U.S. & World

PHILADELPHIA (AP) ― In more than a month since a couple vanished after a night out, their cell phones have not been dialed, their credit cards have not been used and the pickup truck they were driving has not been found.

People who visit the city's nightlife spots are reminded by ubiquitous fliers that Richard Petrone and Danielle Imbo have been missing since Feb. 19. A Web site dedicated to Imbo, of Mount Laurel, N.J., is rife with speculation about what happened, a billboard on Interstate 95 gives details and relatives have pleaded for help on national television.

But the case so far has stumped authorities and families of the missing.

"As one of the detectives said, they don't believe in flying saucers, so where did they go?" said Petrone's father, Richard Petrone Sr.

Petrone appeared with other relatives of the missing couple at a news conference Tuesday. Among those there was Imbo's estranged husband, Joe Imbo, who has moved into his wife's Mount Laurel, N.J., home since she disappeared to care for their 20-month-old son, Joseph Imbo III.

The families pleaded for help finding Petrone, 35, who lived in Philadelphia and Imbo, 34. They believe that because of the couple's strong ties to family, they would not have run away on their own.

"I just need him back, please, please," Petrone's 14-year-old daughter, Angela, said through tears.

A reward for information has grown to around $50,000, said Richard Petrone Sr.

Craig Mitnick, a lawyer who is acting as a liaison between Imbo and Petrone's families and police, said it's increasingly likely that the two are dead and that there was an organized plot to harm them.

"One person couldn't have done that," Mitnick said.

Imbo and Petrone have known each other since they were both in high school in southern New Jersey in the mid 1980s, though they started dating only recently.

Petrone helped run his family's bakery in Ardmore. Imbo was a former singer in a local rock band who processed mortgages from her home while she cared for her son.

The couple left Abilene, a bar and restaurant on bustling South Street, around 11:45 p.m. on a Saturday night last month and told friends they planned to return to Mount Laurel.

From the bar, their trail disintegrates.

Police have not found people who saw the couple on the street. While there were plenty of people around, the couple did not stand out, said Philadelphia police Sgt. Tim Cooney, one of a half-dozen city police working on the case full-time.

The couple have not visited cash machines, used credit cards or made cell phone calls.

Surveillance cameras in front of ATMs along South Street did not show them passing by. And the cameras on the Ben Franklin and Walt Whitman Bridges did not catch Petrone's black pickup driving into New Jersey, Cooney said.

Nearly every street in the city has been searched for the truck. So have the parking lots at Philadelphia International Airport, back roads of the New Jersey Pine Barrens and the swampy land of Tinicum Township, just south of Philadelphia.

The search has gone into New York, Delaware and up and down the New Jersey Shore. Police across the country have been alerted to be on the lookout.

With attention to the disappearance on "America's Most Wanted" and other national television programs, tips have poured in, said Cooney.

"Some little old lady from Iowa called me today," he said.
"She thinks she saw the truck."

But, Cooney said, no such leads have panned out.

The truck is a black 2001 Dodge Dakota truck, with Pennsylvania tags YFH-2319 and a NASCAR sticker. Anyone with information is asked to call police.

(© 2005 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)