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Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory: On February 19, 2005, 34-year-old Danielle Imbo and 35-year-old Richard Petrone went on an impromptu date at a Philadelphia bar. After they left the establishment for the night, they headed towards Richard’s truck—and were never seen again.

FBI Philadelphia Special Agent Phil Blessington: Two people in a vehicle just don't disappear. They just don't go missing.

Oprihory: The FBI’s Philadelphia Field Office and our partners have spent two decades conducting interviews and chasing leads across the United States in hopes of locating the missing couple and bringing closure to their families.

On this episode of Inside the FBI, we’ll discuss this ongoing case and explain how investigators are working to solve this disappearance, 20 years later.

We’ll also get to know who Danielle and Richard were before they vanished and detail how you can help the Bureau figure out what happened to them.

I’m Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory, and this is Inside the FBI.

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***

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Oprihory: The story of Danielle Imbo and Richard Petrone’s disappearance started on a snowy night in February 2005.

At the time, Danielle Imbo was a young mother from South Jersey who had been working as a mortgage processor. As case agent Phil Blessington explains…

Blessington: She was still technically married, but soon to be single. She had a toddler son. She absolutely adored that boy above anything else. Like, he was her world. Anybody who spoke about Danielle would stop at one point and say, “You know, she would give her life for that kid.”

And I think when you talk to different people, you see how that navigated her life. Different decisions she made all seemed to revolve around what is in betterment for him...

FBI Philadelphia Intelligence Analyst Steven Meagher: ...And what is
good for the welfare of my child—whether that be a job, whether that be who I speak to, who I associate with.

Oprihory: That’s FBI Philadelphia Intelligence Analyst Steven Meagher. He and Blessington have been investigating Danielle and Richard’s disappearance since 2015.

Blessington: Danielle was an outgoing person. She was always described as a warm, friendly, social person. She loved her family. She loved her friends.

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. At the same time, she was still very close with her family.

Oprihory: To help achieve her dream of financial security, Danielle and a friend were taking classes to further their careers. They originally had a study date planned for February 19.

But, Blessington explained, Danielle cancelled it at the last minute to instead grab dinner with her mom, her boyfriend’s mom, and a few of their girlfriends.

Her boyfriend’s name was Richard Petrone.

***

Oprihory: Rich was a hardworking family man from blue-collar South Philly who worked at his parents’ bakery.

Blessington: Mom said one of her memories was working the bakery and dancing with him.

Everyone seemed to love Rich, right? He was a good guy.

Oprihory: And, like Danielle, he had a child from a past relationship—a tween daughter who was similarly at the center of his life’s orbit.

Blessington: 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. So Rich, by all accounts, was pretty much a solo dad, and he did everything for his daughter, to raise her.

Blessington: Danielle knew Rich's sister from high school. And when Danielle's father passed away, Rich's sister went to the viewing. They kind of reconnected after that. And that kind of brought Danielle around and brought Rich into the picture.

Oprihory: Rich and Danielle’s relationship was on-again, off-again in nature—due to differing priorities and never animosity. Rich was hoping to settle down and start a combined family, while Danielle was focusing on navigating her separation and being there for her young son.

Blessington: They are both good people. They both treat each other well. They both had similar positive values.

***

Oprihory: On February 19, 2005, during her dinner out with friends, Danielle made plans to meet up with Rich afterwards.

Blessington: Two of the women from the dinner party drove Danielle to a bar to meet Rich about 9 o’clock at night. 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.

They get to the second bar.

Meagher: There weren't many regulars, from what I understand. It was kind of transient just because of the nature of what South Street is. But it wasn't necessarily a rough bar.

Blessington: Rich actually kind of makes a joke to the friend, “I'm surprised how close a spot I got,” because the bar was kind of crowded that night. It's a Saturday night in February. Not much else going on in the city of Philadelphia.

Meagher: It was also snowing really bad that night.

Blessington: So after having, as a friend says, “a nice time"—no problems and everyone's in good spirits—about 11:30—really not too late—the two couples part ways, and Rich and Danielle head out to his truck.

Oprihory: And that was the last time we know of anyone seeing or interacting with Rich and Danielle.

***

Oprihory: The FBI’s investigation into Danielle and Richard’s disappearance began soon after. It all started with a missed appointment the next day: February 20, 2005.

Blessington: Danielle failed to show up for an appointment at a salon. And that's unlike Danielle. And because both Danielle and Rich had strong relationships with their families, they start calling around.

Oprihory: At the time, Danielle still shared custody of her son with her estranged husband. But when he tried to contact her to bring their son back from a weekend visit, Blessington said…

Blessington: He couldn't get a hold of Danielle.

Oprihory: Rich’s family also attempted to reach him, to no avail.

Blessington: Some family members drove around trying to find them in and around the Philadelphia area, and tracing the route back to Danielle's house.

Somebody had gone to Rich's apartment to see if he was there. Maybe he overslept and just if he knew where Danielle was.

Blessington: Both families did definitely their due diligence to try and find any kind of contact point for either of them. And neither family had success.

Oprihory: Since Danielle lived in Mount Laurel, New Jersey—about 15 miles east of Philadelphia—her family contacted the local police department. They, in turn, reached out to the FBI for assistance.

***

Oprihory: About a decade into the investigation, the FBI case agent decided to bring in additional personnel to aid in the search for Danielle and Rich.

As Meagher tells it…

Meagher: …they organized this almost like a cold-case task force. They brought in several outside agencies and other field offices to help out. I got pulled off my squad to get put onto this case.

Blessington: At that point, I was in the Newark Division, and a canvass was a little bit unusual. They were looking for somebody that had sources in two different settings, and I think I was the only person in Newark that had sources in both. They asked if I would mind heading down, and I was excited to get on board.

