Richard Petrone: The Philadelphia Record
A father’s case record and the limits of a retrospective account.
Abstract
NamUs MP3968 lists February 19, 2005 as Richard Petrone’s Date of Last Contact in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was thirty-five.1
A Father Before the Case
David Chang and Claudia Vargas’s NBC10 report describes Petrone as a father to a fourteen-year-old daughter. Retired investigator Vito Roselli remembered him as hardworking and outgoing. Those are biographical descriptions, rather than new observations of his last movements.2
Two Individual Records
Petrone’s entry identifies Philadelphia Police Department’s South Detective Division and case 05-01-005526. Danielle Imbo has a separate NamUs record, MP806. Their shared contact date does not turn two individual missing-person files into one identity.1
The inspected Petrone record does not supply an agency reporting-date field. A database omission cannot establish whether or when a relative called police.1
Sourced Accounts and Questions
Here’s where you come in. Can you match each dated document to Petrone’s own case number before joining it to another person’s timeline?1
Can you distinguish the original account of a last contact from a later investigator’s retrospective interview?2
Keep each source’s date, speaker and unanswered question in a Research File in Almost Solved. Record what a document establishes before using it to explain what happened.
Show later developments and reported outcomes
Later Interviews and Search Assessments
The NamUs vehicle entry lists a 2001 Dodge Dakota pickup. That description identifies a search subject, rather than establishing a route.1
NBC10’s February 19, 2026 page explicitly carries its 2025 anniversary report. Roselli’s account of an unresolved murder-for-hire possibility is an attributed assessment, not a finding of a death or anyone’s responsibility.2
The original interviews, witness statements and full investigative file were not inspected. The page’s later anniversary date does not by itself establish a new interview, a new lead or a resolved case.
Scope and Method
Original interviews, witness statements and the full investigative file were not inspected.
Prepared with AI assistance. Sources and references checked against the cited public materials. This paper is an original synthesis of the identified public sources; it does not reproduce article bodies, transcripts, or an investigative file.
Footnote References
- NamUs, MP3968; reviewed November 3, 2026.
- David Chang and Claudia Vargas, NBC10 Philadelphia, February 19, 2026; carrying its 2025 report.