Thinking Sideways: The Disappearance of Amy Billig

see there. This episode has also brought to you by Stitcher Premium. If you want to get the episodes early four days early as a matter of fact, and you want to get them ad free, you're welcome to do so by going to stitcher dot com slash Thinking Sideways and signing up for Stitcher Premium. If you use the promo code sideways, you will get one month free if

you sign up for the twelve month plan. And by the way, there's also gonna be some extra bonus content thrown in there once a month, so it's a good time to tad by all. Go there, enjoy. We'll talk to you soon. Thank you. Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Thinking Sideways the podcast. I Am Devin, joined as usual by and Steve. Today we're gonna talk about a mystery, weird disappearance. In fact, it's like true crime

kind of crazy. That actually is kind of crazy the celebration of crime con So we're gonna talk about crimes for a little while. Yeah, that works for me. We're going to talk about the nineteen seventy four so super recent disappearance of seventeen year old Amy Billig, who disappear while hitchhiking in to her father's office or art gallery or something place of work, place of war w e

W during to his POW. There have been some reported leads over the past forty some years about her whereabouts, but she has never been found, nor have any remains or anything like that. Quick warning, there is a moment of discussion on some sexually explicit stuff, so big and little ear warnings for that if that's not your change to you know, all sizes. Yeah, and finally, before we hop in, I want to thank listener Christie for being

the first person to suggest this mystery. If you've suggested something recently, you may have found that we started saying, oh yeah, it's on the list, and we might have stopped adding names to the list. I add them. So that's good for you in yourself addressed and stamped envelope, and we will return your prize. We don't actually star, which is your self addressed stamped envelope back to you. Everybody, you really want to suggest stories, it's fine. Let's start

at the beginning, shall we. Amy was born on January nine, nineteen seven, to loving parents and a reportedly normal home. She had at least one brother. I've only ever seen reports of one brother, but I never even heard what his name is. Actually I did see it, and I don't remember it because he is such a tryan or something. I read it. I read an article with him. It was an interview with him, because he was only a couple of years younger. Is still yes, I don't know,

he's still couple of years younger. Um, but I don't remember his name. I'm really sorry. I'm sorry if you're listening, Yeah, looking at really good research right off the top. She was enrolled in high school at the time of her disappearance. Amy enjoyed music, including playing both the flute and the guitar. She was an avid reader and writer and wanted to I was thinking about becoming an actress at the time

because she was seventeen. She was also a very dedicated vegetarian and generally described as kind of a flower child, free spirit, sort of empathetic, and she was a child of the sixties, so that crap was more popular back

in those days. Y. Yeah, it was. Yeah. I'm not really clear how this works the layout of the day that she disappeared, but on the day of her disappearance, which was a Tuesday, um March five, nineteen seventy four, she came home from school at noon for lunch, which sounds like it was the end of her day for that day. She was a senior, so sometimes you get you know, you have your half days because you stacked

your courses that way. Sometimes well, depending on the school, it's almost treated like college where you do certain classes on certain days. That's stack days day Thursday afternoon class totally yeah, or she just was skipping and you know she ha hand, we're okay, but that this was the early seven day school. Yeah, but she was going to happen. You can get a factory job it's fine. Fine, Yeah, you can still afford an entire house and to raise

a family of four on your salary. It's fine. Anyway, it sounds like that was at the end of her day. Was at noon, she was coming home for lunch. Maybe she was skipping the afternoon. I don't really know. It's never ever explained what was happening on that afternoon. So she was going to head off and do something with friends. Apparently later that day. Um, Regardless, she went home on this Tuesday for lunch, and then she called her father and Ned asking for some money, either to go hang

out with her friends or for lunch. It's kind of reported both ways. There's an alternate telling that, Um, she basically was just she just went straight to his office or art gallery. I think they're the same. Ned. It sounds like played the trombone trumpet trumpet, not trombone and owned an art gallery. That was what he did. So something tromboni or artie. Yeah. No, So she needed money and she called him and said, hey, can I come get some money? And he said, yeah, you for a

couple of minutes and I'll get here. Yeah, you gotta listen to me play. Yeah, but by the way, just def why I think it was somebody on redditue said he lived in Miami and said I actually knew where her address was, where his place at work was there about a mile apart. Yeah, it was not very far. Yeah, could have walked minutes. Christ well me anyway, Well, she was um well, And it's not clear again if she did go home and then go to the art gallery or just was headed from school to the art gallery.

Either way, she had called him for some money, started walking there, never showed up. This was pre cell phone. You will remember, some of you will remember pre cell phone times. We will all of us in this. Yeah, that's true. But so I think her dad probably just assumed she didn't end up not needing the money. So it's fine, I'll see her tonight, you know, they do. Yeah, or you know, maybe she found a twenty all or bill in her pocket or something, you know what I mean,

It's fine, Uh those what I mean? You know, if she found some money in her jeans at home or something and decided, oh, I don't need sorry anyway, like I said, didn't show up to pick up the money. She also didn't show up to hang out with her friends and I think her friends probably called the house. Again. This is a really severely underreported part of this story, this whole how it happened, Yeah, which is kind of frustrating because I feel like there's a lot of details

in there that would have been really helpful to know. Yeah, I know, like I've never been totally clear on if her mother was at home when she arrived home, or she talked to her mother any Yeah, based on the stuff that her mother has said, I get the feeling that no, mom was not. Yeah, I get the feeling that they don't really know if she went home or

if she just had was heading straight to the art gallery. Reportedly, she went home and changed her clothes from her school clothes to her going out clothes and then was walking to her father's gallery. But since the friends the time and the friends didn't, you know, I guess they must

have called or something. But otherwise, her parents found out that she hadn't shown up and they thought, oh, she's probably missing then, and the my sense is that they reported her missing in the appropriate time frame and that you know, blah blah blah blah blah. Right she was seventeen, they did, Yeah, And once that was kind of pushed out.

