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Speaker 1: to you soon. Thank you. Hey guys, welcome to another
Speaker 1: episode of Thinking Sideways the podcast. I Am Devin, joined
Speaker 1: as usual by and Steve. Today we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: a mystery, weird disappearance. In fact, it's like true crime
Speaker 1: kind of crazy. That actually is kind of crazy the
Speaker 1: celebration of crime con So we're gonna talk about crimes
Speaker 1: for a little while. Yeah, that works for me. We're
Speaker 1: going to talk about the nineteen seventy four so super
Speaker 1: recent disappearance of seventeen year old Amy Billig, who disappear
Speaker 1: while hitchhiking in to her father's office or art gallery
Speaker 1: or something place of work, place of war w e
Speaker 1: W during to his POW. There have been some reported
Speaker 1: leads over the past forty some years about her whereabouts,
Speaker 1: but she has never been found, nor have any remains
Speaker 1: or anything like that. Quick warning, there is a moment
Speaker 1: of discussion on some sexually explicit stuff, so big and
Speaker 1: little ear warnings for that if that's not your change
Speaker 1: to you know, all sizes. Yeah, and finally, before we
Speaker 1: hop in, I want to thank listener Christie for being
Speaker 1: the first person to suggest this mystery. If you've suggested
Speaker 1: something recently, you may have found that we started saying,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, it's on the list, and we might have
Speaker 1: stopped adding names to the list. I add them. So
Speaker 1: that's good for you in yourself addressed and stamped envelope,
Speaker 1: and we will return your prize. We don't actually star,
Speaker 1: which is your self addressed stamped envelope back to you. Everybody,
Speaker 1: you really want to suggest stories, it's fine. Let's start
Speaker 1: at the beginning, shall we. Amy was born on January nine,
Speaker 1: nineteen seven, to loving parents and a reportedly normal home.
Speaker 1: She had at least one brother. I've only ever seen
Speaker 1: reports of one brother, but I never even heard what
Speaker 1: his name is. Actually I did see it, and I
Speaker 1: don't remember it because he is such a tryan or something.
Speaker 1: I read it. I read an article with him. It
Speaker 1: was an interview with him, because he was only a
Speaker 1: couple of years younger. Is still yes, I don't know,
Speaker 1: he's still couple of years younger. Um, but I don't
Speaker 1: remember his name. I'm really sorry. I'm sorry if you're listening, Yeah,
Speaker 1: looking at really good research right off the top. She
Speaker 1: was enrolled in high school at the time of her disappearance.
Speaker 1: Amy enjoyed music, including playing both the flute and the guitar.
Speaker 1: She was an avid reader and writer and wanted to
Speaker 1: I was thinking about becoming an actress at the time
Speaker 1: because she was seventeen. She was also a very dedicated
Speaker 1: vegetarian and generally described as kind of a flower child,
Speaker 1: free spirit, sort of empathetic, and she was a child
Speaker 1: of the sixties, so that crap was more popular back
Speaker 1: in those days. Y. Yeah, it was. Yeah. I'm not
Speaker 1: really clear how this works the layout of the day
Speaker 1: that she disappeared, but on the day of her disappearance,
Speaker 1: which was a Tuesday, um March five, nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 1: she came home from school at noon for lunch, which
Speaker 1: sounds like it was the end of her day for
Speaker 1: that day. She was a senior, so sometimes you get
Speaker 1: you know, you have your half days because you stacked
Speaker 1: your courses that way. Sometimes well, depending on the school,
Speaker 1: it's almost treated like college where you do certain classes
Speaker 1: on certain days. That's stack days day Thursday afternoon class
Speaker 1: totally yeah, or she just was skipping and you know
Speaker 1: she ha hand, we're okay, but that this was the
Speaker 1: early seven day school. Yeah, but she was going to happen.
Speaker 1: You can get a factory job it's fine. Fine, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can still afford an entire house and to raise
Speaker 1: a family of four on your salary. It's fine. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it sounds like that was at the end of her day.
Speaker 1: Was at noon, she was coming home for lunch. Maybe
Speaker 1: she was skipping the afternoon. I don't really know. It's
Speaker 1: never ever explained what was happening on that afternoon. So
Speaker 1: she was going to head off and do something with friends.
Speaker 1: Apparently later that day. Um, Regardless, she went home on
Speaker 1: this Tuesday for lunch, and then she called her father
Speaker 1: and Ned asking for some money, either to go hang
Speaker 1: out with her friends or for lunch. It's kind of
Speaker 1: reported both ways. There's an alternate telling that, Um, she
Speaker 1: basically was just she just went straight to his office
Speaker 1: or art gallery. I think they're the same. Ned. It
Speaker 1: sounds like played the trombone trumpet trumpet, not trombone and
Speaker 1: owned an art gallery. That was what he did. So
Speaker 1: something tromboni or artie. Yeah. No, So she needed money
Speaker 1: and she called him and said, hey, can I come
Speaker 1: get some money? And he said, yeah, you for a
Speaker 1: couple of minutes and I'll get here. Yeah, you gotta
Speaker 1: listen to me play. Yeah, but by the way, just
Speaker 1: def why I think it was somebody on redditue said
Speaker 1: he lived in Miami and said I actually knew where
Speaker 1: her address was, where his place at work was there
Speaker 1: about a mile apart. Yeah, it was not very far. Yeah,
Speaker 1: could have walked minutes. Christ well me anyway, Well, she
Speaker 1: was um well, And it's not clear again if she
Speaker 1: did go home and then go to the art gallery
Speaker 1: or just was headed from school to the art gallery.
Speaker 1: Either way, she had called him for some money, started
Speaker 1: walking there, never showed up. This was pre cell phone.
Speaker 1: You will remember, some of you will remember pre cell
Speaker 1: phone times. We will all of us in this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. But so I think her dad probably just
Speaker 1: assumed she didn't end up not needing the money. So
Speaker 1: it's fine, I'll see her tonight, you know, they do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or you know, maybe she found a twenty all or
Speaker 1: bill in her pocket or something, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: It's fine, Uh those what I mean? You know, if
Speaker 1: she found some money in her jeans at home or
Speaker 1: something and decided, oh, I don't need sorry anyway, like
Speaker 1: I said, didn't show up to pick up the money.
Speaker 1: She also didn't show up to hang out with her
Speaker 1: friends and I think her friends probably called the house. Again.
Speaker 1: This is a really severely underreported part of this story,
Speaker 1: this whole how it happened, Yeah, which is kind of
Speaker 1: frustrating because I feel like there's a lot of details
Speaker 1: in there that would have been really helpful to know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, like I've never been totally clear on if
Speaker 1: her mother was at home when she arrived home, or
Speaker 1: she talked to her mother any Yeah, based on the
Speaker 1: stuff that her mother has said, I get the feeling
Speaker 1: that no, mom was not. Yeah, I get the feeling
Speaker 1: that they don't really know if she went home or
Speaker 1: if she just had was heading straight to the art gallery. Reportedly,
Speaker 1: she went home and changed her clothes from her school
Speaker 1: clothes to her going out clothes and then was walking
Speaker 1: to her father's gallery. But since the friends the time
Speaker 1: and the friends didn't, you know, I guess they must
Speaker 1: have called or something. But otherwise, her parents found out
Speaker 1: that she hadn't shown up and they thought, oh, she's
Speaker 1: probably missing then, and the my sense is that they
Speaker 1: reported her missing in the appropriate time frame and that
Speaker 1: you know, blah blah blah blah blah. Right she was seventeen,
Speaker 1: they did, Yeah, And once that was kind of pushed out.
Speaker 1: Some construction workers said that, of course it was. They
Speaker 1: were working on her route from her home to the
Speaker 1: gallery and they saw her walk past, which is why
Speaker 1: I think they figured she had gone home and they
Speaker 1: just stand around. Anyway. She was wearing a men denim
Speaker 1: minis sret and cork heels, so they guess we're the
Speaker 1: last people to have seen her. As a construction worker.
