Amy Mihaljevic /// Part 1 /// 308 | Forensic Files

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round grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true crime [Music] Friday October 27th 1989 Bay Village
Ohio this should have been just a normal typical Friday the kids go off to school
the parents go to work when everyone gets home we can start our weekend but on this Friday not everyone will come
home ten year old Amy Mahalo Vic went to school she was in the fifth grade at Bay
Village middle school after school she walked with friends to the Bay Village Shopping Plaza amy was last seen that
day by two of her peers they would later report that they saw Amy Mahalo Vic standing outside of the baskin-robbins
ice cream shop amy was approached by a man in his early 30s standing about 5 foot 8 to 5 foot 10 inches tall with
dark hair and maybe a bald spot on the top of his head one witness said the man was wearing a
tan jacket and might have been wearing glasses but could not be sure the man walked right up to Amy leaned down and
he said something to her he placed his hand on Amy's back and led her away this man walked right up to her spoke to her
and then took her no one who saw the man with Amy knew who he was and to this day we don't know who
he is but we do know that he is a very very evil man I want to jump right into a very detailed timeline now there are
pretty good timelines out there regarding Amy's case and what went on the day she went missing the Lake Erie
murders documentary does a pretty good one but the best timeline I believe is found in James Renner's book Amy my
search for her killer there's a chapter in there called minute by minute and this chapter is by far the most detailed
account of the day that Amy was taken I'm not going to read the minute-by-minute chapter but most of the
following is ripped right from the pages of renters very good book before we get
into this timeline it's important to note a few things one Amy is in the fifth grade and her older brother Jason
is in the seventh grade they both attend Bay Village middle school now Bay Village is a very nice small town it's
what I would call like a it's got a suburb feel to it it's upper-middle class and at one time it was listed as
one of the safest cities probably in the nation now October 27th 1989 the day amy
was taken it was a particularly warm day that day in Bay Village a little after 6:00 a.m. amy woke up and dressed
herself she picked out green pants and a pale green sweatshirt with lavender trim
she slipped on her favorite earrings these are silhouettes of horse heads rendered in turquoise mounted on gold
studs on the way out the door she put on a white windbreaker she slipped on a pair of black riding boots
laced up the front she grabbed her blue denim book bag with red piping around her shoulders outside she climbed on to
her blue antique bike and met up with two friends Kristen and Katie from down the road the three rode together to Bay
Village middle school amy was seated at her desk and mrs. Stewart's classroom before the bell rang at 7:50 a.m. the
students attended an assembly before lunch that day at the assembly they listened to police officer marks Petzl
talk about safety and stranger danger at lunch amy ate spaghetti in the school cafeteria classes let out that day at
2:10 p.m. for the fifth graders normally Amy would get on her bike and ride home
but this day she left the bike behind instead asking a friend her name's Olivia if she could walk with
her the two are walking but this is not in the direction of Amy's home in fact Olivia mentions to Amy you never walked
this way - which Amy replies I'm meeting a friend or I'm meeting a family friend
which those comments are extremely different but it has been reported both ways when the two were approaching the
Bay Village Square Shopping Center Amy informed Olivia that the shopping center was her destination and then the two
parted ways there a classmate of Amy's named Haley then saw Amy walked toward a black van but then Amy stopped stepped
away and walked toward the Baskin Robbins store Amy did not go into the ice-cream shop
she stood outside swinging around the pole keeping her head down apparently lost in thought around 2:45 p.m.
