable accuracy

Their accuracy is uncanny.

Kimberlie McCowan, a child from Oklahoma City, Okla., was missing since 1979. Authorities suspected she was taken by her mother. In 1986, Barrows produced an age-progressed illustration. The sketches were printed on posters and circulated in a four-state area.

A detective from the Oklahoma City police department took the drawing to area high schools.

A principal at Kimberlie's school recognized her. She had a different name, but the resemblance between the girl in the sketch and the girl in the school was remarkable, police said. The next day, Kimberlie was reunited with her father.

"In all my years in police work, I have never seen a drawing so accurate," detective Nick Pittman told the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Washington, D.C. "Her face was a little thinner, but in the corner of the drawing, Barrows had written that the face might be a little thinner. It was fantastic."

Fifteen children have been found with the aid of updated sketches. In one case, a child missing 13 years was found, a spokesman for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children said.

So far, all the located children were taken by a relative or family acquaintance. The challenge now is to locate a child abducted by a stranger, a task authorities agree is more difficult.

"We are still waiting for that," Barrows said. "We do as many stranger abduction cases that we can."

Each sketch takes 15 to 20 hours to complete. The process is slow because only Barrows, Sadler and Brown do them -- all by hand. And they feel pressure to speed the process -- there is a waiting list of 1,400 missing children.

To meet the demand, Barrows and Sadler are now programming a computer to do the complicated pre-artwork calculations. The sketches will still be done by hand.

Research center funded

They do the work for free. Corporate grants have enabled Barrows and Sadler to found a National Research Center for the Identification of Missing Children at the university. Barrows and Sadler are not the only ones who have developed an age- progression method. A New York company created a software package which uses a computer to add years to children's faces. The software is used by the FBI, a spokesman said.

The sketches serve a dual purpose, workers for missing children's groups said. They help law enforcement agencies try to find the children and they help parents cope with the loss.

"More than anything, these drawings symbolize hope," said Jo Ann Currier, the director of Child Keyypers International, a Lake Worth child protection organization.

Jenny Luna of Greenacres City saw an age-progressed sketch of her daughter Christy for the first time last November.

Jenny Luna said she placed it in her scrapbook next to the photographs of Christy at ages 8, 5 and 3.

Luna admitted she was not entirely pleased with the illustrator's rendition. She said the portrait made Christy, now 12, look more like a 15-year-old. But she was so grateful for the sketch, she gave the illustrator the benefit of the doubt.

"Christy's been through a lot of stress," Luna said. "Maybe that aged her."

Caption:
photo: composite of Kristan Sherwood (ran in GLF, KYS
- n), Marjorie Christy Luna (ran in PLM BCH - n)




Memo:
also in PLM BCH, KYS, GLF; see boxes 14a BRWRD
Copyright © 1988 The Miami Herald
Record Number: 8801290925

Miami Police Department
Missing Persons Unit
305-579-6530
305-579-6111
You can remain anonymous if you wish.

Agency Case Number: 406906

NCMEC #: NCMC600311

NCIC Number: M-964017070

dentals dna

http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/b/billig_amy.html

Amy was last seen hitchhiking along Main Highway in Coconut Grove, Florida on March 5, 1974. She was headed to her father's office to borrow money from him so she could meet friends later in the day. Amy never arrived at the office and her friends never saw her that evening. She has never been heard from again. Amy enjoyed playing the flute and guitar, as well as reading and writing poetry, at the time of her 1974 disappearance, and was considering becoming an actress. She often hitchhiked through her neighborhood.

Charles and Larry Glasser, sixteen-year-old twin brothers, called Amy's family a few days after her disappearance and claimed to have kidnapped her. They said they were holding her for $30,000 ransom. The Glassers turned out to be lying; they did not know Amy and had nothing to do with her disappearance. They were subsequently charged with extortion. A photograph of the Glasser twins at the time of their arrest is posted below this case summary.