Speaker 1: You should be careful of just cat calling it, every lady,
Speaker 1: because it might be the last person she sees. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's true, and then you're gonna be guilty forever. Um.
Speaker 1: And I think I didn't mention this, but the road
Speaker 1: that she was walking down was a road called Main
Speaker 1: Highway in the neighborhood Coconut Grove, which is in Miami, Florida.
Speaker 1: It's often reported that she was hitchhiking along the road,
Speaker 1: but you know, like Joe said, it was a mile are. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, I know from reports from her brother, he
Speaker 1: said they hitch hiked around the neighborhood, and she particularly
Speaker 1: hitch hiked around the neighborhood all the time, and her
Speaker 1: parents knew about it, and they were like, it's a
Speaker 1: friendly neighborhood and you know, it's it's safe, it's fine
Speaker 1: for you to hitchhike around the neighborhood. But again, it
Speaker 1: was only a mile, so I don't really know. Maybe
Speaker 1: the heels were uncomfortable. I've certainly been in that situation
Speaker 1: before where I've put on some new shoes because you know,
Speaker 1: I was feeling myself and then started walking king and
Speaker 1: was like, oh my god, this is the worst. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Or maybe she's walking down the road and somebody she
Speaker 1: knew just stopped by and said he want to write,
Speaker 1: or even somebody she didn't know just pulled over and said, hey,
Speaker 1: do you want to write down the road and she
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, because are not scary? Yeah they are,
Speaker 1: you know, your long haul taxi service. Yeah. So a
Speaker 1: search at this point is conducted. It didn't come up
Speaker 1: with anything. The family and the people who knew Amy
Speaker 1: didn't feel like they she had just left voluntarily, like
Speaker 1: she hadn't run away from home for instance. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell, the police seemed to
Speaker 1: have done their job. Though. Again, if this story is
Speaker 1: started starting to sound familiar to you and you don't
Speaker 1: really know why that is, it's because it was an
Speaker 1: episode of Unsolved mysteries, and as happens with these cases,
Speaker 1: it ends up that most of the reporting is kind
Speaker 1: of whatever was in that episode, A lot of people
Speaker 1: report that stuff as being fact. Yeah, well, not only
Speaker 1: is it fact, but it also means that if they
Speaker 1: leave out big chunks of the story, those big chunks
Speaker 1: of the story tend to get lost to history. So
Speaker 1: we don't know a whole lot about the initial investigation
Speaker 1: because Unsolved Mysteries didn't seem to give a hoot about it.
Speaker 1: How many times we talked about that we have, we
Speaker 1: talked about a lot. So so this is where actually
Speaker 1: you can actually be well served to get off the
Speaker 1: Internet and go to your library and actually get a
Speaker 1: book about this stuff. Because I looked in the past,
Speaker 1: you find a lot of stuff that you just can't
Speaker 1: find in the Yeah, or otherwise look at um newspaper
Speaker 1: articles or something like that is really really great. I
Speaker 1: found a couple of newspaper articles that we had used
Speaker 1: the way back machine for for this one. That was helpful,
Speaker 1: but they were still from you know, the early two thousand's,
Speaker 1: so nothing nothing really from well, there was one from
Speaker 1: even Some of the older stuff that I found was
Speaker 1: very thin. Yeah, because this was the time when you
Speaker 1: kids started disappearing and they maybe they were just they
Speaker 1: just ran away. Yeah, especially at especially at seventeen, you know,
Speaker 1: I think police often felt like, well, they just you know,
Speaker 1: they went away. And when she met and sorry mom
Speaker 1: and dad, but she's off happily living with the new boyfriend. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But Um, like I said, it does appear that the
Speaker 1: police did their job. There was a lot of reporting,
Speaker 1: at least in the Florida area about her disappearance. Um.
Speaker 1: A few days after her disappearance, a man who had
Speaker 1: heard about Amy's disappearance, I'm sorry keeps saying disappearance turned
Speaker 1: in a camera o evacuation. Maybe a man who had
Speaker 1: heard about Amy being missing turned in her camera, which
Speaker 1: he said he had found near the Wildwood exit off
Speaker 1: the Florida Turnpike. I've always wondered about the camera thing
Speaker 1: was it actually was? It was right below the under
Speaker 1: the lens she had her name was written, but it
Speaker 1: actually was that keeps losing her camera? What? But probably
Speaker 1: used one of those sticker like the one like Bart
Speaker 1: Simpson had in that episode. Yeah, but for those of
Speaker 1: you who are not familiar with Florida, so like everybody
Speaker 1: even most people who live in Florida. Um. The that
Speaker 1: exit of the turnpike is about fifty miles north of Orlando, Florida,
Speaker 1: which means that the camera was about two hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy two miles away from Coconut Grove. So it's not
Speaker 1: like whoops, you know, on the way to the gallery
Speaker 1: she dropped her camera. It's a big old drive. Well,
Speaker 1: there's a perfectly and as an explanation, she probably pawned
Speaker 1: the camera because she did want money. No, and this
Speaker 1: does come with the caveat that it's really unclear if
Speaker 1: Amy had her camera with her when she disappeared, or
Speaker 1: if it had even maybe been stolen prior. Her parents
Speaker 1: it sounds like couldn't say, you know, for a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks even that they had seen Amy with the camera.
Speaker 1: So you know, maybe she did put it because she
Speaker 1: was seventeen and felt like she needed money. She probably
Speaker 1: maybe somebody stole it from her a couple of weeks before,
Speaker 1: but also maybe it was or maybe it was connected
Speaker 1: to the disappearance. It's almost impossible to tell. Three weeks
Speaker 1: after Amy went missing, Sue Uh's mom Susan Sue, I've
Speaker 1: been calling her Sue the entire time, but I don't
Speaker 1: really know. I'm really sorry. Yeah she did pass away,
Speaker 1: but sorry if that's not anyway, Sue got a call
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night, or I guess the
Speaker 1: Billings did. Yeah, both of them have passed away but
Speaker 1: then passed away in nineteen three. When the calls started,
Speaker 1: they were both living and living together. Sue answered the phone,
Speaker 1: but it was dead air on the other end, so
Speaker 1: she hung up in the words nobody there. Not even
Speaker 1: the breathing. Well, no, it was breathing. I mean, they
Speaker 1: could have been a breathing. She didn't say she could
Speaker 1: hear the breathing, but it wasn't just like dial tone
Speaker 1: or anything like that. So after she young up. A
Speaker 1: few minutes after that, the phone ring again, she answered
Speaker 1: dead air. A few minutes after that, when Sue answered
Speaker 1: the phone because it was ringing again, she was pretty
Speaker 1: sure at this point that it was Amy calling from
Speaker 1: beyond the grave. No, just like you know, to say, Mom,
Speaker 1: I love you, I'm safe for something, I mean, you know, anything,
Speaker 1: trying to exactly. So Sue started to plea with Amy.
Speaker 1: She was asking her to come home. Yeah, she's telling
Speaker 1: her she loves her. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. This goes on
Speaker 1: for almost five minutes UM, at which point Sue decides, Okay, nobody,
Speaker 1: She's not gonna say anything, right, Amy's not gonna say anything.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna hang up. So she hangs up. And this
Speaker 1: goes on for a few weeks before the police get involved,
Speaker 1: which they did, which again leads me to believe the
Speaker 1: police were really doing their job. They started Florida have
Speaker 1: to be on the ball down there. They sure don't. Um.
