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Amy Mihajavic
16 Plays11 days ago
Nylene leads us through the heartbreaking abduction of Amy Mihajavic.
Enter the NIghtmare for show note, transcripts, sources and more!
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Nim and Nyleen's Nightmare Cottage'
00:00:25
Speaker
Welcome to Nim and Nyleen's Nightmare Cottage, where we explore history, mysteries, and other tales of the macabre. I'm Nim. And I'm Nyleen. Let the nightmare begin.
00:00:41
Speaker
Disturbing and mature content to follow. Enter the nightmare, if you dare.
Casual Chat and Recording Mishap
00:00:52
Speaker
That Nyleen said when she thought we weren't recording or that we had to cut because technically you can't put this in places where everyone can reach it.
00:01:08
Speaker
Welcome to the cottage. Done it again. All right. Welcome. Welcome to the cottage, everyone. How we how are we doing? How are we feeling today? I cannot believe we're this far like into May.
00:01:21
Speaker
I know. Like, I don't understand what happened to this month. Like, this month just disappeared. I don't know. I kind of measure everything by what's going on in my garden and and things like that. That's an interesting way, especially if, like, nature's behind. know what I mean? Yeah, for sure. Because everything is, the timing gets weird every year. yeah Yeah, mostly I just keep noticing what I haven't done. Yeah. I never started these seeds I wanted to start like two months ago.
00:01:48
Speaker
Those roses I dug up for you need to go in the ground now. Like it's just everything has just been sitting there. They're alive. I've been doing what I can with my garden, but I'm just...
Chemical Spill Crisis in Garden Grove
00:02:02
Speaker
Just trying to be just vibing. Just vibing. the way things Things are getting heavy. I mean, how do you did you did you hear about that thing that's happening right now actually going to out ourselves? But I mean, as we're recording, they were they were talking about there's like a chemical spill or something going on.
00:02:21
Speaker
OK, so I saw notifications pop up about that, but I didn't have a chance to click on it. So to fill me in with what's going on. Yeah. So this is in and I mean, again, this is early, early days of whatever this is, if it gets further. But it seems like it's pretty serious. It's Garden Grove in California, the Garden Grove area.
00:02:42
Speaker
They're actually saying this is the Orange County area and they're declaring a state of emergency. There's a chemical storage tank at the GKN Aerospace that's over there. There's a storage tank that has a bunch of different chemicals in it. The temperature suddenly started malfunctioning when apparently late last night.
00:03:02
Speaker
And so they've been trying to cool it down all night and day today. And they issued a warning to residents in the surrounding areas the I want to say last night they issued something you know for Orange County residents like, hey, everyone needs to leave. They were saying you know everyone needs to evacuate and not a lot of people were. As of you know earlier today, apparently they were like, hey, no, for real, everyone needs to evacuate. It looks like they don't know how they're going to cool it down.
00:03:33
Speaker
The options right now look like they either need to initiate the spill to allow a decompression of the chemicals, but that will release the chemicals into the air immediately. and the surrounding land in the middle of Orange County. Right. So that could be very disastrous. So if you're in that area, I hope you made it out. Yeah. And I hope everything's okay.
00:03:56
Speaker
and More to come on that. But yeah, they're saying that, let's see, about 50,000 people in six cities, Garden Grove, Stanton, Westminster, Cyprus, Buena Park, and Anaheim. Do they know? Which is where Disney is. Do do they know why it started to heat up? Was it a natural thing that happened? Was it tampered with? Do we have any idea? Right now, they're just saying it's a tank that's overheated. it had begun venting vapor, which was something that it would naturally do. it went to the next pro stage in the process, which was trying to cool it down.
00:04:30
Speaker
And that unfortunately is failing. So it's just right now it just looks like they're just trying to currently work on damage control. And, you know, I'm sure that'll be investigated more later. But what's crazy about this is this is a basically I think it's a liquid propylene. It's it's basically look liquid plastic. Plastic. Yeah. So when they release that, that's just going to aerosolize everywhere. That's going to go in the ground everywhere because it's the chemicals. And they're saying that if they don't release this, then it's going to explode. And if it explodes, it's also going to explode all the other chemicals that are in that area as well. So that could be disastrous for a huge area.
00:05:09
Speaker
So, yeah, rock and hard place right now. We'll see how this ends up playing out. I know that a lot of people live in that area. Isn't it slightly agriculture as well? Like, isn't that? I don't know. I don't know much about the area, to be completely honest with you. if you know something about the area. Nightmare Cottage at gmail.com.
