by Greg Aunapu
"I'm more nervous than you," the boy admitted. "Give me the money and Amy will be home by six o'clock." He reached for the briefcase.
Sue clutched it like a treasure. "Oh, no," she said. "I begged and borrowed from my family and friends for this money. It's everything I have in the world, and I'm not giving it to you until you give me some kind of firm identification about my daughter."
The kid gulped. "What do you mean? You heard her on the phone."
"Tell me something about her."
"She's… she's got long brown hair," the boy said.
"Everybody knows that," Sue told him. "If you have Amy, you'd know more. What's she wearing? What kind of jewelry did she have on? Give me something concrete!"
"Listen, I don't have her myself," the boy said. "If there's going to be a problem, I'm going to have to call somebody."
"You said you had her," Sue said.
The boy shook his head, looking around nervously. "I'm only in on this for like two grand. I'm just picking up the money. I'll have to make a call."
"Then get the information," Sue demanded, stabbing a finger at his chest. "Let's go find a phone."
The boy was shaken by her temerity and took a few steps back. He looked around, seemingly mollified that no police were descending on him, and conceded, "Okay, let's go make a call."
Despite the air-conditioning, sweat streamed down Sue's forehead. She could feel it dripping down her neck and into her bra where the microphone was. They followed the young guy to a phone booth in the lobby. "Call them!" she commanded.
The guy dialed the phone. Ina knew that a detective with binoculars would be jotting down the numbers, so she pulled Sue to the side to make sure the view would not be obstructed.
The boy listened in the receiver and shrugged. "Busy," he said.
An officer had indeed seen the numbers. He handed them to another cop who casually brought them outside to a waiting car. They rushed off to get the address.
The boy dialed again. Again he shook his head. Still busy. "Listen, I'm going to go meet with these guys nearby. You wait where you were and I'll get the information you need. I'll be right back." He strolled away, and they watched him punch the elevator button and disappear into the car with some Hawaiian-shirted tourists. One or more may have been cops; Sue didn't know.
"Oh, God, Ina," Sue said, "I hope they have her."
Sue and Ina headed back to the couch. "Sssh, don't say anything," Ina whispered. "We don't know if they have accomplices watching us."
It was the longest ten minutes Sue had ever endured. Time had never ticked so slowly. Not when she'd brought the kids to the doctor for a high fever. Not even when she'd sat waiting to find out if her mother's cancer operation had been successful the year before. Nothing in her life had prepared her for this.
Finally, he returned. His voice had lost all traces of calmness. "She's got long brown hair, is about five- five, is wearing a blue denim miniskirt, and has platform sandals."
"All that information is in the flyers we handed out!" Sue exploded. "What kind of ring is she wearing? Does she have a scar?"
"Like I said, I'm just the messenger. Give me the money, and Amy will be back home this evening. Otherwise, they'll kill her."
Sue looked at Ina. Ina gave her a short shake of the head. Sue steeled herself.
"Then we keep the money until you get the information," Sue said, amazed at her courage. She knew that once the money was gone, her leverage was gone.
"Come with me," he said, then pointed at Ina. "You stay here."
Sue stood her ground. "Oh, no. I'm not going by myself."
The boy grunted in frustration, then turned and headed for the elevators. They boarded without other passengers. The kid hit the button for the fifth floor. As the doors closed, Ina wiped her forehead, exposing five fingers to Detective Orlando Martinez, who appeared to be a patron waiting for someone in the lobby.
The kid was more observant than they thought.
"I saw that! You flashed that guy the number five."
"You're paranoid," Ina said. "Can't I wipe my forehead?”
The dark sunglasses gave no response. "You're too much," the boy said, apparently satisfied.
The elevator stopped on the fifth floor. As they exited, another boy in a hat and sunglasses, the spitting image of the first, but wearing different colors, was waiting for them.
"Give me the money," he said. Same voice.
Brothers. Sue thought. Where the hell did they get Amy? Did she know them?
"It's easy," Sue said. "I told your friend here. You give us details about Amy, you can have the money, and I'll bless the ground you walk on."
"There's been a change of plans," the brother said.
At that point, the second elevator stopped on the floor. Ina knew Martinez was probably in it, and she was fed up with the boys. She drew a revolver from her purse. "Police officer," she shouted. "You're under arrest. Get down on the floor." Martinez arrived in the other elevator, instantly assessed the situation and drew his weapon.
"Damn right there's been a change of plans," Ina said. "You're going to jail." She looked at Sue, sorrow in her eyes, realizing that Amy wasn't waiting in a nearby room. "I'm sorry, Sue," she said. "I think it's just a cruel prank."
The Glasser twins, Larry and Charles, were sixteen years old and had never met Amy, who attended a different high school. They were from a well-off family and lived with their divorced mother. Neighbors described the twins as "good kids," and their school records were spotless. They were very close-mouthed at the time, and never explained what had sparked their foolish actions or what plans they had for the money. They were released into their mother's care, and in court showed absolutely not a shred of remorse for their actions. They sat in the defendants' chairs looking smug and smiling, insisting that their crime was simply "a prank."