a girl named Maddy was near the Baskin Robbins she saw Amy and she saw a well-dressed man in a beige or tan
jacket walk up to Amy he leaned forward said something to Amy he put his hand on her back and let Amy
away at that time Maddy assumed this was Amy's dad at 3 p.m. Amy's brother Jason arrived home now
this is one of those really sad lesser-known moments in this case Jason later says that his intentions after
school that day were to go to the shopping plaza he did not intend on going to the shopping plaza because he
knew that amy was there in fact he had no idea that she would be there he was going to go there just because so many
of the other kids would go there after school mm-hmm however on his way Jason spotted some boys that were older
than him and these boys often picked on Jason and some of the other kids so seeing these boys Jason decides to go
home instead now this is why I say this is a really sad moment and I know that I
can tell from listening to Jason talk about his sister's case and talk about the events of that day he holds a lot of
guilt regarding this decision because there's got to be a small part of him that wanders and thinks hey had I gone
to the shopping plaza that day and seen my little sister and said you know what are you doing here
this whole thing may have been prevented yeah if amy was hanging out with her brother maybe this perpetrator wouldn't
come up to Amy or if he did that Jason would have been able to identify this individual yeah and the thing to note
here that I think is very important there's a lot of kids coming from the school going to this shopping center
okay and the whoever this offender is when they approached Amy even though there are a lot of other people around a
lot of kids amy is by herself at this time right and as you said had the brother been standing right next to her
or interacting with her this person may have thought this is not the opportunity
that he was looking for want to be clear the other kids are there for a different
agenda they're there to be at the baskin-robbins or to be hanging out Amy is there which we know because she told
her friend she is there to meet somebody yeah and I want to be clear i don't think that
jason has should have any guilt regarding this decision that he made he made this decision based off of these
older boys being real jerks and you know a lot of us have been there where we've
been sidetracked or stepped away from something we wanted to do because people we don't enjoy being around or people
that could be harmful to ourselves are there so that brings us to about 3:00 p.m. on the timeline yeah Jason
arrives home from school and at this time he calls his mother Margaret she's at work
now it was common for both Amy and Jason to call her once they got home from school
Jason tells his mom that Amy is not at the house now this does raise some alarms for Margaret but just a few
minutes later after Jason called Amy then called Margaret Margaret assuming amy was calling from home at the time
Amy tells her mother that she stayed after school for choir auditions later Margaret said Amy seemed off as if she
was rushing the conversation and not her typically talkative self Margaret a little rattled by the whole situation
does decide to leave work a little early that day she packs up her things for the
weekend and leaves work Margaret arrives home pulling into their driveway on Winfred Drive sometime between 4:00 and
4:30 p.m. Jason is quick to point out to his mother that Amy still has not come home
the maternal instinct kicks in Margaret rushed to the middle school the first thing she notices is Amy's bike is still
in the bike rack Margaret tried to get into the school but no luck so she jumped in her car and drove straight to
the police station now we should also note the layout of Bay Village here at this time in 1989 the middle school is
just right down the street from the shopping center and pretty much right across the street from the shopping
center we have the police station so very quickly the she's able to arrive at the school notices the bike
get access to the school drives to the police station this stuff is all happening very quickly once she gets to
the police station amy's mom's gonna report her missing right away the officer that took the report this is
Barbara Schley Peggy this good officer did not waste time treating Amy as a runaway which was the standard protocol
at the time she believed Margaret and Margaret's fear and somehow she knew that this was the real deal so a call
went out to officers and to surrounding towns this at 5:58 p.m. the call included an incomplete description of
Amy but at this time we have officers in Bay Village and officers and surrounding
towns looking for the missing little girl mark Mahalo Vick unaware of the growing
storm at the home front he arrived home from work at 6:30 p.m. to find his family in a panic and Amy gone didn't he
work at a car dealership he worked for Buick at the time and was more involved than just a singular dealership okay
mark spent the rest of the evening scouring Bay Village with a friend he drove his car up and down every street
this between his house and Holly Hill farms which is important to the family because Holly Hill Farms is where Amy
would ride horses this was a big-time hobby of hers he also drove between their home and the school and Huntington
Park and he walked through ravines and the woods calling his daughter's name an 11:00 p.m. thanks to the efforts of Jean
Sabo she was the mother of one of Amy's closest friends and she was on the PTA at Amie school she took a picture that
she had of Amy her school picture to the local news channels and then they broadcast Amy's picture with her name
requesting help or information regarding the missing little girl amy was described as 5 foot 10 inches tall and
weighing around 90 pounds with shoulder-length dark blond hair we need to get to one very important aspect
about this case and information that we know that could help us find who took Amy now it was not
immediate it was not right away that the authorities learned that there was previous interaction between the
abductor and Amy maja Levesque what they do learn from talking to Amy's friends so some of her classmates
told police that Amy had said she was going to the shopping center for a gift for her mother with a stranger who
