Police promise renewed push in search for missing Drexel Hill woman

When Gloria DeGuio and her husband are out walking, they slow down near every young woman they see sitting alone, hoping, praying, that it's their granddaughter Amanda.

In nearly four years, they have not found her.

"You don't know how hard this is for me," DeGuio said Monday, surrounded by her family, inside the Upper Darby Township police station. "My heart beats every second for her."

Amanda DeGuio, a 28-year-old mother of two, was last seen in Drexel Hill in June 2014. Investigators in the township have renewed their efforts to find answers as the fourth anniversary of her disappearance nears.

Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood has assigned the case to two detectives who he said are working "around the clock" chasing down leads. He said the case has been reclassified from the search for a missing person to a criminal investigation.

"When you look at all the facts, four years without hearing from her, it leads us to believe foul play is involved," Chitwood said. "We feel strongly that there needs to be a new direction to the investigation."

Chitwood announced that a $5,000 reward for information leading authorities to DeGuio – or for information leading to the arrest and conviction of anyone involved in her death – has been posted by the Upper Darby Police Foundation.

He said new information had recently come to light about DeGuio, but declined to elaborate. At the news conference, he suggested that people previously interviewed by police might know what happened but were "not being truthful."

Kevin Ryan, a private investigator hired by the DeGuio family, said Monday that he has been working the case since 2015, traveling as far as Texas to search for clues. He's run into countless dead ends, including remains found in Ridley Creek State Park in 2016  that Chitwood initially speculated might be DeGuio's body. Forensic evidence later proved otherwise.

Still, Ryan said he is "convinced that someone out there knows something."

"We're asking for people who know. We need an answer," Amanda's mother, Joanne DeGuio, said Monday. "We're asking that this not die out, because if it dies out, we lose our chance of finding her."

DeGuio was frank about her daughter's struggles with substance abuse, about how an abscess led to a prescription for opiate painkillers and about how a dependency on those painkillers developed into an addiction to heroin.

At the time of DeGuio's disappearance in 2014, police said she might have been involved in prostitution and was frequently seen around Philadelphia's Kensington neighborhood.

"We're not hiding the fact that she had addiction problems," Amanda's sister, Nicole DeGuio, said. "But right before she went missing, she was really trying to get back together. She was looking forward to figuring it out."

During a trip to Walt Disney World just weeks before they last saw her, Amanda's family said she was detoxing with the help of Suboxone. She talked about wanting to go on job interviews and start a career.

But that final memory doesn't jibe with the reality of her disappearance: Joanne DeGuio said her daughter left abruptly one day, not even bothering to take anything with her.

"She just walked out the door and vanished," said DeGuio, who added that her daughter usually called her every day to check in, especially when she knew she wouldn't be home at night. "There's someone out there who knows where she went. How can you not come forward. How do you not have the heart?"

Anyone with information is asked to contact Sgt. Phil Lydon at 610-734-7677 or plydon@udpd.org. Tipsters may remain anonymous.