The calls made from the lobby were traced to the phone number of a friend who had no knowledge of the crime. The two teenagers had masterminded the masquerade by themselves.
The one good thing about the incident was that it brought Amy's disappearance into the national spotlight, and it was soon front page news around the nation. At the trial, Sue met the twins' mother, Maryon, for the first time. The two hugged and cried, simultaneously saying to each other, "I'm sorry." Dozens of news teams interviewed Sue about the twins and what she thought about them receiving no jail time.
Sue told them variations of the same thing. "I feel sorry for their mother. I don't feel anything about the kids. As soon as I found out they did not have my child, they vanished from my mind. I don't wish them any ill. All I want to do is find Amy."
Sue did confront the twins about one thing, though. Just to make absolutely sure, she asked, "What about Amy's voice?"
Larry Glasser shrugged. "It was me . . . just me. That's why we told you she had a cold."
Sue could only grit her teeth, close her eyes and sigh. Several years later freelance writer Mark MacNamara happened to befriend one of the Glassers, Charles—known as “Chuck” – and in 1985 wrote a story about the boy, then in his twenties, for the Miami Herald. By then Chuck was a photographer working for the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, living in an Ocean Drive weekly rental on Miami Beach. He was a pushy kid, caustic and clever, with a good camera eye. But he also tended to be brash and insulting, MacNamara wrote.
Michael Stock, now forty-three and host of a popular folk-music show on Miami's public radio station, was a member of the same Boy Scout troop as the Glasser twins. He remembers that Chuck, "a scrawny guy," seemed to make up for his small stature with an abrasive personality. "He was always cursing and vulgar," Stock says. "But they were both real smart alecks. One day Larry was spitting in our sterilized water as a prank; the next thing I knew they were on the front page of the Miami Herald!"
Shortly after their court case the brothers returned to camp accompanied by their parole officer, where Stock recalls that "Chuck admitted they had done something wrong, but didn't u
nderstand why it was such a big deal. He said, 'It's just like breaking a window. You have to pay for your crime.' The concept of extortion probably never entered their heads. They just thought about it as a prank," the radio personality observed.
Apparently, Chuck's fascination with pranks was not diminished by his terrible caper with the Billigs, either. McNamara wrote that Chuck once "went into the ladies room of the Cardozo with a fire extinguisher and sprayed women in the stalls."
But Glasser, who apparently could not understand why he was shunned and had trouble making friends, never publicly apologized for his actions, telling MacNamara, "Why won't they forget? I was a kid. I was incredibly stupid. It's over. I paid for it. Everybody's got some dirt."
In the late 1980s, Sue Billig was dining with a friend at the Cardozo Hotel's café. Glasser tried to speak with her. She shooed him away. "I have nothing to say to you," she told him calmly, but firmly. Glasser wrote Sue a note on the back of a menu and dropped it on her table before he left.
Again, there was no remorse.
Mrs. Billig,
Why can't you understand that what I did was just the act of a stupid kid? Why does it have to plague me for the rest of my life?
Sue could only shake her head. Some people would never learn.
While she bore the Glasers no specific ill will, their idiocy had affected the lives of dozens of people, caused the Billigs emotional turmoil, and cost thousands of dollars. Worse, as the years passed, one thing became certain. The three wasted days spent on the Glasser red herring was valuable time lost when authorities should have been tracking other leads. In that time, with the pressure off, Amy's true abductors could have spirited her anywhere.
And the Billigs were back at square one.
Today Sue shakes her head, remembering the event. "When people ask me how I survived those times, I say, 'I just did what I had to.' I felt like I had walked barefoot through Hell. But I wasn't going to give up. There had to be something concrete somewhere. I just felt in my heart if Amy were dead, I would know it. This wasn't a time for me to slow down, it was a time for me to speed up."
-3-
“H
ow can I describe what we were going through?" Sue Billig asks today in wonder. "It was chaos. One day the house would be full of people looking for ways to be of help. And, although I loved them all, it made everything so chaotic that I couldn't think straight. I would go crazy just trying to make breakfast for everyone. Then, the next day, the house would be empty, and I would have to call someone just so I didn't feel so alone."
Ned was a caring and fun father, certainly a great husband, but it is clear that his jazzy personality was not suited to this type of continuing crisis. He adored Amy, and was completely supportive in every effort to find his daughter, but he had to run the gallery. So it was Sue who was gradually transformed from a groovy Grovite, whose greatest worries were deciding which beach to go to that day, to a general who commanded the search plans.
Ned later told Edna Buchanan, the Miami Herald’s Pulitzer prize-winning police reporter, that he demurred to Sue's authority because of her "incredible ability to keep notes and records and stay on top of things. She has a better ability to deal with some of the very strange people we've had to deal with along the way. I don't think I could have controlled myself as well. I knew Sue was going into some situations that were somewhat perilous. I trust her judgment."
It can be emotionally draining for journalists to interview the parents of young suicides or murder victims, but we realize that as difficult and miserable a task as it is, what we do often allows the grieving family a way to vent their anguish in front of the public, and thereby begin whatever cathartic healing process they can achieve. At least, that's how we rationalize the brash job of invading and revealing someone's private nightmare.
