Going West: True Crime - Amy Mihaljevic // 12

Episode Date: February 18, 2019

When a predator starts making phone calls to young girls across Northeast Ohio in 1989, an innocent life is lost. The town becomes ridden with fear while police search tirelessly to find her killer, leading them to a 30 year investigation. This is the story of Amy Mihaljevic. **GOING WEST DOES NOT OWN ANY OF THE NEWS CLIPS PRESENTED** WKYC News: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8tzofGiLfM Fox 8: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6edWjLBPHVg Crime Watch Daily: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdAB231EBq4  Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's going on through crime fans? I'm your host, Heath. And I'm your other host, Daphne. And you're listening to Going West. For everyone in the Going West gang, we just released our first ever t-shirt. It's up on our website, Go-In WestPodcast.com. So go check it out. We're going to have it up for two weeks for pre-order, so that end March 4th. So make sure to go check it out and get a T-shirt. Yeah, they're really awesome shirts, and we really hope you guys dig them. We'll also have some stickers available for you guys soon as well.

Today's case is definitely one of those that instills fear in parents across the world. You're listening to episode 12 of Going West. Let's get into it. She went missing in 1989 only to turn up dead the following year in a field. Amy Mahalovic, just 10, captivated the country on America's most wanted. Amy, if you can hear me, you do anything you can contact an officer of the law or cause a terrible. Ten-year-old Amy's life would take a disastrous turn just before Halloween, starting with what seemed to be an innocent phone call. On the line was a man claiming to be a co-worker of Amy's mom and he needed the girl's help, planning

their surprise. Like this afternoon, the coyote and the county corner confirmed that a body found by a jogger this morning on a remote Ashland County road is that of Amy Le Holloway. How important is it 25 years later for you to get an answer to this? Oh my goodness. Well, that would have sure put some closure to it. A quarter of a century later, the search continues to bring a measure of peace to mark, and all those still seeking justice. Amy Mahalovic was born on December 11, 1978 in the Midwest.

Three years later, her family moved to a white-picket fence-ridden neighborhood in beautiful, safe, and suburban Bay Village, Ohio. The Quaint Town sits along Lake Erie, which, for those of you who don't know, is actually the fourth largest lake in North America and settles along Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Michigan, and Canada. Amy grew up with her older brother, Jason,

and her parents Margaret and Mark. Mark worked at an auto dealership, and Margaret worked for a local newspaper, the Trading Times. Amy was passionate about horses, riding her bike and spending time with her best friends. She was an incredibly spirited and wonderful child who never got into trouble. In the fall of 1989, Amy was entering the 5th grade and her brother Jason was entering the 7th. Jason and Amy love to go to the local shopping plaza after school to get an ice cream cone

from bascon robins with their friends. A lot of the kids did this. They get some ice cream and kind of hang out outside of the shopping plaza with their friends before going home. October 27th, 1989 started out like any normal Friday for the mahalovek family. Mark and Margaret went to their jobs while Amy and Jason rode their bikes to school. That day, a police officer, Mark Spetzel, visited the school to discuss stranger danger with students. He kind of taught the kids how to stay safe in certain

situations and to never go off with someone you don't know. Just after 3pm, Jason rode his bike home. The weird thing was, when he got into the house, it was empty. The reason this is unusual is because Amy always got home before Jason. Fifth grade got out about an hour before seventh grade did. So every time Jason would come home from school, Amy would already be at the house hanging out or watching TV, but this day she wasn't. Now, Jason waited around a little bit for his sister to get home until it really started to bother him.

He figured that if she had stopped for ice cream or was hanging out with her friends, she would still have been home by then. He decided to call his mom to check in and see if she had heard from Amy. Margaret was shocked to hear the news. She hadn't heard anything about Amy going to a friends or anything of the sort, so as far as Margaret was concerned, Amy should have been home. Margaret told Jason that she was going to come home right away to figure it out, but as she's getting her things together to leave, her phone rings. She answers the phone and to her relief and surprise, it's Amy.

