Filling the void left by her daughter's death

For the last year, Stephanie Long has marked time by the things she would have done.

In December, she would've celebrated her daughter Amber's 27th birthday. Over the summer, they would've sat next to each other on a roller coaster at Busch Gardens. This month, the two would have been planning a long-dreamed-of trip to Europe.

Instead, Long sat alone at the amusement park. The flight to Europe has gone unbooked. The birthday, she said, was the hardest day she's had in a long while.

Monday will mark the first anniversary of the day Amber Long was shot to death in front of her mother in a Northern Liberties purse-snatching gone wrong - a killing that shocked the city and that remains unsolved.

In the year since Amber's death, homicide detectives have pleaded for tips from the public that never came. They have mountains of evidence before them, a partial DNA sample from Amber's purse, left abandoned in the street after her assailant fired a single bullet and fled, but no one in custody.

"Right now, someone is sitting in a kitchen, or a car, or a jail cell next to the people who did this, and they know," lead Detective John McNamee said in an interview.

As weeks stretched into months without an arrest, Stephanie Long has done her best to move forward.

She's funded a scholarship at Amber's alma mater, Philadelphia University, where her daughter studied architecture. She's finished the paintings Amber left unfinished in her South Philadelphia apartment and made a calendar with them that hangs in the city's homicide unit. She ran a 5K for the charity Handbags for Peace, founded after Amber's death.

"You have to take whatever good you can from it," she said. "It's the difference between living and existing."

For detectives, the case has been marked by reams of potential evidence and leads that have not yet stretched far enough.

DNA from Amber's purse handle submitted to a national database still has not turned up a match. Security footage of the shooting showed two men approaching mother and daughter as they walked toward Amber's car on the night of Jan. 19, 2014, but the men's faces were never visible, and video-enhancement techniques proved fruitless.

The men's getaway car - a dark Chevy Impala also caught on video - was likely a rental, McNamee said, but hundreds of rental cars match that description. Detectives have trawled through rental-car company records trying to identify the car and who was driving it that night.

They're still looking for that car.

Last year, a retired homicide detective wrote down the tag number of a similar rental car in West Philadelphia. Detectives traced it to two individuals and submitted evidence to compare with that found at the crime scene. Those results are pending.

"We've hit levels of frustration," McNamee said, "but our experience in our unit shows some cases take time. You can't get frustrated or get impatient. You'll miss something or lose your focus."

Stephanie Long has spent the year trying to focus.

She's a goldsmith who sells her jewelry at her store in Harrisburg. After Amber died, she stopped making jewelry. She resumed her craft only in November.

She joined a group for bereaved mothers but stopped attending after a few meetings. It wasn't a good fit, she said.

Long has cleaned out Amber's apartment and donated her shoe collection - her daughter's one indulgence - to the Salvation Army but saved her clothing. She wears something of Amber's every day.

"I cherish those connections," she said. "Some people would find it very strange that I wear her clothes. But if there's a ghost to be invoked, I want to invoke it."

She made an unplanned trip to Philadelphia on Friday to speak to the local media.

"There's nothing more important, still, than putting it out there and hoping someone comes forward," she said.

It gets easier, she says.

This time last year, she couldn't eat or sleep. The memories of her daughter are happy ones, after all: Amber at the amusement park, Amber wearing her mother's handmade jewelry, Amber in architecture school, cheerfully reminding her classmates during 2 a.m. study sessions "why they wanted to be architects," Long said.

After her daughter's death, Long said, a homicide detective told her Amber's case was "the kind of case that makes them become detectives. It's the kind of thing that makes them that mad."

"I liked the idea," Long said, "that she could continue to be an inspiration for something."

Anyone with information on the case can call the Philadelphia Police Department homicide unit at 215-686-3334, or the department tip line at 215-686-TIPS.