Some construction workers said that, of course it was. They were working on her route from her home to the gallery and they saw her walk past, which is why I think they figured she had gone home and they just stand around. Anyway. She was wearing a men denim minis sret and cork heels, so they guess we're the last people to have seen her. As a construction worker. You should be careful of just cat calling it, every lady, because it might be the last person she sees. Yeah,

it's true, and then you're gonna be guilty forever. Um. And I think I didn't mention this, but the road that she was walking down was a road called Main Highway in the neighborhood Coconut Grove, which is in Miami, Florida. It's often reported that she was hitchhiking along the road,

but you know, like Joe said, it was a mile are. Um. You know, I know from reports from her brother, he said they hitch hiked around the neighborhood, and she particularly hitch hiked around the neighborhood all the time, and her parents knew about it, and they were like, it's a friendly neighborhood and you know, it's it's safe, it's fine for you to hitchhike around the neighborhood. But again, it was only a mile, so I don't really know. Maybe

the heels were uncomfortable. I've certainly been in that situation before where I've put on some new shoes because you know, I was feeling myself and then started walking king and was like, oh my god, this is the worst. Yeah. Or maybe she's walking down the road and somebody she knew just stopped by and said he want to write, or even somebody she didn't know just pulled over and said, hey, do you want to write down the road and she was like, yeah, because are not scary? Yeah they are,

you know, your long haul taxi service. Yeah. So a search at this point is conducted. It didn't come up with anything. The family and the people who knew Amy didn't feel like they she had just left voluntarily, like she hadn't run away from home for instance. Yeah, and as far as I can tell, the police seemed to

have done their job. Though. Again, if this story is started starting to sound familiar to you and you don't really know why that is, it's because it was an episode of Unsolved mysteries, and as happens with these cases, it ends up that most of the reporting is kind of whatever was in that episode, A lot of people report that stuff as being fact. Yeah, well, not only is it fact, but it also means that if they leave out big chunks of the story, those big chunks

of the story tend to get lost to history. So we don't know a whole lot about the initial investigation because Unsolved Mysteries didn't seem to give a hoot about it. How many times we talked about that we have, we talked about a lot. So so this is where actually you can actually be well served to get off the Internet and go to your library and actually get a

book about this stuff. Because I looked in the past, you find a lot of stuff that you just can't find in the Yeah, or otherwise look at um newspaper articles or something like that is really really great. I found a couple of newspaper articles that we had used the way back machine for for this one. That was helpful, but they were still from you know, the early two thousand's, so nothing nothing really from well, there was one from even Some of the older stuff that I found was

very thin. Yeah, because this was the time when you kids started disappearing and they maybe they were just they just ran away. Yeah, especially at especially at seventeen, you know, I think police often felt like, well, they just you know, they went away. And when she met and sorry mom and dad, but she's off happily living with the new boyfriend. Yeah. But Um, like I said, it does appear that the police did their job. There was a lot of reporting,

at least in the Florida area about her disappearance. Um. A few days after her disappearance, a man who had heard about Amy's disappearance, I'm sorry keeps saying disappearance turned in a camera o evacuation. Maybe a man who had heard about Amy being missing turned in her camera, which he said he had found near the Wildwood exit off the Florida Turnpike. I've always wondered about the camera thing was it actually was? It was right below the under the lens she had her name was written, but it

actually was that keeps losing her camera? What? But probably used one of those sticker like the one like Bart Simpson had in that episode. Yeah, but for those of you who are not familiar with Florida, so like everybody even most people who live in Florida. Um. The that exit of the turnpike is about fifty miles north of Orlando, Florida, which means that the camera was about two hundred and seventy two miles away from Coconut Grove. So it's not like whoops, you know, on the way to the gallery

she dropped her camera. It's a big old drive. Well, there's a perfectly and as an explanation, she probably pawned the camera because she did want money. No, and this does come with the caveat that it's really unclear if Amy had her camera with her when she disappeared, or if it had even maybe been stolen prior. Her parents it sounds like couldn't say, you know, for a couple of weeks even that they had seen Amy with the camera. So you know, maybe she did put it because she

was seventeen and felt like she needed money. She probably maybe somebody stole it from her a couple of weeks before, but also maybe it was or maybe it was connected to the disappearance. It's almost impossible to tell. Three weeks after Amy went missing, Sue Uh's mom Susan Sue, I've been calling her Sue the entire time, but I don't really know. I'm really sorry. Yeah she did pass away, but sorry if that's not anyway, Sue got a call in the middle of the night, or I guess the

Billings did. Yeah, both of them have passed away but then passed away in nineteen three. When the calls started, they were both living and living together. Sue answered the phone, but it was dead air on the other end, so she hung up in the words nobody there. Not even the breathing. Well, no, it was breathing. I mean, they could have been a breathing. She didn't say she could hear the breathing, but it wasn't just like dial tone

or anything like that. So after she young up. A few minutes after that, the phone ring again, she answered dead air. A few minutes after that, when Sue answered the phone because it was ringing again, she was pretty sure at this point that it was Amy calling from beyond the grave. No, just like you know, to say, Mom, I love you, I'm safe for something, I mean, you know, anything, trying to exactly. So Sue started to plea with Amy. She was asking her to come home. Yeah, she's telling

her she loves her. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. This goes on for almost five minutes UM, at which point Sue decides, Okay, nobody, She's not gonna say anything, right, Amy's not gonna say anything. I'm gonna hang up. So she hangs up. And this goes on for a few weeks before the police get involved, which they did, which again leads me to believe the police were really doing their job. They started Florida have

