On Feb. 19, Richard Petrone and his girlfriend, Danielle Imbo, enjoyed a casual Saturday night of drinking at Abilene on South Street. The couple was joined by Petrone's childhood friend Anthony Valentino and his wife, Michelle. A pleasant night out, everybody was happy and laughing. There were no confrontations. No arguments. Just discussing music and telling stories from when Richie and Anthony were kids.

Shortly after 11:30 p.m., Petrone and Imbo stood to leave. They said they had only a short walk to their car and were heading back to Imbo's home in Mount Laurel, N.J. Petrone hugged Valentino, said he'd talk to him tomorrow, and then he and Imbo walked into the cold night air, blending into the South Street crowd. They have not been seen or heard from since. The cops have no leads.

Donna Valente is a realist. She accepts that her cousin Richie is probably dead. But there is always hope, and on a recent warm Saturday morning, Valente led yet another search party for the missing couple.

"They are out there somewhere," she says in a tired voice while loading fliers and bottled water onto a folding table outside Abilene. "We won't stop until we bring them home."

Ostensibly, the aim of the day's search, which will travel to Pennsauken to comb some woods along the Delaware River, is to find a lead, any lead. Richard's black 2001 Dodge Dakota pickup, maybe. Or Danielle's cream-colored sweater. A washed-up license. A shoe. Something. Anything. But it's unlikely evidence will be found. Police have searched by land, air and sea from the Jersey Shore to Delaware County. They have found absolutely nothing.

Still, the search will keep the media's glare on the case. It has so far garnered a good amount of attention, including spots on America's Most Wanted, CNN and MSNBC, but as time slips away, so does interest and the chance of a random tip leading to a break in the case.

The couple's disappearance reads in the style of a one-hour TV police drama. Danielle's estranged husband, Joseph Imbo, allegedly made repeated threats against Petrone. And, just days before the disappearance, Danielle reportedly told Joseph Imbo and Petrone that she wanted space from both of them. Imbo says he has taken and passed a lie-detector test with the Mount Laurel Police Department, but since any results would be confidential, his assertion could not be verified.

"Right now anyone with any relationship to the subjects is being questioned and looked at," says Philadelphia Police Sgt. Tim Cooney of the South Detective Division, which has six officers working the case full time.

Two weeks ago, a psychic informed the Petrone family that Richie and Danielle's bodies were underneath the Walt Whitman Bridge. The psychic then called the Imbo family and told them Danielle was alive and trapped under the bridge in a freight car. Petrone left Danielle for dead, she said. The police conducted a search and found nothing.

"It was cruel," says Valente. "It freaked Danielle's family out. They thought she was alive and coming home."

On South Street, news crews film Valente and other volunteers as they pass out fliers and try to recruit people for the search party. Most passersby take the fliers, nod politely and keep walking, adding a step or two to their gait. One rheumy-eyed little man with broken teeth and gin on his breath mumbles after he's told the search is not a paying gig. A gray-haired man with a ponytail waves his hand haughtily and shouts, "The world is overpopulated enough already for Chrissakes."

Valente doesn't catch the man's invective but seems disappointed by the small amount of volunteers who have showed up. "We can't do this alone," she says, deflating her shoulders as a crowd of laughing, tattooed teenage boys push past. "We need help."

Petrone's friends stand outside Abilene and describe the missing couple to reporters. Petrone is a doting father to his 14-year-old daughter, Angela, and a lover of hockey, NASCAR and Bruce Springsteen. He and Imbo were dating for a year, although they have known each other since high school in Cherry Hill. Imbo, 34, is petite and pretty and sang in a rock cover band until her son was born two years ago. Petrone, 35, plans to take over the family bakery. Imbo has a lucrative job for a mortgage company. Nobody, including the police, think they abandoned their lives and ran off by themselves. And a random crime doesn't fit either.

"Normally in a random crime, we'd find some type of evidence," says Cooney. "However, there is nothing normal about this case."

The staging ground for the search is a pebble parking lot on the banks of the Delaware River about two miles north of the Ben Franklin Bridge. The group will fan out across the banks of the river in the chance that any evidence discarded in the river might have washed ashore. There are 12 volunteers now, and the news cameras have also made the trip. The early afternoon sun shines hot. A warm breeze blows off the river. A train steams by. Dogs bark. Soon, the group heads south along the train tracks. Recent rains have left the banks flooded and many of the entrances to the river are impassable. After three-quarters of a mile, a clearing leads to an expanse of small dunes surrounded by baby birch and oak trees. In the dunes lay the wrecks of abandoned cars, some still smoldering, but none are Petrone's.

Shortly after 3 p.m., volunteer Karol Anne Moscufo, a nurse from Burlington, N.J., inspects a small stretch of riverbank. The muddy trash- and bramble-filled water gently laps against the shore. The industrial skyline of the lower Northeast fills the horizon. Moscufo spots a bone floating in the tide. She calls over other volunteers, including Valente and Dave Swint, an off-duty cop from Willingboro, N.J., to inspect the find. It is too thin a bone to be human, they all agree, and is most likely the remains of a bird or cat.

"The possibilities of where they could be are endless," says Valente on the trek back to the car. "But we'll keep trying."

For information about upcoming searches go to www.richardpetrone.com or www.danielleimbo.com. A $60,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the couple's safe return. Friends and police ask anybody with information about the case to call 215-546-TIPS.