Dad never picked up kids from babysitter in 2003. His body was just found, PA cops say

Authored by yahoo.com and submitted by Havvocck2

Shortly before father James Amabile went missing, Pennsylvania police say he was on his way to pick up his two children from their babysitter’s home.

That was Dec. 4, 2003, WPVI reported.

“We were able to ascertain that Mr. Amabile left his residence in the late afternoon ... after oversleeping and rushing out to pick up his 2 daughters (ages 5 and 8) from the babysitter,” Adventures With Purpose said in a statement shared to Facebook. “Mr. Amabile called the babysitter stating that he would be there within 5 minutes.

“Mr. Amabile never arrived and was never seen again.”

Adventures With Purpose, a team of search and recovery divers who help families find their loved ones, worked to help find the remains of Amabile.

“After searching several waterways our investigation took us to Stingers waterfront where 18 years later we were able to utilize technology not available at the time of his disappearance, to uncover a submerged vehicle in Darby creek 200 yards away, 24 feet beneath the surface,” the organization said in a March 20 Facebook post.

They then contacted the Ridley Township Police Department, which helped identify human remains pulled from the vehicle.

Police confirmed the vehicle’s license plate matched the 2003 missing person cold case, WTXF reported, and the Delaware County Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed the remains were of Amabile.

Ridley Township Police Captain James Dougherty told KYW this discovery brings closure.

“The cooperation of Ridley Township PD was critical in the success of this recovery every step of the way and we tip our hat to their professionalism and their trust in our experience to conduct this forensics recovery,” Adventures With Purpose said. “At this moment we want to take a moment to express our sympathies to the entire Amabile family as they navigate this tragic outcome to a nightmare that has lasted 18 years.”

Darby Creek, in Ridley Township, is in the Philadelphia metropolitan area.

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otter111a on March 31st, 2022 at 17:11 UTC »

Interesting bit from another article:

“Police say the docks have not been replaced in the nearly 20 years since Amabile went missing, and divers say one of the dock's piling punctured the hood of the vehicle.”

So at some point a piling was replaced and they drove it down through the car. It’s salt water so the hood was probably very weak.

BlueLaceSensor128 on March 31st, 2022 at 16:10 UTC »

These situations always blow my mind because there are those posts about famous caves or underground rivers people get lost or sucked into and I guess there’s always a little bit of comfort from the fact that if you just stayed away from them you would be safe. But all it takes is a bad turn into a body of water and people will think you fell off the face of the earth.

And we would probably expect someone to come around and pull our body out within a few days or maybe a week. But it took almost 20 years to find a guy that was 5 minutes away from his destination. So likely less than a five mile radius.

HighJeanette on March 31st, 2022 at 15:11 UTC »

So fucking sad.