to be on the ball down there. They sure don't. Um. So when they did get involved, they started tracing the calls and found they were coming from a phone booth, which they started staking out. Once they started their surveillance on this phone booth, however, the phone calls started coming from a different telephone booth convenient interest. They must have had an end at the police department. Yeah, this game of Captain Mouse went on for a while and Sue

was getting these like silent calls. They would they were able to kind of figure out there was I don't know, four or five phone booths that who the caller was in like a certain kind of radius um And it was pretty much like there were four or five, and they would stake one out and then they would still all the while still tracing calls, and they'd be coming and the call would come from a different phone booth and they were just like, oh my god, what but

they obviously this is not a big enough profile case to send cops to. Well, I don't think they had the research. Would take months to make a call something yeah, yeah, that's what I meaning it out. And then and then the caller would just walk up and like put up one of those one of those sandwich signs, free donuts. No,

I know what actually happened. Let's continue here. After five months of silent calls, the caller finally spoke, Um, so Sue was getting these calls couple night at least pretty consistently at this point, that we're just silence for five months. And then finally the caller did identify himself as Hal

Johnson and told Sue I have her. These calls continued for years, like we said, while while the police continue to search for how they could not figure out which one of the booths he was going to make a call from. And as we said, the phone with him a minnutt a couple of minutes. Sometimes it depends. She said, you know when the silent ones were happening. She would sometimes sit on the phone for five minutes of dead air, like literally five minutes of dead air. But it seemed

like she was always the one who hung up. It wasn't him usually, So I don't really know. It just seems to me like what they should have done was put in a second line and then when he calls, just call the police right away. They just go hit all those phone booths all at once, you know, and just bam and have them, you would think. But so here was the thing that, well why not? They were staking it out there? There was a lot of trouble.

They went to a lot of trouble take in the very very beginning, yes, but I have a feeling that by this point enough time had gone by that they had given up. Well so, I mean, they were also starting to suspect that How was able to identify their undercover cars, because clearly, you know, they would stick out any given one, and it just happened that he wasn't

using that one. That's absurd. They also, um the other thing that's important here for people to know is that some nights, um How would call who literally like dozens of times in a given night, and then he would go months sometimes, like you know, five months, six months without calling her at all. So there was no real rhyme or reason except for that whenever Sue was in the news locally, she could pretty much guarantee that how

it was going to call her. Um horrible stuff too. Yeah, he kind of what what happened is the calls escalated, right, So we said for a good five months there was silence. Then for a couple of months he would just kind of say have her and you know whatever. Then he um, he told Sue that Amy was learning quickly and that he was her she was his sex slave. He yeah, he got really really explicit and like a little weird. Um. Some choice quotes from him include, um, I've smoothed her out.

She knows just how to please, and I can tell you she knows how to use her mouth just in the right way. Wants to hear. Yeah. He eventually started tracing her movements even he said that he was loaning Amy out to other men. He said that eventually he had quote sold her to the ragheads and Saudi Arabia unquote sorry his quote not um where she had quote perfected her art unquote, He, yeah, I'm sorry about all of this. He detailed really awful things that are way

worse than anything I'd ever want to say on this podcast. Um. And these calls continued until three, which is nineteen years of him just saying horrible, horrible, awful things in it changed. You may remember we mentioned a few minutes ago that Ned, Sue's husband, and Amy's father, passed away, at which point after How or after Ned passed away, how, the first call that that Sue got from How after Ned passed away was, UM, he said, you're all alone now, aren't you.

You better watch your back? H nice guy. And then he started to detail some more stuff, basically saying that how How said we want you because apparently he was part of some like organization. I don't really know, but basically they quote unquote wanted Sue to join Amy because they've gotten tired of Amy's age, which would would have been thirty six at the time. Age. Ye, she would have been thirty six at that time. It really took that.

It was years, yeah, it was twenty years. Yeah. So he he said that everybody had gotten tired of how old Amy was, so they wanted a mother daughter duo, and they wanted it to be Sue and Amy's too old. Mommy will make it better, right, I don't really know. I don't really want to go into how where that goes in the brain, but oh god, it's really awful. Um. Anyways, the FBI got involved at this point and helped the police track the person who had been making these calls.

Because you may or may not remember, the twenty years is a long time, especially in this time period, and especially as it pertains to technology. So as Hal had started making these phone calls at phone booths, cell phones became a thing and he started calling from a cell phone. Yeah. Well, so the thing that's really interesting here is, um, they

almost might not have um. The FBI used some It was a couple more years before the technology really really caught up to the technology that Hal was using, but they finally were able to trace the cell phone number that Hal had been using for the last couple of years. Which, again, remember tracing technology, all of that sort of stuff that

takes a while to catch up. So cellphones were a thing. Yeah, so cell phones were a thing for a while before anybody could be tracing cell phones, they were able the FBI was able to trace this cell phone number two and address which the police went to check out. And it turns out the address was a federal drop site linked to the U. S. Customs. I know a federal drop side is, and what's one of the means by

drop site? Like like a mailbox maybe or no, I think it was just like a dead drop site, like you know, something that somebody would use to like drop off some packages behind a locked door or whatever. It's never really gone into. I'm just making an assumption here, but it was a physical address of something. So so the police supervisor at this point, you know, the FBI says, okay, well we linked it to this address, go check it out. And the police go to check out the address and

find out that it's this U. S Customs thing. So the US the police supervisor calls the branch of the custom the US Customs that was registered to this you know, I don't know how we figured it out, but anyway, and he says, um, hey, I have this phone number I'm trying to trace. Can you tell me who it's linked to? And the uh, the supervisor says, uh, take off, get out. He says, um, oh, none of your bleed

bleep business, which I know. Yeah, So the police decide, you know what, we know what will make the supervisor cooperate, and that is we have we have a number of tape recordings that Sue took with the with the approval of a judge. A judge you know, years later, years earlier, had said yeah, you can record these messages for perpetuity or for reno voice recon or whatever. So they took him down to the office. It wasn't even just like

you're recognized. Was that it was just like a listen to all of the really messed up stuff that this person has been dealing with for twenty years and recognized that a lot of them have been coming to a phone number registered to an address that you're in charge of. At that point, the supervisor said, okay, well he didn't he say something like he called somebody else and he's like,

