New Jersey Mom Disappears; Her 11-Month-Old Baby Found in Delaware; Boyfriend Flies to Italy
Amy Giordano didn't act like a woman preparing to abandon her life. Three days before she disappeared, the 27-year-old woman filled out and dated a voter registration card. On June 7, the day before she was last heard from, a surveillance videotape shows her picking up groceries and baby diapers as boyfriend Rosario DiGirolamo pushes their 11-month-old son in a shopping cart.
But she was last heard from June 8, when she talked by phone to her 6-year-old son who lives with her ex-husband in New York City. Her 11-month-old, Michael DiGirolamo, was discovered the next day in a hospital parking lot in Newark, Del., a handwritten note pinned to his diaper calling him "John Vincent" and saying his caregiver had no job or health insurance. "God have mercy on me," the anguished note read.
On June 18, her purse was found in the back of her bedroom closet in her third-floor walk-up, still containing her wallet and ID. It also contained a full pack of cigarettes; Giordano was a chain smoker.
"I can't connect all these dots and come up with a happy ending," said her landlord, Mike Vanderbeck. "The only way to connect the dots is to presuppose something bad happened to Amy."
Now the FBI and authorities in two states and Italy are involved in the case.
Vanderbeck identified the baby after an employee recognized a photo of the toddler on TV. The boy remains in foster care, according to Delaware police.
Giordano's boyfriend, who paid her $850 monthly rent though he was married to and living with another woman, hasn't been seen since June 11, the last day he reported for work at Conair Inc. in East Windsor.
Authorities say he flew alone to Italy on June 14, and did not use his June 28 return ticket. His car was found on New York's Staten Island but yielded no clues, said Casey DiBlasio, spokeswoman for the Mercer County Prosecutor's Office.
Officially, Giordano is a missing person and DiGirolamo is a "person of interest" someone the authorities want to question in her disappearance. He also faces felony child endangerment charges in Delaware because authorities picked up signals from his cell phone near the time and place the baby was abandoned.
