The Serial Killer's Apprentice

by James Renner

  Cleveland detectives are currently taking a close look at convicted serial rapist Nathan Ford, who admitted to attacking girls and women in the Cleveland area for years. His victims range in age from 13 to 55, though he has not been linked to any murders. Ford was sentenced to 138 years in prison in 2006. Police want to know if he ever crossed paths with Gina.

  Even leads from psychics are not dismissed. “The FBI usually does not work with psychics hand in hand. But certainly we’ve received some information from psychics on these cases. We take them. We follow up on every lead.”

  Felix DeJesus has heard from his share of psychics, too, but he stops listening when they say Gina must be dead. “It hurts,” he says. “Just to hear someone say your daughter is dead. We try to block it out. Both of these girls are still alive. I’m convinced of that. Parents would feel that, if they were dead. If they were on the other side, we would know. I know she’s not there. I don’t feel her there.”

  Beth believes Mandy is still alive out there, too. “Until I know something else, I’m going to continue to believe that,” she says. “But I’ll listen to the psychics. I’ll hear what they have to say.”

  Robin Dedeker claims she developed powers of second sight after her son committed suicide. She knows what it feels like to lose a child and the cases she works tend to be missing children. She wants to help reunite other families even if it is only with the body that remains. She wants to give closure even if it is not good news.

  Like many of her readings, her vision of Mandy is disturbing.

  “She’s showing me this car,” says Dedeker’s voice, streaming out of the rickety cassette player. “There were three men. These three men were offering to party with her, to help her get a celebration on for her birthday. She knew these three men. Two of them are 18 or older. One of them is only 16 at the time all this is happening. They did go to the local high school.

  “The 16-year-old is really struggling and having a hard time with the knowledge that he has to keep to himself. He’s not a bad person but he’s made some very bad choices. He has lots of nightmares about this night. The older two have dealt with what happened by blocking it out.

  “The location where Amanda went with these three young men is somewhat isolated. It’s a park. It’s near the water. I’m seeing a kind of parking area. It’s not real big. Off to one side is an overpass. There is water. Flowing water, a river. A few picnic tables. On the other side of the river I’m seeing big office buildings. This is Cleveland. I see a large tree.

  “I’m seeing a driver pull out a bottle from under his seat. It’s hard liquor. Whiskey. The driver takes a swig of it and passes it to Amanda. The driver is dark-skinned. He has black, short, curly hair. It’s more of a little light wave curl to it. He’s not a black man, he’s Hispanic. Mixed Hispanic and white. The one that’s sitting behind him is white and has sandy-brown hair. He’s slightly built. The 16-year-old is skinny with brown hair. He’s also white.

  “Everyone is getting drunk fast. Pretty soon, there’s some groping going on. The Hispanic man wants to have sex with Amanda.”

  The psychic goes on to describe, in graphic detail, how Mandy is taken from the vehicle, unconscious, slipping into shock from alcohol poisoning late in the night. The two older teens have sex with her. When they discover that she is not breathing they panic and fill her pockets with stones from the river bank, then roll her body into the Cuyahoga. There is an unspoken pledge that they will never tell anyone what happened.

  Mandy’s body, says Dedeker, is still in the river, caught in submerged tree branches.

  “I’m being pointed to a location along Riverbed Street,” Dedeker says. “Across the river is Sycamore Street. If you draw a line across Sycamore Street to the other side, that will give you an approximate location of where her body lies. It’s very close to that point. Her body is deep enough that no one could see it from the surface and this is not an area where people swim. It will take professional divers and sonar equipment to locate her remains.”

  The psychic’s lead will be categorized and added to the hundreds of pages of notes and interviews that have been gathered by FBI agents investigating the disappearance of Amanda Berry; boxes of leads, piled high inside a large room, next to boxes of tips related to Georgina DeJesus’s abduction. This is long-term storage. Sharing the same room are boxes filled with the names of suspects in the unsolved abduction and murder of Amy Mihaljevic.