I think I know who this is. It can't really be him, but I'm gonna get so and so to come listen to like they had multiple people listen to it because I couldn't believe it right, But basically he just said, okay, yes, I'll cooperate. You're right, it is it is your business. And now we're going to talk about theories, because I bet you want to know who that might have been on the tape. Bad bad man, all right, he was Hank Blair was our first theory. Yeah,

so that's actually what happened. Is the supervisor said, boy, I hope that's not Hank Blair, but it sounds a lot like it. Yeah, you know it. Hank talks to me just that way. He says, yeah, I got your daughter. I smoothed her out. Yeah. Henry Johnson Blair is actually his full name. Come on, didn't change your name very much, did you. This guy is like not, he was not careful at all. Now he was a is he's still alive US Customs squad leader. Well he was. I'm sorry.

He was a U S Customs squad leader. He is no longer US Customs squad leader. He is alive still. He had more than twenty four years of law enforcement service under his belt. That that he started his priview phone calls when he was like, you know, kind of a rookie police seven. He was actually a UM he was an air marshal at that time, which we'll talk

about in just a second here. Um I just want to run through his kind of kind of actually wonder about did they give the air marshals any like psychological testing or anything like that. Do they give police Do they give police in US customs people psychological testing? Probably, but I mean, you know, people can this stuff. It's fine. Yeah. Um. He was highly decorated for breaking lots of different smuggling

rings in Miami. Um recovered lots of stolen masterpieces for the him In Spain, he own a house in the suburbs. He was you know, your typical like high ranking government, law enforcement official, high ranking middle management at least yep. He was at the time forty eight years old. He his wife was a top administrator at the South Miami Hospital. He apparently didn't even have a speeding ticket on his record,

that's how clean he was. He was realy pulled out his badge every time he got pulled over into official business. His law enforcement background obviously probably aided him and spotting these steakouts at the for sure. Yeah. He had two daughters, one was twenty and one was seventeen. He was basically everybody you know. He was that guy. When the police came to take him away and the handcuffs. Everybody said, oh, he's such a nice guy. But he was always such

a nice, quiet guy. But there you go. He was arrested pretty much on on site at the US Customs. He was in the office at the time, and they just handcuffed him and took him away because a bunch of people identified his voice. And he initially admitted to have calling had been calling Sue for three years prior, which I gather is about Yeah, which is what I believe is how long that cell phone had been active

and had been issued to him. No, so you know, and that makes sense to me, right, he said, Well, I've had the cellphone for three years, so they know for sure if if I was doing it now, I was doing it three years ago, all right, he knows how it works. So he says, yeah, yep, three years ago. Then um, during questioning he admitted to the additional seventeen years. Um, so it was twenty years altogether. Well, it makes me curious about this guy is did he do this to

anybody else or was exclusively Sue? Billy. I don't know. I don't know the answer to that, and you will probably not tell for good reason. Yeah. So when he lawyered up because the lawyer up, his lawyers actually said they were entering a plea of not guilty to the two counts of felony, uh stalking. Well, you know I

was lawyers, I would use the big phone defense. Yeah, his lawyers picked decided to do something even easier, even more shameless, even even more awful, and claim and claim that the calls between um Hank and Sue were consensual. You're going to have to explain that in this theory because that that took me a long time to wrap around and do a lot of reading on. Well, I think probably probably that there is it was put on

my shameless head here. Probably you know, he called and she stayed on the phone and didn't just hang it right up, and so she took that the phone sook that sensual. Well, she answered the phone that's not consensual, but she stayed on the phone. It's probably what the the lawyer said. Well, if she didn't like the phone calls, why didn't she just hang it up instead? She just stayed on the phone and listened to his stuff. That's probably I'm not saying I'm not I know, I know

you're not. You're probably right and that's probably said, or she might have even said if she really believed that it was the tiniest shred of hope that this guy actually had Herrick and maybe some day would give her back, she might have said something the other you know, please call me again, you know, I mean, because you know that was the only hope that she had. Yeah, I think their argument, Yeah, it was basically that, yes, Hank was making these kind of stalking and like really kind

of sexual, like bordering on sexual assault calls. Like what he was saying to her was so really awful and explicit, but it was almost always of like a pretty explicit sexual nature, and I suspect that, you know, that was part of the prosecution, was saying like look at all the really messed up things he said, And the defense was like, no, that was part of the game for her.