While many parents weep, it's amazing how many are able to accept their loss with a brave, stoic calm and continue with their lives, even though they will never be the same again. Many will always prepare an empty place setting at the dinner table, keep the victim's bedroom complete and clean, and hold memorials on birthdays. But day-to-day they continue the same routine, go to work, cook dinner, knowing their child would want them to go on.
Sue, on the other hand, had no such closure and was galvanized into action. She couldn't enjoy a dinner out, couldn't allow herself comforts, or even a good night's sleep while Amy was missing. How could she, knowing her daughter might be hungry, beaten, or worse? She suffered a love-hate relationship with the phone. It could never be left unattended, as any strange and distant voice might provide the critical clue. Yet, most calls and leads proved worthless.
The pile of tattered twenty-five-year-old notebooks tell the story in Sue's hastily scrawled handwriting, done with whatever writing implement was handy, from thick black markers to blue ballpoint to fading pencil.
March 27, 12:30: Anonymous—Man crying for God to give me strength. She is a beautiful girl and he is praying for me.
Or one of the many psychics giving an earnest reading. This one a black female reverend:
“You will find out something in seven days, seven hours. Amy's nauseous, sick feeling. She's got a sore feeling in her neck. It's hot. She is being held against the wall. Her feet are tied. But she's alive! I feel like she's further north. Maybe Texas. Or Okeechobee. There's something about a ring. Someone who gave her a ring may know more about what happened.”
Calls like these were well-meaning but ultimately unhelpful. They were salves that soothed the burn of despair for a short while, only to allow a greater and more aggressive pain to take hold.
That date of March 27 was important, too. It was one day after the Billigs' twenty-seventh wedding anniversary. It was, unfortunately, not a joyous day.
Sue remembers: "Amy was always very conscientious of birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays. She made people cards and gifts or called them. We stayed at home by the phone because we felt that nothing in the world could stop Amy from calling us if she could." Sue sighs. "The enormity of her absence, the completeness of it, really hit home that day, because she never called."
Amy's friends from the Adelphi School held a gathering in Coconut Grove's bayside Peacock Park, where they raised over $1,500 for the Amy Fund. Ned attended the function with Josh—who donated every cent in his savings account—absorbing the condolences uneasily, while Sue stayed at home jumping at every jingle of the phone.
But waiting was too passive, so Sue became ever more galvanized to bring her daughter home. She printed up thousands of flyers and convinced airline pilots and flight attendants to distribute them in cities across the country. She stopped traffic at the intersection of Poinciana and Main Highway, where Amy was last seen, and passed out flyers to drivers who might be taking the same route they had driven on the fateful day that Amy disappeared.
As much as Sue knew, as any mother knows, that she loved her children, the intensity and boundlessness of her love for Amy had only been guessed at before this. Had she realized it when Amy was just five and almost died of appendicitis? Or at age six when Amy had fought a 106-degree fever and dropped into a coma?
"No," Sue says. "Those things you handle. But when your child is missing, then you get up and shout, 'No! This doesn't happen to real people!' "
During this time, Josh, a formerly rambunctious and outgoing youth, retreated into his own head, became ever more quiet, and started to hate going to school. "A lot of kids would say real mean things," he says now. "Hey, I've got your sister tied up in my room! Things like that."
Sue was so focused on finding Amy that she now wonders, "How much pain did I cause Josh by putting our lives on hold? Did he think we loved Amy more than we loved him because of the time we were spending looking for her? Did we stop communicating because I was to protect him from the ugliness by being so private with my feelings?"
Josh, now a stonemason with a family of his own, admits that as a child he must have felt neglected, "And I guess the enti
re situation depressed me for years, although I didn't realize it at the time. Yet I don't think about it now like I didn't get a fair shake or something. Every family goes through their own pain, even though you might not see it on the outside. Self-pity is a weakness. I don't blame them or anybody for not having a normal life. Life isn't easy for anyone."
An award-winning photograph of Sue taken back then shows her carrying a sign among cars, with her jaw as taut as a protestor's. Such photos burned themselves into people's memory, though Sue's true nature is one of sweetness and caring. But she was aggressive at the time, feeling betrayed by law enforcement, trying to get the message out to the world that an innocent girl was missing. "I wanted helicopters in the sky, I wanted a nationwide search, but all the police would say was she was probably a runaway. I knew she hadn't run away. They acted very nonchalant about the whole thing. I begged them to come to the house and take Amy's fingerprints from her room. They always promised, but you could tell they weren't serious about this investigation, because they always put it off."
Within weeks of Amy's disappearance, one particular telephone call generated a sense of dread. Sue wrote down the words in her notebook, as she had with so many unidentified callers before this, though it is not one of the early recorded conversations.
The first communication in what eventually became a marathon series was pretty simple. "Your daughter's dead," stated the steady southern male voice. Complete calm, no evil in his tone, as if he was reciting an item on a grocery list.
Sue's heart felt like something was crushing it. "Dead? How do you know?" she asked in sudden despair.