Margaret asked Amy if she was okay and where she was. Amy said she was fine and that she was home. She then said she would see her soon. Margaret said okay and hung up the phone. This call really gave Margaret a bad feeling, especially since she had just gotten off the phone with Jason and he hadn't seen her. And also it didn't really make sense to her why she even called just to say that she was home. So at this point she just left work anyway to go home. When Margaret got home, which was roughly 10 minutes later, Jason was the only one in the house. He said Amy still hadn't gotten home yet.

Margaret then jumped back into her car and sped over to the school. By this time it was around 5.30 pm, so over three hours after Amy had gotten out of class for the day. When Margaret arrived at the school, Amy's bike was still locked to the rack out front. She started really panicking at this point and rushed to the police station to report her missing. When she got back to the house, she called all of Amy's friends' parents and asked if Amy was there, but they all said no. Yeah, this is definitely the time to panic.

Her bike is still at school. She's not with any of her friends. She's not at the plaza. She's not at school. There's nobody at the school. And she's not at home. And the fact that she called saying she was at home is so strange.

And we're gonna get into the purpose of that call a little bit later. But one thing I wanted to note real quickly is that, you know, when I was in school, when I was younger, if I was, you know, going over to my friend's house or something, sometimes I'd do that and not tell my parents. But usually they would call my friend's parents and find out that I'm safe and I'm there. So the fact that Margaret is calling Amy's friend's parents, and she's nowhere to be found, that really raises a lot of red flags. parents and she's nowhere to be found. That really raises a lot of red flags. That night, Amy's dad Mark and some of his friends actually started walking around the area with

flashlights looking for her, but they didn't have any luck. When they returned to the house, Amy's photo was on the television, notifying the area of her disappearance. It had quickly come out that Amy was last seen at the Baskin Robbins the afternoon that she went missing, meaning she did in fact go there after school as she often did. The following day, police in Canaan scoured the area in search of Amy or any sign of her. It's important that they begin searching for her pretty quickly because, as we all know, the first few hours of a disappearance are the most crucial.

Interestingly enough, Mark Spetzel, the police officer who had been at Amy's school discussing stranger danger, was assigned to her case. And it's actually pretty ironic that Mark Spetzel got assigned to Amy's case because she was actually in his class when he was talking about stranger danger the day that she disappeared. The police then began questioning the family. Everyone in the family had the same story, and they were all quickly eliminated as having anything to do with Amy's disappearance. Suddenly a huge clue came in. One of the mahalviks neighbors took his stepdaughter to the police so she could tell them what

she told him. That she knew a secret no one else did. She and Amy were good friends, they even went to school together. At lunch, Amy had told her that a man had called the house, saying he worked with her mom, and that she was getting a promotion at work. The man asked Amy if she would help pick out a gift for her mom, and that he would get her a gift too. Amy told her friend that it was a secret, and no one else could know so her mom wouldn't find out. Amy's mom was not getting a promotion. The only thing that had recently changed at work for her was going from part time to full time, but that had happened months before. Suddenly

the whole case flipped upside down. Now they basically knew that she was abducted because the man who called was clearly lying to get Amy to secretly go somewhere with him. But who was this man and how did he get Amy's number and how did he know who she was? When school got out around 2pm that day, Amy walked with a friend to the shopping plaza, which was less than half a mile from Bay Middle School. Amy told them that she was meeting a friend, and when they got to the plaza, Amy went off on her own and eventually ended up waiting and standing on a bench, twirling around a pole.

