Still no answers, 2 years after Delco man was found dead in Va.
Yaron Bernsteins father is frustrated by the pace of the investigation.
THE DUMB AND dangerous things children do never quite tip the scales for a parent.
They might get angry and disappointed, even pack a suitcase and stop paying their cellphone bills, but none of that ever outweighs a parent's love.
That's the way Jeffrey Bernstein feels about his son, Yaron, 22, who left a friend's apartment in Northern Liberties on Nov. 13, 2013, to make some money on marijuana. He told his friends he would be back in 30 minutes.
Yaron Bernstein was never seen alive again, and although the FBI is investigating, his father says, there has been nothing but silence.
"It wasn't like he was some hardened criminal. He saw some quick money, a kid seeing hundreds and hundreds of dollars," Bernstein said from a coffee shop in his hometown of Newtown Square. "He had a very, very promising life ahead of him. He was an out-of-the-box thinker. He could have done anything."
Jeffrey Bernstein sprang into action almost immediately after Yaron's disappearance, getting friends to pony up cash for a reward that grew to $100,000 just weeks later. That money would have been given to someone who provided information that led to Yaron's safe return. But there would be no safe return, just a sad one.
On Dec. 7, 2013, a person walking on the beach in Norfolk, Va., spotted a body and called police. It was the body of Yaron Bernstein, hundreds of miles from home. He was wearing a Star of David necklace that his parents had given him when he was 13. His burial place is not far from the coffee shop.
An autopsy determined that Yaron had drowned, and it still hurts his father to think that his son was alive when he went into that cold water two years ago.
"Imagine the pain he must have gone through," Jeffrey Bernstein said.
Investigators immediately deemed the death suspicious, which Bernstein said seemed obvious to everyone. He said he has been given almost no information from the FBI in the more than two years since his son's body was found. He said cellphone records showed that his son had made calls to Virginia, but the FBI has not told him what, if anything, it gleaned from them.
"They never told me anything," Bernstein said.
An FBI spokeswoman from the Philadelphia office said that there was nothing new to report on the case and that it remained an active and open investigation.
At first, the word suicide was mentioned a few times. Jeffrey Bernstein said that his son's goal at 22 was to have "mad fun" and that suicide was unthinkable.
"There's no way," he said. "He had everything to live for.
Yaron Bernstein attended Delaware County Christian School in Newtown Square and finished his senior year of high school in a special program at Eastern University, his father said. He left the University at Buffalo to start Good Looks New York Inc., a "cultural and entertainment collective that specializes in events planning, promotions, photography, and clothing." Yaron listened to electronic dance music, and followed shows and festivals across the country. He had been busted on drug charges before, but Jeffrey Bernstein says he believes that his son's "mad fun" phase might have evolved into a law degree or a successful entertainment company.
"He was the type of kid that if you caught him in the act of doing something, he'd be able to convince you that you were looking at it from a different angle, that you were wrong," Bernstein said. "He was real good at it."
Yaron had been living in Pittsburgh for a while and was home visiting when he disappeared. Bernstein said he spoke to the friends his son was with when he disappeared. He traveled to Pittsburgh to speak with his son's friends there. He also speaks often to Trevor Titley, his son's close friend and business partner at Good Looks New York, but he said the FBI never has.
"For one month I did nothing but legwork. It was 24-7. I did not stop," he said.
Titley has been traveling in Australia and Thailand, and could not be reached for comment.
Bernstein said he wishes his son had talked to him about the darker stuff, the ways he was making money on the side. He would have given him advice. He wasn't a square. He went to Woodstock.
When Yaron dipped his toes into the drug world, he wasn't expecting to find sharks there, and his father thinks that's exactly what he found.
"He was at the wrong place at the wrong time, with the wrong people," he said. "He was dealing with people he didn't know."
Bernstein admits that no one else in his family - even Yaron's mother and sisters - is as interested in getting to the bottom of what happened to Yaron.
"It's just me," he said. "I think he would want me to find out what the heck happened to him. He would think there should be justice. Somebody got away with murder."
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