The owner of the now-shuttered building is expected to say he didn't know it was contaminated. The parents of children exposed to poisons are expected to point fingers and assign blame.

But when the Kiddie Kollege case goes to trial in Gloucester County, the woman who rented the Franklinville building and opened a day-care center there probably won't be heard from at all.

Julie Lawlor has vanished.

Lawlor, whose criminal record includes theft and forgery in Pennsylvania, is on the run, wanted on charges of embezzling $90,000 from her employer in North Carolina.

She might be in Ireland, where she gained notoriety two months ago as a tabloid favorite, a femme fatale who allegedly duped wealthy men into proposing to her. Then again, the 37-year-old woman, who has been married four times, could be anywhere.

The lawyers for the parents in the Kiddie Kollege case never got a chance to question Lawlor in depositions as they prepared their cases. At trial, she could explain how she obtained state and local approvals to open a day care in a defunct thermometer factory.

"There are a lot of strange facts in this case, but I've never sued anyone before and had them disappear," said Joseph Osefchen, one of several lawyers representing parents of nearly 100 children in a class-action lawsuit.

Lawlor opened the day care in January 2004. At the time, she had a lengthy criminal record in Bucks and Montgomery Counties for forging and falsifying records and writing bad checks from 1998 to 2000.

Two years after Kiddie Kollege's launch, Lawlor sold the business and moved to North Carolina. Parents say she never mentioned that a day-care neighbor had warned her the site was contaminated.

Seven months later, in July 2006, parents learned the building was saturated with mercury vapors and harbored mercury beads in the floorboards on which their children had nestled in their sleeping bags. They sued Lawlor and others; mercury exposure can cause neurological and kidney dysfunction.

The scandal made headlines around the country. Lawlor said in a phone interview in 2006 that the landlord had told her the building once contained medical supplies but was cleared for occupancy.

In February, landlord Jim Sullivan III testified at a hearing that he had misunderstood a report about the contamination when he acquired the former factory in a tax-lien sale and foreclosure in 2001. He said he had written a letter to the state's environmental agency and assumed, when he got no reply, that the building had no pollution problems.

Nearly 10 lawsuits name Sullivan, his family businesses, the factory owner, Lawlor, the subsequent day-care operators, and state and local governments that approved the day care.

Some of the Kiddie Kollege parents say their children had rashes and other reactions to the mercury, but health officials have said they don't believe there will be lasting effects.

Last month, a judge ruled that Sullivan was not responsible for a $1 million demolition of the building, but said Sullivan still could be liable in the parents' litigation.

As preparations are made for trial, which is expected to begin this year, Lawlor's whereabouts have become a central part of the saga.

Sunday World, a tabloid in Ireland, reported she was last seen in the republic in March when crime reporter Paul Williams and a photographer confronted her on a Cork street. He dubbed her a femme fatale in two front-page stories and reported that she had conned several men in Dublin and Cork into believing she was a multimillionaire looking for a husband.

Williams said in a phone interview that Lawlor, mother of four, "worked really hard to inveigle her way into social circles" in Ireland. "She took everyone for a ride, really."

Stephen Baughman said the news reports did not surprise him. He and his wife, Becky, bought Kiddie Kollege from Lawlor and her husband, Matthew, in December 2005 for $150,000. The Lawlors never mentioned the mercury, he said.

When the contamination was discovered, his wife was 18 weeks' pregnant. Baughman wonders whether the Lawlors "got out" because they "knew something was going to happen" after a Kiddie Kollege neighbor told them about the factory.