Will Hair Found On Amy Mihaljevic’s Clothes Lead to a Conviction After 36 Years?

In the history of American child abductions, few cases have lingered in the public’s conscience like the kidnapping and murder of 10-year-old Amy Mihaljevic more than 35 years ago.

Amy was lured from a shopping plaza in Bay Village, Ohio, by a man who had called her at home, pretending he wanted her help buying a secret gift for her mother. Despite receiving tens of thousands of tips over nearly four decades, Bay Village Police detectives have been unable to make an arrest. But the discovery in recent years of DNA particles on Amy’s clothing and other DNA evidence from the crime scene has given cold case investigators hope that they can one day pinpoint her killer.

On the afternoon of October 27, 1989, Bay Village—a town of about 15,000 residents on the west side of Cleveland—was the kind of place where families felt insulated from the worst headlines. “It’s sort of an affluent bedroom community where people are very close,” Det. Sgt. Jay Elish of the Bay Village Police Department explains. “I think folks had a ‘that could never happen here’ mentality’ when Amy was abducted and murdered.”

Investigators later learned Amy had most likely spoken on the phone with her killer before she disappeared. The caller said he wanted to help her buy a gift for her mother, who had recently been promoted. That seemingly innocent story was a carefully calibrated ruse to win Amy’s trust, Elish tells A&E Crime + Investigation.

In the days that followed, Bay Village transformed. Missing posters went up, children were kept indoors and national media coverage descended on a town that had suddenly become a symbol of every parent’s nightmare, says investigative journalist James Renner, author of Amy: My Search for Her Killer: Secrets and Suspects in the Unsolved Murder of Amy Mihaljevic.

“Amy and I were around the same age,” Renner recalls. “I saw her missing posters on all the telephone poles. For kids my age in northeast Ohio, her abduction and murder was the very integral moment in our childhoods, and that moment where you realize that you live in a dangerous world.”

In February 1990, four months after Amy vanished, a jogger found her body in a rural field, miles from the shopping plaza where she was last seen.

For more than a quarter century, Bay Village Police stored Amy’s sweatshirt, sweatpants, underwear and socks as well as a blanket and curtain detectives believe the killer used to wrap her body in. Any possible breaks in the cold case lies in extracting every possible clue from the physical evidence that remains, Elish says.

Over the years, Amy’s clothing has been tested “a handful of times for DNA,” most recently in 2024 and 2025, Elish relays. Bay Village Police also collected DNA samples from roughly 250 individuals who had some connection to Amy or her family.

The number of people who had the means, motive and opportunity to commit the crime has made it difficult to pinpoint a suspect, Renner says. “I learned early on that the FBI, the best they’ve ever been able to do is come up with a top 25 list of suspects,” he says. “Most of the potential suspects are still alive.”

The FBI was heavily involved in assisting Bay Village Police because many of the bureau’s northeast Ohio agents lived in the community, according to Elish and Renner.

In 2016, Bay Village police decided to embrace more advanced techniques. “We started getting into the familial and genetic DNA testing that you’re seeing now,” Elish says. They partnered with DNA Labs International, based in Deerfield Beach, Fla., which uses a then-new process called the M-Vac.

“It’s like a vacuum that sucks DNA out of clothing and hard items,” Elish says. “We started to see a lot of cases being solved with the M-Vac. We figured we didn’t have a lot to lose.”

The risk yielded a glimmer of hope as the M-Vac process identified a very small amount of DNA from an unknown male on Amy’s sweatpants. However, the traces were not enough to build a full DNA profile. Scientists at DNA International and other genetic labs informed investigators that future technology could produce better results.

“They have told us to hold tight with it,” Elish says. “New testing was on the horizon this past fall. But it’s not there yet. So we’re holding on to that DNA to see if one day DNA testing advances enough that we can possibly get a profile for this male.”

The sample is preserved, frozen and stored by the lab for the day when technology catches up. “We basically leave it in their hands,” Elish says. “They will let us know if things advance far enough that it can be tested, and on top of that, we are in contact with other people in the DNA world that are aware of what we have. And they have their ears to the ground.”

Hair is another critical piece. Near where Amy’s body was found, investigators recovered a blanket and a curtain about 300 yards away. Over the years, forensic testing uncovered Amy’s hair and another unknown person’s hair on those items. “We feel very strongly that those items were probably wrapped around her when her body was dumped,” Elish says. “Any time we find something hair-wise, we test it.”

Decades after Amy’s death, the case continues to have a deep impact for Bay Village residents, Renner says. “It was a true stranger abduction where a girl just vanishes in broad daylight,” he says. “It happened in a place many believed was one of the safest communities in Greater Cleveland. It really shook people up.”

The Bay Village Police Department has received tens of thousands of tips, averaging well over 100 phone calls and emails a year, Elish says.

The hairs and trace DNA sit in laboratory freezers, waiting for the next leap forward. “We try, at a minimum, to look into the tips and the leads that come in that look pretty good,” Elish says. “And we definitely want to make sure we’re doing everything we can to try to solve it with science.”