by Greg Aunapu
The detective was six feet of burly tenaciousness, sporting a thick mustache and a shaved head. He liked to ride Harleys himself, sketch architectural buildings in Europe, and had studied everything from Sherlock Holmes to metaphysics.
Sue felt that if anyone could think outside the box and come up with new leads, Calvar could. He was a friendly and gregarious man who could easily have been a character actor in different circumstances.
Calvar did have other cases, but working with Sue, he tracked down bikers who had been associated with the case over the years. They were harder and harder to track down, as some had been absorbed into the Witness Protection Program, others had died of alcoholism, been murdered, or were long-term prisoners who didn't want to be labeled snitches.
One of the most important leads he finally tracked down, however, was Paul Branch, now living in Gordonsville, Virginia. He made the trip up to the small town, and found a large unadorned trailer with several dogs in the yard.
"He was in terrible shape," Calvar says. "He was fat and bloated, had a terrible case of skin cancer, and was hooked to an IV. He had large pizza-like lesions everywhere on his body, oozing through old tattoos. It was really sad-looking. Oh, God, it stunk in there. Branch maintained that everything he had told Sue was true, but that he'd lost track of Amy and never seen her again. I really thought I was going to find something and was very disappointed."
He returned to Miami feeling as if there were no other leads to follow but Hal Johnson. "Why else would this man be so obsessed with Mrs. Billig for so long?" he asks. "I really wanted to get him."
Phipps, the tall, paternal FBI agent who had been of so much help in previous years, assisted Calvar and Miami police. After Ned's death, he became very close to Sue, giving her his home number and visiting often when Sue became too terrified to be alone. Josh and his family moved next door, but her son worked long hours, did not always return until after dark, and was sometimes out of town.
"Sue was a dear, sweet woman," Phipps says, "and I wanted to do everything I could to make her feel safe and provide some protection."
But for all the law enforcement muscle that was allocated to the case, Johnson was a wily coyote who slinked from shadow to shadow, phone to phone, always slipping out of any trap that was laid for him.
"It was incredibly frustrating," Calvar says. "He was definitely someone who had knowledge of surveillance techniques. I had a feeling that he was enjoying this, that he was out there watching us watch him."
In 1993 a puzzling call came from Johnson. Sue was able to keep him on the phone for some time, but in the end the telephone company had no trap-and-trace record for the call.
"Damn," Calvar said. "He must be using a cell phone."
Cellular telephones were especially difficult to trace. At the time, there were several dozen cell phone companies operating in Florida, and there was no technology available that could pinpoint where the calls originated. While a cell phone meant that some private user with a name, account, and ultimately a home address might be tracked, no judge would issue any sort of shotgun subpoena for so many communications companies to search their records.
And Hal Johnson knew how well camouflaged he was. Now that he could apparently call from anywhere at his convenience, he called more frequently, at all times of the day and night.
Sue kept up a brave front and didn't tell her closest friends about the constant harassment, or the fear that the telephone stalker instilled in her: that he could be any stranger in the street, the man walking his dog, the driver of the car that seemed to pass her house too slowly, or the friend she ate breakfast with.
"I might be willing to trade you for Amy," he said to her one night.
"Anything," Sue said. "Meet me during the day someplace."
There was a pause as Johnson pondered the suggestion. Sue had stopped listening to his threats and taken the offensive. "Let's get some basic things straight," he countered, trying to regain control of the conversation.
"Go ahead," Sue said in a pragmatic voice.
"Are you willing to go?"
"If I can have proof that Amy is alive. Yes."
"Are you willing to leave everything?" His voice was questioning, cajoling, conjuring up images of being transported to the far corners of the earth.
"Yes, I am—if Amy is alive." Sue was irritated. Johnson had made so many promises before, from the time in Fort Pierce in 1979 until now, always trolling the bait, never trying to set the hook.
"Do you understand what that means?" His voice was businesslike. "You don't get your period anymore?”
"No. I'm not getting into this with you."