claimed to be a friend of the family now from the local newspaper here I'll read
this Amy was last seen alive by classmate in the afternoon of October 27th talking to a man outside the Bay
Village Square Shopping Center her classmates told police Amy had said she was going shopping for a gift for her
mother with a stranger who claimed to be a friend of the family a neighbor told police that Amy had
received a telephone call at her home before her disappearance from a man claiming to be a friend of Amy's mother
Margaret maja Levesque the neighbor said the man told Amy her mother had received
a job promotion and invited the girl on a secret shopping trip to get mrs. maja Levesque a present
mrs. Mahalo Vic has said she was not promoted at her work at the time Margaret maja Levesque is working at the
trading times this could have been a bit confusing for Amy okay there are there are things in this case where the
abductor I believe got lucky on some things the first being this Amy's mother did not receive a promotion but at some
point not too long before this abduction Margaret went from part-time to full-time now Amy was a very smart young
girl but I could see her assuming that that might be a promotion this adding to the credibility of the stranger that's
calling on Amy's behalf you know your mother recently received a promotion this would feel to Amy that maybe this
person is who he says he is he's a friend of my mother because he knew that she is now working
full-time yeah so that's a detail that maybe he just got lucky on or is it a detail that leads somebody to believe
that he actually knew the mother correct yeah that and that's the way that they're going to go with the
investigation at that time so when she's first missing they're talking to all of
her friends and people at the school and people at the shopping center as soon as
they find out this detail they being the authorities find out the detail about the phone call now they're really
looking into Margaret mahalo vaq anybody that she worked with anybody that she knew as well as mark Mahalo Vic same
thing people he worked with people that he knew and really anybody that knew the
family or people in the neighborhood this is a very interesting aspect to this case and I think that this is why
one of the reasons why this case has remained somewhat in the spotlight especially for Northeastern Ohio for so
many years because of their there are a lot of abductions and a lot of missing-persons cases where somebody
just simply vanishes and what I mean by that is there's no eyewitnesses there's not much of a story as to when they were
last seen or who they were seen with yeah there's not a story leading up to them going missing or a story afterwards
so here we have not only do we have eyewitnesses who saw a man with Amy at the shopping center now we have a
situation where he was unlucky because Amy didn't keep this a secret she did tell some of her friends hey I'm meeting
a friend and I've received these phone calls now there is some debate if it was one call or multiple calls or how many
calls it would have been personally I believe there was probably more than one call but one thing that leaves this case
and I think intrigues people about this case is the aspect of the phone call itself this is what you have when you
have a case with a little meat on the bone there's there's something to chew on here there's something to ponder this
could be an angle that could lead you to the right suspect now there were other calls made to other
girls this before Amy went missing yeah it's been reported a whole bunch of different ways that there were multiple
calls placed to girls that lived in North Olmsted Falls which is not terribly far from Bay Village but it's
not terribly close either through the years I've really paid attention to the reports about these phone calls because
I think personally I think that these calls are connected to Amy's case right now what I have seen as far as Bay
Village law enforcement and the FBI is concerned they have stated on the record that they believe two calls two calls to
two different girls are probably connected to Amy's situation keep in mind this is 1989 it was not uncommon
for people to crank call people back then it was not uncommon for perverts to pick up the phone and just randomly dial
somebody well also how many girls came forward afterwards saying oh I got a call but but never received a call
possibly but what we do have on record is the law enforcement telling us that out of all of these people that came
forward we believe that two of these are probably connected so not all of them but probably two of them to which the
reason why I think they would know that they were connected is I believe the caller probably said similar things to
these girls to what Amy told her friends was said to her that's your way to connect these two now in those two
situations luckily those two girls decided to hang up on this man and not meet him somewhere again this goes back
to where I think Amy got fooled she got tricked because this guy got lucky your mom received a promotion we know she
went from part-time to full-time I think this was perceived by Amy to be that promotion that he was talking about so
there were other calls made now many years later and I followed this case since 1989
so I'm always very intrigued when I find out some new information it wasn't until last year
and this was through bill Huffman and through James Renner that I learned a small detail about that phone call it
sounds to me like amy was pretty thorough and pretty detailed when she told these two friends about the phone
calls because she stated we know this little fact here this little detail here that the caller the man told Amy that we
have 40 or 45 dollars to spend on your mother's gift and by the way because you're helping me and you're helping us
out whatever is left over after we purchase the gift you can just keep or we'll buy something for you
right so that's an interesting little detail the problem with this case and the problem with the perception of this
case has always been that so many people immediately jump out of their chair and
go well why the hell when they just law enforcement just figure out who the caller was by the call log to the house
to Amy's house look for the number that doesn't fit or look for all the incoming
