Only a few days before Halloween of 1989, a mysterious phone call arrived at the home of the Mihaljevic family in Bay Village, Ohio, just outside of Cleveland. Ten-year-old Amy Mihaljevic answered the phone, and presumably knew the man at the other end of the line. This unidentified individual told Amy to meet him at the Bay Ridge Shopping Center later that afternoon, as he wanted her to help him pick out a gift for her mother to celebrate her recent promotion at Trading Times magazine. Amy agreed and set out to keep the appointment.
Later witnesses would report that Amy was spotted on the afternoon of October 27th, talking calmly to a man in front of a barber shop at Bay Village Square. Two friends of Amy’s from school also claimed they had seen Amy walking with a man, and that nothing at all appeared amiss.
But something was, in fact, dreadfully amiss. Only moments after her friends saw her walking alongside this mystery man, Amy completely disappeared, and despite a massive search, FBI involvement, and a detailed composite sketch of her companion, Amy’s whereabouts would be unknown for more than three months.
On February 8th, 1990, her body was found by a jogger, lying face down in a field in Ruggles Township, not far off County Road 1181. Amy had been sexually assaulted and stabbed multiple times, and her killer appeared to have taken several items of clothing and jewelry from her body, including her boots and earrings, perhaps as souvenirs. It was also announced that tan-colored fibers from the interior of a General Motors vehicle manufactured between 1976 and 1978 were discovered on the girl’s remains.
Despite numerous leads and witness statements describing the man who had been seen with Amy before she disappeared, the investigation essentially spun its wheels until 2006, when law enforcement officers divulged that several other girls had claimed to have received similar phone calls as that preceding Amy’s kidnapping. Authorities speculated that the killer may have gotten the girls’ names and phone numbers from the visitor’s book at the Lake Erie Nature and Science Center, as all the targeted individuals had visited there shortly before Amy went missing.
Ten years later, in 2016, police officers held a press conference to inform the public that an olive green curtain that appeared to have been made out of a bedspread was likely linked to the case, and may have been used to wrap Amy’s body before it was dumped. The curtain held traces of dog hair that was similar to the hair from Amy’s dog. In 2019, there was a further lead in the form of three hairs recovered from the victim’s clothing that contained a partial DNA profile.
Then, in 2021, on the thirty-first anniversary of the crime, authorities announced that they were seriously investigating an unnamed sixty-four-year-old man as a possible suspect in the murder. This man was brought to the attention of law enforcement by his then-girlfriend, who told police that the individual in question had been uncharacteristically absent from their home at the time of Amy’s abduction. When the man was questioned by investigators, he failed a polygraph, and gave some suspicious statements that led officers to believe he knew a great deal more about the crime than he was letting on. Further, the man owned a car of the same make and model as the one seen by witnesses at the time of the crime, and the car contained fibers similar to the ones discovered on Amy’s remains. Additionally, two witnesses picked him out of a lineup, and it was discovered that not only was it likely that the man was acquainted with Amy’s mother, Margaret, but also that he had a niece in the same grade as Amy, and lived very near the Mihaljevic family.
The case remains open, and investigators are hopeful that it will soon be resolved.
Crime Immemorial 