She enjoyed it, or else she wouldn't have kept answering, right, even though the entire time, the character of how In Hank continued to say I have her, I have your daughter, and that was the only home. I'm sorry, I shouldn't go too far into this because it's just like it's so disgusting. He's a really Jacqueline hide though you think about it, I mean, during the day he's the mild mannered, law abiding, law enforcing good guy, and then at night

he's the evil, evil creep. Well, so he actually, yeah, he said in his admittance to guilt to the police, he said, you know, it would just build in him. He sort of colsive that he would just like he would get the urge to like call her, and he could like suppress it for a certain amount of time. It would just build and build and build, and then he would call her like a couple of times a night, and by the end of the call session he would just be it would be relieved. So it was it

was a compulsion of some kind. It sounds like still kind of messed up. Yeah, it's creepy compulsion. Yeah, this is something that you know, thankfully, thankfully, really, I can't get away with I can't do this. I could just picture I'm making my purvy call and then the policies just wait a minute. I know you're that podcast guy and you go, oh no, no, I don't know what I don't even know what a podcast is. Podcast, So

I can't do that. No, you can't, um and so on the face of this, right, we can pretty much say, well, he's a creep. And but he wasn't able to provide any information about Amy that he couldn't have read in the papers, which is true. And also the information that he said he provided about her was inaccurate. Um, so

he probably didn't kidnap her. So one of the things that I won't just say here is that, you know, one of the things that Sue did, of course, was say like, okay, prove it to me, Like tell me tell me something that uh, that only you could know about Amy's body if you're if you if you do have her and she's your sex slave, tell me something about her that only you could know. And this is important because Amy had a pretty gnarly appendectomy scar on

her torso that that information was never released. Well, I mean it is now, but you know, after twenty some years had still never been released, and he did not he actually said her torso smooth, right, he smooth? But no, I mean so even then a right. But on the other hand, it's worth noting that there's a single mention of a hank in Amy's diary from about six weeks before she disappeared, and it said quote Hank says, as soon as I finished school, he wants to take me

to South America with him. I told him he's crazy, unquote Sue and pretty much everybody who was friends with Amy at the time doesn't recall there ever being a Hank ever. Granted, this is a one off, like one time somebody mentions it if you're if you're a seventeen year old girl, you're not gonna tell your parents you're

dating a guy who's ten years older than you. Well, but it's it's also that, I mean, we've read about this in different stories before, where when there's somebody that you don't necessarily want to admit that you're seeing your interested in, you give him a code name or a nickname. So Hank is somebody else entirely. Plus, Hank wasn't a isn't an uncommon name. She could have literally known some kid in school who was named Hank saying I'm going to go to South America and you should come with me,

hot girl. I mean, it sounds like you know pretty much everybody from the area. You know. Again, this is just a strawhole right of police kind of investigating. It's a small community Coconut Grove. Grant said, Miami is large, but Coconut Groves fairly small, or at least was at the time. It was pretty close knit. People said, well, I don't really remember there. I mean, I remember this this Henry Johnson Blair guy who did actually kind of live in that area at the time, but I don't

really I don't really remember a hank Um. And the other part of that is since he was the Air Marshal, he was actually assigned to um South American roots, so he was spending a lot of time in South America at the time. So I mean, they're little, tiny things. And that doesn't necessarily mean that he might have known her, and he might have He might have known her and said he was going to take her to South America, and that was the end of that relationship because she

was like, wow, you're actually crazy. You're ten years older than me and you're married. No, and she wrote about in her journal and that was that, and then she disappeared six weeks later, and you know whatever. I don't put a lot of stock into this, but it is interesting the timeline for him and his marriage, though, don't it almost exactly does He had just gotten married. He actually he just got married, and Um literally like days

before she disappeared, returned from his honeymoon. Well, no, they see the timeline there is if he it's either he returned two days before she disappeared, where he returned the day after she disappeared, depending on what you believe, depending on if you believe him or his wife. You know, I mean, listen, I I'm just I'm just saying that the t timeline is not the way that I've seen it.

And again this could be totally wrong. The way that I've seen it is his reporting said, yeah, we got back from our honeymoon the day after his wife's reporting, even though she stayed. She seems to have stood by him during this entire time. He spent some time in jail, and he's out and they're still together. But she said no, no, we got back two days before she disappeared. And I would say that she's probably the right one because women usually he closer track of that stuff than anyway, it's

not Um, I don't know. He spent two years in jail for lesser charge. He didn't get charged with the felony charges. He Um got charged with two counts of misdemeanor stalking, spent two years in jail, and then sue sued him and one of five million dollar settlement. I wonder how much I was gonna say. I doubt she saw much of that. She died just a few years after. It's so weird to sue an individual for amounts of money that large, because there is no way they're ever

going to be able to deliver. I agree, But now you've got this outstanding judgment against him, So anytime he makes any money, you know, you your lawyers step in and take it. But you know, Okay, So here's a question. So I know that debt is inheritable, like I run up a bucket load of credit card debt and have a passel of kids and then keel over and that that debt. Can you know the credit card company can pass that on children? Now? They can't. I mean they

can take it out of your estate. I think that's no. They take it out of your state. They can't tag the kids with it. Okay, Well, I know some debt is inheritable, and so my question is it would this kind of debt be inheritable? It's inheritable in and in as much and that it can be taken out of your estate. So if your state is worth five million dollars and your two million dollars in debt, that comes out of two and that's it. That comes out of

their inheritance. Right. But it's my it's my understanding that unless you take over like right, so like if they inherited the house, you inherit that debt because you suddenly become the owner of a house, so you were paying

off the mortgage. But it's my understanding. I could be wrong talking to somebody recently and they were they were utterly convincing me that, oh yeah, if you know, I've got elderly family, and we were talking about debt, and I was saying, oh yeah, like if they wanted to, they could come after you think so unless you are

somehow like a co signer on their dat or something. Well, I think this is that we were talking about if the debt had gone bad, as in, you know, I stopped paying on it for a year and then I die, Can they then? I don't think, you know, take it. I'm sure we've got a lot of listeners anyway. So Sue, you know, died a couple of years after that, settlement was handed down, but it felt like indication certainly, you know.