As Amy stood there, two people witnessed what happened next. A tall man approached her, and they exchanged a friendly engagement before the man put his hand on her back and guided her through the parking lot. This didn't raise any alarms because she wasn't being dragged or forced. One of the witnesses even said that they thought it was her dad because they were acting very friendly towards each other, so it didn't appear that Amy wasn't any kind of danger. Actually, one of the local shop owners even vouched for that,

saying that if there had been a struggle or a screaming or any kind of arguing that she would have heard it and she didn't hear anything that afternoon. No one saw where they went because after Amy and the man began walking, the witnesses both looked away and continued what they were doing. The two witnesses described the man to be around 35 to 40 years of age with wavy brownish hair standing at about 5'7' to 5'11". One said that he was wearing glasses and the other said that they didn't remember him wearing any. No one

in the family recognized the composite sketch, so the police put it on TV. And because of the two different descriptions by the witnesses, they actually made a sketch with a man with glasses and a man without glasses. Yeah, you'll usually find the two composite sketches next to each other. So in case you see them and think it's two different men, it's just two versions of the same man. Also a really cool thing is that a pizza hut in the city actually put a copy of Amy's missing poster alongside the composite sketches on every box to get the word out.

And you're really starting to get the sense of like a community feel, you know, when a pizza hut puts a missing person's picture on every box that they deliver, you know, that's showing you that this community really cares. To kind of explain the phone call that Margaret received while she was at work, police figured Amy was with the abductor and that he let her use the phone to call her mom maybe to put her at ease. Obviously we don't know that for sure but that's kind of what the police began to assume. They were still completely stumped at who would have called Amy regarding her mom's non-existent promotion. My

opinion on this call is that the perpetrator may have told Amy not to give very much information about where she was at since he had told Amy that this was a surprise trip to get her mom a gift. So that could have, like you said, put Amy at ease. I definitely agree with that. My only thing that doesn't make sense is why she would tell her mom that she was home when she probably knew that Jason was home and that Jason would know she wasn't home and then also

For her to just call and say, oh, hey, mom. I'm home. See you soon Not that you know she I mean she could call her mom if she wants to but it just seems like a random Call with no purpose if you will and I think what in Amy's mind what she's thinking is Hey, I'm gonna go get this gift for my mom I'm gonna be back in time to grab my bike and and run home and maybe she just didn't think that Jason was gonna call her mom Yeah, maybe she just figured oh my mom will never know that I was gone Exactly exactly and I think that that was kind of the point is I'm doing this surprise thing for my mom And so that whoever the perpetrator is he put her in a position to

Set her up in an unfortunate way since police couldn't find any link to the unknown perpetrator and Margaret's job They began wondering if anyone else in the area had received this type of call to their surprise a girl in a neighboring town had received an identical phone call the summer before The girl was at home alone with her younger brother when the phone rang Roland and neighboring town had received an identical phone call the summer before. The girl was at home alone with her younger brother when the phone rang. He had been on the phone for a little bit and the girl began wondering who it was and why he was on the phone for so long. She took the phone from his hand and asked who was on the other line.

The man said he was an old friend of their moms and that he hadn't seen her in a while and he wanted to get her a present. He then asked the girl if she could come with him to help him pick something out. She hung up the phone and called her mom, who was very concerned because she didn't know who it could have been. Her mom contacted the police and they made a report. When police visited the girl's house to question her after Amy's disappearance, they noticed something interesting.

The girl had various photos and awards for writing horses. When they asked where she wrote horses, she said Holly Hills Farms. The weird part, Amy wrote horses at Holly Hills Farms too. Police started putting the pieces together that the man could potentially be a frequent visitor or even an employee at Holly Hills Farms. After all, the girl's personal information such as name, phone number, and address would be there. Soon after the discovery of this other phone call, two sisters from another neighboring town received a very similar call from a man saying he knew her mom and wanted to get her a present. He also asked them what they like to do, how old they were, and other personal questions.

At first, they thought it was just a nice guy who knew their mom, but they quickly became worried about the calls because every time their mom left the house, he would call. They also noticed that there was a car outside of the house every time a call came in from him. So while I was researching this case, I actually found this blog that James Renner runs and for those of you who don't know who James Renner is He's the host of a podcast called Philosophy of Crime and he's also an author. He wrote a book about the case of Maura Murray It's called True Crime addict actually just ordered it today. I can't wait to read it He's also an investigative journalist who grew up in Bay Village and he was actually Amy's age So he was around while this whole thing was happening. So he's very involved in this case.

