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Helen Got Murder Line actively investigates cold case murders in an effort to raise public awareness, invite witnesses to come forward and present evidence that could potentially be further investigated by law enforcement.

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On Friday, October twenty seventh, nineteen eighty nine, ten year old Amy Mahalovich rode her bike to her fifth grade class at Bay Middle School with her friend Kristen.

This was part of her usual routine.

It was at Chili Fall Day in Bay Village, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland.

Kristin said that on this day, Amy was excitedly talking about the yearbook picture retakes that were happening at school that morning.

The students had had their original pictures taken a few weeks earlier.

Amy had put her hair into a side ponytail, which was all the rage at the time, but apparently she wasn't happy with how it turned out.

It just didn't feel like her.

Police later checked out this information and found that a photographer from Ohio's School Pictures had come to the school on October fourth.

Amy's fifth grade class led out at two four pm that afternoon.

Kristin later told the FBI that after school, when she went to get her bike to ride home, she noticed that Amy's bike was still in the bike rack.

Amy had a brother named Jason, who was two years older in the seventh grade.

His class led out an hour later than Amy's, so Amy normally got home first.

Both kids were expected to call their mom, Margaret at work, every day when they arrived home, but on that Friday, Jason called Margaret at her job at The Trading Times, the local newspaper where she worked, to say he had made it home safely, but he said Amy still hadn't come home.

Margaret wasn't immediately worried because Amy had told her that there was a choir practice or some kind of a tryout that evening.

At three forty pm, Margaret got a call at work, it was Amy.

Amy told her mom that she was fine and the try out went well.

Margaret later told investigators she thought Amy was home when she made that call.

After work, Margaret drove home, which was about ten minutes away.

Amy still wasn't home.

Concerned, Margaret went to the school.

That's when she saw Amy's bike still in the rack and realized she hadn't ridden her bike home.

She went to the police station to report Amy missing.

Amy's fought Mark.

Who was away on a work trip, would point out later that to him, the mention of choir practice on a Friday afternoon or evening was kind of a red flag, since choir practice, to his knowledge, was not ever held on that night.

In their investigation, police discovered that after school let out, Amy walked about a quarter mile to a nearby mall, the Bay Square Shopping Center, with two girlfriends.

That's when they found out the choir practice story was covered for something else.

They found out that an unknown caller had contacted Amy at home and said they would meet her in the mall to buy a gift for her mother because her mother had been promoted.

But this wasn't true.

There was no promotion and no gift.

Amy's abductor kidnapped her from that mall.

Witnesses saw Amy talking to a man in the parking lot, and then she disappeared, and there was no sign of her for several months until on February eighth, nineteen ninety, nearly four months after the incident, a female jogger was running near a cornfield in Ruggles Township off County Road eleven eighty one, in a rural area of Ashland County.

That's when she found Amy's body.

I'm Catherine Townsend.

Over the past seven years of making my true crime podcast, Helen Gone, I've learned that there's no such thing as a small town where murder never happens.

I've received hundreds of messages from people all around the country asking for help with an unsolved murder that's affected them, their families, and their communities.

If you have a case she'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five.

That's six seven a seven four four six one four five, or you can send us a message on Instagram at Helen Gonepod.

This is Helen Gone Murder line.

Amy Mulholovic was born on December eleventh, nineteen seventy eight, in Little Rock, Arkansas.

She grew up with her mom, Margaret, her dad Mark, and her brother Jason, who was two years older than her.

The year after Amy was born, Mark was transferred to Jackson, Mississippi.

He had a long career with Bwick.

In nineteen eighty four, he was transferred again.

That's when the family moved and settled near Cleveland, Ohio.

That's where Amy grew up at six twenty eight Lynford Drive in Bay Village, Ohio.

Amy grew up riding her bike to school with her friends and doing all the normal things that kids did in the late eighties.

She loved the movie Dirty Dancy.

According to her friends, she knew every line.

She was also proud of her collection of My Little Pony figurines.

Amy was petite four foot ten inches and ninety pounds, and she was constantly on the move.

She participated in a lot of activities, including swimming, brownies, and especially horseback riding.

She loved to take lessons and train at the nearby stable Holly Hill Farms.

The horse she loved the most was named Razzle.

Amy's father, Mark, came home from his work trip.

He had been away for several days.

By the time he got home, he said, Margaret was hysterical.

She'd already called all of Amy's friends, and he immediately started searching the local area.

Margaret had already called the police and reported Amy missing.

By the next morning, the FBI was there and they were cooperating with local police.

