Back to the crime-beat days for a day.
— South Philly guy pleads guilty to torching the building where The Sound of Philadelphia was created; says he was so drunk he doesn’t remember any of it.
“He was caught on video outside and inside, kicking the door in and lighting a fire, so this was never a question of ‘Who done it,’” [the assistant district attorney] said.
— 23-year-old from Pa. last seen in Camden, NJ still missing.
It’s been 10 days since Desiree Caruso last heard from her daughter Jenna Lord, a 23-year-old with a young son from Collingdale who’s been missing since a July 4 visit to relatives in South Jersey.
En route back across the Delaware River to post more missing-persons posters in Camden on Tuesday, Caruso said she’s frustrated by a patchwork multi-jurisdiction investigation that brought implications that Lord is a drug user gone astray.
“Jenna cleaned herself up, but even if she was still doing drugs, she’s a mother and a daughter so we still need to look for her,” she said.
As best Caruso can tell, Lord got a ride from a Collingswood, NJ apartment complex to the Walter Rand Transportation Center in Camden, where she was captured on surveillance video on July 5. She was reported as a missing person in her Delaware County hometown; police in Collingswood and Camden are also involved. Caruso said she’s gotten a lot of information that hasn’t panned out. She goes back daily because the missing-person posters are taken down nightly.
“I want to think she’s alive, but I’m starting not to think so,” said Caruso. “If she’s not, I just want to put her to rest. People aren’t taking this seriously because they think it’s a drug thing, but even if she’s doing bundles of cocaine, I need to find her. She’s a good person, not some scumbag.”