http://www.philly.com/dailynews/loc...sterious_disappearance_5_years_ago_today.html
Every day, when Marge Petrone wakes up, her memory challenges her to a tug-of-war.
On better days, she'll remember her son, Richard Petrone, as a boy in his ice-hockey uniform, or as a man deftly decorating a cake in the family's bakery. She'll see his resemblance in her great-grandson's little face.
On the bad days, her memories can drag Marge Petrone toward the hole gouged out of her family's life when her son and his girlfriend, Danielle Imbo, disappeared after leaving a South Street bar.
"Every day it gets harder," she said recently. "It never gets easier."
The calendar suggests that today might be a terrible day for the Petrones, but the Cherry Hill family says that the five-year anniversary of the couple's disappearance is simply another struggle to endure until there's a break in the case.
"It's the wait," said Marge Petrone, 61. "We have to wait. But we hope it will be worth it in the end."
On Feb. 19, 2005, Richard Petrone, 35, and Imbo, 34, were having drinks with another couple at Abilene's, which was then a bar on South Street near 5th. The couple left the bar together shortly before midnight in Petrone's black 2001 Dodge Dakota pickup. Supposedly, they were heading back to Imbo's home in Mount Laurel.
No one has seen or heard from them since. There has been no trace of the truck.
"They vanished," said John Ottobre, Danielle's brother. "They walked out of Abilene and from the minute they got out the door, no one knows if they turned left or right. We don't even know if they made it to New Jersey."