calls that were received leading up to her abduction and trace trace down those phone numbers to addresses into
individuals and interview those individuals the problem with that scenario is at the time police's hands
were a bit tied on this and getting you just couldn't get that type of information what we learn is basically
the the phone records that are kept by the phone companies at that time are very basic right very simple if it's a
long-distance call it is billed differently than if it's a local call so therefore the phone company keeps track
of all of the long-distance calls going in and out however they don't keep track
of local calls going in and out because they're not billed in that same manner there's no reason for them to keep that
record but what that does tell us is that the call or calls that Amy received came from the same area code where she
lived but an area is pretty large and probably larger back then covering a larger radius back then
than today yeah true so back then the chief of police for Bay Village was William Goro and I'm hoping I say his
name right but in the newspapers he stated that the two calls that they believe could be connected to Amy's case
took place in March and April of 1989 here's an interesting thing to ponder we know that the call to Amy was local so
if law enforcement firmly believed that these two calls out of all the tips they
received about other possible calls if these two calls were connected to Amy's case you damn well better believe that
they tried to track down that information the same way that they tried to track down the phone call information
regarding Amy's calls so what we can gather from that is that wherever these two calls that they believe were
connected to Amy's case were located the individuals that were received these calls we can figure out from there that
those must have been local calls as well because they were unable to track down the offender based off of that
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more information [Music] all right cheers mates let's get back today Amy Mahalo Vic case cheers to you
captain right right through the glass on the morning of February 8th 1990 Yanet Sebold
is out enjoying her daily early morning jog she was maybe a mile from her house jogging along County Road 1181 in
Ashland County this Spa is forty six point eight miles from the Bay Village Shopping Center where amy was last seen
that morning janet spotted something maybe 20 feet off the west side of the road mind you for those new to this case
this area is very rural these are large farmland properties whatever Janet thought it was that she was seeing it
was enough to grab her attention so much so that she stopped jogging and walked toward the object taking very slow steps
soon Janet got close enough to make out that she was looking at the motionless body of a human lying face down in the
mud Janet ran to the nearest home and pounded on the door and Patricia Kidd opened up the door so when patricia
opens up the door janet is on the front porch and she is crying uncontrollably what she says is I think I found a body
called the police why did it have to be me that found it yeah I couldn't imagine
how devastating that would be especially to find the body of a child yeah and I believe that Janet was aware of you know
judging by the size of what she was looking at she probably knew that it was a child they did call the police and the
police arrived it very quickly on the scene the very sad thing here too is Amy's case was so well known to the
public into the surrounding areas that even though this little area this farmland community that's 48 miles away
for where she was last seen the local authorities there were aware of a missing girl and actually they were
looking for a potential body in different locations of their County leading up to this so when they get this
call it's kind of one of those situations where they're like [ __ ] we might know without even being there what
we're actually responding to and everybody's looking for this little girl and we may have found her dead in our
County and they were able to confirm that probably very quickly on site but they confirmed it through dental records
later that day so it was confirmed that what everyone suspected they had found the body that belonged to Amy Mahalo
Vick does the autopsy give us any clues or any information it does give us some information I'm going to read from Emily
Thompson's book unsolved child murders she has a chapter in there on Amy mahalo Vick and it reads the pathologist had
even more disturbing news for Margaret and Mark Mahalo Vick not only did he confirm that Amy had been murdered but
she had been brutally stabbed in the neck three times and bludgeoned over the head with a heavy object it was a
violent death for a young child now the autopsy report was never released to the public but this author
Emily states that she was able in her research to obtain a copy from the Ashland County coroner's office and she
goes on to say that when Amy's body was found she was fully clothed except for her shoes her genitalia showed no signs
of trauma however a spot of blood was discovered in her underwear the stab wounds to the
neck had severed the carotid artery leading to her death there was also a post-mortem stab wound to her chest
disturbingly her nails were irregularly broken suggesting that she had attempted
to defend herself from the man who had so brutally killed her her body was in an advanced state of decomposition and
cating that she had been dead for several months so most likely she was killed closer to the abduction date than
the date that she was found yes that's the way that it would appear judging by those statements in Emily Thompson's
book I do want to further that information a little bit because James Renner has said that he was able to see
the autopsy report and I but I can't remember if he had to go through from memory later when he spoke about it or
if he was able to take notes because you've seen Campton you've seen zodiac remember when Robert gray-smith is is
trying to see some of the case file from one of the murders in the in the zodiac
murders yeah and they're like yeah we'll let you look at it but you got to go in
there with nothing you know we can't have you jotting this stuff down or making copies
or anything like that you get you can go in there and take a quick look at it and