The voice was relentless. "You still have both your tits?”
Sue couldn't believe what she was hearing. He knew she had cancer, and wanted to know if she was healthy enough to be worth trading for. "I have everything," Billig shouted. "And I'm not getting into a personal discussion with you."
"Well, my clients want two generations of tits to play with," Johnson said, taking another tack. "They want mother-daughter teams."
Sue was shocked into silence for a moment before she could answer. "What do you mean?" she asked.
"They want you," he said. "I'll be your trainer. When you're ready, take out an ad in the Miami Herald that says, 'Elderly woman seeks younger, masterful man.’”
"I will do no such thing," Sue replied.
"Watch out, Amy doesn't have long," Johnson warned. "We've cut her tongue out. And we're going to do more!"
Sue's heart stopped for a moment, then crashed against her chest. Sue cried out that she would meet him anywhere, anytime.
"Tonight, at midnight," he said. At Dadeland, a shopping mall several miles away. "Alone."
Sue called Harold Phipps at home. They only had thirty minutes. Phipps, who lived in Kendall, set the blue light on his dashboard and sped over to Shorty's Barbeque, a restaurant on U.S.-1 near Dadeland. "I got there in about three minutes," he says. A nervous but angry Sue took a taxi and met the agent in the parking lot.
Mike Hernes, a Coral Gables police detective who Phipps knew, also hightailed it to the scene after a call from the agent. A marked patrol car would wait nearby. "I'll pose as her son," Hernes said, "since I'm a bit younger." Phipps would hide, fold his large frame into the back seat and provide backup. They drove to the Dadeland Mall in Hernes' black four-door Ford Explorer.
"It's really going to happen," Sue said. "He's finally going to tell me about Amy! I have a good feeling about it this time."
Phipps gritted his teeth and held back any comment, but if Johnson showed, he was prepared to run him to the ground. By this time he was almost as angry as Sue. The two men wore bulletproof vests, and made Sue put one on under her blouse. Both men had guns, and there were more weapons on the seat. It scared the hell out of her, and she realized this situation could become serious.
It was almost midnight when they arrived, and the giant lot was dark and empty besides a couple of cars, lit by spots of amber crime lights. Hernes parked well away from the other vehicles, in front of the Burdines department store, as Johnson had specified, and they waited as the seconds ticked by.
No one.
Sue's hopefulness quickly crumbled into frustration. “I can't believe it. He's lied to me again!”
"I'll get out and walk around the car, so he can see it's me," she suggested. "But I'll get back into the car immediately."
She jumped out of the Explorer and walked around the car. Besides the cars rushing past on Kendall Drive, an always busy thoroughfare, there was no movement. She raised her fists in the air and shouted, "Come out you coward! You… you bastard! I'm here, like I said I would be!" Her only answer was her own voice echoing against the building.
"Psstt. Get back in here!" Hernes said.
Sue marched over to the other cars. "Are you there? Where are you?"
Hernes jumped from the car in alarm, flashed a light into the parked cars, and hustled her back into safety.
&
nbsp; They waited another fifteen minutes, but no Johnson came to gloat. "He's out there," Sue said. "He's watching us!”
Sue got out again, ran to a large Dumpster, and climbed up to peer inside. But there was just construction debris, no human garbage inside. Being good police officers, Phipps and Hernes checked out several places where Johnson might be observing the scene, but found nothing.
"It could be a way to get you out of your house," Phipps said. "We'll go back with you and make sure it's safe."
Phipps's suspicions were unfounded. Johnson was not waiting for Sue at home in a closet or behind the shower curtain.
But while the police were still in her home, the phone rang.
"Why didn't you come to Dadeland?" Hal Johnson asked.
Sue motioned to Phipps and mouthed, It's him!
Phipps motioned her to keep him on the phone and pushed the record button.
"I was there!" Sue said. "You never showed up."
"You blew it, just like you did in Fort Pierce," Johnson said.
