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But Billig would not be diverted from her search for Amy. When police interest waned and community donations dried up, she and Ned financed their own hunt by closing their art gallery, selling their Bentley and moving with their son into a smaller house. They tracked bogus leads to Oklahoma and Nevada, visited the Seattle headquarters of a motorcycle gang rumored to have snatched Amy, persuaded Texas officials to exhume an unidentified body and got Unsolved Mysteries to air a TV segment on the case in 1992. After Ned died of lung cancer two years ago, Billig, who also suffered from the disease, still prodded the fbi and local police to stay on the case. "She'd be a good cop," says Miami homicide detective Jack Calvar. "She knows how to work the system." Her voluminous notes and recordings of Johnson calls will be key to the trial. "She's tiny, just about 5 ft. tall, but she'll blow your head off," says Calvar. "I think she wants [Blair's] head--understandably."
Blair's admirers are adamant that he could not be the obsessive caller. Colleagues describe him as a model of moderation, the kind of guy who drives a fuel-efficient Honda, jokes breezily at lunchtime over a fried fish sandwich and iced tea and indulges in one vice: late-afternoon candy bars. At day's end he hurries home to his condominium in Kendall to fix dinner for his two daughters and wait for Cynthia, a hospital administrator whom he married two weeks before Amy's abduction. "Hank is one of the most down-to-earth, common-sensical, likable people you would ever meet," says an agent at the Customs building in downtown Miami, where Blair specialized in drug interdiction and supervised 17 agents before he was placed on paid leave. Until his arrest, Blair was best known for helping to recover a 1636 painting by Peter Paul Rubens, stolen from a Spanish museum. That won him Spain's highest civilian honor. Now, a conviction for aggravated stalking could earn him 15 years maximum behind bars.
Though Billig has received no calls from the Voice since Blair's arrest, the memory still disrupts her thoughts and sleep. She has not given up on Amy. "It's my job to find my child," she says. "I won't rest until there's some kind of closure." She adds, "Either they find her alive--or they don't."
--Reported by David Beard/Miami