00:05:36
Speaker
What nightmare did you bring me
The Abduction of Amy Mihaljevic
00:05:38
Speaker
today? Okay. Today we're going to talk about the case of Amy Mihilevic. How much, I hope that I'm pronouncing that correctly, how much do you know? Like, have you heard of this case? I know very little. I know that it's sad and it's a kid and that there was loose ends, but I don't, like, I feel like it's been some time. So I don't, I don't know.
00:05:59
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. Great. Yeah. Honestly, i hadn't really, i hadn't really heard of just this case specifically. one thing that I don't mention because I really wanted to focus on Amy and her case during this time period, this is around 1989 in October in Ohio.
00:06:18
Speaker
so over near the lake yurie area This was, you know, early 90s. This is people are still, you know, very free with their their kids and everyone goes out to play and they don't come back in till the lights are out and there's not a lot of parental supervision and we have latchkey kids and kids. Everyone feels very safe. Right. And so i want you to like come into this story, I guess, with that mindset of like the time period. Oh, yeah. And I mean, absolutely. I live that. Yeah. you know, my parents were working parents and, you know, we had situations and stuff. So we we had a lot of times where we, the kids, hang out out at the house without adults. But like, you know, there were rules, there were guidelines, there was ways to contact the parents. Yeah.
00:07:06
Speaker
It was. fine, right? It was legal then, right? Yeah. I don't want to get my mom in trouble. But like, that's just like, that's how it was. And it was okay. And we had, um we had contacts for adults yeah nearby. Like it was, we don't answer the door. We know that we know who our safe people are that we can answer the door to, which exactly as we are, you know, getting into Our times now, we're realizing that a lot of the people we thought were safe are not quite so safe.
00:07:31
Speaker
So we are going to travel back in time. It's Friday, October 1989 in Bay Village, Ohio. ninety eighty nine in bayi village ohio 13-year-old Jason Mihilevic had come home from school and noticed that his 10-year-old sister Amy was not home yet.
00:07:50
Speaker
The siblings would typically be home by three and would call their mother together and report that they had made it home from school because their mom was at work. So Jason went ahead, called his mother, and he reported that his sister Amy wasn't home yet.
00:08:05
Speaker
Margaret, Amy's mom, remembers that Amy mentioned something about trying out for an after school activity. And so she tells Jason, it's fine. Call me back in a bit if Amy still hasn't made it home, but she's probably just delayed.
00:08:20
Speaker
30 minutes later, Jason calls again and he reports Amy still hasn't made it home. Again, she's 10. It's 1989. Margaret decides that she's going to head home early to work out where Amy went. Right.
00:08:36
Speaker
But just as Margaret is packing up to leave, she gets a phone call. It's Amy. They talk briefly, and Margaret gets the impression that Amy is at home, but she notices that the conversation seems short and that Amy seemed less talkative than usual.
00:08:53
Speaker
They say goodbye, she hangs up. Call your mom and act like everything's okay. That's kind of what it feels like. Yeah. A quote from one Cleveland Magazine article written by Thomas Kelly.
00:09:07
Speaker
Margaret went back to her work with an inexplicable but nagging feelings that things still weren't right. She answered my questions with a word. Yes. Okay.
00:09:18
Speaker
Fine. That wasn't like her, says Margaret. She was a little chitter chatterbox. A short time later, for reasons known only to a mother, Margaret left work early and rushed home.
00:09:31
Speaker
She wasn't in the house half a minute when Jason said, Mom, she's still not here. Oh, I would die. i would, I, as a parent, like I could not imagine...
00:09:44
Speaker
i my heart sinks when my kid turns a corner, you know, and I'm like just a few steps behind. Right. But I read too much true crime. Yeah.
00:09:56
Speaker
Fiction. Crime fiction. Yes. Amy should have ridden her bike home from school, which was right down the street. So Margaret drives to the school and finds out there's no one outside. There's no cars in the lot.
00:10:08
Speaker
The school's locked. But there in the school's bike rack is Amy's very distinct aqua-colored bicycle with a white wicker basket. And there is no sign of Amy.
00:10:21
Speaker
I feel like this was one of the things that happened that hit the news that made my parents freak out. Yeah. Like the Amber Alert, not a whole. Yeah. And I was i was older at that point.
00:10:35
Speaker
I mean, I was i was very young here and I wasn't born yet. ah i was I was a kid. I was like eight years old. The Stranger Danger, like that's, I remember being taught Stranger Danger a lot in elementary school. Stranger Danger, yeah.
