Amy Mihaljevic: Abducted in Plain Sight
Margaret McNulty prepared for work on a typical Friday morning on October 27, 1989, when her ten-year-old daughter told her she would stay late at school that day for choir auditions.
Shortly after being dismissed from school that day, Amy Mihaljevic would be taken from the Bay Square Shopping Center in Bay Village, Ohio, by a man that remains unknown to this day.
Months later, on February 8, 1990, a jogger discovered Amy’s body in a field 50 miles away from her home.
A Quiet Life in Bay Village, Ohio
The city of Bay Village, Ohio, was a small, quiet community of around 17,000—the type of place where people didn’t feel the need to lock their doors. In 1989, Amy Mihaljevic was ten years old. She lived with her mother, Margaret, her father, Mark, and her older brother, 13-year-old Jason.
Amy was enrolled at Bay Village Middle School, where she was a star student in the fifth grade. Amy was known by friends and family to be highly intelligent, and she was part of the school’s gifted and talented program.
Amy also loved horses and enjoyed riding horses in her spare time. She and her brother were “latchkey kids,” regularly coming home from school to be alone for some time before their parents arrived home from work. Bay Village was considered safe, however, and her parents never had a reason to worry about the children spending time alone.
On the morning of October 27, 1989, Amy told her mother that she would be staying late at school for choir auditions. Margaret thought nothing of this, knowing her daughter was an exemplary student, and so she went off to work.
Amy and her brother, Jason, took their bikes to school as usual. At school, Amy revealed a secret plan to her friends. Some time prior to this day, Amy had received a phone call on her home phone from a man who claimed to work with her mother at Trading Times Magazine.
The man had told Amy her mother was receiving a promotion, and he needed Amy’s help to select the perfect gift. Amy was excited about the opportunity to surprise her mother; she invited her friends to accompany her to the Bay Village Shopping Center after school.
When class was dismissed around 2:00 p.m., Amy and her friends made the short walk to the nearby shopping center.
Amy’s Abduction
Upon arrival at the Bay Village Shopping Center, reports say the young girls treated themselves to ice cream. Two classmates saw Amy around 2:15 p.m., walking through the shopping center with an unidentified adult male. Nobody knew at that time that Amy would never be seen alive again.
Amy was walking with the man, as later reported, before both individuals vanished. Later, there would be no suspicious vehicles reported and no reports of a struggle or altercation between the two. The man was described as a white male, aged 30 to 35, with a medium build. Eyewitness accounts also recalled the man possibly having round glasses and traces of a beard.
At 3:10 p.m., Amy’s brother Jason became concerned when his sister had not yet arrived home. He called his mother from the house phone, letting her know Amy wasn’t home yet. Margaret wasn’t overly concerned, as she recalled Amy mentioning the choir audition after school. She told Jason about the arrangement, and that he needn’t worry about his sister.
Despite her daughter’s activities that day, Margaret felt that something was off. But just twenty minutes after her phone call with Jason, Amy called her mother at work. She assured her mother that everything was fine, and there was no panic in her voice to indicate otherwise.
Margaret assumed Amy was calling from home—there was no caller ID at the time—and her worries subsided. But when Margaret arrived home at 5:30 p.m., the concern she felt earlier turned to panic. Amy was nowhere to be found. Jason informed his mother that his sister had still not come home.
Now panicked, Margaret jumped into action.
She first called neighbors and relatives to ask if they’d seen Amy. When nobody had seen the young girl, Margaret rushed to Bay Village Middle School, where she found the school empty, though Amy’s bike was still locked up on the bike rack.
Amy next drove to the Bay Village Police Station and reported her daughter missing, just before 6 p.m. Mark Mihaljevic, Amy’s father, returned home around the same time and began assisting in the search efforts.
The Search for Amy Mihaljevic
Almost immediately after Margaret reported her daughter missing, Bay Village Police began searching for the missing girl. Because of the circumstances surrounding her disappearance, BVPD requested assistance from the FBI.
Agents from the FBI office in Cleveland, Ohio, swiftly responded to assist with the search. As the earliest days went by, neither agency came any closer to finding Amy, despite the investigation generating thousands of leads.
