Having a loved one disappear is heartbreaking and soul wrenching, especially when it is out of the blue and there are no answers, even decades on. This is the case of Richard Petrone Jr., 35 and his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Danielle Imbo, 34, who vanished twenty five years ago without a trace.
Richard’s mother, Margaret was the first one to sound the alarm. She explained at the time “I knew something was wrong when I didn’t immediately hear back from him, His phone was never off — it was always in his hands.”
The disappearance of Richard Petrone and Danielle Imbo
The story began the night before, when the couple was seen leaving Abilene’s bar on Philadelphia’s South Street shortly before midnight to get to Richard’s car, a 2001 black Dodge Dakota parked outside the bar. And then they just vanished leaving no trace.
Retired FBI special agent Vito Roselli confirmed that there had been no activity on the couple’s credit cards or bank accounts and that the car had not been picked up on the area’s toll bridge cameras, leaving authorities perplexed. After all, trucks and people do not just vanish without a trace. More than twenty years later, and the families still have no more answers than the day they disappeared, leaving them with questions, accusations, and broken relationships that crumbled under the weight of grief and stress.
Perhaps the story is so scary because it is so mundane, Danielle and Richard met friends around 9 p.m. on that Saturday night, listened to music and drank a few beers, a typical Saturday night for them and for so many people. The plan was simple, after leaving, Danielle would be dropped off at her apartment and Richard would go home as the next morning was a NASCAR race that he would not have missed.
They were wearing normal clothes, Richard a gray Polo sweatshirt, blue jeans and sneakers and Danielle had on jeans and a dark jacket with a black purse, nothing out of the ordinary that could point out to what they were taken or what could have happened to them.
To make the matter even more devastating, Danielle had a son with a former partner, and her disappearance was noticed when the father attempted to drop off their son in accordance with the custody arrangements “It was so out of her character,” Ottobre says. “And so I called around (to) the police stations and the hospitals. And when I got nothing, I knew there was a big problem.”
FBI special agent Philip Blessington gave a statement when the 20th anniversary of the disappearance hit “Anybody who spoke about Danielle (said), ‘You know, she would give her life for that kid. 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.”
Richard also had a child, thirteen at the time, who he would have also never left behind. His mother recalls “He was so good with her, so involved, never passed her off on me unless he really had to do something. Watching him all grown up as a dad, it was so shocking to see how good he was.”
This is why no one believed that they would have just up and vanish voluntarily, not without their children. Some cases continue to weigh heavily on former investigators long after they have stepped away from the badge, and for Roselli, this one stands out above the rest. He is convinced the missing couple met with foul play, but never imagined the investigation would drag on for so many years. As retirement approached in 2023, solving it felt like a race he might not win.
Following the couple’s disappearance, the FBI coordinated with law enforcement across New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Search efforts included divers combing waterways from Philadelphia to Mount Laurel, including parts of the Delaware River. Investigators dug into phone logs, toll records, and financial activity while following leads across state lines. Various possibilities were explored, ranging from a mafia-linked hit to biker gang violence, or even a spontaneous act of violence, yet the mystery remains unsolved.
Roselli, who now works in cybersecurity for an international company in Miami cannot let it go “It stays with me. Like, ‘what did I miss?’ … is constantly living rent-free in my head. But also because you want to see closure for the two families.”
“2005 is not 2025. We don’t have the iPhones (back then). We don’t have digital security cameras everywhere … None of that had existed, so there really wasn’t much video evidence to see to know what route they were (taking),” he says.
But Roselli says one thing’s for sure: More than one person was involved in their disappearance. It would take several people to make a couple and a truck vanish without a trace for two decades, he says.
For now, the mystery remains unsolved, and with no new leads to help the authorities put new theories together, many will go to the grave without getting any answers.