I found this article upon researching some history of bike gang activity in Florida. It centers around The Outlaws. I can't help but feel Amy really was taken by a biker gang. The artcile states that The Outlaws ran wild in Florida in '70s, especially 1974. They would target teen girls who were hitch hiking or simply walking down the streets. They would either pick her up on a bike, or pull the girl in one of the club's vans. In the following article are graphic accounts of what these guys did to the girls they did take. Many who lived were so terrified they did not testify against the people who took them, raped them and tortured them. I have a feeling Amy's mother was led on a wild goose chase, because if they did take Amy, I doubt they would have let her live long
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1995-09-10/news/9509100181_1_bikers-spaziano-outlaws
Like ogres in a fairy tale, they're part of a legend that reaches across decades to seed the sleep of innocents with nightmares.
These are grim brothers, all right: rugged, hairy men in black leather and chains, roaring across 1970s Florida on motorcycles.
The bikers nailed one woman to a tree. They chained another to a ceiling for an afternoon of rape and torture. They snatched teen-age girls from sidewalks, took them to dark clubhouses and raped them repeatedly.
Tales of motorcycle gangs were so potent in the 1970s that even today, 20 years after Outlaws member Joe Spaziano was sentenced to death for killing an Orlando woman, many people familiar with the case still are too terrified to talk about it publicly.
Their fear has become an element of Spaziano's renewed bid this summer to escape execution.
Gov. Lawton Chiles signed Spaziano's fifth death warrant two weeks ago after state investigators reinvestigated the case. Agents found witnesses who convinced Chiles that Spaziano deserves to die, but they provided information on condition that they remain anonymous.
A group of news organizations, including The Orlando Sentinel, is seeking to read the report, but Chiles has insisted that the witnesses must be protected.
Some of those witnesses and others familiar with the case have told the Sentinel they are terrified to speak publicly because of the Outlaws. They give the same comments, over and over:
''They'll kill us.''
''They'll come and get us.''
''You don't know these people.''
Such is the enduring, even paralyzing, fear of the bikers.
Certainly in the late 1960s and 1970s, people had a reason to be afraid:
In January 1970, a girl who rode with the Outlaws was chained to a warehouse ceiling in the Lake County city of Oakland Park. Bikers stripped, beat and sexually abused her as punishment for trying to flee the gang. Bikers threatened to kill her or nail her to a tree.
Two years earlier, Outlaws members did nail a teen-ager to a scrub oak, in Palm Beach County. She was dating a biker, and when she did not give him $10 as ordered one day, gang members nailed her hands to a branch. Her toes barely touched the ground, and she told investigators the bikers threatened to beat her if she cried. Investigators learned of the incident when bikers stole drugs from the hospital where the girl was being treated.
A biker and two friends burst into the Orlando hotel room of a 20-year-old woman in February 1974 and forced her to another room, where they beat, kicked and raped her. They gave the same treatment to a 16-year-old they lured into the room with the promise of a party. The two women were held overnight and threatened with death if they reported the crimes.
Four Outlaws were arrested in Fort Lauderdale in 1974 on charges they tied a 21-year-old woman to a chair, kicked her, beat her and burned her with hot spoons. They said she stole a decal from a biker's motorcycle.
In 1978, three Outlaws were convicted of killing a nightclub singer in Orange County. They beat her, then stabbed her 13 times and slit her throat on orders of a club enforcer.
Several gangs were active in Orange County in the 1970s, but none more so than the Outlaws.
''The Outlaws were running wild,'' said Dan Nazarchuk, an Orange County Sheriff's investigator who still works homicide cases. ''Witnesses would not testify for fear. Rape victims would not press charges. . . . Prosecution of the Outlaws, at that time, was difficult.''
Over and over, women hitchhiking or just walking down the street were pulled into bikers' vans and driven to the clubhouses, where members gang-raped them.
Members made their living selling drugs or stolen motorcycle parts. Biker girlfriends supported their boyfriends by prostitution or by dancing in topless bars.
''It was organized crime, basically,'' said Orange County detective Denny Martin. ''They ruled by intimidation and fear. People didn't want to go against them.''
Tavern takeovers were common. Bikers pulled up at bars on east State Road 50 or South Orange Blossom Trail, went in and took over. Tavern owners were too afraid to oppose them. People who lived near the bars feared letting their children venture outside.
Almost as common as tavern takeovers were gang fights. The Outlaws battled the Hells Angels, Pagans, Warlocks and Iron Cross for dominance. In a 1974 case, the son of an Orange County deputy was kidnapped and beaten when he refused to leave the Pagans and join the Outlaws.
A large part of the biker legend involved Spaziano. In January 1976, he was convicted of killing Laura Harberts, 18, and dumping her mutilated body along a roadside. His trial had extensive news coverage, spreading the biker lore.
In August 1975, an earlier jury convicted Spaziano of raping a 16-year-old girl, slashing her neck and eyes, choking her and dumping her, unconscious, in woods.
Another woman told police that she was grabbed in downtown Orlando, taken to a south Orange Blossom Trail clubhouse and forced to have oral sex and intercourse with at least four men. She identified Spaziano as one of her attackers but declined to prosecute because of fear.
Mel Colman was Orange County sheriff in the 1970s, and he said the biker gang violence evolved slowly. For years, the biker gangs kept mostly to themselves. 'For a long time, it was just a typical gang of motorcycle riders. They'd get drunk and raise hell from time to time,'' Colman said. ''It steadily got worse. . . . There seemed to be a trend toward spreading the violence outside their own.''
Colman and other law enforcement chiefs put pressure on the gangs. By the early 1980s, many had been prosecuted under racketeering laws.
When many members ended up with long prison terms, and others grew too old for the partying lifestyle, gang activity - in Central Florida at least - died down. Investigators estimate there may be no more than a dozen hard-core Outlaws these days at the Orlando and Daytona Beach clubhouses.
Motorcycle gangs still resurface in the news from time to time - a federal jury in Tampa found 14 Outlaws guilty of various drug and arson charges last month - but their violence is directed these days at each other.
Moreover, the image of bikers has mellowed. Twenty years ago, an upstanding citizen never would have approached a group of bikers on the street to talk about motorcycles, Seminole Sheriff's Director Roy Hughey said. Today, doctors and lawyers do it all the time.
The biker threat has diminished, investigators say. But some of the fear won't go away.