Like I said, I don't necessarily think that Hank kidnapped or anything like that, but it was just a lonely tune of one of these guys. Yeah, nothing I have to say about him is a nice thing. Next theory is a real quick one because, yeah, the twinsies, So just so everybody knows, a few days after Amy disappeared, sixteen year old twins Charles and Larry glass Or claimed to have kidnapped her and they wanted for her, which

was a lot of money back then right now. But the police found out that they were lying, and then they were arrested for extortion. So people do this on a regular basis. That's take advantage of a situation. And that's another reason I don't thinking that, well, Henry, there was probably not our purpose Hank, because this case, this cases always attracted those kinds of people too. Yeah, he was not not a good man, but I don't Yeah, anyway, our next theory is the outlaws slash the Pagans, slash

some motorcycle gang of some kind. Yeah, this is actually there was you know, I was I'm a little older to you guys, I remember there was sort of a motor of Backer Gang scared back in you know, Yeah, yeah, there was. They were considered ultra scary. They were. And also they were considered like untouchable by police a lot of times. I don't know why. I don't know why either. But there's a book about this that Sue co authored

before she passed away. If this is your pet case and you know a lot about this theory, or you've read the book, or you're really interested in it, go read the book. We officially do not have any time to talk about yeah, but we're going to get a great detail about her adventures because she decades looking for her daughter. She really really did, And so we'll talk a little. We'll do like a really like really high

level overview of this theory. But if it strikes you as an interesting one, feel free to do more research on it. So, Deitely, this theory sounds very familiar. Are you going to explain to people why in a panic this theory made you think that you knew this story already? Know? Please do no, please share it. No, No, this is very similar because we've done another story that's all like this one that I wasn't this one vote? Devin sent me a panicked message, Oh my god, have we done

this story? I did? It was like two days ago too. I was like, it's too late to change. There are times I'll be reading one of these things and I'm like, yeah, I'm ready to do this story. Wait a second, we do that a year or two ago. Yeah, I mean seriously, Yeah, We've been doing it for long enough for It's kind of like you just want to make sure listen. That list for the listeners out on the website is also

for us. It is oh what absolutely is so? Um. One of the other things that happened in Coconut Grove on March five, nineteen seventy four, was a massive amount of bikers traveling through on their annual Bike Week tour. This tour took them from Coconut Grove UM through Coconut Grove excuse me, up Main Highway, then onto the Florida Turnpike and then up north and then right. Main Highway is the route that Amy was walking along to her father's work, and the Florida Turnpike is where her cameras

found A few days later. Uh, Sue got that got a tip twelve days after Amy's disappearance that somebody from the Outlaws bart Biker Gang had kidnapped her. Um. She was able to arrange a meeting through a friend who had done some legal work for them, and it ended up being with two men and with Amy and with

net I'm sorry, and with Sue and with ned. So for people who don't know, because I know we went in this detail into detailed in the Lauren spar Your episode, but Outlaw Biker Gang is technically classified as what is referred to is the one percent of bikers, the ones who are truly the outlaws and the lawbreakers who do not care and do what they really they're not law

abiding citizens who also happened to own the motorcycle. Yeah, they're the ones that proudly proclaimed that they are part of the one percent and the really gnarly bike gangs and they will do whatever they want. They will really shoot them yeah uh like Cartman. Anyway, this meeting happened with Sue's friend and then ned Um, Sue's husband, Amy's father, and two members of the Outlaw gang and Sue as well.

And the men claimed to have not seen Amy personally, but they did confirm the other gang members had frequently kidnapped and sold young women in the past um which they called old e d set that right, am I the only one to get No, I get it. It's just like anyway they would. They often were sold or exchanged for like a credit card or even like a bike. One one woman came forward and said that she had been an old lady for the Outlaws for a while and she was one time traded for a pair of chaps. Chaps.

That's got to be good for your self esteem in according to the stories in that culture, it's women were property, much like you would see hundreds, if not thousands of years ago, where you traded them for stock. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's what I'm not saying, that's right, but that's what this is. This is saying. And so these two men said they would ask other members about amy. They never

really were able to provide any kind of concrete information. Yeah, there were a lot of a lot of contexts that she that Sue had like this, everyone saying yeah, I think I heard something about it. I'll get back to you, and then stuff like that, what I what I want to know? And obviously you can't answer nobody really can is it this tip that about about the super God

there's somebody from the Outlaws had kidnapped her. It was just a hard tip or it was just just somebody who speculated, And I was thinking, Hey, you know that town that day, I bet you know that. You don't know how solid. Well it may have been solid, because uh suit did follow up a little bit here um in ve so. Ten eleven years later, a member of the Outlaws named Paul Branch called Sue and said that he had been in quote unquote possession the Pagans. He

was Outlaws. I was gonna ask here because I I've seen I've seen Pagans and Outlaws, and I frankly no offense to all of you one percent or biker listeners. I it's all the same, Okay, That's what I was gonna ask because I couldn't. I couldn't. God, they're gonna come leg Those guys are all pretty no. I I pretty much just assume it was the Outlaws because most of the reporting I've seen is the Outlaws. But I

think it's just kind of like Bike Week. It sounds like is just like all of the one percenter bike gangs are going through together and or at least the ones that can get along. And so it's kind of a morphous on who actually it was, but I'm going to just keep saying they were the Outlaws. So Paul Branch, Paul Branch I think was a member for sure of the Outlaws. Um. He called Sue or otherwise contacted her and said that he had been quote unquote in possession

of Amy in Orlando for a while. He said that he bought her off of someone and that he had treated her well, but that when she when he bought her, she had been rough roughed up, a bit, beat up a bit. In general, h claims like this would be brushed off. But he was apparently able to identify that scarlet we talked about all earlier on Amy's abdomen from the appendectomy, and again this was way before anybody would

have known that. Really. My only questioning of that is that if she's if she says, well, can you identify any special marks on her body? What I would say if I we asked that question and I was just full of b s, I would say, well, she had an appendectomy scar Yeah, that's a good there's a good chance she does so this is this is actually also the guy. You might have read this in the reading.

