Soon-to-be married Little River woman beaten to death. How did her killer go unnoticed?
Michelle Robinson sits in a living room chair, one leg tucked under the other, with the sun streaming through the window behind her.
In her lap are photos of her daughter Amber Berbiglia. The photos show the blonde-haired young woman smiling, something she did often.
“Amber was the light. She would just light up the room,” Robinson said. “She was happy all the time.”
The Little River resident looks down at the pictures as she recalls the day an Horry County Police officer knocked on the door to tell her that Berbiglia had been killed.
That was on May 3, 2013, when the 23-year-old’s body was found by mud boggers outside her vehicle on Old Sanders Drive near the Robert Edge Parkway overpass in North Myrtle Beach.
She had been beaten to death with a large boulder. Police told Robinson that it looked like Berbiglia tried to run before she was killed.
Because her body was still warm, her killer was believed to have left the scene just a short time before she was discovered and police arrived on scene. But the person was never found.
Robinson said she could accept her daughter’s death if it was an accident, but not the way Berbiglia died.
“She was so popular. She was so in love. I can’t just see her being beaten,” Robinson said.
But as Robinson marks the 12th year of Berbiglia’s death, no one has been charged in the crime, leaving the 65-year-old to continue her push to find her daughter’s killer.
“It won’t change it, but it will give me peace of mind of who did it and why,” Robinson said. “Why is the biggest question.”
She’s not the only family member who has that question. Berbiglia is one of at least 60 unsolved homicide cases in Horry County.
Was person interrupted in Amber’s killing?
It had rained earlier that May day, making the road muddy.
The area looks different than it did all those years ago. At the time, the area was overgrown and only a few homes were located near the crime scene.
It was teenagers riding ATVs along the dirt road who found Berbiglia.
They had passed by her vehicle, which was stuck in the mud, according to information gathered from police and reports by Gina Stevens, a family friend who has been working to keep Berbiglia’s case in the spotlight.