The FBI interrogated everyone, including Amy's family, following standard protocol.

We got a chance to speak to Amy's older brother, Jason.

Jason is now forty nine years old.

He lives in Ohio.

He shared his experience in the aftermath of his sister's disappearance.

Well, I mean I thought it was Let's see, I was in seventh grade and she was in fifth, sorry getting old, so she would usually be home when I was on my way home, so she got home earlier than I did, and for whatever reason, on that Frienday, she wasn't And I called my mom asked what was going on, and she said, oh, yeah, she had some sort of trial for a choir something that should be back.

And it got later and later, and leader I called my mom and she started, who You're re get worried, and then the whole cascade of things of realizing that no, she really wasn't gone, and I don't know what else is?

Where else is say?

There were countless police and Atbie in and out of the house in all hours of the night and day, and especially the first couple of weeks when everything was focused on finding her and rescuing her.

The day after Amy disappeared on Saturday morning, one of Amy's neighbors, another girl who was in her class, told police that at lunch the day before, Amy had told her that she got a phone call from a man she didn't know.

The male caller called Amy at home.

He claimed he worked with Amy's mother.

He said he wanted help buying a present to celebrate her promotion, and he told Amy she could pick out a gift as well, but Amy told her friend the caller had emphasized this had to be their little secret.

Investigators believe that at the point when Amy made the call to her mom at three forty pm, Amy had already been abducted.

They believed her abductor was standing there with her, and that this call bought him crucial time to get further away.

Amy sounded fine on the call, so it's unclear whether or not Amy knew she was in potential danger at that time.

She may have been frightened, or she may have just thought this was all part of a secret gift plan.

Mark has said in multiple interviews that Amy knew not to talk to strangers.

But what if her kidnapper knew their family or convinced Amy that he did.

Investigators learned something else.

They found out several other young girls had received phone calls similar to the ones Amy got.

They wondered if Amy had been targeted specifically, or if the caller tried several girls before Amy was the one who took the bait.

Police talked to Amy's friends.

Two of her friends said they left class together.

They all walked together to the mall, which only took a few minutes.

They said that after they got to the mall, they split up.

Police talked to two witnesses who were eleven years old.

They said they were out in the parking lot at around three pm.

They saw Amy standing by the mall like she was waiting for somebody.

There was a bask In Robin's ice cream shop out there that a lot of the kids hung out at, and Apparently Amy was near the ice cream store, although they didn't see her go inside.

The witnesses saw a man put his hand on Amy's back and walk her out to the parking lot, but Amy didn't seem to be in any distress, so the two kids said they weren't really paying attention.

They didn't see where Amy went next.

They described the stranger with Amy that day as a clean cut white man, approximately in his thirties, around five foot seven to five foot eleven inches tall, with a bald spot and dark, possibly gray hair.

Detectives put together a composite sketch of the man the witnesses saw.

Now apparently there were some discrepancies between their descriptions.

One of them said the guy Amy was talking to had glasses, the other said he didn't.

And they interviewed many people, but they never found the man in the sketch.

It also probably didn't help that the composite sketch literally looked like your average white man on the street.

It kind of looked like it could be anyone.

Amy's eleventh birthday came and went with her family nowhere closer to finding answers.

Once Amy's body was found in February, of nineteen ninety, around twenty feet from the road.

She was identified very quickly from dental records and fingerprints.

According to the autopsy report, Amy had blunt forced trauma to the back of her head, but the actual.

Cause of death with stab wounds to the neck.

The autopsy found Amy's body had been in that field for a considerable period of time, probably the entire three months.

Investigators believed that Amy was dumped there either on the day she went missing or shortly afterwards.

Their best guess is from a few hours to a few days after her abduction.

Of course, Amy's body was very decomposed.

She was dressed, but her sweatpants were inside out.

This made investigators belief it was likely that she was sexually assaulted, but unfortunately, her body had been out in the elements for way too long for some kinds of sexual assault testing to be effective, so they didn't know for sure.

There were signs that Amy may have been kept alive for at least a few hours after her abduction, although it's not conclusive proof.

The coroner's report found substances in her stomach.

They were able to conclude that Amy's last meal was something soy based, possibly in art official chicken product or Chinese food.

I wonder could she have gotten the food from the mall food court or could her killer have gotten it.

Could they have kept her somewhere else alive for a period of time, or maybe bought takeout food and brought it to her.

There was no way to know for sure.

Several hundred yards away from Amy's body, investigators found a curtain and a blanket that were sent in for forensic testing.

The forensic testing team.

Found yellow gold fibers on Amy's body.

