Investigators test a man's DNA on Amy Mihaljevic's clothing

Bay Village Police investigators are one step closer to solving a more than 30-year-old murder case, giving Mark Mihaljevic some hope.

More than three decades later, Mark said the person responsible for the murder of his daughter Amy Mihaljevic is still unknown.

“Whenever you look back, it seems like it happened yesterday,” Mark said.

Even as Mark and his family continue to grieve this unbearable pain, he said he has never given up hope.

“Never, never, never,” he said. “There’s no reason to do it until they find the person who did it.”

New DNA evidence recently found on Amy's clothing could one day lead to the discovery of her killer's identity.

“This idea that you can defeat DNA or the program just doesn’t come around much anymore,” Mark said.

According to the Bay Village Police Department, her clothing was recently retested and a lab found an unknown man's DNA in it, but there's a problem: the amount of DNA collected is too small to be used to create a profile.

But authorities said they hope new DNA testing techniques that may become available in the future could shed light on the decades-old murder.

“We have been told that new DNA tests may be on the horizon that can identify DNA profiles based on the small amount of DNA we have. “We are optimistic that DNA advances may lead us to a breakthrough in this case in the future,” said Bay Village Police Detective Sgt. Jay Elish.

Amy's disappearance

On October 27, 1989, Amy received a call that would lead to one of Northeast Ohio's most high-profile kidnapping and murder investigations.

She was home alone when the phone rang. To this day, the person on the other end of the conversation is unknown, as is what was said during the conversation with Amy.

What is known, however, is that the caller persuaded them to meet at a nearby shopping center so that the two of them could buy a gift for their mother.

Amy's classmates told police they saw her talking to an unknown man near the hair salon in Bay Village Square on the afternoon of her disappearance.

Her body was found on February 8, 1990. She had been stabbed and left in a field on Township Road 1181 in Ashland County.

In 2021, investigators announced that a curtain found several hundred meters from her body contained her DNA and may have held a clue to what happened to her.

Bay Village reveals new clues in the Amy Mihaljevic case and asks the public for help

RELATED: Bay Village reveals new clues in the Amy Mihaljevic case and asks the public for help

The killer's identity remains a mystery.

Anyone with information about the death of Amy Mihaljevic is asked to call investigators at 1-877-FBI-OHIO or the Bay Village Police Department at 440-871-1234.

Memorial Run & Walk

Amy's case has drawn people like Mark Kevesdy of Bay Village, who started a memorial walk for Amy four years ago.

“If we don’t do something about these cases, in most cases things won’t happen,” said Kevesdy, the Walk for Amy organizer.

Kevesdy said he is confident these efforts will continue to raise awareness and money for the “Amy Fund,” which he said will be used solely to assist detectives with investigations into things like DNA testing.

“I know there are a lot of unsolved cases that maybe in some cases don't have the same dynamic, don't have the same support network, and Amy is certainly one of thousands of cases across the country, so maybe it can be a model for the future said Kevesdy.

The Amy Mihaljevic Memorial Run & Walk will be held at 9 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 26, at Cahoon Park, Bay Village

To register, click here.