by Greg Aunapu
When a man in Texas said his former girlfriend, now dead from a brain abscess, looked like Amy, it took months battling red tape and an intercession by Florida governor Bob Graham to have the body exhumed. Finally, the news came in. The poor girl was, of course, not Amy, any more than the previous bodies had been.
Still, the news hit Sue hard, as she scribbled down in her diary, But where is she? Is she in some other grave, somewhere? I feel empty. Now she says, "Many of my efforts may have been for naught, but if it makes other people realize what they can achieve, then it was worth it."
It had been over ten years of constant activity from March 1974 to September 1985. During that time, people had raised families, built businesses, traveled the world, written works of genius, played music, enjoyed meals, felt sorrow, fallen in love, and survived all the things of human life.
Sue just felt empty.
By 1985 the world had become a very different place since the years of Amy's disappearance. The country's shift toward conservatism, with Ronald Reagan at the helm, had turned the Age of Aquarius on its head.
Teenagers rejected the old ideals of "peace and love," traded in their blue jeans and flowers in their hair for the dominatrix look and identified themselves with the "Material Girl"; the Cold War against what the President had termed the "evil empire" was in full stride; AIDS had changed everyone's ideas about the innocence of sexual relationships; and the incipient War on Drugs had forced small bands of Robin Hood—style entrepreneurial drug smugglers to organize into large, rich, and dangerous organizations.
Here, Rex Ryland made some unfortunate headlines. It turned out that the lawyer who had become such a great friend and helped so much in Amy's search had been leading a double life. In September 1985 the forty-three-year-old criminal defense attorney, who had become a Miami celebrity for taking high-profile cases, was arrested and charged, along with thirty-eight other defendants, with operating an international drug smuggling ring that grossed some $64 million from 1979 to 1982. Under this new world order, Ryland's transgression was treated much more severely than it might have been a few years earlier. He was disbarred and sentenced to sixty-five years in jail for his participation.
Before he was sentenced, Ryland accepted his guilt, saying, "I put a lot of good years to get where I was, and in a matter of months it was all over."
Serving most of his time in Talladega, Alabama, he was finally paroled in the year 2000, after fifteen years in prison, and is currently a freelance paralegal in Miami.
By contrast, when Big Jim Nolan, forty-five, was convicted as a "dangerous special offender" on charges of racketeering and conspiracy stemming from his years as head of the South Florida chapter of the Outlaw Motorcycle Club, he received fifty years. The club had been accused of murder, drug dealing, and extortion.
The ongoing search and the increasing public awareness of child abductions had made Sue a frequent guest on news programs and television talk shows. Each time she appeared, she did it in the hopes that other parents and children would be more vigilant and that other families would be spared the Billigs' experience.
On December 9, 1987, Sue was a guest on Oprah, for a show on "Forgotten Americans." She was one of six mothers who appeared.
Oprah asked sympathetically: "the things that your heart and mind can imagine are far more damaging to your own spirit than what actually happened or is happening to Amy—am I right? Because I guess you imagine the worst?"
Sue's answer was directed toward some unknown person who might be watching the show: "What I keep hoping is that somebody out there knows something, and since Amy has been gone thirteen years, the statute of limitations is over and they'll come forward and give us some information about her, whether she's dead or alive, and that's what we hope and pray for. And that's why we keep on looking and going on anything public in the hopes that even if she doesn't know who she is, that she sees a picture of herself and says that could be me, I have no background, I don't know where I was when I was little, I don't know what I used to look like, and say I want my family, they want me, and I have to find them again. If there is anyone out there, please contact us."
When Oprah seemed to think of Amy's case as being parallel to parental abduction, Sue tried to disabuse the talk-show host of the thought: "It's terrible when a child is gone, but when you know that your ex-husband or wife has them, it's terrible but you know the child is alive and is being fed. I don't know that my child is warm or being fed or even alive, and I think it has to be separated. I think the government should step in and do something for all these hundreds and thousands of children. We're not getting help from anybody. Everything we had to do we had to do ourselves. Children taken by strangers should be helped by the FBI, and we cannot get help from them."