Speaker 1: So when they did get involved, they started tracing the
Speaker 1: calls and found they were coming from a phone booth,
Speaker 1: which they started staking out. Once they started their surveillance
Speaker 1: on this phone booth, however, the phone calls started coming
Speaker 1: from a different telephone booth convenient interest. They must have
Speaker 1: had an end at the police department. Yeah, this game
Speaker 1: of Captain Mouse went on for a while and Sue
Speaker 1: was getting these like silent calls. They would they were
Speaker 1: able to kind of figure out there was I don't know,
Speaker 1: four or five phone booths that who the caller was
Speaker 1: in like a certain kind of radius um And it
Speaker 1: was pretty much like there were four or five, and
Speaker 1: they would stake one out and then they would still
Speaker 1: all the while still tracing calls, and they'd be coming
Speaker 1: and the call would come from a different phone booth
Speaker 1: and they were just like, oh my god, what but
Speaker 1: they obviously this is not a big enough profile case
Speaker 1: to send cops to. Well, I don't think they had
Speaker 1: the research. Would take months to make a call something yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I meaning it out. And then and then
Speaker 1: the caller would just walk up and like put up
Speaker 1: one of those one of those sandwich signs, free donuts. No,
Speaker 1: I know what actually happened. Let's continue here. After five
Speaker 1: months of silent calls, the caller finally spoke, Um, so
Speaker 1: Sue was getting these calls couple night at least pretty
Speaker 1: consistently at this point, that we're just silence for five months.
Speaker 1: And then finally the caller did identify himself as Hal
Speaker 1: Johnson and told Sue I have her. These calls continued
Speaker 1: for years, like we said, while while the police continue
Speaker 1: to search for how they could not figure out which
Speaker 1: one of the booths he was going to make a
Speaker 1: call from. And as we said, the phone with him
Speaker 1: a minnutt a couple of minutes. Sometimes it depends. She said,
Speaker 1: you know when the silent ones were happening. She would
Speaker 1: sometimes sit on the phone for five minutes of dead air,
Speaker 1: like literally five minutes of dead air. But it seemed
Speaker 1: like she was always the one who hung up. It
Speaker 1: wasn't him usually, So I don't really know. It just
Speaker 1: seems to me like what they should have done was
Speaker 1: put in a second line and then when he calls,
Speaker 1: just call the police right away. They just go hit
Speaker 1: all those phone booths all at once, you know, and
Speaker 1: just bam and have them, you would think. But so
Speaker 1: here was the thing that, well why not? They were
Speaker 1: staking it out there? There was a lot of trouble.
Speaker 1: They went to a lot of trouble take in the
Speaker 1: very very beginning, yes, but I have a feeling that
Speaker 1: by this point enough time had gone by that they
Speaker 1: had given up. Well so, I mean, they were also
Speaker 1: starting to suspect that How was able to identify their
Speaker 1: undercover cars, because clearly, you know, they would stick out
Speaker 1: any given one, and it just happened that he wasn't
Speaker 1: using that one. That's absurd. They also, um the other
Speaker 1: thing that's important here for people to know is that
Speaker 1: some nights, um How would call who literally like dozens
Speaker 1: of times in a given night, and then he would
Speaker 1: go months sometimes, like you know, five months, six months
Speaker 1: without calling her at all. So there was no real
Speaker 1: rhyme or reason except for that whenever Sue was in
Speaker 1: the news locally, she could pretty much guarantee that how
Speaker 1: it was going to call her. Um horrible stuff too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he kind of what what happened is the calls escalated, right,
Speaker 1: So we said for a good five months there was silence.
Speaker 1: Then for a couple of months he would just kind
Speaker 1: of say have her and you know whatever. Then he um,
Speaker 1: he told Sue that Amy was learning quickly and that
Speaker 1: he was her she was his sex slave. He yeah,
Speaker 1: he got really really explicit and like a little weird. Um.
Speaker 1: Some choice quotes from him include, um, I've smoothed her out.
Speaker 1: She knows just how to please, and I can tell
Speaker 1: you she knows how to use her mouth just in
Speaker 1: the right way. Wants to hear. Yeah. He eventually started
Speaker 1: tracing her movements even he said that he was loaning
Speaker 1: Amy out to other men. He said that eventually he
Speaker 1: had quote sold her to the ragheads and Saudi Arabia
Speaker 1: unquote sorry his quote not um where she had quote
Speaker 1: perfected her art unquote, He, yeah, I'm sorry about all
Speaker 1: of this. He detailed really awful things that are way
Speaker 1: worse than anything I'd ever want to say on this podcast. Um.
Speaker 1: And these calls continued until three, which is nineteen years
Speaker 1: of him just saying horrible, horrible, awful things in it changed.
Speaker 1: You may remember we mentioned a few minutes ago that Ned,
Speaker 1: Sue's husband, and Amy's father, passed away, at which point
Speaker 1: after How or after Ned passed away, how, the first
Speaker 1: call that that Sue got from How after Ned passed
Speaker 1: away was, UM, he said, you're all alone now, aren't you.
Speaker 1: You better watch your back? H nice guy. And then
Speaker 1: he started to detail some more stuff, basically saying that
Speaker 1: how How said we want you because apparently he was
Speaker 1: part of some like organization. I don't really know, but
Speaker 1: basically they quote unquote wanted Sue to join Amy because
Speaker 1: they've gotten tired of Amy's age, which would would have
Speaker 1: been thirty six at the time. Age. Ye, she would
Speaker 1: have been thirty six at that time. It really took that.
Speaker 1: It was years, yeah, it was twenty years. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: he he said that everybody had gotten tired of how
Speaker 1: old Amy was, so they wanted a mother daughter duo,
Speaker 1: and they wanted it to be Sue and Amy's too old.
Speaker 1: Mommy will make it better, right, I don't really know.
Speaker 1: I don't really want to go into how where that
Speaker 1: goes in the brain, but oh god, it's really awful. Um. Anyways,
Speaker 1: the FBI got involved at this point and helped the
Speaker 1: police track the person who had been making these calls.
Speaker 1: Because you may or may not remember, the twenty years
Speaker 1: is a long time, especially in this time period, and
Speaker 1: especially as it pertains to technology. So as Hal had
Speaker 1: started making these phone calls at phone booths, cell phones
Speaker 1: became a thing and he started calling from a cell phone. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: so the thing that's really interesting here is, um, they
Speaker 1: almost might not have um. The FBI used some It
Speaker 1: was a couple more years before the technology really really
Speaker 1: caught up to the technology that Hal was using, but
Speaker 1: they finally were able to trace the cell phone number
Speaker 1: that Hal had been using for the last couple of years. Which, again,
Speaker 1: remember tracing technology, all of that sort of stuff that
Speaker 1: takes a while to catch up. So cellphones were a thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so cell phones were a thing for a while before
Speaker 1: anybody could be tracing cell phones, they were able the
Speaker 1: FBI was able to trace this cell phone number two
Speaker 1: and address which the police went to check out. And
Speaker 1: it turns out the address was a federal drop site
Speaker 1: linked to the U. S. Customs. I know a federal
Speaker 1: drop side is, and what's one of the means by
Speaker 1: drop site? Like like a mailbox maybe or no, I
Speaker 1: think it was just like a dead drop site, like
Speaker 1: you know, something that somebody would use to like drop
Speaker 1: off some packages behind a locked door or whatever. It's
Speaker 1: never really gone into. I'm just making an assumption here,
Speaker 1: but it was a physical address of something. So so
Speaker 1: the police supervisor at this point, you know, the FBI says, okay,
Speaker 1: well we linked it to this address, go check it out.
Speaker 1: And the police go to check out the address and
Speaker 1: find out that it's this U. S Customs thing. So
Speaker 1: the US the police supervisor calls the branch of the
Speaker 1: custom the US Customs that was registered to this you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know how we figured it out, but anyway,
Speaker 1: and he says, um, hey, I have this phone number
Speaker 1: I'm trying to trace. Can you tell me who it's
Speaker 1: linked to? And the uh, the supervisor says, uh, take off,
Speaker 1: get out. He says, um, oh, none of your bleed
Speaker 1: bleep business, which I know. Yeah, So the police decide,
Speaker 1: you know what, we know what will make the supervisor cooperate,
Speaker 1: and that is we have we have a number of
Speaker 1: tape recordings that Sue took with the with the approval
Speaker 1: of a judge. A judge you know, years later, years earlier,
Speaker 1: had said yeah, you can record these messages for perpetuity
Speaker 1: or for reno voice recon or whatever. So they took
Speaker 1: him down to the office. It wasn't even just like
Speaker 1: you're recognized. Was that it was just like a listen
Speaker 1: to all of the really messed up stuff that this
Speaker 1: person has been dealing with for twenty years and recognized
Speaker 1: that a lot of them have been coming to a
Speaker 1: phone number registered to an address that you're in charge of.
