Mikalena Nau

[LadyBlue]

Philadelphia Police arrived at Covanta Disposal at 10 Highland Avenue at 10 a.m. and left just before noon and they returned later Thursday evening around 7 p.m. looking for clues in the mysterious disappearance of the Northeast Philadelphia woman.

The facility takes in trash collected throughout the city and processes it into energy. The facility contains over 300 tons of trash. Some of the collections are reportedly stored for a year.

On Wednesday, police got a tip that Nau’s body was possibly dumped and set on fire a day after she was reported missing by her sister. At Frankford Avenue and Allen Street in Fishtown, police examined a charred dumpster believing its contents may have been taken to Covanta Disposal.

It is theorized that Nau’s body was wrapped in a carpet and set on fire in a dumpster.

Sources tell CBS 3 that the FBI interviewed a truck driver who reported delivering a burned industrial size gray carpet to the facility.

Earlier this week, police removed items from a Tacony apartment belonging to George Conway, Nau’s hairdresser and friend, who was murdered on March 1st.

According to sources and two witnesses who are being interviewed by the police, there is speculation that Nau was possibly murdered in Conway’s apartment.

Sources say that Conway supplied drugs to Nau and may have been trying to calm her down during a rage.

Three people were brought in for questioning Wednesday. Police also say another person of interest maybe the owner of the salon where Conway worked.

Police believe Conway’s and Nau’s murders are related in some way.

Nau, 37, was last seen withdrawing $100 from an ATM machine near her temporary home in the Oxford Circle section of the city, but was not reported missing by her family until the 16th of February.

“We have documented evidence that she was there at some point on February 4th and that’s the last time there has been any observation of this woman,” said Philadelphia Police Capt. Benjamin Naish.

According to police, Nau’s car, a 1997 Mercedes Benz, had been spotted several times before being found February 20th on the 5700 Block of Keystone Street in Tacony section, only four miles from where she has been staying. Her purse was found outside the car, but her wallet was missing.

Tacony resident Ellen White found Nau’s abandoned car parked in her neighborhood and called police after she became suspicious, unaware it belonged to a missing person.

“There was no damage; there was papers that looked like files in the back seat with a bottle sitting in the center,” said White.

Sources said the investigation took police to a home with a "for sale" sign on a nearby block, but details of the search were unknown.

Officials said they do not believe she had any recent conflicts or that anyone wanted to do her harm.

"We're running up against some walls now in our investigation and we hope that someone in the public may have some information about her whereabouts," said Naish.

Police say her disappearance is a mystery and at this time they fear foul play is possible and ask anyone with information to contact police at [phone].

Nau is described as 105 pounds, 5’4” and also goes by the name Michelle or Rachel.

Officials said investigators are checking out new leads and combing through every detail of Nau’s background in hopes it can shed some light on her disappearance.

So far, there are no charges pending in this investigation.

kyw.com/topstories/local_story_061181543.html

[LadyBlue]

[glow=red,2,300]Homicide Detectives Take Over Nau Case[/glow]
March 7, 2006 - There is new information in the search for a missing Oxford Circle woman. Mikalena Nau has been missing since February 4th when she was last seen using an ATM machine near her Elbridge Street home.

Action News has learned of several new developments in the investigation into the disappearance of Mikalena Nau who lived on Elbridge. Most importantly, this investigation has now been handed over to the homicide division. While police have not found Nau's body, they do have reason to believe that Nau is no longer alive and while it may just be a coincidence, they want to know if her disappearance is connected to the murder of an acquaintance of hers last week.
37-year-old Mikalena Nau is a real estate agent who police sources say worked for an escort service. She disappeared a month ago, vanishing without a trace after withdrawing money from an ATM near her home. Her mother spends her waking hours looking for her missing daughter.

Over the weekend, police marine units dredged the Delaware River looking for Nau's body after a cadaver dog picked up her scent. From the start, her disappearance was handled as a missing person's case. Until now, Action News has learned that in the last 24 hours, homicide detectives took over the investigation. Nau's mother believes the move means more resources will join the search for her daughter, dead or alive.

Police confirm that Nau's disappearance became a homicide case, in part, because of the results of forensic tests performed on blood found in her car. The Mercedes turned up in the 57-hundred block of Keystone February 20th. Sources say it had been wiped clean of any fingerprints.

Last Wednesday, a young man described as an acquaintance of Nau's was found murdered. A source says she had called the murder victim repeatedly on the night she disappeared.

Police won't release anymore details about that part of this case.

abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=local&id=3971195

[LadyBlue]

[glow=red,2,300]Police say escort's pal 'freaked' at her death[/glow]
After Michelle "Mikalena" Nau died in his Mayfair apartment during a night of partying, George Conway "freaked out," according to authorities.