I didn't write down the number, but uh, Sue was off was offering a fairly sizable reward, basically the buying power of like five thousand dollars, And when Paul Branch contacted to he said, I don't want the money. I just want you to know what I think I know. Um, so I do lend a little credence. Again, I don't

really know. I think appendectomy scars weren't aren't. I mean, they're not so uncommon, especially in those days, they're pretty common, so it's totally possible to it was a different girl. It's also very possible to say, what are common things that you see on somebody who has had any When a parent says, well, can you tell me this at any identifying features? Uh, Scars, moles and birthmarks. These are these are the three go too And you can say,

well there was that birthmark and they say nothing. You wait, wait, no, it wasn't a birthmark. Was it a mole? Right? So there are ways, So there are ways for him to have gamed the system. But again he didn't want the money. So it's like to what end system. Let's go back to bank. But let's go back to Henry for a second. There totally it's totally different. I'm not saying it's the same thing, but I'm saying that that somebody can actually be totally full of it. It's totally different to anyway.

It doesn't really matter the The whole thing here is that Um, it might have been true that she was in Orlando for a while. The eason that also gives this a little bit of steam is that when Sue did track her there um after talking to Paul Branch and kind of connected with some people because we talked about she did this like countrywide to ur Sue UM over the years trying to track Amy Um and outlaws.

I guess she questioned a ton of people in Orlando and kind of the surrounding area, and she actually found a convenient store manager who remembered seeing Amy, or at least a young woman being escorted by at least two bikers on many occasions. The manager remembered one detail about this young woman, and that detail was that she always bought vegetarian vegetable soup, which is an important little factoy because you may remember that Amy was a dedicated vegetarian. Um.

The Communion store manager said she was never alone. She always had at least a couple of people with her. She was always well guarded. Blah blah blah blah. Whether or not this I mean, you know, the Unsolved Mysteries episode as mentioned about this case. They make a big deal about this, and the Orlando lead and Amy's cur Sues book makes a big deal about the outlaws thing. Yeah.

The one of the questions I have about this, and you guys maybe can answer this, is it I go to veg I you know, I go to convenience stores, but I'm always there to buy like beer and chips, and so I have no idea of convenience stores even sell soup? Do they depends on this if if it's not a chain convenience store. So, if we roll back the clock twenty thirty years, you could go down to the whatever Quickie marks, it was much don't give me that looked. It was much more prevalent back in the day.

Kind I'm giving you that look because literally every convenient store I've ever been in in my entire life has always had at least a couple of different kinds of soup on the shop. Yeah, I go to the seven eleven by my house. The seven eleven, how candy is crappy because the seven eleven, I mean the seven eleven by my old house used to have like five or

six different kinds of soup. Grand But the reason, the reason that that it was interesting was at least, you know, again, on the Unsolved Mysteries episode of this they interviewed they re interviewed the commnience store clerk and she said, the girl asked me if it was if we had vegetarian soup, and then at one point the woman said, well you don't.

We don't got more interesting because in other reporting she's always described as you know, in this whole biker theory thing is everybody she was always docile and quiet, and there's you know, these hints that maybe somebody cut her tongue out. So I find it that's very opposite. Well, yeah, I mean I think the sense that I got, at least again from that was the store that convenience store clerk was like, you know, she like very timidly said

like do you have this or whatever? I mean, you know, maybe yeah, again, we just like this is we don't know because it's it's such a Yeah, miss brasher is the word I'm going to use. There's so many conflicting accounts, especially in the quote unquote biker angle. Well, I gotta tell you too that going going to going around see Orlando and showing Amy's picture and stuff like that. I have no but you know, you can always contaminate your witnesses too by just saying stuff to do you ever

see this woman. She might have been with some bikers, some really scary biker guys, you know, and she was a vegetarian and then you know that kind of thing. So you don't really know how the quality of the interrogation that was going on here for sure. Yeah. And and also I kind of question any anybody's memory if they think, like, how long had it been like ten years, five years since this clerk a couple of years probably least. It's kind of hard to imagine, seriously, unless you got

a photographic memory. Yeah, so I don't. I mean, I think the at least the kidnapped biker gang theories kind of like a red herring and kidnapped been held forever. Yeah, I could totainly see someone of the theory. But the problem I have with this series that and the reason I think somebody just kidnapped her and killed her probably is that, you know, obviously they would have held her

for decades. It's like and all that time she would she would have definitely had opportunities to get away or to at least pick up a phone and call the police or well, I mean, I think that that is kind of what the interview with the other biker gangs and the other women who were old ladies really speaks to is that that's a thing. I mean, you can you can brainwash a person or intimidate them into feeling like they have no other option but to make you happy.

And particularly if if it is true that she was with Paul Branch for a while and he got her really really beat up, it's you know, and especially if her tongue had actually been cut out or anything like that. You know, it's it's I mean, it's you just get victimized. You can get so victimized that you want to lose your will or even thought using using the term brainwash is very is kind of a slippery slope because it's not that's hard to well, brainwash is hard to actually

categorically say this is what it is. But an actual tactic that people that are stealing people to put them into situations of sexual slavery do is they hook them on drugs. Once you make somebody an addict and you are the only source of their deal, they become very compliant and they do what you say when you say, and they don't fight back because they need their fix. Yeah,

that's true. So I mean that would I agree. I personally think the long term theory is is just as viable as some But he stole her and shipped her overseas to be a slave, I would find I would find that more believable. So I do have a sub theory on the Outlaws biker gang thing, and that is um that it's possible that she had been picked up for a party. I mean, you know, if it was bike week. You know, she's wearing a short, little denim

skirt and heels. She's seventeen. She's a pretty good looking young lady walking just walking down the side of the highway. A biker pulls over and says, hey, baby, you want