Speaker 1: At that point, the supervisor said, okay, well he didn't
Speaker 1: he say something like he called somebody else and he's like,
Speaker 1: I think I know who this is. It can't really
Speaker 1: be him, but I'm gonna get so and so to
Speaker 1: come listen to like they had multiple people listen to
Speaker 1: it because I couldn't believe it right, But basically he
Speaker 1: just said, okay, yes, I'll cooperate. You're right, it is
Speaker 1: it is your business. And now we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about theories, because I bet you want to know who
Speaker 1: that might have been on the tape. Bad bad man,
Speaker 1: all right, he was Hank Blair was our first theory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's actually what happened. Is the supervisor said, boy,
Speaker 1: I hope that's not Hank Blair, but it sounds a
Speaker 1: lot like it. Yeah, you know it. Hank talks to
Speaker 1: me just that way. He says, yeah, I got your daughter.
Speaker 1: I smoothed her out. Yeah. Henry Johnson Blair is actually
Speaker 1: his full name. Come on, didn't change your name very much,
Speaker 1: did you. This guy is like not, he was not
Speaker 1: careful at all. Now he was a is he's still
Speaker 1: alive US Customs squad leader. Well he was. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: He was a U S Customs squad leader. He is
Speaker 1: no longer US Customs squad leader. He is alive still.
Speaker 1: He had more than twenty four years of law enforcement
Speaker 1: service under his belt. That that he started his priview
Speaker 1: phone calls when he was like, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: a rookie police seven. He was actually a UM he
Speaker 1: was an air marshal at that time, which we'll talk
Speaker 1: about in just a second here. Um I just want
Speaker 1: to run through his kind of kind of actually wonder
Speaker 1: about did they give the air marshals any like psychological
Speaker 1: testing or anything like that. Do they give police Do
Speaker 1: they give police in US customs people psychological testing? Probably,
Speaker 1: but I mean, you know, people can this stuff. It's fine. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: He was highly decorated for breaking lots of different smuggling
Speaker 1: rings in Miami. Um recovered lots of stolen masterpieces for
Speaker 1: the him In Spain, he own a house in the suburbs.
Speaker 1: He was you know, your typical like high ranking government,
Speaker 1: law enforcement official, high ranking middle management at least yep.
Speaker 1: He was at the time forty eight years old. He
Speaker 1: his wife was a top administrator at the South Miami Hospital.
Speaker 1: He apparently didn't even have a speeding ticket on his record,
Speaker 1: that's how clean he was. He was realy pulled out
Speaker 1: his badge every time he got pulled over into official business.
Speaker 1: His law enforcement background obviously probably aided him and spotting
Speaker 1: these steakouts at the for sure. Yeah. He had two daughters,
Speaker 1: one was twenty and one was seventeen. He was basically
Speaker 1: everybody you know. He was that guy. When the police
Speaker 1: came to take him away and the handcuffs. Everybody said, oh,
Speaker 1: he's such a nice guy. But he was always such
Speaker 1: a nice, quiet guy. But there you go. He was
Speaker 1: arrested pretty much on on site at the US Customs.
Speaker 1: He was in the office at the time, and they
Speaker 1: just handcuffed him and took him away because a bunch
Speaker 1: of people identified his voice. And he initially admitted to
Speaker 1: have calling had been calling Sue for three years prior,
Speaker 1: which I gather is about Yeah, which is what I
Speaker 1: believe is how long that cell phone had been active
Speaker 1: and had been issued to him. No, so you know,
Speaker 1: and that makes sense to me, right, he said, Well,
Speaker 1: I've had the cellphone for three years, so they know
Speaker 1: for sure if if I was doing it now, I
Speaker 1: was doing it three years ago, all right, he knows
Speaker 1: how it works. So he says, yeah, yep, three years ago.
Speaker 1: Then um, during questioning he admitted to the additional seventeen years. Um,
Speaker 1: so it was twenty years altogether. Well, it makes me
Speaker 1: curious about this guy is did he do this to
Speaker 1: anybody else or was exclusively Sue? Billy. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know the answer to that, and you will
Speaker 1: probably not tell for good reason. Yeah. So when he
Speaker 1: lawyered up because the lawyer up, his lawyers actually said
Speaker 1: they were entering a plea of not guilty to the
Speaker 1: two counts of felony, uh stalking. Well, you know I
Speaker 1: was lawyers, I would use the big phone defense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: his lawyers picked decided to do something even easier, even
Speaker 1: more shameless, even even more awful, and claim and claim
Speaker 1: that the calls between um Hank and Sue were consensual.
Speaker 1: You're going to have to explain that in this theory
Speaker 1: because that that took me a long time to wrap
Speaker 1: around and do a lot of reading on. Well, I
Speaker 1: think probably probably that there is it was put on
Speaker 1: my shameless head here. Probably you know, he called and
Speaker 1: she stayed on the phone and didn't just hang it
Speaker 1: right up, and so she took that the phone sook
Speaker 1: that sensual. Well, she answered the phone that's not consensual,
Speaker 1: but she stayed on the phone. It's probably what the
Speaker 1: the lawyer said. Well, if she didn't like the phone calls,
Speaker 1: why didn't she just hang it up instead? She just
Speaker 1: stayed on the phone and listened to his stuff. That's
Speaker 1: probably I'm not saying I'm not I know, I know
Speaker 1: you're not. You're probably right and that's probably said, or
Speaker 1: she might have even said if she really believed that
Speaker 1: it was the tiniest shred of hope that this guy
Speaker 1: actually had Herrick and maybe some day would give her back,
Speaker 1: she might have said something the other you know, please
Speaker 1: call me again, you know, I mean, because you know
Speaker 1: that was the only hope that she had. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think their argument, Yeah, it was basically that, yes, Hank
Speaker 1: was making these kind of stalking and like really kind
Speaker 1: of sexual, like bordering on sexual assault calls. Like what
Speaker 1: he was saying to her was so really awful and explicit,
Speaker 1: but it was almost always of like a pretty explicit
Speaker 1: sexual nature, and I suspect that, you know, that was
Speaker 1: part of the prosecution, was saying like look at all
Speaker 1: the really messed up things he said, And the defense
Speaker 1: was like, no, that was part of the game for her.
Speaker 1: She enjoyed it, or else she wouldn't have kept answering, right,
Speaker 1: even though the entire time, the character of how In
Speaker 1: Hank continued to say I have her, I have your daughter,
Speaker 1: and that was the only home. I'm sorry, I shouldn't
Speaker 1: go too far into this because it's just like it's
Speaker 1: so disgusting. He's a really Jacqueline hide though you think
Speaker 1: about it, I mean, during the day he's the mild mannered,
Speaker 1: law abiding, law enforcing good guy, and then at night
Speaker 1: he's the evil, evil creep. Well, so he actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: he said in his admittance to guilt to the police,
Speaker 1: he said, you know, it would just build in him.
Speaker 1: He sort of colsive that he would just like he
Speaker 1: would get the urge to like call her, and he
Speaker 1: could like suppress it for a certain amount of time.
