Amy: My Search for Her Killer: Secrets and Suspects in the Unsolved Murder of Amy Mihaljevic

Amy: My Search for Her Killer: Secrets and Suspects in the Unsolved Murder of Amy Mihaljevic

“Poignant and wonderfully well-written.” — Richard North Patterson, New York Times bestselling author of Silent Witness “I fell in love with Amy Mihaljevic not long before her body was discovered lying facedown in an Ashland County wheat field. I fell for her the first time I saw that school photo TV stations flashed at the beginning of every newscast in the weeks following her kidnapping in the autumn of 1989—the photo with the side-saddle ponytail . . .” So begins this strange and compelling memoir in which a young journalist investigates the cold case that has haunted him since childhood. It’s one of Northeast Ohio’s most frustrating unsolved crimes. Ten-year-old Amy Mihaljevic (Muh-ha-luh-vick) disappeared from the comfortable Cleveland suburb of Bay Village. Thousands of volunteers, police officers, and FBI agents searched for the girl, who was tragically found dead a few months later. Her killer was never found. Fifteen years later, journalist James Renner picks up the leads. Filled with mysterious riddles, incredible coincidences, and a cast of odd but very real characters, his investigation quickly becomes a riveting journey in search of the truth. Reads more like a screenplay than your typical tell all crime story. It is compelling, riveting and hard to set down. The characters are flushed out and frighteningly honest . . . A well written, passionate narrative that has a place on your shelf, but more importantly a place in your thoughts. Sadly, it is necessary to remind ourselves bad people live around us, watch our children and are dangerous. Renner brings that to light all too well. -- Michael Dakota ― Cuyahoga Falls News Press Published On: 2006-12-17 Reads like a who-done-it, with lively and fast-paced narrative. -- Laura Kennelly ― Morning Journal Published On: 2006-12-17 Poignant and wonderfully well-written. ― Richard North Patterson, author of Silent Witness Published On: 2007-01-25 James Renner is a novelist, freelance journalist, and blogger. In his spare time, he hunts serial killers. His true crime stories have been published in the Best American Crime Reporting and Best Creative Nonfiction anthologies. His film adaptation of a Stephen King story was an official selection at the 2005 Montreal World Film Festival. A graduate of Kent State University, Renner lives in Akron, Ohio. Chapter One Taken I fell in love with Amy Mihaljevic not long before her body was discovered lying facedown in an Ashland County wheat field. I fell for her the first time I saw that school photo Northeast Ohio TV stations flashed at the beginning of every newscast in the weeks following her kidnapping in the autumn of 1989―the photo with the side-saddle ponytail. First love in the heart of an eleven-year-old boy is consuming. One look at that brown-eyed girl and I knew that, if she had gone to my school, she would have been the one I passed notes to behind Miss Kline’s back. But Amy didn’t go to my school. She went to Bay Middle, which was somewhere on another planet, far from the sub-suburban cow town where I lived with my father. I had a vague notion, though, that Bay Village was somewhere near my mother’s apartment in Rocky River. When I visited Mom every other weekend, I looked for Amy’s face in the crowds at Westgate Mall, hoping to find her wandering the aisles at Waldenbooks―as if she’d simply been lost there the whole time. I would be the one to lead her home. Throughout the last part of October and the whole of November 1989, local newscasts began their six o’clock coverage with updates on the investigation. It was my routine to come home from school and turn on the TV to see if there were any new developments, to see if she’d finally been found. I watched closely. I learned to pronounce that difficult last name―“Mah- hal -leh-vick.” I memorized the face of her abductor from the police-artist sketches and searched for him in crowds. With time, the reports became less frequent. A brief news segment in December covered her eleventh birthday party, which her family celebrated without her. Then the reports dropped off altogether. But I knew she was alive. She had to be. I was supposed to meet the girl in that photo. Maybe at a high-school football game five years in the future. Or in college. She would be found, and I would get to tell her that I never stopped looking for her. On Thursday, February 8, 1990, I came home and flipped on the television. I sat cross-legged in front of it, and when the tube finally warmed up, her face was on the screen. It was that fifth-grade class picture again. I turned the volume up and listened as my innocence died. Dead. Murdered . Dumped . The news anchors cut to aerial pictures of County Road 1181 in Ashland County. Men in dark trench coats milled about a wheat field, tiny black specs in a sea of brown. The image was strangely ethereal, like the final glimpse of earth seen by a detached soul. It was here, they said, that Amy’s body had been found. A jogger had sp