Amber Jean Swartz-Garcia

• Missing Since 06/03/1988
• Missing From Pinole, California
• Classification Non-Family Abduction
• Sex Female
• Race White
• Date of Birth 08/19/1980 (44)
• Age 7 years old
• Height and Weight 4'0, 65 pounds
• Clothing/Jewelry Description A short-sleeved white shirt with teal bands around the bottom of the shirt, the neck, and the bottoms of both sleeves and images of multicolored sunglasses printed on it; purple corduroy pants, pink socks, brand-new white LA Gear sneakers with pink or white laces, and emerald earrings with gold posts.
• Medical Conditions Amber has a hearing impairment and uses a hearing aid and reads lips. She has a slight speech impediment due to her impaired hearing. She also suffers from migraine headaches due to a concussion she sustained in 1984. The headaches cause loss of balance and vomiting. She took the prescription medication Fiornal for them at the time she disappeared. Amber had neither her hearing aid nor her medicine with her when she vanished.
• Distinguishing Characteristics Caucasian female. Blonde hair, blue eyes. Amber's teeth are crooked and her upper right front tooth was missing at the time of her 1988 disappearance. Her ears are pierced and she is right-handed. Amber has a scar on the inside of her right eyebrow and moles on her throat and below the right side of her lower lip. She sucked her thumb when she was tired or nervous at the time of her disappearance. Some agencies refer to her as Amber Swartz or Amber Garcia Swartz. Her nicknames are Am and A.J.

Details of Disappearance

Amber was last seen jumping rope at approximately 4:15 p.m. in the front yard of her family's residence on Savage Avenue in Pinole, California on June 3, 1988. She was not usually allowed to play in the yard alone but her mother, Kim Swartz, made an exception that day because their neighbors would be arriving home soon.

Kim checked outside approximately 15 minutes after Amber left the house and noticed she had disappeared. The child has never been heard from again. She may have been holding an adult-sized leather jump rope with wooden handles at the time of her disappearance. It disappeared along with her and was never found.

Authorities did discover a pair of pink socks near Amber's residence on June 4, the day after her disappearance. The socks were found on a baseball diamond by the creek that flows behind Amber's house. Kim believes they may have belonged to her daughter, but she is uncertain and additional clues were never located. The socks were located after the area had been searched once already; it is believed that they were left after the initial search.

For many years, Timothy Bindner was a suspect in Amber's disappearance, as well as the disappearances of Michaela Garecht, Ilene Misheloff and Amanda "Nikki" Campbell. A photo of Bindner is posted with this case summary. He maintains his innocence and successfully sued Amanda's hometown of Fairfield, California in 1997 for defamation of character.

He has been ruled out in Michaela's case, and in 2020, David Misch, was charged with her kidnapping and murder. Misch is a suspected serial killer. He is awaiting trial in Michaela's case and in the 1986 double murder of two women.

Bindner approached many of the mothers of missing girls from the East Bay area offering his assistance, including Amber and Michaela's families. He introduced himself to Kim three days after Amber vanished. Investigators asked Kim to maintain a quasi-friendship with him in hope of learning if he was connected to any of the girls' cases. She and authorities agreed that Bindner appeared to playing mind games with victims' loved ones and law enforcement.

Kim was married to Amber's father, police officer Floyd "Bernie" Swartz, when he was killed in the line of duty in May 1980. Photographs of Kim and Floyd are posted with this case summary. Amber was born three months after her father's death. Any connection between her and James Richard Odle, the man who murdered her father, was ruled out. He was on death row in in 1988.

In a surprise development in the summer of 2009, investigators announced they'd identified the man responsible for Amber's abduction and murder and were closing her case. Curtis Dean Anderson, a known pedophile and violent criminal, was already in prison for the 1999 kidnapping and murder of a seven-year-old Vallejo, California girl and the kidnapping and molestation of an eight-year-old girl when he confessed to Amber's murder in 2007.

Anderson stated said he just happened to be driving in the neighborhood, saw Amber and kidnapped her "for company." He stated he sedated Amber with root beer schnapps and took her to a motel in the Tucson, Arizona area, where he suffocated her about a day and a half after her abduction. He then left the child's body in an isolated area beside Highway 10 in Benson, Arizona. It has never been found. A photograph of Anderson is posted with this case summary.

Anderson made the confession a month before he died in prison in December 2007. He also confessed to other sexual assaults, kidnappings and abductions in the San Francisco Bay area, but he only signed a statement in Amber's case. Authorities spent eighteen months investigating his confession and couldn't find any evidence to refute it.

Many, including Kim, remain skeptical of Anderson's claims, however. Anderson enjoyed the notoriety he got for his crimes and enjoyed teasing and manipulating the police and the families of his victims, and some believe his statement about Amber was just another example of this.

In 2013, after an online petition campaign, the Pinole Police Department reopened the investigation into Amber's disappearance. The department cited, in part, new forensic techniques that will allow them to better process old evidence.

Amber's body has never been found.