by Greg Aunapu
Most bikers boasted long rap sheets. A new recruit spent a year as an underling, an "associate," before becoming a full-fledged member. To graduate, a major crime such as murder was often committed, which made it difficult for law enforcement to infiltrate the gangs.
Still, despite the drugs, alcohol, and crime, bikers were often highly intelligent. Though many were high school dropouts, others were sharp, educated men who just couldn't handle boring society. Big Jim Nolan, the Outlaws' president, had been valedictorian of his high school. Others were savvy, experienced Vietnam veterans who weren't about to take crap from some twit in a pin-striped suit. It was a wayward and appealing life for many people who couldn't fit into square society. In many ways, bikers were both feared and admired by regular guys for flouting authority. Even celebrities like Willie Nelson, the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia, and the Rolling Stones hung out with bikers. Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson hooked up with the Hell's Angels in the mid-sixties and wrote a book about it before he started annoying them and they "stomped him good."
Today, many of the nine million weekend Harley enthusiasts, or Hog riders—chiropractors, surgeons, builders, waiters, psychologists, and thousands of others—are scoffed at by real bikers as "Rolex Riders" or "Weekend Warriors." The fakers shave their heads or grow long hair, sport mustaches, and don sweaty black leather clothes and chains to appear their menacing best when they roar through towns across America. In Coconut Grove they line up their pristine, $20,000 to $40,000 bikes curbside to be appreciated by the fawning masses as their daring, muffler-challenged owners sip cappuccinos at sidewalk cafés. But real bikers scoff at these guys. Outlaw bikers, traditionally considered only one percent of the total rider population, call themselves "One Percenters," and if you have that mark tattooed on your hand, you damn well better be one.
On that pristine March 5, Paul Branch and his friends roaring through the Grove were definitely not Rolex Riders.
Sue returned home in the late afternoon. She had left the house at twelve noon. According to Ned, Amy had called at twelve-ten, which meant she had only missed her daughter by a scant few minutes.
"She was supposed to come by to pick up a couple dollars," Ned said. "She must not have needed it."
Amy had earned confidence and freedom from her parents because she was responsible. She was allowed to stay out late and do what she chose because she always got her homework done, and always, always called home to check in. By evening Sue was nervous. No member of the family ever missed a meal without calling.
After Ned arrived home, the Billigs phoned a Miami police detective friend, Mike Gonzalez, at eight P.M. Gonzalez visited on his way home from work and questioned Josh about Amy. Was there any possibility the boy's sister could have run away?
"Never," sixteen-year-old Josh replied.
Sue agreed. "We're the kind of family that other kids run away to," she observed.
The family had always gotten along well. Amy, seeming older than her years, often sat back and watched the internal dynamics with amusement, as if each person had been given roles to act out in this life. In the next reincarnation, maybe everything would be reversed.
Parents are funny -- sometimes they want to be my friends and we are—open and honest, but sometimes, I have to let them do their parent trip too, I guess it's only fair—but it's hard to explain to them, that basically we are only human beings not parents and children and being treated as such is where it's at.
I am Amy and you are Ned and Sue and we can really get it on, if you just let it happen.
—Amy
Gonzalez knew that more than ninety-nine percent of children who are reported missing have only missed a telephone call and show up again on their own. His voice was calm. "She's probably just out with friends," he assured the frantic couple. "Don't panic. Call again if Amy isn't home by morning.”
Sue spent all night worrying. She finally tracked down Amy's friend Cathy on the phone. "Tell her I'm mad at her," Cathy complained. "She stood us up for lunch, and she's got my shoes from last night to boot."
After spending a fretful, sleepless evening, Susan could take it no longer. At six A.M., she called Mike Gonzalez. "I am now panicking," Sue wept. "Amy is missing!"
Still, it was a more innocent time, and despite Gonzalez's friendship, the police considered Amy a low priority—probably a runaway. Sue assured them over and over again that Amy would never do such a thing. Her daughter wouldn't have run away because she didn't have to. She was a good girl who was looking forward to graduating high school in two weeks.