Yeah, and he's been doing research on this case for many, many years. So definitely check out philosophy of crime. I highly recommend it. Yeah, and check out his books. So the blog that he had had a bunch of comments that I read and a few women actually said that they lived in the area at the time when they were children. And they received calls from a man saying that their mom was in the hospital. So while I was reading it, it was like two different women said that they had received this call. And they had called their family after receiving this call from this man and their moms were not in the hospital. So pretty weird. So we know that this killer is definitely a planner and he plans these abductions very well. He sets up these phone calls and he carries out his plan

if it works out in his favor. He's kind of an opportunist. He knows when these girls parents are not home so he knows the right time to call, you know, in his mind he's thinking this is the perfect plan. It's just weird to think that so many different little girls in the area received calls like this, like this is his way of trying to lure these girls. I mean, as far as we're concerned, it only worked on one girl, and that was Amy, but there were a lot of other children who were murdered around the general vicinity of Amy around these few years. Yeah, so if you guys get a chance to watch the ID Discovery show, the Lake Erie murders, they kind of explain that it was a very scary time for this part of the United States.

And maybe a scary time for all of the United States, there was a lot of abductions going on in the 80s, late 80s and early 90s, and that introduced the stranger danger phenomenon. There were a lot of potential suspects at this point that matched the composite sketch. People all around town were asking police to check out various men. One of the main persons of interest was a handyman who frequented the area and worked a lot throughout the neighborhood. He even had worked on a house just a few doors down from Amy two weeks prior to her disappearance and he looked pretty similar to the sketch. Turns out he had a pretty good alibi, one of the locals in the neighborhood who is this really nice family. He was actually at their house that afternoon discussing in a fair he was having, so he was no longer being looked into.

One month after Amy went missing, the police received a call from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. There was a girl on the other line. She said, my name is Amy Maholovic, and I'm in Farmington, Maine, and then hung up. They played the recording to Amy's family and they thought it sounded like her. Police then contacted law enforcement in Farmington, Maine to try and see if they had any leads on her being there, but nothing came up. The police conducted audio analysis on the recording and unfortunately came to the conclusion that it was not her voice. It's unclear what they used to compare her voice, maybe it was a home video, we're

not sure. They actually found that the call was placed by a girl who had made similar calls for other missing people in the past, despite not being any of them. I actually heard a recording of this, and I'm not sure if it's the real one, but the girl says, I'm Amy Mahalavik, and she pronounces it Mahalavik, even though everyone we've heard pronounces it Mahalavik. So I don't know if that was kind of a hint that it wasn't her, because when I heard that, I was like, that can't be her, she didn't even pronounce her last name right?

And this is really sad and heartbreaking, because Amy's parents believe that it's her on the recording, and they probably just really wanted to believe that it was her, even though it wasn't. Yeah, I mean, you have to think about it. This is a month later, and they have no idea where she is or what could have possibly happened to her. And they get this weird call.

And the interesting thing is, how did the person even pick Farmington Man? Like, where did that even come from? So it seemed like, oh, it's so random. Maybe this man took her far away. And so when I first heard that, I was like, whoa, like they found her. But it's just sad that it was a fake. And when they actually looked into the call a little bit further, they found out that the girl that had made the call was suffering from a mental illness. So she was actually not charged with making that call. Months had passed and they really

began to lose hope. Margaret did whatever she could to keep her daughter in the news and in the newspaper. So she was actually constantly appearing on TV and being the biggest advocate for her daughter's safe return. But things took a horrifying turn just three months after Amy went missing. On February 8th, 1990, a young woman was jogging along a remote road in New London, Ohio, surrounded by open fields in farmland. By the way, New London is about an hour outside of Bay Village. As the girl was jogging, she noticed something laying in the field. At first, she thought it was some random clothes that had gotten dropped

in the field, but she decided to take a closer look. As she approached, she realized that it was a body of a young girl. She called police, and when they got to the scene, they quickly realized that it was the body of Amy Mahalovic. The area was incredibly open. There were no houses or businesses in the area whatsoever. The road was long, so if a car had been approaching while Amy was being placed there, the killer would have a lot of warning. Her body had been in that field for 104 days.