Speaker 1: It would just build and build and build, and then
Speaker 1: he would call her like a couple of times a night,
Speaker 1: and by the end of the call session he would
Speaker 1: just be it would be relieved. So it was it
Speaker 1: was a compulsion of some kind. It sounds like still
Speaker 1: kind of messed up. Yeah, it's creepy compulsion. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is something that you know, thankfully, thankfully, really, I can't
Speaker 1: get away with I can't do this. I could just
Speaker 1: picture I'm making my purvy call and then the policies
Speaker 1: just wait a minute. I know you're that podcast guy
Speaker 1: and you go, oh no, no, I don't know what
Speaker 1: I don't even know what a podcast is. Podcast, So
Speaker 1: I can't do that. No, you can't, um and so
Speaker 1: on the face of this, right, we can pretty much say, well,
Speaker 1: he's a creep. And but he wasn't able to provide
Speaker 1: any information about Amy that he couldn't have read in
Speaker 1: the papers, which is true. And also the information that
Speaker 1: he said he provided about her was inaccurate. Um, so
Speaker 1: he probably didn't kidnap her. So one of the things
Speaker 1: that I won't just say here is that, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things that Sue did, of course, was
Speaker 1: say like, okay, prove it to me, Like tell me
Speaker 1: tell me something that uh, that only you could know
Speaker 1: about Amy's body if you're if you if you do
Speaker 1: have her and she's your sex slave, tell me something
Speaker 1: about her that only you could know. And this is
Speaker 1: important because Amy had a pretty gnarly appendectomy scar on
Speaker 1: her torso that that information was never released. Well, I
Speaker 1: mean it is now, but you know, after twenty some
Speaker 1: years had still never been released, and he did not
Speaker 1: he actually said her torso smooth, right, he smooth? But no,
Speaker 1: I mean so even then a right. But on the
Speaker 1: other hand, it's worth noting that there's a single mention
Speaker 1: of a hank in Amy's diary from about six weeks
Speaker 1: before she disappeared, and it said quote Hank says, as
Speaker 1: soon as I finished school, he wants to take me
Speaker 1: to South America with him. I told him he's crazy,
Speaker 1: unquote Sue and pretty much everybody who was friends with
Speaker 1: Amy at the time doesn't recall there ever being a
Speaker 1: Hank ever. Granted, this is a one off, like one
Speaker 1: time somebody mentions it if you're if you're a seventeen
Speaker 1: year old girl, you're not gonna tell your parents you're
Speaker 1: dating a guy who's ten years older than you. Well,
Speaker 1: but it's it's also that, I mean, we've read about
Speaker 1: this in different stories before, where when there's somebody that
Speaker 1: you don't necessarily want to admit that you're seeing your
Speaker 1: interested in, you give him a code name or a nickname.
Speaker 1: So Hank is somebody else entirely. Plus, Hank wasn't a
Speaker 1: isn't an uncommon name. She could have literally known some
Speaker 1: kid in school who was named Hank saying I'm going
Speaker 1: to go to South America and you should come with me,
Speaker 1: hot girl. I mean, it sounds like you know pretty
Speaker 1: much everybody from the area. You know. Again, this is
Speaker 1: just a strawhole right of police kind of investigating. It's
Speaker 1: a small community Coconut Grove. Grant said, Miami is large,
Speaker 1: but Coconut Groves fairly small, or at least was at
Speaker 1: the time. It was pretty close knit. People said, well,
Speaker 1: I don't really remember there. I mean, I remember this
Speaker 1: this Henry Johnson Blair guy who did actually kind of
Speaker 1: live in that area at the time, but I don't
Speaker 1: really I don't really remember a hank Um. And the
Speaker 1: other part of that is since he was the Air Marshal,
Speaker 1: he was actually assigned to um South American roots, so
Speaker 1: he was spending a lot of time in South America
Speaker 1: at the time. So I mean, they're little, tiny things.
Speaker 1: And that doesn't necessarily mean that he might have known her,
Speaker 1: and he might have He might have known her and
Speaker 1: said he was going to take her to South America,
Speaker 1: and that was the end of that relationship because she
Speaker 1: was like, wow, you're actually crazy. You're ten years older
Speaker 1: than me and you're married. No, and she wrote about
Speaker 1: in her journal and that was that, and then she
Speaker 1: disappeared six weeks later, and you know whatever. I don't
Speaker 1: put a lot of stock into this, but it is
Speaker 1: interesting the timeline for him and his marriage, though, don't
Speaker 1: it almost exactly does He had just gotten married. He
Speaker 1: actually he just got married, and Um literally like days
Speaker 1: before she disappeared, returned from his honeymoon. Well, no, they
Speaker 1: see the timeline there is if he it's either he
Speaker 1: returned two days before she disappeared, where he returned the
Speaker 1: day after she disappeared, depending on what you believe, depending
Speaker 1: on if you believe him or his wife. You know,
Speaker 1: I mean, listen, I I'm just I'm just saying that
Speaker 1: the t timeline is not the way that I've seen it.
Speaker 1: And again this could be totally wrong. The way that
Speaker 1: I've seen it is his reporting said, yeah, we got
Speaker 1: back from our honeymoon the day after his wife's reporting,
Speaker 1: even though she stayed. She seems to have stood by
Speaker 1: him during this entire time. He spent some time in jail,
Speaker 1: and he's out and they're still together. But she said no, no,
Speaker 1: we got back two days before she disappeared. And I
Speaker 1: would say that she's probably the right one because women
Speaker 1: usually he closer track of that stuff than anyway, it's
Speaker 1: not Um, I don't know. He spent two years in
Speaker 1: jail for lesser charge. He didn't get charged with the
Speaker 1: felony charges. He Um got charged with two counts of
Speaker 1: misdemeanor stalking, spent two years in jail, and then sue
Speaker 1: sued him and one of five million dollar settlement. I
Speaker 1: wonder how much I was gonna say. I doubt she
Speaker 1: saw much of that. She died just a few years after.
Speaker 1: It's so weird to sue an individual for amounts of
Speaker 1: money that large, because there is no way they're ever
Speaker 1: going to be able to deliver. I agree, But now
Speaker 1: you've got this outstanding judgment against him, So anytime he
Speaker 1: makes any money, you know, you your lawyers step in
Speaker 1: and take it. But you know, Okay, So here's a question.
Speaker 1: So I know that debt is inheritable, like I run
Speaker 1: up a bucket load of credit card debt and have
Speaker 1: a passel of kids and then keel over and that
Speaker 1: that debt. Can you know the credit card company can
Speaker 1: pass that on children? Now? They can't. I mean they
Speaker 1: can take it out of your estate. I think that's no.
Speaker 1: They take it out of your state. They can't tag
Speaker 1: the kids with it. Okay, Well, I know some debt
Speaker 1: is inheritable, and so my question is it would this
Speaker 1: kind of debt be inheritable? It's inheritable in and in
Speaker 1: as much and that it can be taken out of
Speaker 1: your estate. So if your state is worth five million
Speaker 1: dollars and your two million dollars in debt, that comes
Speaker 1: out of two and that's it. That comes out of
Speaker 1: their inheritance. Right. But it's my it's my understanding that
Speaker 1: unless you take over like right, so like if they
Speaker 1: inherited the house, you inherit that debt because you suddenly
Speaker 1: become the owner of a house, so you were paying
Speaker 1: off the mortgage. But it's my understanding. I could be
Speaker 1: wrong talking to somebody recently and they were they were
Speaker 1: utterly convincing me that, oh yeah, if you know, I've
Speaker 1: got elderly family, and we were talking about debt, and
Speaker 1: I was saying, oh yeah, like if they wanted to,
Speaker 1: they could come after you think so unless you are
Speaker 1: somehow like a co signer on their dat or something. Well,
Speaker 1: I think this is that we were talking about if
Speaker 1: the debt had gone bad, as in, you know, I
Speaker 1: stopped paying on it for a year and then I die,
Speaker 1: Can they then? I don't think, you know, take it.
Speaker 1: I'm sure we've got a lot of listeners anyway. So Sue,
Speaker 1: you know, died a couple of years after that, settlement
Speaker 1: was handed down, but it felt like indication certainly, you know.