Even today Sue shudders at the trauma of those first days. "I can't imagine any personal disaster worse than having your child just simply disappear. No note, no body . . . just gone. Anytime I see a family on the news going through something like this, it just tears my heart out. I was afraid. I felt she might be starving, sick, or hurt… In that one moment when we realized she was gone, our lives changed forever."
Sue would stare into the night and conjure up Amy's face, see her daughter's smile, to hear her voice, try to reach out with her mind to grope for Amy's presence somewhere out in the darkness and ask, "Where are you? Come home, sweetheart. Please, just come home.”
She spoke to the universe, offering Faustian bargains, anything and everything, just to see her daughter bounce through the front door with an embarrassed, "Sorry I caused so much trouble" expression on her face.
The police made promises, but little more, assuring the Billigs that Amy would soon turn up.
Even the weather had changed its temperament. Gone was the glorious sun, giving way to depressing sheets of steady rain.
In desperation, Sue and Ned turned to friends, who scoured the neighborhood and posted signs with Amy's photograph on telephone poles. They beat the bushes—the Grove being heavily foliated—looking for an injured body. Nerves were frayed, as only one week earlier a woman had been hit by a car and found in the brush.
Josh hunted up and down the streets that he and Amy had walked together just days ago. "I was so scared, but I forced myself to look into every bush, praying I wouldn't find her," he says.
While a missing child would be front page news in almost any community now, it took nearly a week, until March 10, for the story to hit the local papers: The Miami News and The Miami Herald. The Herald buried the story on page six of the local section: GROVE 17-YEAR-OLD MAY BE KIDNAPPING VICTIM, POLICE SAY.
A benefit concert by popular Grove musicians raised $850, which seeded an expense fund started at the local Coconut Grove Bank. A $1,000 award was advertised in the local media. It doesn't sound like much money now, but at the time a brand new 1974 Mustang sold for $2,800.
Soon, tips began coming in. One caller insisted he had seen Amy riding in a green Jeep. Another said he had seen her get into a white van. Green Jeeps were hunted all over the city. One poor guy, a friend of the family, owned such a vehicle in the Grove. Over fifty calls about him were made to police.
Sue and Ned contacted a private investigator, Frank Rubino, a former Secret Service agent, to aid in the search. The family pleaded with the FBI to get involved, but without real evidence that Amy had been kidnapped, and no formal request from local police to lend a hand, the agency could do little.
While Sue remained unconvinced that Amy had run away, she called friends across the country to keep a lookout for her in case she showed up somewhere.
Ned looked steady on the outside, calm and orderly, answering the phone with a voice now often steadied by alcohol. Inside he was Jell-O, praying every time the phone rang that it would bring happy news. Sue, a nervous wreck, stared out the window all night. When she would descend into some kind of unconsciousness, nightmares flung themselves at her. She told friends, "I keep seeing Amy outside in the rain, cold. She says, 'Mama, I need you!'”
On March 16 the phone rang. A friend, Toby, now staying at the house, took the call.
"Hello, Mr. Billig?" came a mature female voice.
"Who's calling
, please?"
The person seemed unsure of her own identity. "Ah, this is . . . Susan Johnson."
"Susan, can I help you?"
"Yes, I saw Amy's mother in the Grove . . . with a poster.”
"Right," Toby said.
"Of course, Johnson isn't my real name, because I'm afraid. But I want to tell you what I know." The person sounded apologetic.
Toby had heard this type of call before. So many tips and false leads were coming in that the police had brought in a tape machine to record the messages. "Okay, fine," he said stoically, no change in his voice.
"A friend of mine went up to Daytona, where they had the motorcycle races last week. And a motorcycle gang was there. Now . . . they have her! They picked her up hitchhiking and she's being held against her will…”
"Are you sure about this?" Toby insisted.
The woman sounded tired, expended, as if she had been worrying about whether to make this call for a while. "I'm positive. I swear on my daughter's life," she replied.
