Twenty-Year Cold Case Still Lingers Over South Philly

Broad & Liberty ran my piece on the twenty-year-old missing persons case in South Philly.

You can read the piece via the link blow or the below text:

Paul Davis: Twenty-year-old cold case still lingers over South Philly  

A retired Philadelphia detective who was on the periphery of the Imbo and Petrone missing persons case twenty years ago told me that he is still haunted by the disappearance of the South Philadelphia couple. Like Petrone, the former detective is a South Philadelphian.

“I can’t believe it has been twenty years, and we still don’t know what happened to them,” the retired detective said. “South Philly neighborhoods are like small towns. More so in the Italian neighborhoods. Everybody knows everybody. Someone here has to know something.” 

Over the many years that I’ve covered cops and crime, I’ve heard several law enforcement officers note that a long-term missing person case is often worse for the families than a murder case.

A murder case, even an unsolved murder case, offers a bit of closure for the family. They know that their loved one is dead, and he or she is no longer suffering. A long-standing missing person case, on the other hand, has the victim’s loved ones wondering every day what happened to the victim, and their imagination can go dark thinking about what the missing person might be suffering at that moment. In some cases, the loved ones wonder if they are the reason the person went missing in the first place.

On February 19th, on the 20th anniversary of Imbo and Petrone’s disappearance, the FBI offered a look back at the disappearance and the FBI’s efforts to solve the case.  

According to the FBI, on February 19, 2005, a young couple named Danielle Imbo and Richard Petrone left a cheerful, informal get-together with friends at a Philadelphia bar and were never to be seen again.

“It’s unlikely Danielle and Rich disappeared willingly,” the FBI stated in their update. “Each of them was a dedicated parent to a child from a past relationship, and investigators say that a decision to abandon their children would go against everything in their DNA.”

The FBI stated that at the time of her disappearance, Danielle Imbo was a 34-year-old mortgage processor from Mount Laurel, New Jersey.

Investigators said Imbo was known for being warm and outgoing, for quickly turning new friends into adopted family, and for her devotion to her son.

“Anybody who spoke about Danielle would stop at one point and say, ‘You know, she would give her life for that kid,’” recalled Special Agent Philip Blessington, who is co-leading the FBI Philadelphia investigation with Intelligence Analyst Steven Meagher.

“She very much wanted to earn enough money to buy a house that had a grass[y] backyard so her son could play, that was her driving goal,” Blessington said. She was even enrolled in a class to help further her career.

Petrone was a family man from South Philly who worked at his parents’ bakery.

Like Imbo, Petrone had a child from a prior relationship, a daughter who was the center of his life.

“Rich wasn’t married at the time, but for whatever reason, the daughter’s mother wasn’t in position to care for her daughter in the best possible manner,” Blessington said. “So Rich, by all accounts, was pretty much a solo dad, and he did everything for his daughter, to raise her,” the FBI recounted. “Imbo met Petrone through his sister, who’d been one of her high school classmates. Although Imbo and Petrone had an on-again, off-again relationship, mostly because their immediate priorities were different, things between them were always amicable.”

In their 20th anniversary update on the Imbo/Petrone disappearance, the FBI offered the facts of the case: On February 19, 2005, Imbo originally had a study date planned with a friend and coworker. But, investigators say, she cancelled at the last minute to have dinner with her mother, Petrone’s mother, and their girlfriends. Imbo made plans to meet Petrone later that evening.

“Two of the women from the dinner party drove Danielle to a bar to meet Rich about 9 o’clock at night,” Blessington explained. “And shortly after arriving at the bar, Rich informs Danielle that a friend of his and that friend’s significant other were at another nearby bar.”

The FBI stated that the couples reportedly had a cheerful time at the second bar before parting ways just before midnight. Imbo and Petrone were last seen walking to his truck. The following day, Imbo uncharacteristically missed a hair appointment. This, and the pair’s sudden radio silence, worried their respective families, who contacted the authorities.

When the Mount Laurel Police Department realized they needed help to track down the missing couple, they contacted the FBI.

The FBI stated that ever since, the Bureau’s Philadelphia Field Office, and local, state, and federal law enforcement partners from across the United States have rallied together to determine what happened to the couple.

“A decade into our efforts to unearth the truth about the couple’s whereabouts, FBI Philadelphia case agent Vito Roselli — who has since retired from the Bureau — formulated a coalition of local, state, and federal investigators to help us hunt for the missing couple,” the FBI stated.

This informal task force included FBI personnel, the Philadelphia Police Department, the New Jersey and Pennsylvania state police, personnel from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, the local U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Mount Laurel Police Department in New Jersey, and the Plymouth Township Police Department in Pennsylvania.

The investigation received additional support from the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office, the Criminal Investigation Division of the Delaware County, Pennsylvania, District Attorney’s Office, and multiple agencies in Montgomery and Chester Counties, as well as the New Jersey and Illinois State Departments of Corrections.

The FBI Philadelphia personnel currently leading the investigation, Special Agent Philip Blessington and Intelligence Analyst Steven Meagher, joined the case in 2015. 

“They’ve spent the years since pounding pavement to cultivate sources; analyzing phone, road toll, and financial records; conducting searches; and otherwise chasing leads in Pennsylvania and beyond,” the FBI stated. “Since then, the case team’s investigative efforts have included nearly 300 formal interviews, including one with an Illinois prison inmate who claimed to have information about the missing couple. The team has also vetted tips from the public that have placed Danielle and Rich as far as Alaska and Washington state.”

Despite a wealth of tips received, Meagher said, none have come to fruition.

“A lot of what happens is rumor starts to become legend in the city,” Meagher explained. “So, there are parts of the city where a story that may not have been true or was just a rumor kind of metastasized and became something that it’s not.”

But, he added, even false leads that the case team received helped them refine their search for answers.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s any chance that they are alive,” Blessington said. “If there’s only one thing I can guarantee, there is no way that Danielle Imbo and Rich Petrone wouldn’t find a way to get some kind of message back to their kids.”

According to the FBI, investigators are confident that the same tight-knit South Philly community that raised Petrone and served as a partial backdrop to his love story with Imbo, is keeping the secret of what happened to the couple.

The FBI encourages anyone with information about the whereabouts of Imbo and Patrone and/or his truck, a black 2001 Dodge Dakota with Pennsylvania license plates YFH 2319, to call the FBI Philadelphia Field Office directly at 215-418-4000. The FBI is offering a reward of up to $15,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of anyone involved in the disappearance of Danielle Imbo and Richard Petrone.

“After 20 years, we really need to bring Rich and Danielle home,” Blessington said.

Paul Davis, a Philadelphia writer and frequent contributor to Broad + Liberty, also contributes to Counterterrorism magazine and writes the “On Crime” column for the Washington Times. He can be reached at pauldavisoncrime.com.