He called friends, wrapped her body in a carpet, drove it to the Jersey Shore, brought it back, and left it on his back deck before he finally took it to a Fishtown trash bin and set it on fire, police said yesterday.

Police said numerous witnesses told them that Conway, with bloodied clothes and in a panic, called his friends for help on Feb. 4. One friend drove with him to dump Nau's body at the Jersey Shore before changing plans, police said.

Witnesses said Conway then kept Nau wrapped in a carpet on the rear deck of his apartment, in the 4200 block of Princeton Avenue, before he and a friend dumped her in a trash bin on Frankford Avenue near Interstate 95. Police were told Conway went back to the bin afterward and set it on fire Feb. 16.
The contents of the bin were later incinerated at a trash-to-energy plant in Chester.

The case, however, remains open.

"It's still an open and active investigation," Homicide Capt. Michael Costello said yesterday.

If Nau, 37, of the Oxford Circle section of the Northeast, is indeed dead and her body was taken to the Chester plant, there is little chance of finding her remains.

Nau - who worked for a Queen Village escort service while trying to get a real estate license - has not been seen since Feb. 4, when she withdrew $100 from an ATM near her home and went to party with Conway, 48, a bar bouncer and handyman.

Conway was shot to death March 1 in his apartment.
Costello said homicide investigators are looking for two people seen going into Conway's apartment before he was killed. And they are trying to determine why he was killed and whether his slaying is linked to Nau's disappearance.

So far, detectives have pieced together an account tainted with prostitution and cocaine binges.

Witnesses have told police that on the day she died, Nau had been doing cocaine in Conway's apartment. She then went into a violent rage, threatening to burn Conway's apartment. A witness told police that he and Conway were holding her down when she died. Police do not know whether she was strangled, accidentally asphyxiated herself, or died of a drug overdose.
Police declined to identify the witness.

Conway's second wife, Debbie Conway, of Southampton, said yesterday that the man she was married to was a hardworking, loving father to their son.

"When we were together, he was a very reputable person," she said in a telephone interview. "I was aware he had declined, but not to this extent."
When they were married, she said, Conway, who grew up in the Far Northeast, worked as a mailman, worked out, and was "not at all" into drugs.
They divorced in the early 1990s, she said, because "he had issues with his anger, mostly verbal."
"He just really had to work on channeling his anger," she said.

[LadyBlue]

[glow=red,2,300]More details emerging on missing woman[/glow]
Philadelphia police detectives on Friday asked the FBI to provide a "cadaver dog" to help in the search for Michelle "Mikalena" Nau, the Northeast Philadelphia woman who has not been seen or heard from for a month.

FBI agent Jerri Williams, a spokeswoman for the bureau's Philadelphia Division, said she did not know if police needed the dog to search a specific area.
Detectives, meanwhile, are "concerned that foul play may be involved," said Capt. Benjamin Naish, a police spokesman. He would not elaborate.

A few additional details emerged on Friday about the investigation into the disappearance of a 37-year-old woman who was last seen withdrawing $100 on Feb. 4 from an ATM near her home, but was not reported missing until Feb. 16. Her 1997 Mercedes-Benz sedan was found four days later in Tacony, about four miles from her home, which is on the 1100 block of Elbridge Street in the Oxford Circle section of the Northeast.

Police initially said Nau's purse had been found near her car.

On Friday, Naish said that a man had seen two men rummaging through the purse. When he approached them, they dropped the bag. That person found Nau's business card and left a message on her cell phone. After the family reported Nau missing Feb. 16, police retrieved the message and got the purse.

Naish said he would not comment about a media report indicating that a 911 call was made from Nau's cell phone the day she was last seen.

Additional details surfaced about Nau's life. Many saw Nau as a free spirit whose life touched very different worlds.

She drove a luxury car, was renovating her home, and told people she was in real estate.

Interviews and court records, however, portray a woman hobbled by past debts and decisions. Public records showed judgments against her by the owners of several apartments in which she had lived, and she filed for bankruptcy in 1999.

David S. Glanzberg, the lawyer who filed the bankruptcy petition, recalled Nau as engaging. He said he believed that she went into debt over medical bills resulting from an automobile accident.

Nau had business cards indicating that she worked for Re/Max Elite in Huntingdon Valley, but officials there said she had only applied for a position and was not an employee.

Nau, who first contacted Re/Max in 2004, came to the office late last year, said office manager Michael Lisitsa.
"She was a very nice lady, very quiet," Lisitsa said. "She wanted to have a license to sell her aunt's house."

Nau apparently had passed the exam needed for her license and filled out an application, but could not obtain the license when criminal charges appeared in her background check, Lisitsa said.

She told him a boyfriend asked her to carry a package for him when the two were arrested in the 1990s, Lisitsa said.