She wasn't even very far off the road, just about 20 feet. No one saw her for 104 days. The news broke like crazy all across the globe. Everyone was talking about Amy Maholovic. And we'll get more into this after the break. Hi, my name is Nick. I'm Brandon. We are the hosts of the Tenish Podcast, where every week we cover a different top tenish list. We cover lists such as the highest-grossing films of all time, the best-selling musicians of all time, the...

The sexiest mogwais, the richest leprechauns, the... All this and more we cover on the Tenish Podcast. I had more. You can find us on all podcast players, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher. All you got to do is search for 1-0 ISH Podcast. You can also find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at TennisPod. And Brandon, what will we do if the listeners don't check out our podcast? We'll cut your fucking head off.

Don't make us cut your fucking head off. Listen to the Tennis Podcast. Bye. And welcome back. Reality really began to set in that there was a monster in their little town, and he had abducted and murdered a wonderful and bright 10-year-old girl. A corner's report concluded that Amy's cause of death was a stab wound to the side of the neck. She also had blunt force trauma to her head. They were

unable to determine whether or not she was sexually assaulted, however, her underwear was inside out when they found her. It had also been concluded that she was killed at a different location and then dumped at this spot just days after she went missing. A few hundred yards away from where Amy's body was found, they also found a green curtain. They took it in for testing to try and see if it was in any way connected to Amy's death. Initially, there was no concrete evidence. They were later able to determine that some of the hairs on the curtain were very similar to those of Amy's dog. So they felt that it was possible that Amy was wrapped in the curtain, and the dog hairs transferred to the

curtain that way. It's just strange why the curtain, and the dog hairs transferred to the curtain that way. It's just strange why the curtain would be a thousand feet away from her body if it was connected to her case. And with the killer that we know plans very well, would he take the risk of leaving his evidence behind? They kind of hope that putting the curtain on the news would help potentially receive a call from someone saying they recognized it, and maybe it would connect them to the killer,

but no such evidence ever came about. If you look at pictures of the curtain, it almost looks like it's blood stained and it's really dirty, but there was no blood found on it, so just in case you look at the picture and think that, because that's what I thought. The day Amy went missing, she was wearing horse-shaped earrings. They weren't found on her body, though. The police determined that this was likely because her attacker kept them as a momentum or trophy,

as a lot of killers do. The creepiest part is that the girl who originally came out saying that she had received a similar call, who also rode horses, was sexually assaulted when she was 14. She was, and still is, unaware of who her attacker was, however, he took a momentum from her too. The day that this girl was attacked, she too was wearing horse-head-shaped earrings, and her attacker took them. At this point, police began looking into Holly Hill's farms again, specifically at the caretaker. He had a similar look to the composite sketch and his alibi was pretty sketchy. He said he was at home for most of the day Amy went missing, but then there was some time that was unaccounted for. Police took a very interesting and direct approach to the specific suspect. They gave him truth serum.

Okay, I'm going to be totally honest. I didn't know truth serum was a real thing. I thought it was like a plan words, just like how they say that alcohol is truth serum. Like I didn't know that there was actually something called truth serum. I had actually heard about this being used in a couple different cases. And I'm not sure how often they use this tactic because I'm not positive if it's 100% effective,

but I did know that it does exist. But anyways, basically truth serum is something that's injected into the body that basically takes away a person's ability to lie because it slows down the brain. So you're supposedly not really able to think of a lie because your brain reacts differently to questions than it normally would. So not only did the truth serum not bring any suspicious answers, but police determined that he didn't possess enough intelligence to carry out the crime, so the caretaker was let go and they were back to square one.