00:10:50
Speaker
And I feel like it's, this has to have been part of that conversation in my life. Yeah. The specific case. 100%. Yeah, I would imagine it would be. And I mean, yeah, Stranger Danger. It's so funny that you say that because they actually had an officer that was investigating Amy's case later.
00:11:11
Speaker
That came to the school the day Amy went missing and spoke to Amy's brother, Jason, and I believe Amy's class as well about stranger danger and, you know, how to avoid stranger danger and just, you know. And then it happens that day. yeah If it was a stranger, right? Right. Well, of course. So that's ah that's another thing you have to think of. After noticing that Amy's bicycle's at school, Amy's not there, Margaret drives straight to the police station and she reports everything.
00:11:40
Speaker
At this point, Amy has been missing for two hours. But local police take the report very seriously. Good. Kids don't go missing in Bay Village. This is a safe community where everyone knows everyone.
00:11:52
Speaker
The first notice of Amy's disappearance is released within three hours of her disappearance in surrounding areas. Good. There's a massive effort in place searching for Amy. A quote from Mark, Amy's father, on the town that was looking for Amy that night.
00:12:06
Speaker
They told me she was just missing. The police were there, and I went all over the house with them from top to bottom. Friends of the family soon joined him, and and we just wanted to do something, says Mark.
00:12:20
Speaker
We searched the ravine, the one that runs through the lake. We walked the whole thing, every inch, calling her name, Amy. amy While Mark helped volunteers and police search for Amy all over town, Margaret was calling everyone she could think of who might have some idea of where her Amy was.
00:12:36
Speaker
A friend, a parent, a store owner, anyone who had seen Amy leave school that day. By the next morning, the FBI are involved since this has been filed as an abduction. They are canvassing the area and going door to door speaking to everyone.
00:12:50
Speaker
And suddenly little reports start to trickle in Friends of Amy are letting slip that she had told them a secret. Amy had received a call one day from a man who had said that he was a co-worker of her mom's at the like office where she worked at and that her mom was up for a promotion.
00:13:11
Speaker
And this guy, he really wanted to make sure that they got a good present to give her mother. And and he needed her help. Oh, and of course, she would get a little something extra for her time as well.
00:13:23
Speaker
And Amy agrees to keep it a secret because the person told her it was a surprise. Right. um He called her at home. He he clearly did know her mother. and And at work, he knew her name. And he seemed to be familiar with the town and and everything else.
00:13:39
Speaker
He asked her to meet him in the Bay Village Square after school. This was a small little shopping center across the street from the town's police department. Oh, my God. I know.
00:13:49
Speaker
The absolute audacity across the street from the police department. Spoilers. One of the reports I read mentioned, you know, one of the the investigators, he just he was so frustrated with the fact that he was like, I could have just looked out my window. i might have looked out my window and he was just standing there. He could have just been standing there taunting us like. and And they wouldn't know. Right.
00:14:18
Speaker
God, the guilt. Yeah. Amy was to meet the man. at the shopping center and they would go to a larger shopping center outside of town for a better selection.
00:14:30
Speaker
She told her parents she was staying after school for choir tryouts, but left her bike at school and walked to the Bay Village Square. A few of Amy's classmates recall seeing her waiting for somebody.
00:14:43
Speaker
She was wearing a lavender shirt with green sweatpants and ankle-high black boots. How old is she? 10. She's 10? Yes. God. Yes. um Soon after, a man had approached her and they spoke for a moment.
00:14:59
Speaker
The man put his hand on her shoulder and walked her through the parking lot and away from the square. It's assumed that the car was parked outside the square. This is where things kind of started to get rough.
00:15:13
Speaker
There had been two different sets of sketches that were completed after her final sighting came to light. The physical descriptions were similar, but not a match. Both depicted a white 30-year-old man between five eight and five ten with dark hair and a bald spot near the back of his head.
00:15:29
Speaker
One of the children's remembers the man wearing glasses while the other does not. The parents and close family were quickly eliminated as suspects and the case grew cold.
00:15:42
Speaker
I mean, that description is so many people. Yes, that is like, yeah. And and I mean, not not anything to, you know, shame the the people who did, you know, come forward. Like, that's great, but it is unfortunate.
00:15:56
Speaker
And something that I lightly touch on. in today's story there were so many i feel like there were four sketches they they say there were only two official sketches but there were multiple sketches that were just like refined or like oh we actually think maybe he looked like this or like a different artist interpretation of the transcription yeah or um you know different witnesses that might have come forward for other things yeah
00:16:29
Speaker
On February 8th of 1990, a woman was jogging alongside County Road 1181, 50 miles from Amy's home in Ashland County.