"I was there!" Sue cried. "You're a coward and didn't meet me!"
But Johnson had gotten his kicks for the night. "I'll call you tomorrow," he promised, and hung up.
Johnson had done it again—left Sue with a mind-numbing migraine that kept her in exhausted pain all the next day.
Phipps had had enough of this, and showed up with Miami detectives later in the afternoon. Sue struggled to the door to let him in. The agent was carrying a small case. "What did you bring?" she asked.
Phipps held up the case and smiled. "Newest technology," he said gleefully. "State-of-the-art cell phone tracer. Let's set her up, boys."
Now anybody can purchase a caller ID that shows cell phone numbers. But it was cutting-edge stuff at the time. They disconnected the old recorder and plugged in the new machine. Phipps called Sue's number and checked that his cell phone number was properly displayed. It was not the instantaneous process it is nowadays; it took a few minutes.
"It works!" Sue said.
"Now we just wait," Phipps replied. "This is going to be good."
Sue invited the officers to sit down for coffee. While everyone sipped from their cups, the telephone rang. A sound of cymbals that only she could hear reverberated in her head. Oh God, can they finally get him? she wondered.
Phipps motioned for her to draw out the conversation.
"Tell me what Amy looks like," she mumbled softly after Johnson greeted her.
"She has no lines on her abdomen," Johnson purred. This was exactly what he loved to talk about. "She has a great mouth. She really knows how to use it.”
"I'm her mother," Sue said. "I don't want to hear that."
"My client's put in a special order, he wants you and her together. Are you ready to give up everything?" Johnson asked, obviously reverting to his previous conversation, in which he had told Sue he would take her away.
"Yes," Sue replied. Johnson, of course, couldn't see her beatific smile. She was smiling because Phipps was giving her the high sign.
Johnson's number had popped up on the display.
Even though they had the number in hand, there would be no midnight bust, as the number itself meant little before they could find out who it belonged to. And finding the owner would prove more difficult than they thought. Calvar brought the information to Assistant State Attorney, Andy Hague, who filed a subpoena against Bell South Mobility to issue the identity of the phone.
Hague was a compact, athletically built former diver, with square shoulders and the tenacious personality of a pit bull. He had successfully prosecuted everything from Colombian hit men to a gang of murderers who made international news for preying on tourists who they followed from rental car lots. He had attended high school in Coconut Grove and had mutual friends with Sue Billig, but hadn't known the extent of everything she'd been through.
"When I heard about the agony that she had endured," Hague says, "I knew I had to find this guy if I could. My biggest motivation was that I thought this guy knew what happened to Amy."
Even with a subpoena in hand, Hague was frustrated. Records were decentralized, and he had to machete through a forest of bureaucratic inefficiency, fighting with the company's "office of compliance," only to find out the number was issued by AT&T Wireless. Hague worked after hours and on days off until he finally got the records he wanted. The number was one of about a dozen leased to an import/export company with an address on Miami's posh Brickell Avenue, a wide boulevard lined with office buildings along Biscayne Bay. In its heyday, South American drug lords had stashed more than $20 billion in surplus narcobucks in Brickell banks.
As soon as he had the information, Hague drove by the address. When he finally found the proper building, he wanted to scream.
It was a Mailboxes-R-Us.
It took weeks to subpoena the records of the mailbox drop, which was rented by a company called Yaro. With that information, Hague contacted the Florida Secretary of State's office to ascertain who the company officers were. With their names and Social Security numbers in hand, Hague had an Auto-Trac background check performed, only to find out that these were all false identities.
"By this time," Hague says, "I was really getting uncomfortable. No one could be so buried unless it was someone in law enforcement." This time he subpoenaed the actual records of phone calls made by the phone. Sure enough, Susan Billig's phone number was on the list.
"I had to be very cautious and not go in like a bull in a china shop," Hague says. "If it was part of some kind of undercover operation, I might blow somebody's cover and get someone killed."