you're gonna have to remember whatever you say you're like that's actually more common than people think yeah so Renner
has said publicly I believe it was on his website he stated that you know this was a big moment for him because it was
a big battle for him to win to see this autopsy report it was something he was trying to view for quite some time
before he was actually allowed to look at it after viewing it he did say you know there are things in there that I'm
just going to keep to myself and I have absolutely zero problem with that we have covered cases where they are open
cases and we've come across some information or seen some things and had to make the decision it's in the best
interest of the investigation of the open investigation that some of this information is not widely known yeah but
there's a public right but it still makes you curious when you hear something like that yeah actually with a
guy like James Renner that is so open about his investigations on cases well and especially this case yeah you know
it may be brutally honest we should say when it comes to Amy's case and I think that's
just because he like so many of the rest of us this is important case to to him personally and he likes so many of us
want to see this thing solved I want to go into some things here because there's
always been the question of was Amy sexually assaulted and from the statement that we just read you can't
really gather it doesn't sound like she was raped and and I'm sorry to use these
these terrible words and descriptions but this is where we are yeah there are indications that there was some form of
sexual assault one being that when they found her remember that she is fully clothed and I just used air quotes there
but the underwear that she was wearing when she was found was inside out now this could have just been happenstance
could have just been an accident or whatever but law enforcement believes that this is an indication that she may
have been redressed at some point and then we further that with what Emily Thompson says in her book about there
being blood inside the underwear Amy's blood well the injuries that occurred that led
to her death very likely would not have placed blood inside the underwear so it's another
indication that at some point during whatever assault occurred that she was in a state of undress or partially
undressed and further that thought I have never in all my years of following this case I've never heard an
investigator say anything other than the following we can't think of any other reason why somebody would have taken her
when when asked specifically was she sexually assaulted or raped they said we can't there there's things to indicate
that we can't prove it we can't say 100% but we believe some type of assault happened based off of the information we
can see but furthermore we can't find any other motivation for the abduction in the
first place and we've talked about it before it's sad that we live in a world that we we can walk down the street zero
motive if we don't have money on us or if somebody doesn't dislike us but females walk around with a motive on
them 24/7 with all these creepos out there and and so yeah I mean it doesn't make any sense why somebody would take
her again unless you go with the angle that this person was actually close to the family and it's some kind of revenge
for some reason but if they don't have any evidence that are pointing them into the direction of somebody that actually
knew the family or somebody that was mad at the family the mother or father then
what other motive would there be hmm and if you believe that the other two phone calls to the other girls are in
fact connected we can't say 100% right but if you believe those to be connected then that takes away from revenge as
well well just even if there's this one call that's connected mm-hmm you know it's difficult though to but because
there's no trauma in that area but you could have a situation where you know it's a stretch but you know there's
medical conditions like micropenises and things like that that might not actually
leave trauma well and the other thing that you have to wonder I mean it was a hundred days a hundred or so days after
the abduction that the bodies found so we have months of decomposition going on yeah what is lost through that time
remember we talked about when we watched the Adnan Syed special on HBO they titled one of them time is the killer
yeah again we have a situation here time is the killer in this case because it's
the killer of evidence that could have been on or around her body all this decomposition takes place again this is
another situation where I really feel that this offender is not like super sophisticated this
not a Hannibal Lecter type where he's just so much more brilliant than the lawn for law enforcement officers and
investigators working the case this is another situation where I believe that he again got lucky that I believe that
this body there there is reason to believe that the body was very likely there for quite some time and I mean in
the field and the thing that we also should point out here too is there has never been an investigator who has
visited that dump site that recovered her body that day that has said we believe she was killed here for
everybody has always said the amount of blood the amount of of blood from that attack she had to have been killed
elsewhere and then later transported to that location now Renner as well as some
others have stated that there was a sapling or some type of plant growth that had grown through one of the
articles of clothing that Amy was wearing they can't say for certain how long it would have taken that that plant
growth to patru dand go through her clothing but what they can say is that is an indication that she was in that
field for a long time before being discovered now what's your gut feeling like if you had to give it a percentage
of motive do you have a percentage of what you think it was you know the mode of being rape oh to me 100% I cannot I
agree I it's and even if I've proven if the guy's gives you in some kind of sexual assault it's rape that's what it
is the this idea you know whatever happened even if there wasn't penetration or whatever that it's it's it's rape that's
what it is and the amount of fear that she had to go through is I mean it's horrible to think of from Emily