Investigation into Amy's Murder
00:16:38
Speaker
She saw a small figure dressed in a pale green sweatsuit lying in the tall grass.
00:16:46
Speaker
It was quickly apparent that she should go get help. She ran a quarter mile to the nearest house and got them to call 911 and
00:16:56
Speaker
She was too afraid to look because, you know, everyone knew that Amy had been missing and what she had been wearing. Right. So they, you know, from the description, they immediately knew this had to be her.
00:17:09
Speaker
So the FBI were also called into the scene and it was immediately locked down. It was determined that the area where she was found was not where she was murdered, but where she was left. Her clothes had been put back on after her death.
00:17:21
Speaker
Take that for what you will. County coroner who examined Amy's body confirmed that Amy had likely been deceased since a day or two after she had gone missing.
00:17:33
Speaker
She had eaten at least one or more meals after she had been taken and her death had been abrupt, so hopefully she didn't feel it. She showed signs of having been struck forcefully in the head and then was stabbed twice in the neck. Oh my God. She all was also missing three items that are believed to have been kept by whoever did this.
00:17:54
Speaker
A single gold metal stud earring with a turquoise horse's head on it. A pair of black leather ankle boots with vertical rows of silver studs.
00:18:06
Speaker
And a black leather folder that had a brass clasp of the Buick 3 Chevron logo and best in class on it. It was given to her by her father who had just won that as a great job reward. And he had given it to his daughter to use. and yeah So that those three things were not with her and when she was found, but were definitely with her when she was taken.
00:18:34
Speaker
Over the past 30 years, there have been many theories and possible suspects to this case. yeah And we're just going to get into a few, the really big ones. The first suspect, one of the volunteers that was heavily involved in organizing searches and helping to look for Amy,
00:18:51
Speaker
It's always the volunteers. Right. Because they say they come back to the scene of the crime. They they want to keep being close to it. but They want to feel involved. Well, and it also, you know, they feel it throws suspicion. Right. Because, you know, why would I be helping find myself? for Yes, exactly. So he looks like the sketches, which is already odd.
00:19:11
Speaker
He introduces himself to Margaret, Amy's mom, at the call center and hugs her for entirely too long and strong. They didn't really know each other. he was, i think, from a town over.
00:19:23
Speaker
Some of the people close to the family at the time reported that this guy just kept getting in the way and being a bit too familiar. He had offered to come over to Margaret's house to help with any housework she might need.
00:19:34
Speaker
He would also mail her things. He had sent her a sympathy letter with a pin that Margaret could wear. and he told her that he had a matching one for Amy when she comes home. But there isn't really anything concrete for the investigators to go on besides his overly friendly behavior and that he sort of looks like a sketch. So he's he's creepy and icky and looks like the suspect in the sketch. But that's all we got. Exactly. Yeah.
00:20:01
Speaker
Unbeknownst to them, the day that Amy's body was found, he had checked himself into a mental hospital voluntarily. And just a few days after her memorial, he passes away from an apparent suicide. Are you serious? It was found that he had died from drinking a combination of dry gas, which is ethanol, and Coca-Cola.
00:20:20
Speaker
They search his apartment after his death and they find a suicide note in the trash. Nowhere in the note does it mention Amy or that his death had anything to do with Amy.
00:20:32
Speaker
Besides his strange behavior, again, there wasn't anything connecting him to the case. And the sketches were two different faces, one with glasses and one without. He had some work issues. He had relationship issues. He had a history of mental illness.
00:20:46
Speaker
This might have just been his 13th reason. And he was really leaning on saving this girl to save himself. So the case grows cold once again. yes It is unfair to to pin it on somebody just because they seem icky, i guess. Yeah. But yeah, it just it was just really weird timing.
00:21:07
Speaker
Yeah. The second suspect. This one relates to another little girl that disappeared in 1992. 11-year-old Shawna Howe. She disappeared walking home from Halloween party in Oil City, Pennsylvania.
00:21:22
Speaker
Shawna went missing on October 27th. Oh. oh Three years to the date of Amy's disappearance. There were a lot of similarities in this case that had investigators thinking they might finally have their guy.
00:21:38
Speaker
When Shawna is found to have been murdered, tips come in on who the believed suspect is. And this guy is retired. He has a house near Bay Village where Amy went and missing.
00:21:49
Speaker
And he also has a hunting trailer right outside of the Oil City area where Shawna Howe is missing. Also helps, he resembles the police sketches. So they go to interview the guy and they realize they've already interviewed him before.