to go party? And she thinks, okay, sure, you know whatever, and gets on the back of a bike because there were some reports, again however tainted, that she was seen on the back of a motorcycle and you know, they parked for the night party, something bad happened were there, and she's now you know, feeding the gate or was then feeding the gators and people I thought I only lived in Sue. Yeah, you're right, yeah, um that you

just keep believing that, Steve. But I mean I think that's I think that's possible, that you know, something kind of unfortunate like that happened. I think that's that's that's entirely possible. Or there's a random serial killer. Yeah. So there's one final theory here, and that's the Tan truck slash Deep slash Van guy. Because there were a number of reports initially, not after the fact, just initially during

the initial search. People said, oh, yeah, I think I saw somebody who looked like Amy in a Tan truck or van or jeep um you know, along main highway along that route or getting in that or you know whatever somehow associated with something like that. And the only reason that that gives me even a little bit of pause is you remember we talked about the camera that was found. They developed the film which you might have assumed.

You were probably actually yelling like what did they do with the film, and we were frustrating you just pulled it out like a toddler with a tape. Yeah. No, they developed it and most of the most of it was just way overexposed and like totally unidentifiable whatever. But there was one picture that they could identify, which was still pretty overexposed, but it was an overexposed picture of

a tan truck against like a wall. And I have heard through again, I don't I mean, I don't know what the reporting really is that maybe Hank Blair had a truck that looked kind of like that van that looks kind of like that. Yeah. Actually a lot of

people had vance. A lot of people still do, yeah, or trucks or jeeps do either of you know, whatever became of the film from that role of film might Here's my reason for asking, is that technology technology you can scan negatives and do some amazing stuff that I mean I found Listen, I was digging around in my attict. This was a couple of years back, and I found a bunch of old negatives and some of them you could tell where people and some you couldn't really tell

what the hell they were. And if you put them into a film scanner and then you run them through the gamut, you can pull an amazing amount of and make exceptional you can see what there was because you can dial it back, and there's a tonal control that you get digitally that you didn't get from analog film process. I don't know. You know, the thing about it is is you would think that the film would still be

somewhere in evidence. But you know, on the other hand, the evidence does seem to get lost quite and film degrades. I mean, you know, if it wasn't stored properly, it could have just degraded. They could have somebody could have thought, well, there's no way that this is going to be relevant. I mean, anybody who's connected to it knows and they find that freaking film. You get it to somebody who can scan it properly. Yeah, send it to us. We'll

solve the case. Yeah, I'll buy. Yeah, we got the money, I'll buy a film scanner. Yeah, I've always wanted one, right, Yeah, we'll start a Kickstarter. It'll be great. Um No, I mean that is the only other kind of theory that's out there. But it just had something to do with this. There is one other theory. Okay, really is it? Is it Aliens? No? Actually it's not, is it um? Are you ready? Pyramids? The rapture? That's what I think it was. That's probably true, the rapture. Okay, I'm down. I gotta

be honest with you. I really this is one of the few times where I'm going to say, none of the theories do you think happened to her? I mean, I don't think that it was the bikers. I don't think that it was any of the people who were described like I mean, van guy is the is maybe the only thing because I literally think that some unknown person picked her up, whether of her own volition or not, and drove away with her and she is probably in

a shallow grave. That's that's what I think happened most likely? Is that? What? But which is all? I mean, thankfully Sue doesn't have to hear her say that. Yeah, but yeah. And as as far as the van, I mean that picture might have been taken some other day. I mean

who knows. Yeah, I mean, like I said, we don't know when the camera disappeared, if it disappeared with her, if it disappeared weeks or even months earlier, and I totally but I'm with Steve on that I think it most like, I mean, you know, again, there's a whole picked up, technical party, killed disposed of. That's possible too, but I'm thinking most likely it was just some freak who picked her up and murdered her and she's tossed her in the swamps. Yeah, I mean, I us have

to agree. I think, um, you know, Unfortunately, again with a lot of these disappearances, the most merciful thing is

that that person. You know, maybe it was a really terrifying couple of hours after they got kidnapped, but really, honestly, I just often hope that the years of decades, decades of literal torture, right, I mean, so, you know, and I just tend to think if they weren't found, it's it's really likely, especially this long, that she just got killed one way or another within a couple of days, a couple of hours. And one of the things I'm

curious about is when when did the Unsolved Mysteries segment there? Oh, it was in the nineties at some point, okay, And so I guess it had to have been like it. It was between when Ned died because Ned had passed away already and when Sue died, and she died in late nineties, I think. Okay, so okay, so uh And I'm sure those things usually touch off a whole avalanche of tips. Yeah, I don't think there was any. There

were no updates or anything. Yeah, so that's one. But that's another reason that I think, and that's I have not heard of anything, any sort of information being dislised by the area of that episode. Yeah. I mean, I think if she were alive, people would have seen her. A lot of bikers would have seen her, and other people would have seen her if she's been held captive for all those decades. I agree. Yeah, so unfortunately, I think she's been dead for a long long time since

about Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. Well, um, if you want to see some of the research that we did for this case, or if you want to take a look at that episode list we talked about that keeps us sane kind of um, or you want links to merch because we've got shirts and mugs and some other things too. Yeah, um, you can find all those things on our website. That website is Thinking Sideways Podcast dot com if you want interact with us in any kind of social way. UM,

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any kind. And you can find us pretty much anywhere where you're streaming us. You know where you find us, make sure to make sure to rate and review, and you know, do all those fun things. And all about having been said, I think we're going to go ahead and get on out of here. I'm gonna drink a lot to feel less depressed about this story. Room Zoom Zoom Next week, kids, Bye bye, and sturges