Officers Push Efforts To Trace Amos' Movements

Officers Push Efforts To Trace Amos’ Movements

Investigators Working On Assumption Junk Dealer Slain, Robbed

MILAN — State police were pressing their efforts today to crack the still unsolved mystery of the death of Floyd J. Amos, Milan junk dealer who was found dead Saturday with a bullet in his brain at his lonely home on Platt Rd.

Sgt. Thor Person of the Ypsilanti state police said that he and sheriff's deputies were widening their day-and-night search for witnesses who may have seen Amos alive Saturday.

Thus far, he said, they can place the time of Amos’ death only between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. Saturday. His body was found at 6:30 p.m. by Wilburn Myers, who had gone to the home to buy an auto part.

Original theories that Amos had committed suicide were almost discarded. Person said he had received official notice of reports, published yesterday, that the bullet causing Amos’ death did not come from the gun found under his body.

Couple Sought

Person, Sheriff Detective George Randel and Deputy Tom Goodrich have questioned seven persons who saw the 58-year-old widower Saturday before his death. They were searching for one couple who had been seen talking to Amos at his home at 11:30 a.m.

"We hope they will come forward,” Person said, “to give us information. If we could find them, we could narrow the gap of several hours during which Amos’ movements are unknown.”

The state police investigator said “we’re working on several other angles, but they’re just shots in the dark.” Most of the* “angles,” he said, involved placing the time when Amos was shot.

Police began to be skeptical about the possibility of Amos having committed suicide when they learned that the junk dealer habitually carried several hundred dollars in his pockets in two billfolds, but there was no money in his pockets when he was found.

A thorough search of Amos’; house and junk-littered yard failed to uncover “even a penny,” Person said. Nor could any of his personal papers, including his driver’s license, be found.