Speaker 1: Like I said, I don't necessarily think that Hank kidnapped
Speaker 1: or anything like that, but it was just a lonely
Speaker 1: tune of one of these guys. Yeah, nothing I have
Speaker 1: to say about him is a nice thing. Next theory
Speaker 1: is a real quick one because, yeah, the twinsies, So
Speaker 1: just so everybody knows, a few days after Amy disappeared,
Speaker 1: sixteen year old twins Charles and Larry glass Or claimed
Speaker 1: to have kidnapped her and they wanted for her, which
Speaker 1: was a lot of money back then right now. But
Speaker 1: the police found out that they were lying, and then
Speaker 1: they were arrested for extortion. So people do this on
Speaker 1: a regular basis. That's take advantage of a situation. And
Speaker 1: that's another reason I don't thinking that, well, Henry, there
Speaker 1: was probably not our purpose Hank, because this case, this
Speaker 1: cases always attracted those kinds of people too. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: was not not a good man, but I don't Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: our next theory is the outlaws slash the Pagans, slash
Speaker 1: some motorcycle gang of some kind. Yeah, this is actually
Speaker 1: there was you know, I was I'm a little older
Speaker 1: to you guys, I remember there was sort of a
Speaker 1: motor of Backer Gang scared back in you know, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there was. They were considered ultra scary. They were. And
Speaker 1: also they were considered like untouchable by police a lot
Speaker 1: of times. I don't know why. I don't know why either.
Speaker 1: But there's a book about this that Sue co authored
Speaker 1: before she passed away. If this is your pet case
Speaker 1: and you know a lot about this theory, or you've
Speaker 1: read the book, or you're really interested in it, go
Speaker 1: read the book. We officially do not have any time
Speaker 1: to talk about yeah, but we're going to get a
Speaker 1: great detail about her adventures because she decades looking for
Speaker 1: her daughter. She really really did, And so we'll talk
Speaker 1: a little. We'll do like a really like really high
Speaker 1: level overview of this theory. But if it strikes you
Speaker 1: as an interesting one, feel free to do more research
Speaker 1: on it. So, Deitely, this theory sounds very familiar. Are
Speaker 1: you going to explain to people why in a panic
Speaker 1: this theory made you think that you knew this story already? Know?
Speaker 1: Please do no, please share it. No, No, this is
Speaker 1: very similar because we've done another story that's all like
Speaker 1: this one that I wasn't this one vote? Devin sent
Speaker 1: me a panicked message, Oh my god, have we done
Speaker 1: this story? I did? It was like two days ago too.
Speaker 1: I was like, it's too late to change. There are
Speaker 1: times I'll be reading one of these things and I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm ready to do this story. Wait a second, we
Speaker 1: do that a year or two ago. Yeah, I mean seriously, Yeah,
Speaker 1: We've been doing it for long enough for It's kind
Speaker 1: of like you just want to make sure listen. That
Speaker 1: list for the listeners out on the website is also
Speaker 1: for us. It is oh what absolutely is so? Um.
Speaker 1: One of the other things that happened in Coconut Grove
Speaker 1: on March five, nineteen seventy four, was a massive amount
Speaker 1: of bikers traveling through on their annual Bike Week tour.
Speaker 1: This tour took them from Coconut Grove UM through Coconut
Speaker 1: Grove excuse me, up Main Highway, then onto the Florida
Speaker 1: Turnpike and then up north and then right. Main Highway
Speaker 1: is the route that Amy was walking along to her
Speaker 1: father's work, and the Florida Turnpike is where her cameras
Speaker 1: found A few days later. Uh, Sue got that got
Speaker 1: a tip twelve days after Amy's disappearance that somebody from
Speaker 1: the Outlaws bart Biker Gang had kidnapped her. Um. She
Speaker 1: was able to arrange a meeting through a friend who
Speaker 1: had done some legal work for them, and it ended
Speaker 1: up being with two men and with Amy and with
Speaker 1: net I'm sorry, and with Sue and with ned. So
Speaker 1: for people who don't know, because I know we went
Speaker 1: in this detail into detailed in the Lauren spar Your episode,
Speaker 1: but Outlaw Biker Gang is technically classified as what is
Speaker 1: referred to is the one percent of bikers, the ones
Speaker 1: who are truly the outlaws and the lawbreakers who do
Speaker 1: not care and do what they really they're not law
Speaker 1: abiding citizens who also happened to own the motorcycle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're the ones that proudly proclaimed that they are part
Speaker 1: of the one percent and the really gnarly bike gangs
Speaker 1: and they will do whatever they want. They will really
Speaker 1: shoot them yeah uh like Cartman. Anyway, this meeting happened
Speaker 1: with Sue's friend and then ned Um, Sue's husband, Amy's father,
Speaker 1: and two members of the Outlaw gang and Sue as well.
Speaker 1: And the men claimed to have not seen Amy personally,
Speaker 1: but they did confirm the other gang members had frequently
Speaker 1: kidnapped and sold young women in the past um which
Speaker 1: they called old e d set that right, am I
Speaker 1: the only one to get No, I get it. It's
Speaker 1: just like anyway they would. They often were sold or
Speaker 1: exchanged for like a credit card or even like a bike.
Speaker 1: One one woman came forward and said that she had
Speaker 1: been an old lady for the Outlaws for a while
Speaker 1: and she was one time traded for a pair of chaps. Chaps.
Speaker 1: That's got to be good for your self esteem in
Speaker 1: according to the stories in that culture, it's women were property,
Speaker 1: much like you would see hundreds, if not thousands of
Speaker 1: years ago, where you traded them for stock. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I'm not saying, that's right, but that's what
Speaker 1: this is. This is saying. And so these two men
Speaker 1: said they would ask other members about amy. They never
Speaker 1: really were able to provide any kind of concrete information. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of a lot of contexts that
Speaker 1: she that Sue had like this, everyone saying yeah, I
Speaker 1: think I heard something about it. I'll get back to you,
Speaker 1: and then stuff like that, what I what I want
Speaker 1: to know? And obviously you can't answer nobody really can
Speaker 1: is it this tip that about about the super God
Speaker 1: there's somebody from the Outlaws had kidnapped her. It was
Speaker 1: just a hard tip or it was just just somebody
Speaker 1: who speculated, And I was thinking, Hey, you know that
Speaker 1: town that day, I bet you know that. You don't
Speaker 1: know how solid. Well it may have been solid, because
Speaker 1: uh suit did follow up a little bit here um
Speaker 1: in ve so. Ten eleven years later, a member of
Speaker 1: the Outlaws named Paul Branch called Sue and said that
Speaker 1: he had been in quote unquote possession the Pagans. He
Speaker 1: was Outlaws. I was gonna ask here because I I've
Speaker 1: seen I've seen Pagans and Outlaws, and I frankly no
Speaker 1: offense to all of you one percent or biker listeners.
Speaker 1: I it's all the same, Okay, That's what I was
Speaker 1: gonna ask because I couldn't. I couldn't. God, they're gonna
Speaker 1: come leg Those guys are all pretty no. I I
Speaker 1: pretty much just assume it was the Outlaws because most
Speaker 1: of the reporting I've seen is the Outlaws. But I
Speaker 1: think it's just kind of like Bike Week. It sounds
Speaker 1: like is just like all of the one percenter bike
Speaker 1: gangs are going through together and or at least the
Speaker 1: ones that can get along. And so it's kind of
Speaker 1: a morphous on who actually it was, but I'm going
Speaker 1: to just keep saying they were the Outlaws. So Paul Branch,
Speaker 1: Paul Branch I think was a member for sure of
Speaker 1: the Outlaws. Um. He called Sue or otherwise contacted her
Speaker 1: and said that he had been quote unquote in possession
Speaker 1: of Amy in Orlando for a while. He said that
Speaker 1: he bought her off of someone and that he had
Speaker 1: treated her well, but that when she when he bought her,
Speaker 1: she had been rough roughed up, a bit, beat up
Speaker 1: a bit. In general, h claims like this would be
Speaker 1: brushed off. But he was apparently able to identify that
Speaker 1: scarlet we talked about all earlier on Amy's abdomen from
Speaker 1: the appendectomy, and again this was way before anybody would
Speaker 1: have known that. Really. My only questioning of that is
Speaker 1: that if she's if she says, well, can you identify
Speaker 1: any special marks on her body? What I would say
Speaker 1: if I we asked that question and I was just
Speaker 1: full of b s, I would say, well, she had
Speaker 1: an appendectomy scar Yeah, that's a good there's a good
Speaker 1: chance she does so this is this is actually also
Speaker 1: the guy. You might have read this in the reading.