00:22:04
Speaker
Hmm. Back in 1989, after Amy's disappearance, they talked to a lot of the small town's residents, including people who were shopping in the square the day Amy went missing.
00:22:15
Speaker
This guy was one of those people. He claimed to not have seen Amy or anything at the time. But a few days after investigators interviewed him, one of his employees went to police stating that they were tidying up his office and they found pictures of the shopping center where Amy went missing.
00:22:32
Speaker
as well as a book about an abduction that really has nothing to do with anything. Seemed like a reach, but somehow they were able to search his property at the time and they found nothing.
00:22:44
Speaker
So they had to move on. But now it's 1992. Right. right And they're looking into Shauna's murder and they're zoning in on him and his camper in Oil City. They go to search his camper and they find out he recently sold it.
00:22:58
Speaker
Of course he did. They track down the buyer who allows them to search it, but they find nothing. But I do feel like even if they found evidence, like it would still be thrown out because like, I mean, it's been given to someone else maybe. Yeah. But in the case of this man and his second look as a suspect, they found nothing to tie him to Amy or Shauna's murder.
00:23:19
Speaker
So the case grew cold once again. Suspect number three.
Theories and Suspects in Amy's Case
00:23:26
Speaker
the mysterious caller that lured Amy to the shopping center the day of her disappearance.
00:23:32
Speaker
Investigators noted that the call had been placed from a local number and only long distance calls were logged by the phone company at the time. To try and widen their net, they put a warning out to the public to come forward if their children reported to have received mysterious calls as well. Yeah.
00:23:47
Speaker
And there turned out to be a few children who had received similar calls in the Lake Erie area. Same story of wanting to get a present for one of their parents. They seemed to know when the children were home alone.
00:23:59
Speaker
their phone number, their parents' names, where they worked. This was 1989. So there was ah there was a corded phone in the house that anyone could answer. And a lot of kids were latchkey kids, as we said.
00:24:10
Speaker
So it seemed there had to be a specific way the mysterious caller got his information of like which kids to target. Right. And after checking in on all the connections to the kids, they found a few possible connections. Yeah.
00:24:25
Speaker
the Lake Erie Nature and Science Center in Bay Village, and the Holly Hill Farms that some of the kids had attended. So they had links on both of those places.
00:24:36
Speaker
Field trip stuff and like visited for whatever reason? Just for whatever reason, like the kids who were called by this mysterious caller all frequented these places.
00:24:50
Speaker
So investigators interviewed employees and volunteers regarding the connection, and they found that the center was using a physical guest book to track their visitors at the time. This guest book is something that was signed by all guests with their name, address, and phone number.
00:25:05
Speaker
All things that would make it really convenient for our mysterious caller to pinpoint which child to target. Yeah. The worst part, they find out that the guest book is missing and presumed to have been stolen. Yeah.
00:25:17
Speaker
Could have been someone covering the tracks or they stole it to do God knows what and they still have it. Who knows? That part's never figured out. So for the Holly Hill Farms connection, Holly Hill Farms a stable where the students can ride horses.
00:25:33
Speaker
Amy was getting really into her lessons there and would ride her bike to Holly Hill Farms by herself almost every day in the days leading up to her disappearance. A few of the girls who rode horses here also admitted to getting the creepy call from a mysterious man asking them to help find a present for their mother.
00:25:50
Speaker
So investigators really, like, zoned in on this place. Right. They interviewed the staff, and they also searched the whole place, and they set their sights on Harold Bound, also known as HB.
00:26:03
Speaker
And that's how we will ah mention him for most of the story. HB was the son of the owner, and he worked and lived on the farm. So did his brother. He lived in a small apartment above the garage, and as you would expect at a farm, he had firearms and other weapons in his room.
00:26:19
Speaker
The problem with that was HB was known by the students there to be a little creepy. He was a Vietnam vet. He was schizophrenic to boot. Right.
00:26:30
Speaker
And the girls just felt a bit uneasy with him walking through the fields behind the stables in camo with a bow sometimes. Oh, God. Which, again, and it's not a crime. It's just weird. It is weird. And like, maybe don't do that when the kids are around Harold, you know? Yeah.
00:26:45
Speaker
And just the parents didn't like it. and Just everyone just generally just got an ookie bit. But there isn't anything they could do. But the investigators decide to question him and they find that he has no alibi for the night that Amy went missing.