There were also some things that were missing.

Her black studded boots that she wore for horse riding were missing, and investigators never found the other items that Amy had been carrying that day, including her denim backpack, her black binder with Bwick Best in Class written on it, and some very unique turquoise earrings that she was wearing.

They were shaped like little horseheads.

Police considered the possibility that Amy's killer had taken these items and either ditched them or kept them as a souvenir.

Police were trying to figure out the caller's origins.

They were also investigating every possible connection to Amy or Margaret, since Margaret was mentioned in the call trading time said Margaret had not gotten a promotion.

The only thing that had happened recently with her work schedule was that she had gone from part time to full time.

Police also explored connections with Holly Hill Farms, where Amy rode horses.

And spent a lot of time.

One of the young women who got a call similar to the one Amy got months before she disappeared, reported the incident to police.

The FBI came to her house, and they found out this girl, like Amy, was a regular at holly Hill Farms.

There was a documentary called The Lake Erie Murders on Investigation Discovery, and there were three episodes in that series about Amy's case.

They interviewed someone else, a woman who was ten years old at the time Amy disappeared.

She told ID few weeks before Amy disappeared, she got a similar phone call to the one Amy got.

She said, someone identifying themselves as her mom's boss called her and mentioned them buying a secret gift.

Apparently, she asked her mother about it, and her mother kind of shut the whole thing down, so she never attempted to meet up with the caller, and that caller was apparently never found When detectives were investigating the girls who got calls mainly in the summer before Amy disappeared, they found that there was one place they all had in common.

They had all apparently been to the Lake Erie Nature and Science Center in Bay Village.

Police said that the location had a paper log book where visitors could write down their names and addresses.

So one theory they had was maybe someone involved with the center, a volunteer or an employee, or possibly just a visitor, got the girl's phone numbers from inside that logbook.

Police looked for the logbook, but it was gone and investigators were never able to find that logbook.

Over the years, police interviewed Amy's friends several times.

They ran down a lot of leads.

Of course, they asked about Amy's parents' relationships, about her parents' friends they're male friends, Amy's father and her friend's father's They found nothing conclusive.

There were a lot of names mentioned in connection with Amy's case over the years, a lot of false starts and red herrings.

The jogger who found Amy's body mentioned a weird guy who lived on her street, but there was no evidence that he was ever connected to Amy's case, and in my opinion that was part of the problem.

It seemed like everyone.

Knew a weird guy who lived on their street, which was a challenge for the police.

Another early suspect mentioned by the FBI profiler Robert Wrestler, was Billy Strunak, a man who had stalked a waitress in nineteen eighty three.

Police became interested in him as a potential suspect in Amy's case in nineteen eighty nine.

Apparently the reason why police were suspicious was Billy's criminal past and his behavior.

They say that Billy volunteered, that he inserted himself into the investigation, that he was trying to cozy up to Margaret after Amy's disappearance, and even offered to clean her house.

Thirteen days after Amy's body was found, Billy took his own life by drinking dry gas and soda.

Police said after his death they searched his residence.

They said they found zero evidence that would link him to Amy.

They said, on the contrary, his suicide note referred to problems at work and depression.

They said there was nothing there referring to Amy at all, so that lead turned into a dead end.

Police also continued to explore connections with Holly Hill Farms, especially once they found out one of the other girls who got one of these weird phone calls was also a regular at Hollyhill Farms.

One man the FBI talked to was a caretaker there, a man named Harold Bound.

He lived on the property.

His parents owned the stables, but apparently they were out of town when Amy went missing.

Harold was cooperative.

He allowed investigators to search his apartment and the whole farm.

Harold was described as a loaner and a Vietnam veteran.

He had a habit of striking up conversations with some of the girls who rode horses at the stable.

Some of the parents told police they thought Harold was a little bit weird and creepy.

Harold requested polygraph tests.

He actually asked police to test him with sodium pentathal aka truth serum, which, to be honest, is the first time I've ever heard of anyone being interrogated like that voluntarily.

We don't know what the results were, but in the end police did not pursue Harold as a suspect.

He was never arrested or charged with anything in connection with Amy's Disas parents, police were also contacted by two girls in North Olmsted, which was a.

Few miles from Bay Village.

They found out girls were getting calls there as well, and some of the girls who got called had unlisted phone numbers, So naturally, investigators wondered was this the same caller who called Amy and how did the caller get all of their numbers.

Over the years, police considered several suspects.

One was a man named Kenneth Ray Stanton.

He was a traveling salesman and serial child molester.