Also, I was thinking that if she knew the caretaker, wouldn't she know that he didn't work with her mom? Yeah, I was thinking that too. And you'll see there's a couple other suspects that she knows. And I just feel like if this guy called her and said, I work with your mom. And then she saw him, she'd be like,

oh wait, I know you, you do this. You're from Holly Hills Farm. So she would still know him to trust him enough to go with him, but wouldn't she think, wait, you're not my mom's coworker, you're such and such. Yeah, exactly.

It just doesn't really add up. But it's actually pretty interesting because like we heard with the handyman and now the caretaker and then another suspect coming up, she knows them, so it just seems all that it would be someone that she knew. Exactly, and she may not have known the perpetrator but she must have seen him. This is going to be really hard to explain so bear with me but another thing I was thinking is that let's say it is a guy she knows. It is the caretaker. It is the handyman, whomever. And on the phone he says, I'm your mom's co-worker because he doesn't want to say who he is,

obviously. And then when they meet in person, let's say it is the caretaker and she says oh hey caretaker and he says hey Amy oh yeah by the way I also work with your mom just so he doesn't get caught in his lie so I'm thinking maybe that would have made that would have been the factor that made sense in him being someone she knew. Does that make sense? Yeah, I can't make sense. It's just a theory I have. Yeah, I'm picking up, just throwing down, I guess. It's really hard to explain. I can't explain it any better than that,

but whatever. It's possible that with someone she knew is all I'm saying. I get what you're saying. I get what you're saying. So he calls her, he says, Hey, I work with your mom. They meet in person She recognizes him and he goes, yeah, you know, I am the caretaker, but I also work with your mom Right, so that's just what I'm saying is like if it was someone in the community that she knew

It's possible that it could have been in fact because he could have said something like that Like oh, I also work with your mom. And it wouldn't set up any, you know, red flags that way if he explained it that way. And we're not exactly sure. I mean, obviously we know that it probably wasn't the caretaker. I'm just kind of going back to what we said a minute ago when we were like, oh, it could, how would it have been someone she knew? So that's the other side.

That's devil's advocate of maybe it is someone she knew. Yeah, definitely. And by the way, I actually don't believe that it was the caretaker or the handyman. My preferred suspect is coming up, but I just wanted to use that as an example. Amy's memorial service turnout was amazing. The entire town showed up.

Police actually put cameras inside the church to keep an eye out for any suspicious attendees. As a lot of us know, killers like to stay close to the investigation, and even sometimes help out. So they really thought that the killer would likely show up at our service and hide in plain sight. The Aimee Center was the place where people volunteered their time to produce flyers, take phone calls, and do anything that they could to help find Amy Maholovic.

Police really focused their attention there as well, thinking the killer could also show up as a volunteer. Police got a call about yet another death in the community, but this one was on purpose. A man who had been a volunteer at the Amy Center had killed himself by drinking a mixture of cola and dry gas. This man was heavily involved in Amy's case and even made himself acquainted with Amy's mom Margaret. This all really perked the police's ears.

Apparently the day Amy's body was found, he checked himself into a hospital voluntarily, likely upset about her discovery or somewhat emotionally involved at least. Unfortunately, his suicide note had nothing to do with Amy. It just noted that he had severe depression and trouble with relationships and work. This doesn't necessarily mean he wasn't involved in the case, but they couldn't find anything related to Amy in his home at all. Not too long after Amy's body is found, a woman comes forward and says that the day before Amy's body was located, she saw a hatchback car with the trunk open and a man standing in front of it around the spot where the body was discovered. This was obviously very suspicious because it's a remote road.