He began calling numbers on the sheet. A few were beepers. He looked at one that had been called repeatedly after hours, and tried that one. It rang once and was picked up.
"U.S. Customs," a woman answered cordially.
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O n October 27, 1995, Hague persuaded Bonnie Tischler, the Customs Special Agent in Charge, to confide that the mailbox was a "drop" for an undercover operation, and that the cell phone in question was assigned to one of their agents. "But our phones have been cloned a number of times," Tischler informed the prosecutor, "Anybody could have initiated the calls."
Yeah, right, Hague thought. "My mind was racing in all directions. I really couldn't believe this could be a law enforcement officer." He told her they wanted to interview the agent immediately, then beeped Harold Phipps and told him the news. "I'll meet you at Customs!" He also informed Jack Calvar and Lieutenant Hernes, who said they would be there.
The Customs building was located against the Miami River just opposite downtown Miami. From their windows, they could watch every freighter that chugged up the waterway, many constructed with secret compartments filled with cocaine. It was only a ten-minute drive for Hague, so he arrived well before the other investigators, and was greeted by Tischler and two Customs Internal Affairs agents. "It was not a warm reception," Hague recalls.
The cell phone in question, he was told, was assigned to Henry Johnson Blair, a top supervisor in charge of undercover operations, and a highly decorated agent.
"The hair stood up on my neck, and I got tunnel vision," Hague says. "I was salivating."
Blair had been informed that the State Attorney's Office was coming to ask him some questions and would be waiting for them in a conference room. Hague was ushered down three hallways that required special clearance to access, and finally led into a well-furnished conference room with a large table. At the head sat a plump, gray-haired man with bushy gray eyebrows and hanging jowls, dressed in an off-the-rack business suit. Only forty-eight, he looked older, the way heavy drinkers often add years to their appearance. Still, he was so normal-looking he could easily have disappeared into a crowd of retired CPAs.
Hague introduced himself to Henry Johnson Blair, and gave him background on Billig's case and the telephone calls in question.
"I've never heard of her," Blair told Hague evenly. "You have to understand, our cell phones are cloned all the tim
e. Anybody could have made those calls."
When Phipps arrived with copies of the tapes, they were shown into another room, where they played them for one of Blair's agents, Walter Wilkowski.
Wilkowski, a brown-haired man with a thick New York accent, had worked under Blair since January of 1992, and obviously held him in high regard.
Phipps, dressed in his standard gray suit and corporate tie, looked stoic and a bit sad that this situation was playing out in this way. No lawman liked to bust another lawman. He pressed the play button of a cassette recorder. Out came the southern voice they had all come to know so well: "I am going to be your trainer. Do you still have your period?”
Hague felt bad for Wilkowski. "Tears welled up in his eyes. The content of the tapes was disgusting, and he obviously thought it was Blair."
Phipps turned off the tape and rose from the chair. "I guess we better confront him."
Calvar and Hernes arrived, then accompanied Hague, Phipps, and the Customs Internal Affairs agents to the back room, where Blair was waiting. Phipps leaned back in his chair, looking unassuming and harmless.
Following procedure, Phipps explained that they were investigating harassing calls made to Susan Billig which had been traced to the cell phone assigned to Henry Blair. The FBI agent leaned forward, asking, "Do you know anything about the calls?" Blair maintained that he did not.
"Are you aware that some of these conversations were taped?" Phipps asked, smacking the recorder down in front of the Customs agent.
Hague was focused on Blair, and remembers "his face became red and blotchy."
Phipps pushed the button. Hal Johnson's voice emanated from the speaker.
"I… I… made the calls," Blair admitted with effort.
Hague, Phipps, and the detectives looked at each other with surprise as the information registered.
Phipps continued in a steady voice, "At this time, I have to advise you of your rights . . ." He kept cards in his wallet, in English and Spanish, to read the Miranda rights. Blair obviously knew them by heart, nodding a feeble yes to each section. At the end he signed a Miranda waiver and said he would answer their questions.