  * * *

  The Missing Children’s Task Force is offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to the whereabouts of Amanda Berry and Georgina DeJesus or the murderer of Amy Mihaljevic. Anyone with information related to these cases should contact the Cleveland FBI at 216-522-1400, or the Cleveland Police Department at 216-621-1234.

  Left: Amanda “Mandy” Berry studied from home to avoid the dangers of an inner-city high school. Right: What Mandy might look like today. (www.missingkids.com/FBI)

  Left: Georgina “Gina” DeJesus would never have accepted a ride from a stranger. Right: What Gina might look like today. (FBI)

  A map of the area where Mandy and Gina disappeared.

  Gina’s route (red, or lighter, dotted line)

  1. Wilbur Wright Middle School

  2. Gina’s friend uses pay phone here

  3. Bloodhounds lose Gina’s scent here

  Amanda’s route (blue, or darker, dotted line)

  4. Burger King

  5. Her home; also her last known whereabouts

  Is it coincidence that they vanished so close to each other? Or is this section of town the hunting ground of one man? (Ron Kretsch)

  The family they left behind: Beth Serrano, Theresa Miller, Nancy Ruiz, and Felix DeJesus.

  Chapter 12

  Amy: Through the Looking Glass

  Still Searching for Amy Mihaljevic’s Killer

  Things would probably have turned out differently if I hadn’t picked “bring your daughter to work day” to talk to the Accountant.

  It was just one of those things. Another odd happenstance.

  “Can you point me towards [the Accountant]?” I asked the receptionist, seated in the lobby of the single-floor firm. I used his real name, of course. But, since he remains an uncharged suspect, I am hesitant to put his name in print. As with other suspects listed in this chapter, I have excluded their names for their own protection so that over-eager do-gooders cannot harass those who are innocent.

  “I don’t know his extension,” she said. “But his desk is right over here.” The middle-aged woman started walking down a short corridor leading to rows of cubicles.

  “I’ll follow you,” I said.

  As we rounded a corner, I noticed for the first time that the office was teaming with middle school–aged girls. “It’s ‘bring your daughter to work day,’ ” the receptionist informed me. Anger, and fear—fear for them—started to brew inside me. There was no time for me to check myself.

  “Here he is,” the receptionist said, motioning toward a man sitting in front of a computer inside a tiny cubicle. He was skinny. Somewhere in his 50s. His nose was misshapen from disease or an old wound. A young girl slid past him on her way to her mother’s office door.

  “Hello?” asked the Accountant.

  “I’m James Renner,” I said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  At that, he sprung to his feet. “Get this man out of here, right now,” he told the receptionist. But instead, she stood there, shocked.

  I asked him if it was true that police had questioned him about Amy Mihaljevic.

  “Don’t say that name again,” he warned.

  “What? Amy Mihaljevic?”

  He rushed at me, one hand up as if to punch me in the face. I backed away, quickly. I began to retreat to the door.

  “Why don’t you want to talk about Amy Mihaljevic?” I asked.

  “Stop saying that name!” he shouted and ran toward me.

  I headed for the door, a few strides ahead of him.

  “Call th
e cops,” he told the receptionist.

  “Yes,” I said. “Let’s call the cops.”

  He stopped, panting. I turned around at the door.

  “Leave,” he said.

  I obliged.

  * * *

  Amy was 10 when she disappeared from the idyllic West Side suburb of Bay Village. She was taken in front of a Baskin-Robbins ice cream store at the Bay Square shopping center, across the street from the police station, at about 2:30 p.m. on October 27, 1989. Her abductor was a well-dressed man with shaggy hair.

  Amy had told friends she was meeting a man after school that day, a man who said he worked with her mother. The man had called Amy at home when she was alone in the house after school, and he had told her that her mother had just received a promotion. He said he wanted to take her shopping to pick out a present for her mom. He asked her to keep it a secret.