Why was this person pulled over there? Was this the killer returning to the site? Or was this the killer placing her there just the day before she was found? So as we had mentioned earlier, her body had been there for 104 days. I couldn't find anything to wear if they knew her body had been there for 104 days because of imprints on the soil or whatnot or if they had just assumed that because based on her body's decomposition that she had been dead for 104 days. So technically she could have died 104 days prior, but placed there at any time. So the man that had been seen there the night

before was maybe putting her there for the first time. If you look at an overhead image of where her body was found versus where the road is, it's so close and it's an open flat field. So I don't understand how nobody, for 104 days, saw her. You know, it just doesn't, it's just hard to believe that she was unseen for so long. Yeah, that totally makes sense. My only thing about that is that it's possible that the grass was tall enough to where it may have covered her body, but even so, there's planes that probably fly over that area, and they might have seen something in the field. Right, but even when I saw photos, it wasn't like it was crops or even plants or anything. It just looked flat. So when I saw the shot that the news took of the police surrounding her body

I was like that is so obvious see her body is so obvious because it's dark on top of like yellow land Right, but I had also seen some pictures where there were some Stocks like some green stocks that were it looked like they had been chopped and they looked like at one point They may have been thick. So I'm not going to speculate too much on it because I don't know, but I get what you're saying, that it's possible that she was put there 104 days after she went missing. I mean, we don't know if she was put there that night that the woman saw the man, or if she was put there beforehand. We just don't know.

Right, that was just my point that I think it's possible that she could have been placed there at any time because of the circumstances. So maybe the man was keeping her in his possession all that time and then decided to put her down. It just strange to me that it took so long. Yeah, and this is such a strange case because there's so much to speculate on. I think that this is one of those cases where a lot of the details are unclear and everybody's trying to figure out what happened, but there's no clear truth out of yet. Yeah, I hope I'm not upsetting anyone with my speculations or nobody thinks I'm ridiculously dumb, but I'm just

thinking of everything here. Yeah, and I mean, that's what's important to do in these type of cases because, you know, we're trying to help solve this case and as many people are, and I think that speculation is important because we want to cover every single angle, everything that could have happened. The woman that had witnessed the man at his car couldn't remember any details other than the fact that it was a man and the car was a hatchback. So police actually had her put under hypnosis to get her to relive the moment and remember certain things. She had determined that he was a tall, maybe

six foot, white male with dark hair, standing behind behind a dark colored hatchback. A composite drawing was created based on her description. The death of another young girl, Shana Howe, brought upon an interesting suspect in both her and Amy's case. The man was retired and resided in Bay Village, but also had a hunting trailer in oil city where Shana was murdered. He even looked like the composite sketch. When the police questioned him, he acted like he had no idea who Amy was and that he had nothing to do with her murder. But police realized something shocking.

They had interviewed him when Amy had initially gone missing. He claimed he hadn't seen her or anything that happened to her. Even weirder, this man had a housekeeper who found some peculiar things in his home. He had photo prints of the shopping plaza where Amy was last seen. The police decided to search his house and didn't actually find the photos, and when they asked the man about them, he stated he didn't know anything about them. Another weird find was that the man suddenly sold his hunting trailer, so police had to track it down.

They scoured the trailer and there was absolutely no forensic or incriminating evidence relating to Amy or Shana. So at this point he was no longer a suspect, and this happened a lot. In this case, there was a man who matched the composite, and there were some sketchy connections with them, but there was no real evidence at all so they would let them go. Over 10 years after Amy's death, a man named Richard Allen Fullbird, who was attending a church service, stood up and walked to the front of the pew before yelling that he was Satan and he killed Amy Maholovic. When police brought him in for questioning, they quickly figured out that he was not the

man that they were looking for. None of what he said was making any sense. There was nothing in his house that related to Amy and they found that he would skits a frenic and wasn't taking his medication. This was another dead end for the case. This next suspect to Heathenai at least is the most likely suspect. His name is Dean. We're not gonna say his last name, but a quick Google search will lead you to it if you're interested. So in 1990, when police had tried to make the connection between the girls who had received phone calls and Amy, they had all been to the Lake Erie Nature and Science Center. There was a log book at the center where kids entered their name, phone number, and address.