Since Amy’s disappearance in 1989, more than 20,000 interviews have been conducted relating to the case; several suspects in 1989 were asked to take polygraph tests, which ultimately led investigators nowhere.
Months passed, and nobody had seen or heard from Amy. Early on, the family was cleared of suspicion, and they refused to give up hope. The search for Amy Mihaljevic ended on February 8, 1990.
A jogger in Ashland, Ohio, some 50 miles from Bay Village, made a horrifying discovery while running through a field just off County Road 1181. Police moved quickly to identify the body, and everyone’s worst fears were confirmed.
An autopsy revealed that Amy had been dumped shortly after her abduction. Her cause of death was determined to be multiple stab wounds to the neck and blunt force trauma to the head, along with other bodily injuries.
Amy was dumped wearing the same clothes she had worn to school that day. There was blood in her underwear, indicating that Amy likely suffered some form of sexual abuse prior to her death. A few items were missing from Amy’s person, and a curtain and blanket, believed to be handmade, were also found in the field near her body.
The search for Amy was complete, but the search for her killer had just begun.
Amy’s Strange Circumstances
When investigators first discovered Amy’s body, they immediately noted a few odd items missing from her person. Amy’s horse-riding boots were gone, along with her denim backpack, her school binder, and her turquoise horse’s head earrings.
These items are believed to have been taken by her killer, likely as a sort of trophy. The blanket and curtain found near Amy’s body appeared to be handmade, but despite circulating photos of the items, nobody came forward to identify them.
There were also peculiar details surrounding Amy’s kidnapping and murder. Foremost, the killer somehow knew Amy’s home phone number. He also knew, to some extent, the family’s schedule, as he was able to call when Amy would be the one to answer the phone.
The apparent “plain sight” abduction of the young girl also perplexed investigators. The Bay Village Shopping Center was nestled in a busy part of town, and between two and three in the afternoon, it would not have been empty. This kidnapping occurred in a public place in broad daylight: Amy was taken between 2:15 and 3:00 p.m., and there would have been plenty of opportunities for someone to witness the crime.
And after Amy had been taken, when she made a call to her mother, the young girl did not sound distressed. The killer must have given Amy access to a phone, and somehow kept her calm enough to not alert her mother that there was any sort of danger at hand.
Perhaps the strangest detail of the abduction is that the Bay Village Shopping Center sits directly across the street from the Bay Village Police Department. Whoever kidnapped and murdered Amy Mihaljevic was bold: his brazen abduction in broad daylight right across from the police station has stumped investigators for years.
The Leading Suspects
The Bay Village Police Department, along with the FBI, have kept the suspect list fairly private over time. Thousands of people were either interviewed, questioned, or polygraphed during the initial investigation.
Today, most sources agree that there are three primary suspects in the Amy Mihaljevic murder case: Dean Runkle, Richard Holbert, and Joseph Newton Chandler III.
Of these three suspects, many who have studied Amy’s case believe Dean Runkle to be the most likely culprit. Not only does Runkle match the description and the artist sketch, but he was also a teacher in Ohio.
Runkle denied any involvement with the crime, but when the Bay Village Police began collecting DNA samples from potential suspects, he sought legal counsel. It should be noted that Runkle was also accused of inappropriate conduct by a former student, and he allegedly set aside a few thousand dollars for his favorite student, though nothing ever came of the relationship.
Richard Holbert, who was not one of the original primary suspects, came under suspicion after confessing to the crime. While attending a Sunday mass service, Holbert confessed to killing Amy Mihaljevic.
However, he was not the only person to confess that they killed Amy, and Holbert’s medical records later proved his confession to be false. On the very day Amy was kidnapped, Holbert had been institutionalized, so it wasn’t possible for him to have kidnapped and killed Amy.
The last of these three suspects is Joseph Newton Chandler III, of whom few public details have been released. In 2018, investigators announced that they were pursuing a possible connection between Chandler III and Amy’s murder.
Unfortunately, Chandler III died in 2002, after taking his own life. After his death, investigators learned that his real name was Robert Ivan Nichols, and he stole his previous moniker from a child that died in a car accident.