Sue also appeared on Geraldo, the Today Show and many others, in the hopes of delivering her message to authorities and whomever else might be listening.
By now the Billigs had to wonder if all their investigations during the years had been worthwhile, because Hal Johnson continued to call, and he seemed to know so much about Amy. He talked about her looks, her appendix scar, the music she liked…
Ring… Ring…
"You know who this is," came the voice. "I'll meet you at the Taurus restaurant tomorrow night at eight and give you pictures of Amy," he told them. "You and your husband alone. No police. Be there."
The Taurus was an old Grove hangout just blocks from the Billigs' house in the South Grove.
They spent the day in agitation, of course notifying the cops, who promised to be there undercover.
"What will he want, Ned?" Sue asked.
"It doesn't matter," Ned told her. "We'll get whatever he wants."
And then Sue thought about it. "He kidnapped Amy or knows who did. Ned, he picked the Taurus for a reason. He knows where we live. He could be watching us right now. He could be anybody. A person in the store, the guy behind you in the car. He could bump you in the street, say 'Excuse me,' and you would never know."
"We have to hope they catch him," Ned said.
The Taurus was so close, they walked there in less than ten minutes and arrived fifteen minutes early. It was a wooden pub and restaurant on the southern tip of the Grove business district, shaded by thick banyan trees. They knew the bartender and half the other people there. Ned ordered a beer and told the bartender, "Don't pay any special attention to us." They took chairs at a table where they could see the door.
Friends and acquaintances waved from varnished wood tables. They waved back and searched the faces they didn't know. Could it be the man with gray hair hunched over the bar? Was it the guy with the beard and the leather vest? Not quite a biker, but someone who wanted to look like one. He looked familiar, but maybe that was because he'd been watching them. Was he looking at them too hard?
The nervous couple kept vigil on the door, a shiver slipping down Sue's spine every time someone entered. The bearded guy slapped a bill on the counter and departed.
Ned tapped his watch. "It's eight now."
The minute hand crept inexorably around its arc.
"This is nerve-wracking," Sue said. "It could be anybody!”
A man entered, tall and gangly, with bad skin, deep-set eyes, and wild hair. He looked around, went to the bar and ordered a beer.
"It's him," Sue said. "I'm going up there." She jumped from the seat before Ned could stop her and strode up to the man. "I'm Susan Billig."
The man looked surprised. "Oh, hello . . . “I’m Dr…”
The name didn't concern her. She knew instantly that she was wrong. Not a shred of recognition had passed across his eyes. She went back and sat with Ned.
And sat.
Hal Johnson could be any of the single men at the bar, silently laughing at them, but if so, he was too wary to approach. They even stood on the outside deck for a while, in case he wanted more privacy.
"What kind of man would kidnap a girl in the first place?" Sue cried in disgust. "He's a coward!
" She raised her fists in the air. "Coward!"
They took a cab home. Just in case. On the few minutes' trip home, Ned hugged his wife and said, "It's all right, honey. Just stay calm. Stay calm."
But Hal Johnson would make sure they would never feel calm again.
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F alse leads continued to come in regarding biker women who looked strikingly similar to Amy but were not. A couple of women's names kept on coming up: "Mute" and "Sunshine," for instance. Almost everyone who identified Amy's photograph usually said she did not speak very much. A habit such as that could easily lead to a nickname of "Mute." An equally strong coincidence was the name "Sunshine." Amy had written many poems that included references to sunshine, so it seemed like a possibility. Girls often had more than one nickname, as did their old men, however, so it was entirely possible that Mute and Sunshine were several different women, or even the same one.
The Billigs were kept constantly on edge trying to keep track of it all. Many families might have been torn apart by the circumstances. There were always a hundred decisions to be made about how to allot their meager resources for the continuing search, and it was a source of tension. But the Billigs were soul mates, destined to be together, and were resolved that no matter how hard life might be, they would face it together.
