Phaedra Trethan

@CP_Phaedra

LINDENWOLD - Mother and daughter are both smiling in the photo. The pretty young woman with brown hair and eyes to match holds the baby, her own brown hair and eyes looking right into the camera.

But Brianna Day, now a 21-year-old college student, has no memory of her mother — only the recollections of relatives, some reluctant to talk about Danielle, who left behind two children and countless questions.

Danielle Marie Day, troubled by her addiction to heroin and crack cocaine, left her brother’s Clementon apartment March 30, 2001. It wasn’t unusual for the then-28-year-old to lose touch with her family for extended periods, so her mother didn’t immediately contact authorities.

But after several days without hearing from her daughter, Carol Olivo called Lindenwold Police to report Danielle missing. And in the 15 years since, there has been no new information for detectives working to find her.

“I just want some closure,” Day told the Courier-Post, as she looked at photos of a mother whose appearance is so similar to her own. “I just want to know what happened to her.”

Day and her brother Frankie were just 6 and 7, respectively, when their mother went missing. But even before that, she was, at best, an infrequent presence in their lives. The siblings were placed in separate foster homes, their mother intermittently taking advantage of visitation rights, before eventually being adopted by Olivo, their maternal grandmother.

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Day knows little about her mother, and nothing about who her father is. Danielle was known to spend time in Camden, Philadelphia and Brooklyn, New York, and had worked as a dancer at the Fantasy Show Bar, a now-demolished strip club on the Black Horse Pike in Mount Ephraim.

“My grandmom said that when she wasn’t on drugs, she was a good person, the nicest, most respectful person. But when she was on them, she was a whole other person,” Day said, her voice trailing off.

“She did visit us, when we were with our grandmother,” she recalled. “But it’s hard to talk about her because I don’t know much.”

Olivo, she said, has a hard time talking about her daughter. “She’s dealing with a lot,” she said. “But I know she’s still upset about it, and I know she still thinks about her and still cares what happened.”

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Lindenwold police Det. Joe Tomasetti was assigned to the case after the original investigator, Noel Cortes, retired last year. He’s talked to family members, including Danielle Day’s brother and her former boyfriends and co-workers from the Fantasy Showbar, but still has few leads.

Investigators have swabbed Olivo and Brianna Day for their DNA, hoping to find out whether it might be similar to unidentified women whose bodies have been found and match Danielle Day’s description. So far, though, none have.

Danielle Day is on NamUs, the National Unidentified and Missing Persons System, a U.S. Department of Justice database of missing people that cross-references various agencies’ records, looking for similarities among cases and offering free DNA testing and assistance with dental records, among other information.

But Tomasetti believes the answers to some of Brianna Day’s questions may be found close to home.

Brianna Day, who hopes to someday become a nurse or ultrasound technician is holding out hope that her mother is still alive: Danielle Day had been a prostitute while trying to feed her addiction, so her daughter fears she may be a victim of human trafficking. “Lindenwold isn’t that big a town,” he said. “Someone here has to know something, and they just haven’t come forward.”

“Or she could have changed her whole identity, and be far away and no one knows,” Day said.

She’s prepared, as well, for the worst: that her mother’s remains might turn up, the DNA from her or her grandmother a match to an unidentified body in the NamUs database, or that, as Camden undergoes a period of growth, a body might turn up at a long-vacant site that’s being redeveloped.

“I wondered about her all the time growing up. But I think I might be the only one in my family who did,” she said. “I just want to get closure. To get information.”

Her brother is more guarded with his emotions, she said, and less inclined to talk about their mother.

“I wish I remembered more,” Day said about her short time with her mother.

She’s set up a Facebook page to get the word out in the community, one that’s drawn more than 250 followers.

If she could see her mother today, Brianna said, “I would ask her why she went away, and why she took so long to come back. And ask what’s she’s been doing, if she’s still doing drugs, and I would want her to get help.

“I’ve been waiting 15 years for her to come back around.”

Phaedra Trethan: (856) 486-2417; ptrethan@gannettnj.com

MORE INFORMATION

Anyone with information about Danielle Marie Day is urged to contact Det. Joe Tomasetti at Lindenwold Police at (856) 784-7566, ext. 421 or jtomasetti@lindenwoldpd.com.