Thompson's book the the broken fingernails Amy's broken fingernails pointing out
that she defended herself I've always believed that she fought back and I've always believed that the motivation for
the abduction was is sexual in nature I don't I don't where I have a break in the case in the
motive of the offender is I unable to determine or to decide if the killer if the abductor knew in advance that he
was going to kill the victim I've always kind of believed that the motivation was
sexual and that the killing may have happened because she fought back and that maybe that was not the intention of
the abductor now obviously we will never know that until this offender is apprehended and if they choose to tell
us what their motives and motivations were but that's always been my thought one hundred percent this was a sexually
motivated crime the other thing that comes into question here is not only how long was the body in the field but how
long was Amy kept alive if in fact the motivation for the abduction was sexual in nature and this offender went to all
of these high-risk activities to to abduct her it's thought that he would want to have spent some time with her so
one thing that we should point out based off of the autopsy information is that at some point Amy consumed what is I
believe it's listed as a soy-based protein product now that doesn't tell us exactly what she consumed obviously
right and again that might lead towards some of the decomposition that took place but there's been a lot of
speculation on this of what it could have been that she could have consumed the people that think that she may have
been killed very quickly after the abduction they point to the fact that she did have lunch at school that day
and according to renters book it was spaghetti there have been other people that have suggested that this type of
product that we found we find this to be very similar to what you might find on pepperoni pizza
and if that's the case then she consumed another meal after the abduction as far
as we know other people have pointed out that it could have been from something like Chinese food
so there there's a lot of thought there and a lot of speculation on how long she
was alive and captive but we have a pretty good idea of what she left school with like what she was wearing
very good very descriptive I mean from everything to her outfit to her jacket to her book bag some of the contents of
her book bag the type of shoes she was wearing she was wearing riding boots as well as the earrings that she was
wearing that is a huge factor in this case and I've actually always believed that this would be what would find and
hang the killer okay because some of these items that she left her home with that day the day she was taken some of
these items have never been they weren't recovered with her body and they've never been found since then so
let's go through that again real quick she was wearing a tutu simplify it she was wearing a green jogging outfit a
white nylon jacket and black ankle boots these are decorated boots with silver studs and she had on those turquoise
earrings these these earrings are shaped like a horse head she was also carrying a black leather
folder decorated with the buick three chevron logo with the words best-in-class embroidered on the front
so what we need to point out here where I said earlier she was found fully clothed than I and I said I'm using air
quotes there what was not found is her white nylon jacket her book bag the earrings the riding boots and the folder
the Buick folder those items were never found now what is interesting I think it was
in 1997 it was years years after the abduction in the murder of Amy maja Levesque
until they released that information you know they knew at the time these items are all missing the killer either kept
them on purpose or kept them on accident or they were discarded of elsewhere so the boots are missing and the earrings
are missing them boots earrings folder book bag and the nylon jacket so when they win the police and FBI present this
information to the public they come out and they say look these earrings were missing this folder was missing the
boots are missing what they purposely left out was the nylon jacket and the book bag right and it was it was bill
Huffman that asked the chief of police the current Chief of Police why did you not include that back in if it was 97
back in 97 when you release that information to the public and spatzle says that that's for good reason you
don't want to muddy the waters too much here because the nylon jacket that she was wearing is super common there's
thousands of them the book bag that is missing it's very again common there's thousands of them it's not unique it's
not specific to Amy what is unique and specific to Amy are these earrings these are like almost one-of-a-kind earrings
the boots they're riding boots anybody that rides horses they know that there's there are commonly made boots
mass-produced boots and then there are there are also some boots that are not common that are one-offs that are made
special these this would be a very uncommon item especially for a young girl you would expect most to be wearing
you know tennis shoes right but this makes me think that the person that took her knew that these items were
indicators and what I mean by that is maybe they worked at the place that she took riding lessons and so by taking
these items away maybe they would not know that she was wearing him that day but if she
was seen with that that maybe that would be a clue to lead them back to somebody
does that make sense yeah well yeah and the other thing too that was missing is that black leather folder decorated with
the Buick three chevron logo and the words best-in-class right this is embroidered this is not you know Trapper
Keeper this is not go to to Kroger or to CVS and pick up just any general folder
for my child to take to school right this is a very specific very unique folder this was actually something that
was made by Buick remember mark is employed by Buick at the time this is something he received at work there's
not a lot of them it's awfully fancy and he gives it to his daughter to use for school so the thing that the police
pointed out when they come out with this news conference is they say everyone out
there look at these items look at the earrings look at the riding boots look at the black folder any of these items