Investigators were immediately intrigued by this man, believing him to be a potentially dangerous fugitive. The reasoning for his name change, move, and period of disappearance is currently still a mystery, but investigators have been pursuing possible connections to Amy’s case for several years.
Amy Mihaljevic Case Updates
Although Amy was abducted in 1989, her case is still open and being actively investigated. Since her murder, there have been several major updates to the case, including ones in recent years. In 2006, investigators revealed that Amy was not the only young girl in the Bay Village area to receive a suspicious phone call.
Multiple girls, all residents of North Olmstead, had received calls from a man who told them he needed their assistance in purchasing a present for their mother. Based on this information, it is presumed that the same man who called these girls kidnapped and murdered Amy.
Some of these girls had unlisted phone numbers, and the suspect would not have been able to find them in a phone book. However, Amy and each of the girls that was contacted had signed the guest book at the Lake Eerie Nature and Science Center at some point in their young lives.
Presumably, the killer could have taken the girls’ information from the guest book, and later used it to contact them. The police obtained a copy of the book, and have extensively investigated the center employees, but no leads have been made public.
Perhaps the biggest break in Amy Mihaljevic’s case came in 2021, when police announced that a former girlfriend of a man on the suspect list had come forward and implicated her ex-boyfriend in the crime.
Although the man’s name has not been publicly released, sources say he gave suspicious answers to interview questions, and had possibly met Margaret McNulty prior to Amy’s death.
This man willingly provided a DNA sample, but failed a polygraph test administered by investigators. The potentially most condemning circumstance for this suspect is that when questioned, two eyewitnesses picked him out of a lineup, and he was identified by both of them as the man seen with Amy before her disappearance.
Police are keeping a tight seal on the information, but it can only be assumed they are pursuing every possible connection between this man and the murder of Amy Mihaljevic.
In October 2025, investigators revealed they sent three unidentified hairs found on Amy Mihaljevic’s clothing for new DNA testing, hoping to finally identify the man who abducted and killed the 10-year-old in 1989.
After thousands of tips and decades without answers, the FBI is banking on modern forensic technology to break one of Ohio’s most haunting cold cases. A reward of up to $25,000 is still being offered to anyone who submits information leading to an arrest and conviction in Amy’s case.
Where to Watch
What Happened to Amy?, Dateline NBC (aired September 17, 2021)
Who Killed Amy Mihaljevic?, The Lake Erie Murders (aired December 30, 2018)
Sources
The Amy Mihaljevic Case. Bay Village, OH. (n.d.). https://www.cityofbayvillage.com/425/Amy-Mihaljevic-Case
Amy Mihaljevic. Cuyahoga County Prosecutor. (n.d.). http://prosecutor.cuyahogacounty.us/pdf_prosecutor/en-US/2016-06-Amy-Mihaljevic-Press-Conference.pdf
Amy Renee Mihaljevic Unsolved Homicide. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost. (n.d.). https://www.ohioattorneygeneral.gov/Files/Law-Enforcement/Investigator/Cold-Case/Homicides/Mihaljevic
FBI. (2014, January 22). Amy Renee Mihaljevic. FBI. https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/seeking-info/amy-renee-mihaljevic
NBCUniversal News Group. (2023, January 22). Dateline Friday sneak peek: What happened to Amy?. NBCNews.com. https://www.nbcnews.com/dateline/video/dateline-friday-sneak-peek-what-happened-to-amy-120947269618
Renner, J. (2013). Amy: My Search for Her Killer: Secrets and Suspects in the Unsolved Murder of Amy Mihaljevic. Gray & Company.
Thompson, E. G. (2018). Unsolved Child Murders: Eighteen American Cases, 1956-1998. Exposit.
Vrsansky, N. (2020, October 27). The Amy Mihaljevic Case: Investigators hold out hope that DNA advancements could soon help solve 1989 cold case. https://www.cleveland19.com. https://www.cleveland19.com/2020/10/27/amy-mihaljevic-case-investigators-hold-out-hope-that-dna-advancements-could-soon-help-solve-cold-case/
Walk for Amy. (n.d.). https://www.walkforamy.org/