"Okay, now what is the name of this gang?"
"The Outlaw motorcycle gang."
"All right now, listen, Susan, I know you're afraid…”
"Yeah…”
“…but you're going to have to talk to someone besides me. Would you call this number back? You don't have to say who you are. There are no tracers or anything on the line."
"Okay."
"But are you a hundred percent positive of this?"
For the first time, this seemed like a real lead. The biker gangs that had swept through the Grove the day of Amy's disappearance were still fresh in everybody's mind.
"I'm a hundred percent positive."
"Do you know Amy?"
"No, I don't know her, but I know the person who told me and saw her with them. They are holding her against her will. They have another girl also."
Toby became agitated. It just sounded too real, much different than the other calls. The woman agreed to call back in an hour.
This time Ned answered the phone, picking up "Susan Johnson's" call. Ned had a low smoky voice with a New York accent.
"This is Amy's father," he assured the caller. "I'm Ned. And I'd really appreciate it if you'd do me one favor. You don't have to give your name. But there's a friend of ours who's handling this thing and he would like to hear it from you and find out what's going down so he can try to follow it up." Johnson agreed.
Ned gave her Mike Gonzalez's phone number at the Miami police station. Ned assured her, "He's a friend who's been helping us—because he's a groovy friend." He explained that there was a $1,000 reward. "That's yours, too, and don't forget it."
Johnson's credibility rose a notch when her tired voice replied, "Really, I'm telling you the truth that I know is true. I don't care about the money. I just want you to have your daughter back."
Ned's voice softened. "Thank you, sweetheart…”
Gonzalez was optimistic when he phoned the house after he had spoken with the caller.
"This Susan Johnson did call me, as incredible as that may seem. She was worried that I would trace the call. But she wasn't able to tell me any more. Still, she sounds sincere, and like she believes it—in her present state of mind, anyway. While it's vague, she promises to go back to her friend and get some more information. They're supposed to be camped out around Titusville Here the information became ominous. "The two girls are being held for white slavery . . . and he recognized the picture of Amy as being one of the girls."
Gonzalez relayed the information to the Titusville police, and the family crossed their collective fingers. The story had a ring of truth, and was corroborated by what the police knew about the Outlaws and their recent movements. They had blazed through the Grove, and they were known to kidnap and sell women. Amy would have been quite a prize.
The biker connection soon intensified as the couple received its first real evidence. A man named David Hemming called. He had found a camera with Amy's name on it at the Wildwood off-ramp of Florida's Turnpike. His mother actually lived in the Grove and had recognized the name on the camera. Wildwood was a small town on the turnpike just north of Orlando. Interestingly, it was on the prime route that a bike gang would take traveling north to any of the interior states from Daytona.
Hemming hand-delivered the evidence to the Billig house. No one could remember the last time they had seen the cheap plastic camera. It may have disappeared before Amy had for all they knew. There were four exposed photographs on the cartridge of slide film.
Had Amy flung it there as a clue? Had a kidnapper thrown it away as incriminating evidence? Stranger still, the camera was found on the southbound side of the road. If the bikers were headed north, which authorities noted, then why find the camera on the southbound side of the road?
Like so many events tied to this case, what happened next was an absurd comedy—which in turn led to more clues. No one with a car was available except one teenager from out of town, the brother of a friend. The only lab that could develop the slide film that afternoon was several miles away. On the way to the shop, the teenager was stopped by an officer for making an illegal left-hand turn. The boy, driving with an out-of-state license was arrested. He called Sue an hour later from jail.
Sue called a bail bondsman to spring the kid from jail. The bondsman, Joe Klein, listened to the story and informed Sue that he was a bondsman for the Outlaws. He vowed to get a couple of bikers to pay Sue a visit the next evening.
“They owe me," Klein said. "They'll come."
When Sue picked up the developed film the following afternoon, she broke open the envelope with shaking hands and prayed, "Oh, God, please give us a clue!" Holding each slide up to the light was a crushing disappointment. Three slides were completely overexposed. The fourth showed a wall with vines growing up it. A white pickup truck was parked in the background.
