When Liz Falco disappeared in September, there was plenty of speculation on where she had gone.
One report had her leaving town to follow the Grateful Dead. Another placed her in Camden. A third theory had her headed for Italy.
By December, there was no question what had happened to Liz Falco. The only question was who did it.
Her body, clad only in her black, high-top Reeboks, was found near Philadelphia International Airport, lying in a grassy area off Tinicum Avenue.
Someone had shoved her partway into a green plastic trash bag. Medical experts who examined the near-skeletal remains believe that she was strangled.
Since then, her family and friends have been tortured with questions. Questions about where she was and whom she was with when she vanished.
"The whole thing is fishy," said Nathan Sonnheim, Falco's friend and former therapist. "To me it's really mysterious."
The man trying to solve that mystery is Philadelphia Homicide Detective Lt. Kenneth Coluzzi.
"We're looking at all the possibilities," said Coluzzi, who leads the investigation into Falco's death.
Because of the decomposition of the body, authorities were unable to determine whether Falco, 25, had been raped. Nor could they determine the exact cause of death. Although police and family members said Falco had been known to use drugs, no evidence of drugs was found in an autopsy.
Elizabeth Jane Falco grew up in Cherry Hill, where she devoted much of her time and energy to the care of her younger brothers. She moved to Philadelphia about a year ago and was out of work when she died.
Her life was unremarkable. Her death drew the attention of the medical examiner, several police detectives and an FBI agent.
But all that lay ahead on Thursday, Sept. 13.
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Falco spent that Thursday evening at the Bank, a popular nightspot in a converted bank building at Sixth and Spring Garden Streets. It's an old building of stone and wrought iron, with two snarling gargoyles guarding the front doors.
They fit the neighborhood, where discarded newspapers and beer bottles litter the bushes and rats scurry across the sidewalks.
Falco was last seen about 1 a.m. that Friday, pedaling her boyfriend's bicycle toward their Center City apartment.
"I knew immediately that something bad had happened," said Joanne Falco, Liz's mother. " . . . I had this terrible feeling that I had to talk to her, but I couldn't reach her on the phone."