Speaker 1: I didn't write down the number, but uh, Sue was
Speaker 1: off was offering a fairly sizable reward, basically the buying
Speaker 1: power of like five thousand dollars, And when Paul Branch
Speaker 1: contacted to he said, I don't want the money. I
Speaker 1: just want you to know what I think I know. Um,
Speaker 1: so I do lend a little credence. Again, I don't
Speaker 1: really know. I think appendectomy scars weren't aren't. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're not so uncommon, especially in those days, they're pretty common,
Speaker 1: so it's totally possible to it was a different girl.
Speaker 1: It's also very possible to say, what are common things
Speaker 1: that you see on somebody who has had any When
Speaker 1: a parent says, well, can you tell me this at
Speaker 1: any identifying features? Uh, Scars, moles and birthmarks. These are
Speaker 1: these are the three go too And you can say,
Speaker 1: well there was that birthmark and they say nothing. You wait, wait, no,
Speaker 1: it wasn't a birthmark. Was it a mole? Right? So
Speaker 1: there are ways, So there are ways for him to
Speaker 1: have gamed the system. But again he didn't want the money.
Speaker 1: So it's like to what end system. Let's go back
Speaker 1: to bank. But let's go back to Henry for a second.
Speaker 1: There totally it's totally different. I'm not saying it's the
Speaker 1: same thing, but I'm saying that that somebody can actually
Speaker 1: be totally full of it. It's totally different to anyway.
Speaker 1: It doesn't really matter the The whole thing here is
Speaker 1: that Um, it might have been true that she was
Speaker 1: in Orlando for a while. The eason that also gives
Speaker 1: this a little bit of steam is that when Sue
Speaker 1: did track her there um after talking to Paul Branch
Speaker 1: and kind of connected with some people because we talked
Speaker 1: about she did this like countrywide to ur Sue UM
Speaker 1: over the years trying to track Amy Um and outlaws.
Speaker 1: I guess she questioned a ton of people in Orlando
Speaker 1: and kind of the surrounding area, and she actually found
Speaker 1: a convenient store manager who remembered seeing Amy, or at
Speaker 1: least a young woman being escorted by at least two
Speaker 1: bikers on many occasions. The manager remembered one detail about
Speaker 1: this young woman, and that detail was that she always
Speaker 1: bought vegetarian vegetable soup, which is an important little factoy
Speaker 1: because you may remember that Amy was a dedicated vegetarian. Um.
Speaker 1: The Communion store manager said she was never alone. She
Speaker 1: always had at least a couple of people with her.
Speaker 1: She was always well guarded. Blah blah blah blah. Whether
Speaker 1: or not this I mean, you know, the Unsolved Mysteries
Speaker 1: episode as mentioned about this case. They make a big
Speaker 1: deal about this, and the Orlando lead and Amy's cur
Speaker 1: Sues book makes a big deal about the outlaws thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The one of the questions I have about this, and
Speaker 1: you guys maybe can answer this, is it I go
Speaker 1: to veg I you know, I go to convenience stores,
Speaker 1: but I'm always there to buy like beer and chips,
Speaker 1: and so I have no idea of convenience stores even
Speaker 1: sell soup? Do they depends on this if if it's
Speaker 1: not a chain convenience store. So, if we roll back
Speaker 1: the clock twenty thirty years, you could go down to
Speaker 1: the whatever Quickie marks, it was much don't give me
Speaker 1: that looked. It was much more prevalent back in the day.
Speaker 1: Kind I'm giving you that look because literally every convenient
Speaker 1: store I've ever been in in my entire life has
Speaker 1: always had at least a couple of different kinds of
Speaker 1: soup on the shop. Yeah, I go to the seven
Speaker 1: eleven by my house. The seven eleven, how candy is
Speaker 1: crappy because the seven eleven, I mean the seven eleven
Speaker 1: by my old house used to have like five or
Speaker 1: six different kinds of soup. Grand But the reason, the
Speaker 1: reason that that it was interesting was at least, you know, again,
Speaker 1: on the Unsolved Mysteries episode of this they interviewed they
Speaker 1: re interviewed the commnience store clerk and she said, the
Speaker 1: girl asked me if it was if we had vegetarian soup,
Speaker 1: and then at one point the woman said, well you don't.
Speaker 1: We don't got more interesting because in other reporting she's
Speaker 1: always described as you know, in this whole biker theory
Speaker 1: thing is everybody she was always docile and quiet, and
Speaker 1: there's you know, these hints that maybe somebody cut her
Speaker 1: tongue out. So I find it that's very opposite. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think the sense that I got, at
Speaker 1: least again from that was the store that convenience store
Speaker 1: clerk was like, you know, she like very timidly said
Speaker 1: like do you have this or whatever? I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe yeah, again, we just like this is we don't
Speaker 1: know because it's it's such a Yeah, miss brasher is
Speaker 1: the word I'm going to use. There's so many conflicting accounts,
Speaker 1: especially in the quote unquote biker angle. Well, I gotta
Speaker 1: tell you too that going going to going around see
Speaker 1: Orlando and showing Amy's picture and stuff like that. I
Speaker 1: have no but you know, you can always contaminate your
Speaker 1: witnesses too by just saying stuff to do you ever
Speaker 1: see this woman. She might have been with some bikers,
Speaker 1: some really scary biker guys, you know, and she was
Speaker 1: a vegetarian and then you know that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: So you don't really know how the quality of the
Speaker 1: interrogation that was going on here for sure. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: and also I kind of question any anybody's memory if
Speaker 1: they think, like, how long had it been like ten years,
Speaker 1: five years since this clerk a couple of years probably least.
Speaker 1: It's kind of hard to imagine, seriously, unless you got
Speaker 1: a photographic memory. Yeah, so I don't. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think the at least the kidnapped biker gang theories kind
Speaker 1: of like a red herring and kidnapped been held forever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I could totainly see someone of the theory. But the
Speaker 1: problem I have with this series that and the reason
Speaker 1: I think somebody just kidnapped her and killed her probably
Speaker 1: is that, you know, obviously they would have held her
Speaker 1: for decades. It's like and all that time she would
Speaker 1: she would have definitely had opportunities to get away or
Speaker 1: to at least pick up a phone and call the
Speaker 1: police or well, I mean, I think that that is
Speaker 1: kind of what the interview with the other biker gangs
Speaker 1: and the other women who were old ladies really speaks
Speaker 1: to is that that's a thing. I mean, you can
Speaker 1: you can brainwash a person or intimidate them into feeling
Speaker 1: like they have no other option but to make you happy.
Speaker 1: And particularly if if it is true that she was
Speaker 1: with Paul Branch for a while and he got her
Speaker 1: really really beat up, it's you know, and especially if
Speaker 1: her tongue had actually been cut out or anything like that.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's I mean, it's you just get victimized.
Speaker 1: You can get so victimized that you want to lose
Speaker 1: your will or even thought using using the term brainwash
Speaker 1: is very is kind of a slippery slope because it's
Speaker 1: not that's hard to well, brainwash is hard to actually
Speaker 1: categorically say this is what it is. But an actual
Speaker 1: tactic that people that are stealing people to put them
Speaker 1: into situations of sexual slavery do is they hook them
Speaker 1: on drugs. Once you make somebody an addict and you
Speaker 1: are the only source of their deal, they become very
Speaker 1: compliant and they do what you say when you say,
Speaker 1: and they don't fight back because they need their fix. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. So I mean that would I agree. I
Speaker 1: personally think the long term theory is is just as
Speaker 1: viable as some But he stole her and shipped her
Speaker 1: overseas to be a slave, I would find I would
Speaker 1: find that more believable. So I do have a sub
Speaker 1: theory on the Outlaws biker gang thing, and that is
Speaker 1: um that it's possible that she had been picked up
Speaker 1: for a party. I mean, you know, if it was
Speaker 1: bike week. You know, she's wearing a short, little denim
Speaker 1: skirt and heels. She's seventeen. She's a pretty good looking
Speaker 1: young lady walking just walking down the side of the highway.