Josh married in 1988, and he and his wife Michelle, a schoolteacher, had a daughter, Elizabeth, who Ned and Sue doted on. There were also the normal family crises that all families have to deal with: fevers, accidents, school. But always, even dealing with the minutiae of life, the dilemma of Amy's absence was felt. Did it help that from the time of her infancy Elizabeth bore a striking resemblance to her missing aunt? While all their friends could see the similarity, the family seemed to be in denial about it.
And from day to day, week to week, there was always Hal Johnson.
"Do you know what Amy's doing to me now?" he would say. "She has a great stomach, great muscles, she's keeping herself very nice."
When Sue's mother died, she received the expected calls from friends and family. But Johnson made sure to add his voice to the choir to taunt her about it.
Time marched on. George Bush was elected President, the Berlin Wall was torn down, the USSR was dissolved, Boris Yeltsin was elected president of Russia, the Gulf War made the Middle East erupt in flames in 1991, straining the world's nerves and starting an international recession—and, throughout it all, Johnson continued to add his brand of torture to the Billigs' lives.
But there were moments Sue was still determined to enjoy, like her and Ned's forty-fifth anniversary on March 26, 1992. Sue made reservations at a fancy restaurant in the Grove, one of their favorites where they only went on special occasions. Unfortunately, she had been feeling a bit lethargic at the time and her breathing was shallow, and so she made a routine visit to the doctor. He said he wanted to see her again to discuss some test results. Ned drove her to the office on their way to lunch.
Sue couldn't believe it as the doctor fixed her chest X-ray negatives to the light. There were large, dark blobs in her lungs.
The doctor held her hand and squeezed. "I'm sorry," he said. "The tumors are inoperable."
Sue was outraged. "Cancer? I haven't smoked a day in my life!"
"Secondhand smoke," the doctor intoned softly.
A freight train howled through Sue's head, drowning out the sound of her own thoughts. Her voice seemed a very long way away. "How . . . how long?"
The doctor shook his head. "I'm very sorry, Sue. I give you maybe four months to live."
The words echoed in Sue's ears. She fell into Ned's arms, but didn't cry. She wasn't worried about herself, but in agony that she would never see Amy again. "I'm not satisfied with that diagnosis. I'm taking this to a higher authority!" she managed to quip.
The doctor's stern expression didn't change. He wasn't the joking type.
"Secondhand smoke?" Ned asked. He had smoked three packs a day for years, especially since Amy disappeared.
"It's a recent finding," the doctor intoned. "It carries more carcinogens than primary smoke that is inhaled through the filter."
Ned put his head in his hands. "Oh, God. Honey, let's go home and get you some rest and figure out what to do."
Sue would have none of it. "We are keeping our reservation, and we're not going to have the slightest mention about my immediate demise all day," she commanded. "I'm not listening to some doctor that doesn't even have a sense of humor!"
The next time Johnson called, she told him.
"Please, I've got cancer," Sue told him. "They don't give me long to live. If you've really got Amy, let me see her."
The plea received no sympathy. Sue didn't write this conversation down, but the answer, she remembers, was something like "Maybe you can meet us for a mother-daughter team before you die."
Ned, however, refused to believe the doctor. "I am not just going to let you die," he said. "We're getting another opinion."
The second doctor agreed with the first.
Then Sue's dentist referred her to a more youthful, more courageous doctor who was prepared to remove the tumors. "You're trying so hard, I really want to give you a chance," Dr. Young told her. "There's absolutely nothing to lose."
Sue endured a few weeks of debilitating chemotherapy first, which made her deathly ill and did not reduce the tumors. The prognosis was not positive, but she kept telling herself, "I'm not ready to die. I'm too busy to die! I will not die until I find Amy!"