if you know someone then it has one two or all three of these items we want to talk to you because we want to talk to
them that was something that I personally thought at the time when they came out with that information I thought
it might not be long it might not be long until they find out who killed Amy but these items are obviously items that
are easily to discard but you also just wonder with the weird connection with this case if if this person was obsessed
with Amy on some level that you would I would assume that they would keep these items at least a few of them or yeah or
maybe even just one it's not terribly uncommon one for particularly serial killers and I don't know that we are
dealing with a serial killer here it could be some type of serial offender but it's not uncommon for them to keep
trophies or ways of remembering their victim or victims so that's one possibility the
that the killer is actually you know with with thought and effort hanging on to these items that is a possibility
and then like you said it's also a possibility that they transported the body and then just discarded of these
items simply by throwing them in the trash right and maybe they also thought that this would be a way to identify her
faster yeah and the thing too is see that I thought about that for a long time and question that myself I really
think that I don't see any effort made on behalf of the killer to slow down identifying the body of being that of a
Mima holodeck you know we don't have fingers removed the head removed we don't have the body being buried right
but we have a long period of decomposition so you wonder if she was somewhere else he let her sit there long
enough so the decomposition process is further along and then he discards of her right but it I mean it was no
trouble to identify it the body as being hers right right personally I think that
if there was if what they were worried about her being identified as Amy Mahalo vaq as the victim that he abducted if
that was truly what they were worried about I think that this individual would have buried her somewhere and
unfortunately well fortunately he did not because unfortunately had he done that there's a chance she may have never
been found and then that's a whole new set of problems and issues for the case the
other thing too that I should point out is and I think this is a big reason why not only do you know anybody that has
these items that we're missing from Amy not only does that mean the killer but could the killer have give given any of
these items away right you know when we talked about the Green River Hillar Gary Ridgway he he'd get these
victims he would take jewelry or other small items from them and he would sell them at his garage sales or give them to
co-workers or to his wife and say hey I bought you something or hey I found something for you barn we both believe
that these are sexually motivated it's a sexually motivated crime and we both believe that this perpetrator would not
stop trying to MIT to commit these sexual crimes to molest or rape young females so these could be gifts as part
of the grooming process mm-hmm to other victims yeah I don't know how many times
this offender has offended let's say but I don't believe this was his first attempt at doing so Amy was not his
first attempt at doing so and if in fact he did not intend to kill her and it went that way it went very wrong for him
there is a chance be a very very small chance in my opinion yeah then it was enough to scare him off of
this for good but I don't think that that's the situation I think this individual probably attempted to offend
again but making sure that they the murder wouldn't be the end result so that is what was not found but there was
an update about what was found at the place that she was left okay so this update took place June 23rd in 2016 I
know you and I spoke about this on Mike somewhere right did we do that on off-the-record I believe so okay so
let's go through this real quick on June 23rd 2016 Bay Village police chief mark
special Cuyahoga County prosecutor Tim McGinty and FBI agent Phil tours knee held a press conference in which they
presented never-before-seen evidence in hopes that it could refresh someone's memory the evidence was a handmade
curtain and blanket that had been discovered near Amy's body when the items were tested for DNA or
fingerprints canine hairs that matched Amy's dog Jake were found on both items indicating that his hair the dog's hair
had been transferred from Amy's clothing to the curtain and blanket when Amy was
found she had not been draped in either item leading investigators to believe that the curtain and blanket had most
likely come from the location where she was murdered it is theorized that she may have been wrapped in them to conceal
her body while her killer transported her to County Road 1181 identifying the curtain and blanket could lead
investigators to the scene where she was killed at the same press conference it was also revealed that the reward fund
for any information leading to the arrest of Amy's killer was now up to fifty thousand dollars now I think when
we spoke on record or off the record or wherever it was then I I expressed some anger and disappointment to the
investigators and the investigation of Amy's abduction and murder and I said that because I was I was frustrated at
the time I was happy to learn about the new information but I was frustrated to learn that 26 years later hey does
anybody know where this curtain came from or this blanket came from because we now we believe it's connected to her
murder yeah and the fact that they were custom made yes these are handmade items
to me they actually look like they were an item that served a purpose at one time and were repurposed repurposed
reconfigure ated in a way to serve a different purpose later and yes very likely if they found hairs
Amy's dog's hair on these items then they are connected to Amy they are connected to her murder I do want to
clear something up and this adds to the defense of law enforcement and not to my own defense but I'll a
screw you yeah screw you NIC I later learned that the reason why they waited so long to
release this information is that for many many many of those years I don't know how long but for a good majority of
that time they did not know that they were connected to AMI right it was found yes they were found