Amy's mother, Susan Billig, began investigating her daughter's case in addition to law enforcement's attempts immediately after Amy disappeared. Photographs of Susan at the time of Amy's disappearance are posted below this case summary. Susan began receiving tips from numerous individuals who claimed that Amy had been abducted by members of <i>The Outlaws</i> or <i>The Pagans</i>, both motorcycle gangs that traveled through the Coconut Grove area of Florida in 1974. Some people claimed that Amy was alive and others maintained she had been killed; these tips led Susan on a cross-country chase through the U. S. and even into Great Britain through the years. Sometimes Susan would seemingly come within days of finding her daughter, but Amy was never located. She may have used the aliases "Mute," "Sunshine," "Little Bits," and/or "Mellow Cheryl" while with the bikers.

Paul Branch, a member of The Pagans, initially told Susan in the late 1970's that Amy was alive and being held by Pagan members in the U. S. Branch's widow claimed he recanted this statement on his deathbed in the late 1990's; he then said that Amy had attended a party thrown by <i>The Pagans</i> in Florida on the night of her disappearance and died of a drug overdose, and that her body had been taken to the Florida Everglades by gang members and tossed to the alligators. His widow relayed this information to Susan.

Amy's camera was located at the Wildwood exit on Florida's Turnpike shortly after Amy's disappearance. It was turned in by a man who had heard she was missing. Wildwood would have been on the route the biker gangs took traveling north. Nobody knows if Amy had the camera when she disappeared, however; it might have disappeared before she did. The film inside, once developed, revealed no clues as to her whereabouts. The majority of the photographs were completely overexposed.

Another sidenote to Amy's disappearance involved harassing phone calls that Susan began receiving shortly after Amy vanished in 1974. A then-unidentified male caller informed Susan that Amy was abducted by members of an illicit sex ring organization and being held captive. The caller tormented Susan for 21 years until 1995, when FBI agents were able to trace a call the man made using his cellular phone. Until that time, the caller always used a pay phone to harass Susan, making him difficult to apprehend. The caller was identified as Henry Johnson Blair, who worked for the US Customs Department. A photograph of him is posted below this case summary. Blair claimed that he was an alcoholic and had an obsessive-compulsive disorder which caused him to harass Susan; he also stated that he never met Amy and knew nothing about her disappearance. Blair was sentenced to a two-year prison term for harassing Susan and has since been released. Susan settled a lawsuit against him for five million dollars.

The addition of Blair into this case focuses renewed attention on to a man Amy described in her journal. Amy wrote that she was considering running away to South America with a man she called "Hank." Blair's nickname is Hank. A photo developed from a roll of film in Amy's camera showed a white van which was identical in color and model to a van Blair drove in 1974. Blair's job with the Customs Department required him to relocate to South America around the time Amy specified in her journal. Blair has not been positively linked to Amy aside from his incarceration for the harassment of her mother, however.

The A & E Networkaired a program about Amy's case on its Investigative Reports series in 1998. The documentary shows elements of Susan's decades-long search for her daughter with law enforcement and also provides footage of Susan's meeting with Branch's widow. Susan accepts his widow's statement at the program's end, but authorities believe that his widow was lying about his confession in an effort to financially profit from Amy's disappearance.

Amy's father died of lung cancer in the early 1990s. Susan co-authored a book about Amy's disappearance in 2001 with Greg Aunapu, called Without A Trace: The Disappearance Of Amy Billig—A Mother's Search For Justice. She died of a heart attack in 2005, at age 80. Amy's case remains unsolved.

Without A Trace: The Disappearance Of Amy Billig -- A Mother's Search For Justice
By Susan Billig and Greg Aunapu
The National Center For Missing and Exploited Children
Investigating Agency
If you have any information concerning this case, please contact:
Miami Police Department
305-579-6530

more photos

http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/ser...earchLang=en_US

age progressed to 51