There was nothing else to do but go under the knife. Feeling weak and miserable, barely able to stand, she insisted on leaving a clean house and buying burial plots that were only a few miles from the house. If she died, she didn't want people having to trek too far to visit her grave.
They operated on one lung first. She woke up feeling the worst pain in her life. It lanced right though the morphine and could be felt even in her sleep. When the doctor told her he thought the operation had been successful and that they could operate on the other lung in six weeks, she laughed painfully, saying, "If I'd known it would hurt so much, I wouldn't have let you do the first one! I'm not letting you touch me again!"
But despite the pain, she felt grateful to be alive, and had a very positive attitude. When she was released from the hospital after the second operation, the couple was able to celebrate Sue's "imminent survival."
But in January 1993, just when Sue was beginning to strengthen and the couple began to make plans for the future, Ned was also diagnosed with lung cancer. Like Sue, he was given only a few months to live. Unfortunately, he was genuinely inoperable.
"The instant I heard he was sick," Josh says, "all of the problems between us dissolved. All I wanted was for him to get better. And we really were able to heal things. It makes you wonder what all your problems were ever about in the first place. When he was dying I was holding his hand and said, 'We love you.' I really wanted to say 'I love you,' but he smiled, because I think he understood what I meant."
Ned would never lose his sense of humor, even in the most painful moments. "He could still muster a joke until the moment I kissed him good-bye," Sue says.
Near the end, Ned took her hand and said, "Don't think of it as losing a husband. Think of it as gaining a closet."
Josh remembers that Sue bought Ned a new pillow. "I've been asking for one for years," he joked. "I have to die to get a new pillow?"
And while Ned lay dying beside her, "Hal Johnson called over and over again to torment me about it," Sue remembers.
Even as he expired, Amy was never far from Ned's mind, either. Just minutes before his time on earth was up, he gripped Sue's hand, searched her face with milky eyes and said, "Never give up looking for Amy."
Sue remembers, "Losing Ned was such a blow, a tremendous test of inner strength to me. Not only did I have to continue the search alone, but now there was nobody I could open my heart to. We had always been there for each other, trying to lessen the pain that we both felt."
Th
e publication of Ned's obituary was a surprise to many in the community who had not known that he was sick. Sue was on the phone for hours at a time, welcoming the company in any form it came. Except for one.
After tossing the first handful of dirt on Ned's coffin, after weeping and saying prayers to send her loved one to God, the phone rang two weeks later.
"Ned's dead, isn't he," Hal Johnson said. "You're alone now, aren't you?"
"What do you mean by that?" Sue asked. "Why do you keep taunting me? Please leave me alone…”
Johnson's voice breathed evilly. Then, "You better watch out," he said.
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H al Johnson kept any sense of normality from entering Sue's life. Even as she recuperated from Ned's death and dealt with her own painful recurrences of cancer and the necessary chemotherapy treatments, his calls came ever more frequently.
He had Amy, he told her. He was training her as a sex slave She would alternately hang up or plead for more information. After so many trails had turned to dust over the years, Johnson seemed to her the only road left that might lead to Amy. No matter how disgusting the calls became, there was one consistent theme—Amy was alive.
Sue notified local police and FBI agent Harold Phipps of the continuing telephone calls. He couldn't take over the case completely, but he could assist the locals. Cold case detective Jack Calvar took over Amy's case file and, along with Phipps, set up a more sophisticated trace and recorder system on Sue's telephone. The calls were still being initiated from several telephone booths in the Miami suburb of Kendall, southwest of Coconut Grove. But as before, every time police arrived, the caller was long gone. Surveillance proved fruitless, as Johnson kept one step ahead of police and always seemed to use a different phone than the one being watched.
Calvar took a great interest in the case. A Miami police officer for twenty years, he'd been hearing about the Billigs throughout his career. "I felt an instant sympathy for Sue and her family," he says, "and for Amy, a lovely girl who had vanished so long ago. I just wanted to do everything within my power to find her."