His mo was to find victims in upper middle class, largely white neighborhoods.

He would choose holmes where.

The victim, a young girl between the ages of seven and twelve, was home alone.

Kenneth appeared clean cut, normally he wore suits, and he was capable of being charming, at least charming enough to convince his victims to let them into the home.

Sometimes he posed as a police officer or food safety inspector.

Kenneth did looked like the composite sketch.

Investigators say they believe Kenneth was in Ohio at the time when Amy disappeared.

The FBI were hunting for him.

In December of nineteen eighty nine.

His abandoned car was found in Perrysburg, Ohio.

Kenneth's case was featured on America's Most Wanted, and minutes after the episode aired, multiple people called in to say that Kenneth was living in Moraine, Ohio with his wife.

That's about three hours from Bay Village, where Amy lived.

After the episode aired, Kenneth fled the area.

Police eventually tracked him down at a motel in rock Hill, South Carolina, where he had molested another young girl.

Kenneth pleaded guilty to the molestation charges and was sentenced to sixty years in prison.

Investigators have confirmed they did consider Kenneth mainly due to the possible proximity to Amy, but later stated they did not believe he was their suspect.

Kenneth died in prison on August twentieth, twenty eleven years past and police hit many dead ends.

Amy's family still had no answers and it was weighing on them.

Jason shared his thoughts on how hard he believed the police worked on the case.

They never let Amy's case rest a single day.

They've continuously worked on it the pride of DNA and even take tundles of hair way back in the eighties when nobody had heard of anything like that.

It's always very humbling to me to be have my sister remembered so long after it's actually happened.

It's been, at least for me, a very touching and humbling experience to go, hey, you know, the community at large, including most of America, really loved my sister.

And we're not I mean, it sounds terrible.

We're not in any special We're just we're just a couple of kids from Suburbia, a mobile family that went through the same thing everyone else does.

In twenty thirteen, a retired investigator named Phil Torsney announced that he would be coming out of retirement to work on Amy's case.

Phil assisted the FBI in catching the mobster Whitey Bulger.

Whitey was on the run for years and spent a lot of time on the FBI's ten most wanted list.

Phil told reporters he didn't believe that Amy's killer had come from her immediate area.

Instead, he believed the killer was more likely to have ties to Ashland County, to the area where Amy's body was found.

Phil described Amy's hometown as.

Quote two dents too close knit to be a likely place to commit.

Murder end quote.

In March of twenty fourteen, the FBI announced a twenty five thousand dollars reward for any information that would help lead to Amy's killer or killers.

In twenty sixteen, police announced they had done testing on the blanket and curtain that were found near Amy's body.

They found dog hares they said were similar to Amy's dog, So detectives believe it's very possible that the hairs on that curtain did belong to Amy's dog and that somehow they were transferred from her clothing to that curtain, meaning that the curtain that was found near the body was what Amy's killer had used to wrap her in and dump her body.

The curtain itself is unusual.

Police continue to release photos of that curtain in hopes that someone might recognize it.

They believed that it could be a crucial clue.

The curtain actually looks like something someone sewed at home.

It's a dark green beige color.

The tabs on the top are not equal distance apart.

Police want to find out where the curtain was before it was found near Amy.

If it was in the killer's house, They hope that it may have DNA evidence that can be tested.

At some point, James told us he thought the police had done a very thorough and good job.

He pointed out they followed a ton of leads and most importantly, had carefully collected all kinds of DNA from the crime scene, years before.

Some kinds of DNA testing were available.

The vials of hair and clothing were carefully sealed in the crime lab.

And since we hear about so many cases on this podcast where evidence is lost or destroyed, it's actually so refreshing to hear about a police department taking the proper steps to preserve evidence and actually having the foresight to preserve that evidence.

But even with the evidence preserved after the initial investigation, police were left for many years without a sole, viable suspect.

They did interview hundreds of people they followed up on tips and rumors, including a pedophile ring and an identity thief, but all of these leads were dropped or ruled out.

In twenty twenty one, right around the thirty first anniversary of Amy's remains being found, police stated they had another person of interest, a sixty four year old man whose former girlfriend had told.

Them she believed he had been involved in the killing.

According to news reports, she told police she suspected this man because he was not at home when Amy went missing.

He lived close to where Amy was kidnapped, and he reportedly had a niece who was in the same grade as Amy.

Police interviewed the man and it was reported that he made suspicious statements.

Law enforcement also revealed this man had been picked out by a witness out of a lineup in May of twenty twenty.

Police also said the man.