  A jogger discovered Amy’s body in a field just off County Road 1181, in Ashland County, on the morning of February 8, 1990. She had been stabbed in the neck and hit on the head with a blunt instrument.

  We’ve never been told, definitively, if Amy had been sexually assaulted or how long her body had been in that field.

  No one has been charged with her murder.

  These clues were repeated over and over for years, on newscasts and in articles, until we could recite them by heart. But when I began investigating this crime in 2005, I was surprised at the amount of information about this case that had never been revealed to the public.

  My motivation for delving into the mystery was simple and strange—I had fallen in love with Amy when I was 11. I fell in love with that image of her with the sidesaddle ponytail, and vowed to find her killer one day. In 1989, I spent weekends at Westgate Mall, looking for her. When I became a journalist as an adult, I decided to try my best to track down her killer, or at least keep her name in the spotlight.

  In 2006, I wrote a book about my investigation, Amy: My Search for Her Killer. It introduces the lead detectives and FBI agents assigned to her case. It provides a minute-by-minute timeline of her last day. It offers a few new clues (the two eyewitnesses of the abduction never saw Amy get into a vehicle; gold fibers were found on Amy’s body; there was some soy substance found in her stomach). It also debunks a few urban legends that have infected this case over time—no, Amy’s family were not connected to the mob and they were never in witness protection.

  The book’s narrative ends as I peer into the window of a suspect’s garage, inside what was once a small apartment attached to the back of the building. On the dirty burnt-orange carpet, I spy a dark stain that could be mud, or blood. For a moment, I consider committing a little breaking and entering, to procure a small sample, but I decide to obey the law and let the detectives do their job.

  I was so certain it was him, the man I referred to in the book as “Mr. Harvey,” a pseudonym borrowed from Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones. William Gareau, the former police chief of Bay Village, told me that Mr. Harvey was on the top of his list, too. Mr. Harvey was the most interesting suspect I had discovered during the course of my research and I naively thought there were no other major suspects left to be found.

  Detective Lieutenant Mark Spaetzel, the lead detective assigned to Amy’s case, warned me there were “around 50 other people as compelling” as the suspects I had found. But I didn’t believe him.

  I was unprepared for the number of new leads people sent to me after the publication of the book. Leads that point to more interesting suspects than Mr. Harvey (although he remains on my short list). Leads that suggest the man who abducted Amy almost kidnapped another young girl from North Olmsted.

  As more information continued to pour in (to the tune of 10 unique e-mails a day, on average) I began to question everything I thought I knew about the case. I can empathize with Alice, who ventured through the Looking Glass one day and found a world reversed. This is a dark adventure leading into the shadows of society. And somewhere, lurking and watching (oh, always watching), is a Jabberwocky who knows my name.

  * * *

  Anyone who has spent significant time investigating the unsolved abduction and murder of Amy Mihaljevic is haunted by the 10-year-old girl. Some believe it is her ghost, a restless spirit whispering in their ears as they fall asleep, urging them onward, toward her killer. The skeptical detective may believe it is merely his own subconscious, demanding a solution. We complain about vivid nightmares. We feel her influence on our daily lives, in the shaping of mundane details and ordinary circumstance—that song on the radio that reminds us of a certain suspect, or the number 1181 (the number of the desolate road where her body was recovered) appearing on the license plate of a car that cuts us off on the highway. When we listen, especially on the anniversaries, we sometimes hear thoughts that are not our own.

  I had my doubts. Until the psychic showed me the Polaroid she took of the dump site on County Road 1181, that is. The photo with the man’s displaced face. Now, I don’t kid myself. It’s not my subconscious. Never was.

  The psychic asked me to keep her identity secret, so I’ll stick to first names. Sylvia called me at the newspaper one afternoon, shortly after the book was published. “I’m a seer,” she said, and I rolled my eyes.