Philadelphia court records show that Nau was put on probation in 1991 on a drug-possession charge, although the nature of the drug and the circumstances were not clear.

"She wanted to show houses, but we told her she could not do it without her license," Lisitsa said. Her only Pennsylvania license, according to state records, was issued in 1992, as a cosmetologist. That license expired in 2004 and was not renewed.
Lisitsa paired Nau with agent Ilya Vorobey to help her go through the process to get her license.

Vorobey said he looked at the property on Elbridge Street - owned by Nau's cousins from Northeastern Pennsylvania and rented out for 20 years - and suggested the property be renovated with an updated kitchen to get the family's asking price of $140,000.
Nau's real passion was social dancing, and, by all accounts, she was talented.

Ron Bess, who writes an online dance newsletter, said he has been friends with Nau for 15 years and described her as a great dancer who liked doing the "hustle" and could also dance to salsa music.

"When she danced, she was a great, great dancer. And people watched," Bess said. "She's a striking girl. Very attractive."

Bess said while Nau regularly showed up to dance socially at Michael's Cafe in Bensalem with close friends, she would leave town for months at a time.

"It's not unusual for her to pick up and go to Florida for six months," Bess said. But to completely disappear without her dog or car, he said, "just doesn't seem right."

[LadyBlue]

[glow=red,2,300]Missing woman had worked as escort[/glow]
Mickalena Nau, the Oxford Circle woman who's been missing for the past month, had ties to a Center City escort service NBC-10 reported yesterday.

Citing unnamed sources, the television station said on its Web site that the strikingly attractive Nau - who also went by the names Rachel and Michelle - worked at the Full Moon Escorts, on 4th Street near South, as recently as a year ago.

An investigator from Northeast Detectives said he would "neither confirm nor deny" the report. Officers from the Third Police District, however, confirmed that for the past several weeks, detectives have been combing the area where the escort service is situated.

The escort service's listed address is a five-story office building that is home to a number of businesses and overlooks the bustling South Street traffic. The service's Yellow Pages ad boasts "Discreet" and "Always Prompt" service that's available to customers day or night.
Repeated calls to Blue Moon were unreturned last night. Attempts to locate the service inside the building were also unsuccessful.

Nau's sister Gabrielle Jaslow immediately deferred to her attorney when contacted by this reporter by phone. Jaslow's attorney, Blake Berenbaum, also did not return calls.

Police on Thursday appealed to the public for help in their search for Nau, citing a lack of leads and rising concerns over the amount of time the 37-year-old has been missing.

Nau's purse and Mercedes Benz were recovered by police in Tacony on Feb. 20, four days after her family reported her missing.

Her wallet and cell phone were not in the car, but police said other personal items had been found in the trunk. Her Mercedes is still being processed by investigators for forensic evidence.

Detectives said Nau's family initially thought that she had gone off on an impromptu vacation without letting anyone know. Nau is single and lives alone, neighbors said.

Neighbors said that Nau, a realty agent who usually is accompanied by her dog, spent most of her free time rehabbing a relative's home on Elbridge Street near Summerdale in Oxford Circle.

www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/local/14015848.htm

[LadyBlue]

[glow=red,2,300]A dog picked up a scent on the Delaware's banks. Police will resume the river search today.[/glow]
A possible break in the case of a woman missing for more than a month came yesterday when a police cadaver dog picked up a scent on the banks of the Delaware River in the city's Tacony section, police said.
Michelle "Mikalena" Nau, 37, of Northeast Philadelphia, was last seen withdrawing $100 on Feb. 4 from an ATM near her home, but was not reported missing until Feb. 16. Her 1997 Mercedes-Benz sedan was found four days later in Tacony, about four miles from her home, which is on the 1100 block of Elbridge Street in the Oxford Circle section of the Northeast.

The dog, lent to police by the FBI, detected the scent near where Unruh Avenue meets the Delaware, police said. The Philadelphia Police Marine Unit planned to resume the search of the river this morning.
Detectives are "concerned that foul play may be involved" in Nau's disappearance, police spokesman Capt. Benjamin Naish said Friday.

Nau, described by friends as a free spirit who loved social dancing, was known to leave town suddenly for months at a time. But disappearing without her car and her dog was not like her, said Ron Bess, a friend who writes an online dance newsletter.

State records show that Nau received a license as a cosmetologist in 1992, but it expired in 2004 and was not renewed. That year, she contacted the Re/Max Elite real estate office in Huntingdon Valley and eventually applied for a job, said office manager Michael Lisitsa.

She was stymied in her efforts to go into real estate sales, however, because criminal charges turned up in her background check. She had been put on probation in 1991 on a drug-possession charge, according to
Philadelphia court records.

She also had financial problems that led her to file for bankruptcy in 1999.

www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/states/pennsylvania/14022308.htm

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