S. Jersey woman seeks clues to mom's 15-year disappearance
Brianna Day was 6 when her mother vanished. It was 2001. Her mother, Danielle Marie Day, was using heroin and crack cocaine, and sometimes disappeared for weeks at a time from the Lindenwold home she shared with Brianna, son Frankie, and their grandmother, Danielle's mother.
Brianna Day was 6 when her mother vanished.
It was 2001. Her mother, Danielle Marie Day, was using heroin and crack cocaine, and sometimes disappeared for weeks at a time from the Lindenwold home she shared with Brianna, son Frankie, and their grandmother, Danielle's mother.
So when Danielle Day, 28, with dark hair and brown eyes, left an acquaintance's Clementon apartment in March that year, it sparked no alarm.
But after more than a month passed and the family had heard nothing, her brother reported her missing. It was May 15.
Fifteen years later, Danielle Day has yet to be found. Her children are grown. Brianna is 21 and Frankie 22. They wonder whether she is alive, and if not, how she died.
"Not knowing what happened to her is hard," said Brianna Day, who lives in Lindenwold. "It's my mom and I want to know what happened to her, and I just want closure."
Lindenwold Police Detective Joseph Tomasetti, who was recently assigned the case - the former detective on it retired - is now going back to family members and witnesses, pressing them for any detail that might rekindle the investigation.
He said he believes drugs may have played a role in Danielle Day's disappearance, but it is hard to say because of the lack of clues.
"To be honest, there's not a whole hell of a lot," he said.
Brianna Day acknowledges that she does not know much about her mother, because of how early in her life she disappeared.
She said that she and her brother were placed in foster care sometime before their mother's disappearance, but that they still received visits from her. Brianna Day said she still does not know the identity of her or her brother's father.
Danielle Day bounced around jobs, at one point working as a dancer at the Fantasy Showbar, a go-go joint in Mount Ephraim, Tomasetti said. But her drug addiction often took her to Camden.
"Maybe she just got caught up in the wrong crowd of people," Brianna Day said. "But at the same time, maybe she just didn't want the life that she had anymore."
Had Danielle Day fled and tried to start her life over, Tomasetti said, she probably would have contacted her children by now.
"When she was clean, she was good with her kids," he said.
Authorities said Danielle Day left her brother's girlfriend's apartment sometime in the late afternoon on March 30, 2001.
Tomasetti said the girlfriend, whom he recently interviewed, does not remember whether Day drove or walked off, or what conversation they had. But Tomasetti, who plans to interview Danielle Day's brother in the coming months, hopes something will surface.
Meanwhile, Brianna Day, along with her brother, waits.
On a Facebook page she has created about her mother's case, she posts old family photos and pleads for clues. Few people reply, other than those telling Brianna Day to stay strong.
"She's never coming back," Brianna Day posted in January. "I love you mom, wish I knew what happened to you."
Earlier, in October 2014: "Somehow I know we'll meet again. Not sure quite where and I don't know just when. You're in my heart, so until then it's time for saying goodbye. I miss you."
Anyone with information can call Lindenwold Detective Tomasetti at 856-784-7566 or Camden County Prosecutor's Office Detective Michelle Chambers at 856-580-6070.
856-779-3829 @borenmc