Drove a car at the time of Amy's abduction that was similar to the ones seen by witness on February eighth, nineteen ninety when Amy's body was found.

But since twenty twenty one, no more information has been released and there has been no arrest.

Jason said Amy's case had a massive impact on the family over the years.

He said his parents never really got over her abduction.

Margaret and Mark had already been having problems in their marriage before Amy's disappearance, but after she went missing, the marriage never recovered.

They divorced in nineteen ninety one.

Mark remarried a woman who's been married to for the past twenty five years, so James had a new stepbrother and stepmom.

Margaret moved away from the area, eventually ending up in Las Vegas.

She went on talk shows and continued to do media.

She was begging the public for any tips that could lead to her daughter's safe return.

Margaret died in her apartment in Las Vegas in two thousand and one.

According to an autopsy report, the cause of her death was complications from chronic alcoholism.

James says he's.

Humbled by how many people remember Amy's story and keep her memory alive and the massive impact she's had on the community.

Well, again, it's always very humbly when she remembered.

I mean this is not quite forty years ago, and still she's very much into the news and forefront and on people's minds.

And that's amazing to think that she had that much impact, and you know, the effort for her had that much impact as well.

I would certainly caution people to learn from some of those mistakes, like guard your children and make sure they're safe and know who they're talking to and why, and be that defense for your children.

I mean, my parents were just wasn't as forefront, you know, it wasn't I don't know what to say.

It wasn't like they didn't really can get happened to them, I guess at the point.

And of course the calls were happening in secret, so it wasn't like they were letting them happen.

And they were going on when nobody else was home, which is part of the reason why it was allowed to happen.

So just being you know, that hyper vigilance about keeping your kids faith and helping them to reach their full potential.

In September of twenty twenty five, Amy's case made news again.

Police released a new composite sketch of a new person of interest.

He was described as around thirty five years old, with fair skin, and as being someone who was standing near a blue hatchback vehicle on the day Amy's body was found.

Police stated to News five Cleveland that the witness had waited a year before coming forward with this information.

Apparently they didn't realize it could be important at the time.

We're going to be posting this composite.

Sketch, actually all of them, and also the missing items, the black studded boots, the black buick case with gold clasp, and the horse head shaped aquamarine earrings on Instagram at Ellen Gompot.

At the same time, police have said there was very little physical evidence in the case, but that may be changing with new technology.

In April twenty twenty five, it was reported that new DNA testing was being conducted on hair that had been found on a curtain and a blanket that Amy's body was dumped with.

The FBI was in the process of confirming that the hair was not Amy's, and if it's not a match to Amy, presumably they will try to find a match.

Scientists told nineteen News that DNA testing on evidence from the field was being conducted.

DNA labs in Deerfield Beach, Florida told nineteen News they found DNA from a man on Amy's sweatpants, the one she was found in, but sadly the sample was too small to test it to identify suspect.

But the DNA lab is said they hope that new technology coming out, possibly even by the end of the year, could change that.

Jason said that he thinks about Amy a lot now that his own children are teenagers, and he still has hope that whether it's a DNA breakthrough or someone recognizing the horse earrings in a drawer or some other item from a garage sale or some other random occurrence.

He he still has hope that Amy's killer could be caught.

I know that there's a hole that nothing can kill with Amy, and I would love to have seen what she would have become and moms you were becoming in her parenting style and whatnot.

I have two mostly grown children at this point.

Mack nineteen, he's had a job.

He's busy making his way in the world.

And Ethan is sixteen, almost seventeen, and he got his first job.

And again, Amy's lives, even the impacted their lives.

They never met her, but they certainly have a memory of her, if that makes sense, even keep alive in their generation of what happened.

And to be a beaconist to you know, keeping your children safe and not talking to strangers, and being aware of your surroundings as a young person, as a child, like hey, people are not always out there for your best interest.

For whatever reason, Amy became in many ways I think I don't want to say, is like American's Sweethearts.

It's uite afraid, but it became verson.

I can't ever say enough thank you for any of that because it means.

A lot for me.

I'm Catherine Townsend.

This is Helen Gone Murder Line.

Helen Gone Murder Line is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts.

It's written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced by Etily's Perez Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her research assistance and James Wheaton for legal review.

Noah camer mixed and scored this episode.

Our theme song is by Ben Salek.

Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and l.

C.

Crowley.

Listen to Helen Gone ad free by subscribing to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel on Apple Podcasts.

If you were interested in seeing documents and materials from the case, you can follow the show on Instagram at Helen Gonepod.

If you have a case she'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five.

That's six seven eight seven four four six one four five.

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