Now it's unclear why this book even existed and why this information was needed, but children did fill this out while visiting. For some reason, police never found this log book. So it made it really hard to actually prove that there was a link between the center and the phone calls, but it's still a really big potential clue. Dean was a middle school teacher and a volunteer at the Nature Center, even giving his students extra credit to go there. One thing he would do was breed mice. When he had too many mice at one time, he would actually bring them to the nature center and feed them to the snakes while the children watched. The strangest part, when police

questioned him, Dean denied ever knowing that the nature center existed, despite multiple people saying that he had been there frequently. He looked so incredibly similar to the composite at the time. He was living in New London, Ohio, and his house was just two miles away from where Amy's body was found. That's probably the craziest thing for me is that his house was two miles away from where her body was found, especially because he was a volunteer in Bay Village, so that connects him to Bay Village as well. Yeah, he's just so close to where her body was found, and him working at the

Nature Center just puts a really big spotlight on him as a suspect. James Renner did a lot of research into this man and deemed him his favorite suspect, and like we said, we agree. So in 2008, James actually went to the school that Dean used to work at, and the school said that Dean had been reported twice for having inappropriate relationships with his students. Apparently, Dean was living in Key West, Florida in 2008, so James actually flew to Florida and spent days driving around searching for him on the streets. He even asked people around town if they'd seen him and showed everybody the composite sketch. And this is

probably one of the craziest elements of this case. James Renner was driving around looking for Dean and had no luck finding him. He had 30 more minutes of searching that night before he had to drive back to Miami to catch his flight. So he's down to the final moments of his search. James Renner is stopped at a stop sign and suddenly Dean walks right in front of his car. It's hard to imagine what James was feeling in that moment. I mean, what are the odds, you know? James puts his car into park and gets out. He runs over to Dean and stops him before asking about Amy and the nature Center. Dean said, quote,

I never told the police that I wasn't there. I only told them that I don't remember being there. James said, what else don't you remember? And then Dean stated that he was done talking to him and continued walking. So at this point, James fully thought that he was going to return to Ohio and get Dean arrested, but law enforcement just didn't think it was enough to put him away. The sad part about this is that I don't even think that law enforcement really followed up with it. I mean, I don't think they actually really looked into Dean, because if that was the case, Amy's case may have been solved by now.

That's actually a really good point because there's all these other suspects that we're talking about and how their homes were searched and the whole lives were searched and it doesn't really seem like they did that with Dean. Exactly. And if you Google a picture of Dean, you can find it on the internet, he literally looks exactly like the composite sketch. I mean, to the T. So there's a few things that we know about Dean that make me very suspicious of him. First of all, he lives two miles away from where her body was found.

He volunteered at the nature center. He had sexual allegations brought against him by the school, and he moved to a different state after Amy was killed. To me, this is pretty obvious, or at least obvious enough to look into further. Margaret and Mark Maholovic obviously took the death of their daughter very hard and actually ended up divorcing, but they did have marriage problems beforehand, so it can't be fully blamed on Amy's death. Mark ended up getting remarried to a woman who had other children, giving Jason some siblings to grow up with again.

Eventually, Margaret moved out of Bay Village and into Cleveland, Ohio. She started abusing alcohol and she was just slowly deteriorating. The death of Amy had completely taken over her life. And I mean, no parent should have to bury their child, so her grief was completely understandable. In 1999, she moved to Las Vegas to be closer to her mom, and in late 2001, Margaret passed away. It's unclear if she committed suicide or died naturally, and her family actually doesn't even know the cause of her death. It's so heartbreaking to know what happened to Margaret after Amy's disappearance and and murder. You can tell that she was kind of slowly losing herself through this whole case and it's just heartbreaking for everybody that was involved in the

case her family and her friends. To this day no one has ever been arrested for the murder of Amy Maholovic. They have been over 15,000 leads and not one of them has stuck. This year is the 30th anniversary of her abduction and murder and Mark Spetzel still works to solve the case. All we can do is hope that this becomes a closed case sometime soon. If anyone knows anything, no matter how small the details, please call the Bay Village Police Department at 440-871-1234 or email bvpd at cityofbayvillage.com. Thank you so much everybody for listening to episode 12 of Going West. Yeah, thanks so much for listening today.

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