  While researching Amy’s case, I had made a conscious effort to avoid psychics. Soothsayers flock to unsolved abductions involving children and they are rarely helpful. Either they offer false hope, by telling the parents that their kid is still alive somewhere, or they crush the parents’ spirits at a time they need to remain strong, by telling the details of their child’s violent end. Many psychics wanted to talk to me about their visions of Amy’s final moments. But I noticed that these so-called “psychics” who did track me down all had the same frantic intensity in their voices, an illogical excitement I’ve only ever heard in the voices of salesmen or cult leaders. And like salesmen and cult leaders, they usually stood to benefit financially if I did what they said, in their case, writing about their dreams in the paper.

  But Sylvia didn’t want publicity. She didn’t want me to use her name. And when she spoke, there was no edginess in her voice. Instead, there was patience.

  “I have something you should see,” she said. “A couple things, really. The first is a photo album that was given to me by Amy’s mother, Margaret. The second is a Polaroid that shows the face of Amy’s killer.”

  I told her I’d be right over.

  Amy’s mom was a fascinating woman. She was a member of Mensa. She collected antique dictionaries. She also suffered from lupus, which was exacerbated by her alcoholism. Those who knew her describe a doting mother who was in love with her little girl, but also stressed and preoccupied with the dissolution of her marriage in 1989. At the time of her kidnapping, Amy’s parents were in the process of separating. I would have liked to talk with Margaret about her daughter. But her disease took her life in 2001. She died in her apartment in Las Vegas, where she had moved to be closer to her mother. Luckily, Margaret had been a shutterbug. She documented the lives of her two children—Amy, and her older brother Jason—in a collection of photo albums, organized by year. Before moving to Vegas, she gave the most important album to Sylvia for safe keeping.

  Sylvia had driven to the Mihaljevic house shortly after Amy was taken and introduced herself to the family. Something about this particular psychic must have impressed Margaret, because Sylvia was the only one she ever used.

  The psychic’s home was decorated in what I would call Midwestern Grandma. Pictures of family propped on every exposed surface; cotton tablecloth in the dining room; brick-a-brack displayed for your viewing pleasure. We sat at the dining room table and she produced an ancient-looking, cloth-bound photo album. I opened it up and understood immediately why this specific album was the most important one Margaret had owned—inside was a lock of Amy’s hair.

  The series of thoughts that danced in my head in the seconds following this discovery may provide a better look into my own psyche than I
’m particularly comfortable with. My first thought was cloning. I’m a sci-fi nerd, after all. I know it’ll be possible in my lifetime to clone a human being. And what better human to clone than one whose original life was cut short, unfairly? Is that a frightening thought? Selfishly naïve and immature? Just a little too crazy? Yeah, okay. Probably, it is. But my next thought was even more dangerous. My next thought was simply: This is evidence. Evidence that could be planted in a suspect’s house.

  No, this photo album wasn’t just important. It was a ticking time bomb. I quickly realized that the only people who should ever have it in their possession is Amy’s family. It cannot be trusted to anyone else. I didn’t even trust myself to deliver it to Amy’s dad, so I contacted him and asked that he drive directly to Sylvia’s house to retrieve it ASAP. I’m happy to report he did just that.

  I set the album aside and asked to see the Polaroid.

  Sylvia handed me a standard Polaroid photograph. It showed the familiar rise of earth where Amy’s body was discovered in a wheat field off CR 1181. The picture was taken only a day or two after the body was recovered; the dirt had been scraped for evidence and a temporary memorial had been arranged by grieving community members who had left behind teddy bears and flowers.

  “I have a magnifying glass if you need it,” she said.

  “I don’t,” I answered.

  There it was. Plain as day. Near the center of the frame was a man’s face, in the shadows and highlights formed by the dirt. It was not something you needed to squint to see. It wasn’t something you needed to imagine into existence, like those 3-D puzzle pictures that were so popular at mall kiosks a couple of years ago. In the dirt was a man’s face, in very minute detail. The man was balding. He had a large nose. He looked vaguely like the composite sketch of Amy’s abductor, but older.