close to her she wasn't found wrapped up in these items it wasn't obvious that they were connected to her it was only
through finding those hairs on these items that they were in fact connected to her into her case so but but that
tells us something right because it tells us a lot but I want to I want to go through this just real quick before
you jump in with that idea later when I was reviewing some of my stuff that I've
collected over the years on Amy's case I found newspaper clippings where the investigators that responded to the call
about the body being found in the field you can see pictures of them in the newspaper where they are carrying trash
bags full of items so again this is not through a lack of effort on anyone's part in the investigation so I'm kind of
slapping myself here for expressing some anger toward that notion what they did was they collected just about any item
that they found within a half-mile radius of her body this would have been everything from people you know from
terrible worthless people that throw trash out their car windows to cigarette butts beer cans beer bottles anything
that was just flying around flapping in the wind blowing around in that field out there they collected all of those
items and the way that it works is back then keep in mind this is 89 this is 1990 they can only they were had to send
items off to the FBI for testing and the FBI of course they're not this is in its
infancy this kind of technology the FBI saying you can't send us a whole u-haul truckload full of
trash bags full of stuff that you found at the scene right we can't test all that stuff send us what you think is
connected first we'll test that we will come back to you with the results then later you can send us some more and you
can send us some more I actually I have heard this I obviously don't know if it's true or not but I believe that the
curtain and/or the blanket may have been found anywhere from a hundred feet to a
hundred yards away from her body so if if you just take the most simplest idea of investigating and deducing what items
are more likely to be connected to Amy then items that are less likely to be connected to her body you start with the
stuff that you find closest to her so you know I'm just kind of I wanted to throw that out there to admit that I was
wrong I admit that I was wrong there yeah I don't know she had to be transported somehow and and that could
have just been the murderer carrying her but but back to my point there's not much there would be no sign
of blood on these curtains correct it does not appear to be that way and they've never stated so if they did find
blood on them or anything they thought to be blood they probably would have these items would have been sent much
earlier right testing so what this can tell us is okay the what we actually know here 100% is Amy's body and/or
clothing came in contact with these two items at some point so she was either had either laid on them been wrapped in
them or concealed in them or all three at some point during the course in which she was held before the body is placed
in that field the thing is with there being no blood on it it would point more towards that these items while they may
have been in the general vicinity of where she was attacked and killed these items likely were not applied to
her body or clothing until the bleeding had stopped right to put it as you know plain as simple as we can yeah or and so
I think it's it's likely that these two items were used for one or two purposes one transporting the body and maybe
concealing the body in the field because keep in mind if she was out there for close to 100 days or about 100 days that
body was not spotted by anybody so these items are not really more any wonder because it is a pretty open field at
that point it makes me wonder if if people actually saw this when they're driving by and they just didn't stop
because it didn't look like anything recognizable at the time or or if she just wasn't out there that long well
that's something and that we can really dive into in the next part here but that
that is a good question that's something interesting to think of [Music] it's important to feel safe at home
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[Music] [Applause]

Source: https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-ivex2-b37dc5

Amy Mihaljevic /// Part 1 /// 308 Part 1 of 2 www.TrueCrimeGarage.com This week Nic and the Captain revisit one of Northeast Ohio’s coldest cases. Join us for an in-depth review and discussion of the abduction of 10 year old Amy Mihaljevic. Beer of the Week - Pink Drink by Hi-Wire Brewing Garage Grade - 3 & 3 Quarter Bottle Caps out of 5 Check out the Garage’s awesome sponsors and save BIG with our coupon codes! www.Stamps.com - use code GARAGE for a 4 week trial plus FREE postage and a digital scale www.SimpliSafe.com/GARAGE - Try Simplisafe today with FREE shipping and a 60 day risk free trial www.LightStream.com/TCG for a special low rate on a credit card consolidation loan

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Brief Summary

The episode details the abduction and murder of Amy Mahalo Vic, highlighting the investigation and emotional impact on her family.

Key points

The Disappearance of Amy Mahalo Vic. On October 27, 1989, ten-year-old Amy Mahalo Vic went missing after school. Witnesses reported seeing her with a man who led her away.
A Mother's Instinct. Margaret Mahalo Vic's maternal instincts kick in when she realizes Amy hasn't come home. She rushes to the school and then to the police station to report her missing.
The Phone Call. Details emerge about a mysterious phone call Amy received before her disappearance, claiming to be from a family friend.
Janet's Discovery. While jogging, Janet Sebold finds a motionless body in the mud, leading to a tragic revelation.
Autopsy Reveals Brutality. The autopsy confirms Amy was brutally murdered, raising questions about the crime's nature.
Investigator's Challenge. James Renner battles to access the autopsy report, revealing critical details about the case.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

We do know that he is a very, very evil man.

Describing the unknown abductor.

4:41WatchJun 4, 2019

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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