Amanda Brown remembered

TAMPA - Every year for the last 11 years, Roy Brown has celebrated his daughter's birthday in the same way: by going to the shores of Old Tampa Bay, by the waters where investigators last searched for little Amanda's body.

"The worst part about it is before all of this even took place me and Mandy used to come out here and fly kites," said Brown.

Amanda Brown was just seven when she went missing. Detectives arrested Willie Crain, a local crabber and convicted child molester, for her murder.

For weeks investigators searched the waters off the Courtney Campbell Causeway where Crain took his boat, but Amanda's body was never found.

"I didn't get to see her have boyfriends. I didn't get to run them off. There's just so many things I've missed out on," added Brown.

Brown says since Amanda's disappearance, he's been as involved as he can be with missing children.

According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, there are still more than 300 kids in Florida who have gone missing in the last 25 years and have never been found.

Brown says he's become friendly with many of those children's parents, like those of Zachary Bernhardt, a little boy who disappeared exactly two years after Amanda.

"They go through life every day thinking Zachary is going to come home. They don't have nothing like what I got. I have somebody on death row," explained Brown, which he added was little solace.

As he and his family celebrate what would have been Amanda's 19th birthday, Brown says he fears his memories are also growing older.

"It just gets harder every year. I guess as I get older I forget things that I don't want to forget, " added Brown.

So Saturday, Brown and his family released 19 purple balloons to remember the girl Amanda Brown was and honor the woman she might be today.

Willie Crain is on death row, though he maintains his innocence.

Guilty or innocent, Crain might not make it to his execution date. He has been diagnosed with colon cancer.