The last time anyone saw Camden Sylvia and her boyfriend, Michael Sullivan (left), the couple was returning a video to a rental store near City Hall.
It was the evening of November 7, 1997. After that, they pretty much vanished into thin air.
Sylvia, 36, and Sullivan, 54, both artists, shared a loft in a shabby 1840s fifth-floor walk-up at 76 Pearl Street for years.
Neighbors suspected their disappearance may have had to do with the fact that earlier in the day, Sylvia gave the building’s owner, Richard Rodriguez, a letter stating that unless he turned up the heat, tenants were going on a rent strike.
Rodriguez and the couple were embroiled in an ongoing battle over building conditions and rent, which was stabilized at $300 a month.
Police focused on Rodriguez. They searched the Hudson River, and they brought scent-sniffing dogs to his property upstate. But there was nothing to link him to their disappearance.
Rodriguez served a few years in state prison for tax evasion. But he was paroled in 2002, and though Sylvia and Sullivan are long presumed dead, no trace of them has ever been found.
[Right: 76 Pearl Street today, no longer owned by Rodriguez]