00:26:59
Speaker
His brother, who also stayed on the farm, reported to investigators that he saw HB come home late that night on October 27th. They had him complete multiple lie detector tests which he came up positive for deceptive answers.
00:27:14
Speaker
There's a few different reports that also state he was given a truth serum, which may have been used as an investigative tool for multiple suspects at the time, actually. In response, HB signed himself into a psychiatric ward at the VA hospital in Brecksville, and he was stating that he had suffered from episodes of uncontrollable violence, and he's like, I'm just, I'm out.
00:27:39
Speaker
And they had to drop the investigation on him because that's all they had, that he was creepy. He didn't have an alibi and what have you. They did end up in... i didn't want to get too involved in this because there were some reports that said they had found a pair of green pants that they thought might have been Amy's.
00:27:58
Speaker
But obviously we know that Amy was found with her pants on her. Right, yeah. So that obviously wasn't the case. But... James Renner with Scene Online Magazine did an interview with Harold Bowne in 2005. They included it in an article they wrote titled The Coldest Case.
00:28:15
Speaker
When they interviewed HB, they found that he was in a group home living off his disability tracks and he was still going to outpatient treatment at the VA. This is in 2005. I'll be quoting a few lines from the article that I referenced here.
00:28:31
Speaker
This is h b I can't prove one way or another I didn't do it, he says of Amy's killing. He admits to having bouts of uncontrollable violence in 1989. But he hasn't had a problem for the past 10 years.
00:28:45
Speaker
Back then, he failed two FBI lie detector tests because of the stress, he claims. I have problems with voices. I still hear them. I'm glad I don't know who those FBI agents are. I'm glad I can't recognize them anymore.
00:28:59
Speaker
At one point in the conversation, Bound claims that he couldn't pick out Amy if she were standing in a lineup of 10 girls. Later, he says that he used to watch her from his apartment at Holly Hill Farms.
00:29:10
Speaker
And he remembers seeing Margaret drop Amy for lessons one day. They appeared to be fighting. Amy got out and Margaret threw her boots out the window before driving away.
00:29:21
Speaker
Amy sat alone in the gravel parking lot. That's when I met her, Bowne says. She was putting on her boots. He went up to the girl and asked whether she needed any help.
00:29:35
Speaker
Amy wouldn't talk to him, so he walked away. Good girl. All investigators would say on the subject of HB is that barring any new evidence, there's nothing that could lead to an arrest.
00:29:48
Speaker
End quote. So those are the three main suspects. That doesn't mean there weren't many, many, many more leads and suspects over the past 35 years.
00:30:00
Speaker
Those were just a few of like the most lasting and impactful ones. Sure. But there were a few outrageous ones over the years. One of them happened again, October 2002, St.
00:30:14
Speaker
st Angela Morisi Roman Catholic Church in Fairview Park, Ohio. During Sunday mass, a shaggy haired man stood and began shouting from his pew, quote,
00:30:28
Speaker
May I have your attention, please? My name is Richard Allen Fulbert. People know me as Satan. I killed Amy Mihaljevic. End quote. There were a couple of off-duty police officers at Mass that day, and so they took him down quickly, and they took him in for questioning.
00:30:46
Speaker
They find that he's schizophrenic and had missed taking his meds for a few weeks, and While he did vaguely resemble the sketch, it was found that he had absolutely nothing to do with the murder.
00:31:00
Speaker
He is adamant to this day that Amy was killed by Satan to silence him from warning the world of impending doom. He also believes Hillary Clinton is the Antichrist.
00:31:12
Speaker
Of course. So there's that. He did write a book about the things that he knows. I'm sorry, but he seems to like Satan, but he... No, he does not like Satan. Oh, okay. No, no, no, no, no. like he So um what happened was he was trying to tell the world that Satan was coming And Satan was like, well, then I'm going to mess up this girl and I'm going to kill her and I'm going to tell everyone you did it. And that's what happened. And that's why Amy died. That's what he believes. Got it. Is what happened.
00:31:46
Speaker
Like he really believes. So he did write a book about the things he knows. It's like 200 pages and it's titled By the Truth, Do Not Sell It, which is apparently a quote from the Bible.
00:31:56
Speaker
In more recent years, Richard promotes his book as a window into the mind of a schizophrenic. in an active episode and suggests its use for study by psychology majors and others wanting to see the patterns that a mind in the state will fall into. Which, honestly, i i can appreciate that. Look, like, yeah you wrote a book in a manic state and you're able to to look at it and say, look, hey, you use it for science. Yes. Because i was on one. I'm so sorry.
00:32:28
Speaker
If you haven't figured it out by now, this is still a cold case.
