WITHOUT A TRACE: RIchard Petrone and Danielle Imbo are still missing.

Yet, he's been trying to get in touch with relatives and authorities to offer a peculiar brand of help: psychics. He has already invited some to town to help with the missing-persons investigation.

McCandless, of Bucks County, has repeatedly contacted Petrone's cousin Donna Valente but she says his efforts only remind her of the psychic who contacted the families shortly after the couple went missing and falsely raised their hopes. All that woman did, Valente says, was lead police on a futile search and exploit the mystery for her own benefit. However desperate they may be for answers, the relatives say they have no interest in bringing in another seer.

"These people," Valente says, "they prey on people's desperation. Every psychic claims to know where they are. It's mean-spirited."

McCandless, however, hopes they change their minds and has invited a pair of clairvoyants to visit next month.

He became interested in the case after taking a Duck Boat ride with his wife. While motoring along the Delaware River, the contraption struggled to climb the ramp back onto Delaware Avenue, sputtered to a stop and drifted down to a Heliport until a rescue boat dragged it to safety. That got McCandless thinking: What if the boat hit something under water, like Petrone's black 2001 Dodge Dakota pickup truck? He immediately called the police tip line, but he says they seemed disinterested, so he contacted clairvoyants from the Court TV show Psychic Detectives.

Now, McCandless has arranged for Gale St. John of Ohio and Vicki Warren of Texas to visit Abilene on South Street, the last place the couple was seen. He says St. John already named some city streets to him; Warren has told him two men and two vehicles were involved and told him she saw a dirty, dusty road.

Police Det. Eric. Johnson, the investigator assigned to the case, says it is department policy not to work with psychics, but "if they have something physical to back it up, I have no problem looking into it." He and four other detectives in his unit, as well as other departments, the New Jersey State Police and the FBI still consider the case a priority.

"This is personal," he says. "It is completely out of their lifestyle to disappear. They're not involved in any drug or criminal lifestyle. And they both left children behind."

Shortly after the disappearance, Valente set up a Web site through which many people contacted her offering to help. She appreciates the condolences of others who have gone through similar ordeals, but she says McCandless' fixation is just creating more pain. Valente welcomes ideas that are independent from psychic efforts, "like a day to get people to volunteer and come out and raise awareness not only for Rich, but for the cause of missing persons."

A lack of resources forces law enforcement officers to rank cases and missing adults can get overlooked in a sea of reports, says Valente, who thinks opportunities were lost in the first snowy hours after her cousin and Imbo left Abilene. (The couple is among 107,899 missing people in the FBI's database as of April 1.)

Valente says she has told McCandless to back off and that the Petrones want to let the authorities do their job without any interference from psychics. "I believe the people who are working on this case have embraced it and done the best they could to transition it to the FBI," she says.

It remains to be seen whether McCandless will honor her requests, but when told about the family's reaction, St. John said they will not get involved without "a 100 percent invite" directly from the parents of Petrone or Imbo. As plans to raise money for their travel by hosting psychic readings while they were in town are already being considered, St. John said they thought McCandless had the family's blessing. Now, McCandless says he'd be willing to drop everything if the family wants.

"I was just trying to help them out," he says. "It's just been bugging me since that day. And I figured it would probably bring peace to a lot of people."

Anybody with information about the disappearance is asked to call 215-546-8477 or e-mail Donna Valente at dmvpenn@yahoo.com.