Speaker 1: A biker pulls over and says, hey, baby, you want
Speaker 1: to go party? And she thinks, okay, sure, you know whatever,
Speaker 1: and gets on the back of a bike because there
Speaker 1: were some reports, again however tainted, that she was seen
Speaker 1: on the back of a motorcycle and you know, they
Speaker 1: parked for the night party, something bad happened were there,
Speaker 1: and she's now you know, feeding the gate or was
Speaker 1: then feeding the gators and people I thought I only
Speaker 1: lived in Sue. Yeah, you're right, yeah, um that you
Speaker 1: just keep believing that, Steve. But I mean I think
Speaker 1: that's I think that's possible, that you know, something kind
Speaker 1: of unfortunate like that happened. I think that's that's that's
Speaker 1: entirely possible. Or there's a random serial killer. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: there's one final theory here, and that's the Tan truck
Speaker 1: slash Deep slash Van guy. Because there were a number
Speaker 1: of reports initially, not after the fact, just initially during
Speaker 1: the initial search. People said, oh, yeah, I think I
Speaker 1: saw somebody who looked like Amy in a Tan truck
Speaker 1: or van or jeep um you know, along main highway
Speaker 1: along that route or getting in that or you know
Speaker 1: whatever somehow associated with something like that. And the only
Speaker 1: reason that that gives me even a little bit of
Speaker 1: pause is you remember we talked about the camera that
Speaker 1: was found. They developed the film which you might have assumed.
Speaker 1: You were probably actually yelling like what did they do
Speaker 1: with the film, and we were frustrating you just pulled
Speaker 1: it out like a toddler with a tape. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: they developed it and most of the most of it
Speaker 1: was just way overexposed and like totally unidentifiable whatever. But
Speaker 1: there was one picture that they could identify, which was
Speaker 1: still pretty overexposed, but it was an overexposed picture of
Speaker 1: a tan truck against like a wall. And I have
Speaker 1: heard through again, I don't I mean, I don't know
Speaker 1: what the reporting really is that maybe Hank Blair had
Speaker 1: a truck that looked kind of like that van that
Speaker 1: looks kind of like that. Yeah. Actually a lot of
Speaker 1: people had vance. A lot of people still do, yeah,
Speaker 1: or trucks or jeeps do either of you know, whatever
Speaker 1: became of the film from that role of film might
Speaker 1: Here's my reason for asking, is that technology technology you
Speaker 1: can scan negatives and do some amazing stuff that I
Speaker 1: mean I found Listen, I was digging around in my attict.
Speaker 1: This was a couple of years back, and I found
Speaker 1: a bunch of old negatives and some of them you
Speaker 1: could tell where people and some you couldn't really tell
Speaker 1: what the hell they were. And if you put them
Speaker 1: into a film scanner and then you run them through
Speaker 1: the gamut, you can pull an amazing amount of and
Speaker 1: make exceptional you can see what there was because you
Speaker 1: can dial it back, and there's a tonal control that
Speaker 1: you get digitally that you didn't get from analog film process.
Speaker 1: I don't know. You know, the thing about it is
Speaker 1: is you would think that the film would still be
Speaker 1: somewhere in evidence. But you know, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: the evidence does seem to get lost quite and film degrades.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, if it wasn't stored properly, it
Speaker 1: could have just degraded. They could have somebody could have thought, well,
Speaker 1: there's no way that this is going to be relevant.
Speaker 1: I mean, anybody who's connected to it knows and they
Speaker 1: find that freaking film. You get it to somebody who
Speaker 1: can scan it properly. Yeah, send it to us. We'll
Speaker 1: solve the case. Yeah, I'll buy. Yeah, we got the money,
Speaker 1: I'll buy a film scanner. Yeah, I've always wanted one, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll start a Kickstarter. It'll be great. Um No, I
Speaker 1: mean that is the only other kind of theory that's
Speaker 1: out there. But it just had something to do with this.
Speaker 1: There is one other theory. Okay, really is it? Is
Speaker 1: it Aliens? No? Actually it's not, is it um? Are
Speaker 1: you ready? Pyramids? The rapture? That's what I think it was.
Speaker 1: That's probably true, the rapture. Okay, I'm down. I gotta
Speaker 1: be honest with you. I really this is one of
Speaker 1: the few times where I'm going to say, none of
Speaker 1: the theories do you think happened to her? I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think that it was the bikers. I don't
Speaker 1: think that it was any of the people who were
Speaker 1: described like I mean, van guy is the is maybe
Speaker 1: the only thing because I literally think that some unknown
Speaker 1: person picked her up, whether of her own volition or not,
Speaker 1: and drove away with her and she is probably in
Speaker 1: a shallow grave. That's that's what I think happened most likely?
Speaker 1: Is that? What? But which is all? I mean, thankfully
Speaker 1: Sue doesn't have to hear her say that. Yeah, but yeah.
Speaker 1: And as as far as the van, I mean that
Speaker 1: picture might have been taken some other day. I mean
Speaker 1: who knows. Yeah, I mean, like I said, we don't
Speaker 1: know when the camera disappeared, if it disappeared with her,
Speaker 1: if it disappeared weeks or even months earlier, and I
Speaker 1: totally but I'm with Steve on that I think it
Speaker 1: most like, I mean, you know, again, there's a whole
Speaker 1: picked up, technical party, killed disposed of. That's possible too,
Speaker 1: but I'm thinking most likely it was just some freak
Speaker 1: who picked her up and murdered her and she's tossed
Speaker 1: her in the swamps. Yeah, I mean, I us have
Speaker 1: to agree. I think, um, you know, Unfortunately, again with
Speaker 1: a lot of these disappearances, the most merciful thing is
Speaker 1: that that person. You know, maybe it was a really
Speaker 1: terrifying couple of hours after they got kidnapped, but really, honestly,
Speaker 1: I just often hope that the years of decades, decades
Speaker 1: of literal torture, right, I mean, so, you know, and
Speaker 1: I just tend to think if they weren't found, it's
Speaker 1: it's really likely, especially this long, that she just got
Speaker 1: killed one way or another within a couple of days,
Speaker 1: a couple of hours. And one of the things I'm
Speaker 1: curious about is when when did the Unsolved Mysteries segment there? Oh,
Speaker 1: it was in the nineties at some point, okay, And
Speaker 1: so I guess it had to have been like it.
Speaker 1: It was between when Ned died because Ned had passed
Speaker 1: away already and when Sue died, and she died in
Speaker 1: late nineties, I think. Okay, so okay, so uh And
Speaker 1: I'm sure those things usually touch off a whole avalanche
Speaker 1: of tips. Yeah, I don't think there was any. There
Speaker 1: were no updates or anything. Yeah, so that's one. But
Speaker 1: that's another reason that I think, and that's I have
Speaker 1: not heard of anything, any sort of information being dislised
Speaker 1: by the area of that episode. Yeah. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think if she were alive, people would have seen her.
Speaker 1: A lot of bikers would have seen her, and other
Speaker 1: people would have seen her if she's been held captive
Speaker 1: for all those decades. I agree. Yeah, so unfortunately, I
Speaker 1: think she's been dead for a long long time since
Speaker 1: about Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. Well, um, if you want to
Speaker 1: see some of the research that we did for this case,
Speaker 1: or if you want to take a look at that
Speaker 1: episode list we talked about that keeps us sane kind
Speaker 1: of um, or you want links to merch because we've
Speaker 1: got shirts and mugs and some other things too. Yeah, um,
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Speaker 1: having been said, I think we're going to go ahead
Speaker 1: and get on out of here. I'm gonna drink a
Speaker 1: lot to feel less depressed about this story. Room Zoom
Speaker 1: Zoom Next week, kids, Bye bye, and sturges