Unsolved Case and Public Awareness
00:32:32
Speaker
There wasn't technology for DNA evidence in 1989, but there was DNA evidence collected.
00:32:38
Speaker
In present-day testing, they found the hair to be too degraded for them to test, and the DNA sample they have is too small for them to test with the current technology. But we know how quickly that has changed in such a short time.
00:32:50
Speaker
So they hold on to it with hope that they can one day retest and trace the killer of Amy Mihaljevic. The FBI is offering a reward up to $25,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the individuals responsible for the death of Amy Renee Mihaljevic.
00:33:07
Speaker
Anyone with information concerning the murder of Amy Mihaljevic should contact the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI. You may also contact your local FBI office or the nearest American embassy or consulate, or you can submit an anonymous tip online at tips.fbi.gov.
00:33:25
Speaker
And I'll also put a link in the show notes for you. Nightmare Cottage dot com. And that's the story of Amy Mihaljevic. Man. That's really sad. I mean, it sounds like it is so unfortunate that there were so many people of really weird situation or moral character around this very young girl.
00:33:49
Speaker
And, you know, honestly, as I like get older and look back on reflect on my own youth. Right. There are many times where i made some very poor choices and should not be alive today. Right.
00:34:04
Speaker
So I do understand that it's it's that it's that easy and it's it's scary. It's so scary. And so I just don't, I know that there were a lot of reports of um Amy's mom and being an alcoholic and that, you know, they were fighting a lot. and Her parents were fighting a lot. And, you know, that may have led Amy to, you know, not heed the warnings of the stranger danger because she wanted to piece her family together and you know, really, you know, help her mom and, you know, that her mom may have been neglectful. Like, I don't, I didn't want to focus on that because I feel like those
00:34:45
Speaker
Her mom did everything that she could to find her. And these kinds of things, like the only person to blame is the person who did it. Absolutely. um Because, you know, shame on you. She was a 10-year-old girl who, you know, is just trying to solve adult problems.
00:35:03
Speaker
You know, I feel like something that I definitely am trying to teach my child that we're now learning We don't tell secrets. We don't hold secrets. Right. ze We don't. No one. An adult should never ask a child to keep a secret. Exactly. There is no reason.
00:35:17
Speaker
Mommy should not ask you to keep a secret. Like that's that's where you start really, really, really weird things. And it cascades. And that leaves room for, you know, these kinds of situations where horrible, horrible things happen.
00:35:34
Speaker
Well, thanks. That was bleak.
00:35:43
Speaker
Did you have Nightmare Fuel? I do have Nightmare Fuel today. Presence. It's a movie. It's on Hulu. Honestly, it's great. It has the movie from the perspective of the presence. And it's, if nothing else, even if... Honestly, I had to watch it twice to understand what had happened. Yeah, so... Like, I watched it the first time and it was great, but the second time I was like, oh my gosh, I know everything. I'm so glad because the second time you watched it was with me last night.
00:36:14
Speaker
And I'm so glad that you were there with the insight because... You know we were like, oh, wait, I was slow on it. Like it took me a second to get there. And like once I did, I was like, oh everything you've been talking about for the last five minutes actually makes sense now. And it didn't. then And yeah, so that was fun.
00:36:32
Speaker
um I do have Nightmare Fuel. I'm going to recommend it's a short story collection called I Know a Place. And it's by Nat Cassidy, who is the author of a few different things I've put on Nightmare Fuel before. So but it's a lot of great little short stories. Like with most anthologies like this, there's like really amazing things and like some that are like kind of whatever. There's no deads in this one. There's one that's real gross. But it really kind of encapsulates.
00:36:57
Speaker
Nat Cassidy is my age. Grew up with the same horror lineage that I did. And i grasped a lot of that in these short stories. So that's my nightmare fuel. I know a place by Nat Cassidy.
00:37:15
Speaker
So I have a mini grave encounter for you today. This is actually i I haven't been to this one, but I read I was you know, you find you stumble upon things online.
Grave Encounter in South Carolina
00:37:25
Speaker
And this is just it it was really interesting. So I wanted to share it.
00:37:30
Speaker
Share away, my darling. In an unassuming broom closet at the Washington Street United Methodist Church in Columbia, South Carolina, there is a rug covering a hidden door.
00:37:42
Speaker
This door leads to crawl space. If you go down and carefully navigate the old tombstones its crypt and tree stumps about in for about 20 yards, you'll come across a partially buried metal casket with a glass viewing window. oh my gosh.
