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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, 35, and Danielle Imbo, 34, have been missing since Feb. 19.
A Web site dedicated to Imbo 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 III.
The families pleaded for help finding Petrone, who lived in Philadelphia, and Imbo. 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. Police have neither named nor ruled out anyone -- including Danielle Imbo's estranged husband -- as a suspect.
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 helps run his family's bakery in Ardmore. Imbo, a former singer in a local rock band, processes mortgages from her home while caring for her son.
The couple left Abilene, a bar and restaurant, 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. The two have not visited cash machines, used credit cards or made cell phone calls.
Surveillance cameras in front of ATMs did not show them passing by. And cameras on 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.
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.
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