Oprihory: They were joined by another special agent from FBI New York, as well as our partners from:

The Philadelphia Police Department;
The New Jersey State Police;
The Pennsylvania State Police;
The ATF;
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;
Multiple agencies in Montgomery and Chester Counties; and
The New Jersey and Illinois state departments of corrections.
***

Oprihory: In this type of investigation, Blessington said, interviews are key. So building trust within the South Philly community has been critical to the case.

Blessington: The city of Philadelphia is more like a town than a city. Everybody knows everybody. Everybody kind of looks out for everybody. A lot of people are related. I mean, we're not even six degrees; we're like three, at best—which is one of the challenges of this case.

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Blessington: In South Philadelphia, people are very close. It's a generational-type area where people may live in the same house that their parents, and even their grandparents, lived in. And then, their brothers and sisters might live in the house behind the alley behind them or up the corner.

People from South Philly tend to move over to South Jersey, which is where the other part of this case seems to take place. So, it is a very tight knit community.

The positive thing is we know people who know things, and people have shared that with us. At the same time, other people are concerned because everyone kind of knows others’ business, about speaking to us. So, it's kind of been a double-edged sword.

But what I can tell those people—and there are people who know things—[is]: If we only do one thing very, very well, we protect the people that are brave enough and try and help us out.

You have parents that will never be whole. You have kids that will never be whole. You have brothers and sisters. You have extended family and friends.

When people trust us enough to share things with us, we protect that.

Meagher: Especially the collection of investigators and intelligence people put together for this case--they're impeccable. I was proud to be a part of this investigation because I got to watch people who knew what they were doing, knew how to do it, and execute on a very high level.

And they protected the information that was coming into this case.

Oprihory: He and Meagher used conversations with sources to help guide their searches of physical locations for Danielle, Rich, and the truck they disappeared in.

Blessington: So, we search like different bodies of water or different locations where an object—regardless of the size—could disappear, for lack of a better term.

Oprihory: Investigators have also employed polygraph examinations, surveillance, and data analysis in the search for the missing couple.

Blessington: There's been some analysis of phone and toll records that help tell the story. And again, all this is refining the story, looking at some financials of different individuals that we think help refine and sharpen the point of this focus.

***

Blessington: You have to do that due diligence. We have to be able to shut the door and say “This was not what happened.” And part of the investigative process is being able to confirm this is not what happened.

And that's why Steve went to a couple different states to make sure that was done.

Oprihory: Meagher and other members of the case task force even traveled to a jail in the middle of Illinois to interview an inmate who claimed to have information about Danielle and Rich’s disappearance.

***

Blessington: In a case like this, a lot of people want to do the right thing. A lot of people want to help out. And especially at the ten-year mark, we had a lot of different leads and tips come in.

Oprihory: While the investigators had a rough idea of what might’ve happened that night…

Blessington: … when you get other outstanding tips or leads that could be credible, you have to run them down, right? You owe it to the victims, you owe it to the families. You owe it to everybody to run them down, to remove doubt.

We ran down and we disproved a lot of theories. It's more challenging to prove things, but it's just as important to disprove different situations.

Oprihory: Disproving theories, Blessington said, was crucial to avoiding confirmation bias.

Blessington: [Confirmation] bias is you already have an idea or a theory and you want to prove why it works, you sort of ignore any facts that might give you indication otherwise, right? If you think something is the answer, you ignore any facts that would disprove or dispel that.

And we've been very careful not to do that.

Oprihory: The investigators were so determined to avoid making dangerous assumptions in the case that they’d have meetings dedicated to poking holes in various theories of what might’ve happened to Danielle and Rich.

Tips from the public have allegedly placed Danielle Imbo and Richard Petrone thousands of miles from their last known location in South Philly.

Meagher: We periodically get reports of Rich and Danielle in different states like California or Washington state or Texas. We've received reports that they have been seen as real-estate agents, or they work at a mall. And we have to run those down, too, because people genuinely feel for this case and they feel for those people.

Blessington: Just recently, we had a report that they were living in Alaska, and we've had them spotted outside the continental United States, as well.

Oprihory: But despite thoroughly vetting every lead, Meagher said...

Meagher: ... we haven't had anything come to fruition.

A lot of what happens is rumor starts to become legend in the city. 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.

Some of the tips that we got were just false leads. However, those tips did refine this investigation in order to direct it in a certain area.

Blessington: I came into the case in 2015, and we have done close to 300, if not more, interviews. I feel like we know Danielle and Rich as well as you can know somebody without ever meeting them—the good, bad, and ugly. But the reality is there wasn't really much ugly. There wasn't much bad.

Blessington: They were two good people I think anybody would love to have as next-door neighbors.

Meagher: It would be almost impossible for us to think that they would just leave on their own as opposed to this being some form of nefarious activity.

Blessington: Unfortunately, I don't think there's any chance that they are alive.

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.

***

Oprihory: If you have any information that could help us solve this case and bring closure to the victims’ families—whether you recall seeing Danielle and Rich at a South Philly bar on February 19, 2005, or spotted the couple or their black 2001 Dodge Dakota truck afterwards—we encourage you to call the FBI Philadelphia Field Office 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.

You can also learn more about Danielle and Rich, as well as view their pictures, at fbi.gov/missing.

***

Blessington: Just call us. We'll help them work through all the different concerns, all the different emotions. We help people work through different legalities.

Meagher: Please come forward. It's something that I think these families need. Somebody out there knows something.

Blessington: After 20 years, we really need to bring Rich and Danielle home.

***

Oprihory: This has been another production of Inside the FBI. You can follow us on your favorite podcast player, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube. You can also subscribe to email alerts about new episodes at fbi.gov/podcasts.

I’m Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory from the FBI’s Office of Public Affairs. Thanks for listening.

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