00:37:59
Speaker
Here lies Sophia Catherine Nance. Up until 1996, people would access this space to explore and see the woman under the church. Yeah. Like, would they break in or like it was open to the public?
00:38:12
Speaker
It was somewhat visitable. Like, it you could request to go in. Okay. There's a description from a Grave with a View by Angshaman Noss. Her dried out skin has darkened and become like leather.
00:38:25
Speaker
oh that was not, I wasn't ready for that. Okay, so she's beef jerky right now. She's been buried for a long time. Yeah.
00:38:36
Speaker
And I mean, fair enough. Those are some pretty good conditions. I imagine it's very arid down there. Yeah. I mean, and she died in 1853. So she's been down there a minute. The the quote is her dried out skin has darkened and become like leather, but the pores are clearly visible.
00:38:51
Speaker
Withering eyelids partly cover empty sockets and brown eyebrows remain on her forehead. What? Wait. Oh. Her nose is perfectly shaped, though the skin is taut over the bone.
00:39:04
Speaker
In her mouth are five or six decaying teeth. There are beads of moisture around the neck, and a bit of her clothing is visible under her chin. Why? And that was... Why is she there?
00:39:15
Speaker
Why is she visible? Why is this happening to this? So basically there had existed a graveyard at this church up until a certain point and they were expanding the church and they moved to the graveyard and they reached out to everybody's family who of the people who were interred at the graveyard to get permission to move them to another place.
00:39:37
Speaker
Well, some people didn't have anybody respond for them, and Sophia and her two children were among those people. But she was buried in that casket because of her apparent beauty to preserve her beauty. Yeah.
00:39:52
Speaker
Yeah, they wanted to still be able to view her in death, I guess. And so that's why she had that crazy ass casket. my God. So, but then they still expanded the church over it. So the only accessible way to get to it was through the crawl space. So that's why she's there.
00:40:09
Speaker
Nice. And on the tombstone inscription says, Sophia Catherine Nance, 24th January, 1853, age years, six months days.
00:40:21
Speaker
There's no census or other historical records of Sophia. i mean, she got married and stuff, but there's no like marriage records or anything like that. The church has apparently continued to seek answers to know more about her and the two children that were buried near her. wow But as of 1996, the space was closed off to all visitors.
00:40:39
Speaker
The glass became cracked. There's no official stories, but they think that some kids got down there and broke the glass. Now it's exposed to the elements, so there's like a white fuzzy mold that's began to grow all over her face. Oh, man. So the space is no longer accessible. But why do we ruin everything? Because people suck.
00:40:58
Speaker
But yeah, so that is Sophia Nance's grave in South Carolina. Where in South Carolina? Underneath the Washington Street United Methodist Church in Columbia, South Carolina. And can you still access it to this day? or You cannot. It's not you're not supposed to ruin it.
00:41:16
Speaker
Everybody just ruined it. Yeah. I mean, I wonder how it's maintained or who maintains it. I imagine the church still maintains to some degree, i guess. I don't know. i mean, yeah it's not like a publicly kept cemetery. So I guess they don't really have to. Yeah.
00:41:31
Speaker
That's sad. That was cool, though. So that's our little mini grave encounter. Didn't get to see this one. And I guess I won't ever get to go and take my own pictures. You can find some pictures online of it prior to having been molded and after being molded. And yeah, I know.
00:41:47
Speaker
and But there's like a you can find a description of the or ah like a diagram of like the casket model and stuff. And there's some links that will be in the show notes. Nice. Well, thanks for sharing that with us. Yeah. Thank you for sharing me your nightmare. That was really, i really hate it when it's actually really sad because that is, that is the true nightmare. Yeah. But I think it also helps to like, again, especially these unsolved ones, just bring them to light again, remind people of like,
00:42:14
Speaker
what you know that this this still happened and you never know like I mean there's a lot of cases that are being solved now pick up the rock pick up the rock and see what stirs yep yep and now that we're all inheriting all of our aged parents's stuff that was their parents's that they never went through we are finding a lot of things don't throw them away guys turn them in Yes. Like not condoning being a narc, but also like they're dead. Just like give, give, give whoever needs that closure, that closure.
00:42:46
Speaker
Yeah. Agree. Well, thank you for joining us and we will see you next time. Sweet dreams. Night night. name stop
00:43:00
Speaker
If you have topic requests, book or movie recommendations, or just want to say hi, email us at nightmarecottage at gmail.com or visit our website at nightmarecottage.com. Sweet dreams.
00:43:22
Speaker
Bye-bye.