She began weeping and threw herself into Ned's arms.
Dozens of people were coming in and out of the house—friends, helpers, and media. So many, in fact, that Sue forgot the bikers were scheduled to stop by the following evening.
Sue opened the door and was shocked. Two bikers were standing there, each well over six feet tall. One was over 300 pounds. Her first words were, "My God, you're huge!" Her heart jumped into overdrive, pounding in her chest.
The hefty biker shook his head. "Lady, if you think we're big, you should see our friends. You gonna let us in, or what?"
"Oh, y-yes, come in, please," Sue stuttered, her mouth going dry. When she had imagined the bikers, she thought back to handsome Marlon Brando and the film The Wild One. "These guys made The Wild One look like innocent babies," she remembers.
The two entered, looked disdainfully at the crowd, and asked, "Got a private room?"
Sue ushered the bikers into the den, following them on weak legs.
The two men wore crusty, oily old jeans with knees showing through holes. When they turned around, she saw big switchblades poking from their back pockets.
Over sweaty T-shirts sporting the Harley-Davidson logo they wore black jackets that read OUTLAWS across the back. Their feet were encased in muddy black boots with steel toes. Once a biker donned the biker jacket, it was never supposed to be washed again, so they got pretty nasty.
Sue asked if her friend, Miami News reporter Ann Friedman, could sit in on the conversation. "Fine with us," they agreed.
The bikers sat on a couch, making it squeak under their weight. One, with long tangled hair and wearing a huge Star of David, introduced himself in a New York accent as Sid Fast. The other wore a big gold cross and called himself "Greek."
Sue wanted to faint, thinking that bikers like these might have her daughter. She tried to loosen herself up with some small talk. "You have a New York accent," she said. "We have some friends named Fast in…”
She named a town.
Sid brightened. "I know them. They're distant relatives of mine."
"I'm not kiddin', lady," Sid said. "They're cousins. H
ow 'bout that?"
Sue was amazed. "A Jewish Outlaw?"
Sid laughed. "What'll they think of next, hey? So tell us why we're here."
Sue told them about Amy and the call from Susan Johnson, explaining that her daughter had been abducted by Outlaws.
Sid shook his head and turned to his friend. "You hear of anybody taking a girl down here, Greek?" "Whadda I look like, a narc?" Greek shot back in disgust. "Girls come and they go."
Sid shrugged and turned back to Sue. "Would Amy get on a bike?" he asked.
Sue sighed. "I don't know. I can't see her getting on one. But she might, if she thought she recognized one of her freaky friends from the Grove. She's very sweet and trusting. She always says mosquitoes don't bite her because they know she loves them. She would never think someone would harm her. She might go for a lark . . . for a ten-minute ride . . . if the guy said he'd get her to her appointment on time. Do you think she could have gotten on the bike and then been taken forcibly”
"Of course," Sid told her. "Bikers take chicks that way all the time. They tie 'em up to the bike . . . or hold them on the seat in front. You get some brothers to ride on the sides . . . no one would ever know."
"And this happens a lot?" Friedman asked.
"Listen, we get chicks in all sorts of ways. But usually they come of their own accord. Or they come to a party and get high . . . we keep 'em doped up and the whole gang bangs 'em. It's like an initiation. After they get hooked to the drugs and sex, they're pretty much ours forever."
Sue patted him on the knee. "Don't tell me any more. My daughter isn't a nun, but she's a real nice, sweet girl. I can't think of her like that."
The anguish and love in Sue's voice hit a chord with Sid. His eyes softened. "Listen, I feel for you, but I really haven't heard anything about a new girl. Tomorrow night, though, there's a big meeting up in Lauderdale. All the brothers will be there. You seem like a nice lady, and if you're friends of Joe's, that's enough for us. We'll give the message to Big Jim—he's the president. If Amy's in the Outlaw nation, we'll get her back for you."