March 25, 2005 In the days before Danielle Imbo disappeared last month, she told both her boyfriend and her estranged husband that she wanted space from each of them.
Since Imbo and her boyfriend, Richard Petrone Jr., both 34-year-olds with children, went missing after drinks at a Philadelphia bar on Feb. 19, police have been confounded by the disappearance.
In interviews this week with The Associated Press, a picture emerged of her as a deeply conflicted woman and of both Petrone and Joseph Imbo Jr. as scorned men.
"I hate to say this because I won't want to hurt anyone's feelings, but she didn't want to be with either of them," said Dawn DeSimone, who has been a friend of Danielle Imbo's since they met at Cherry East High School nearly 20 years ago.
Philadelphia Police Sgt. Tim Cooney said he is aware of the entangled relationships.
"We would be negligent if we didn't" investigate whether either of the men may be behind the disappearance, Cooney said. But police have not named or ruled out any suspects in the case.
Joseph Imbo Jr. said he took a police lie-detector test - and passed. Imbo Jr. said that in March 2004, he moved out of the Mount Laurel home he shared with his wife and their son, Joseph Imbo III, who was then 8 months old. He became involved with a woman he had met on a trip to the Super Bowl in Houston a little over a month earlier.
By May, Danielle Imbo was dating Petrone, the brother of one of her longtime friends. He had moved from Ardmore to South Philadelphia to be closer to his teenage daughter, worked long hours in his family's pastry shop and sometimes traveled to see NASCAR races.
The never-married Petrone's feelings for Imbo were stronger than her feelings for him, friends said. "My son would have been very, very lucky to end up with her," said Petrone's mother, Marge. "It was my dream to see them end up together."
But that was never Imbo's dream, two of her friends said. "'He's a really great guy, but a little rough around the edges.' That was her line to me," said Jeanette DeAngelo, Danielle Imbo's friend.
Petrone gave Imbo space when she asked for it, friends and family say, but she didn't have the heart to end their relationship because he was so kind to her and she did not want to hurt him.
Joseph Imbo Jr. said he did not like his wife dating the other man but he and others said the two never met in person, but they did talk on the phone.
Marge Petrone said Joseph Imbo Jr. called her son many times and made threats. Imbo, 33, gives a different account.
"Rich and I had some conversations on the phone two or three times," said Joseph Imbo Jr., who works for Cendant Mortgage in Mount Laurel. "Rich more threatened me than I threatened him."
Even as the Imbos' divorce was pending, Joseph Imbo Jr. and his wife initiated reconciliation efforts. But they never stuck.
In January, he moved briefly to Georgia to be with the woman he had met a year earlier. He returned after just 10 days to try again to win back his wife.
After that Danielle Imbo seemed very stressed, said DeSimone, who sometimes stayed at Imbo's home. The already thin woman kept getting thinner. After she put her son to bed, she would sit on her couch nervously chain-smoking.
By the middle of February, she decided what to do about the two men.
"Danielle called me the Wednesday before she disappeared," Joseph Imbo Jr. said. "She said, 'I want you to know that I'm no longer seeing Rich.' ... She said, 'I want to be by myself now."'
DeAngelo, who met Danielle Imbo when both worked at an Atlantic City casino in the late 1980s, said her friend had a clearer resolve around the time she tried to loosen her ties to the two men.
"She set a goal for herself to really save some money so she could get out of the condo and get a bigger place for her and her son," DeAngelo said.
Danielle Imbo, formerly a singer in a southern New Jersey rock band, was working for Cendant Mortgage out of her home so she could care for her son. She wanted her son and husband to have a close relationship, even when she did not want to reconcile with the man, friends said.
The afternoon of Saturday, Feb. 19, Joseph Imbo Jr. picked up the toddler for the weekend.
And that evening, Danielle Imbo had dinner with her mother and Petrone's mother and sister at a sports bar in South Philadelphia. Afterward, she met up with Richard Petrone Jr. and two of his friends for a few drinks at Abilene, a restaurant and bar on South Street, a center of nightlife in the city.
It surprised DeAngelo that Imbo would have gone to see Petrone after a phone conversation they had the day on Feb. 18. "She told me she was staying home all weekend," her friend said.
Petrone and Imbo left about the bar about 15 minutes before midnight. Their path from there disappears. Their cell phones, credit cards and bank accounts have not been used and Petrone's big Dodge pickup has not been located.
The searches have gone from Philadelphia to the New Jersey Shore. Sgt. Cooney said Friday that the search has widened in the last few days, but he would not say how.
Joseph Imbo Jr. has returned to the home he and his wife had shared. He is now living there and taking care of their son.
Relatives have appeared on national television asking for help and touting a reward, which now stands at more than $50,000. The family and friends have been careful, including in interviews for this article, not to blame anyone specific for the disappearance. "The Petrones are not pointing fingers in any direction," said Craig Mitnick, a lawyer working for the family. "They are just praying and hoping that law enforcement follows every possible lead."
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