As questions linger over her killing, family marks Melanie Colon's birthday

Louis Colon looked out from his front porch at the birthday celebration for his daughter Melanie, taken from him three years ago.

The pink and white balloons tied to the telephone poles on his tiny North Philadelphia side street. The friends and family members, the painting of his daughter affixed to the front of the house. The DJ's pounding music, bright pop songs and dance numbers.

The enormous cake, pink and white - her favorite colors - with a plastic tiara on top. "Happy Birthday, Melanie," the icing read.

Colon had to acknowledge that the cake was nice. And if she had been alive to see it, Melanie Colon would have loved her 26th birthday party, celebrated May 17.

But Louis Colon had not wanted a party at all. He saw nothing to celebrate. His grief consumes him.

"I want to be here in quiet and in peace," he said.

He caved, in the end, for his children, who wanted to honor their sister's life.

"She's still here, as far as they're concerned," his wife, Maribelle, said.

On this block, on a warm night in May 2012, Melanie Colon slipped into the passenger seat of friend Reynaldo Torres' gold Mazda and headed off for a drive.

The two were never seen alive again. Colon's body was found four days later behind an apartment building in Juniata Park, shot six times at close range.

Torres, 43, disappeared, with no clues to his whereabouts or Colon's death.

The Colons buried their daughter, mourned her death, but did not - could not - move on. There were too many questions unanswered.

Then, more than a year later, came a break - one that would transform Melanie Colon's case from an unsolved mystery into a chapter in a lurid tale involving a disgraced former homicide detective and another homicide he was accused of covering up for.

It was October 2013 and Detective Ron Dove, a 16-year veteran of the force, had just been accused of helping his girlfriend, Erica Sanchez, skip town after she allegedly killed her lover, Cesar Vera. Investigators, sifting through evidence in a case that seemed better suited to film noir, had come across something curious on Dove's iPad.

The information on the tablet led them to an overgrown ravine in North Philadelphia.

For days, crime-scene investigators picked through dirt and branches and trash until they found what they had been looking for: evidence that Reynaldo Torres was also dead. Investigators found his jawbone. It was all that was ever found.

Investigators have said they believe Vera was linked to the disappearance and deaths of Colon and Torres.

But it has been three years since Colon's death and two since Torres' jawbone was found, and both families are still paralyzed by the agony of not knowing. The detective's arrest this year, in Sanchez's case, left them with no real answers, just questions that become more frustrating by the day.

The District Attorney's Office declined to comment on the case. Announcing Dove's arrest in January in connection with the Vera homicide, it said a grand jury investigation was continuing.

Dove, 42, is free on $25,000 bail, awaiting trial on charges of conspiracy and hindering apprehension. His attorney did not return a call for comment.

Sanchez, 34, who has been in custody since late 2013, is awaiting trial in Vera's killing.

In the meantime, the Colons have tried to keep the faith. And so: the birthday party two Sundays ago, the balloons and the cake. The pop songs that Melanie Colon, a well-known DJ in the gay community, would have likely spun herself at house parties all over North Philadelphia. She called herself "DJ Kiss."

Colon's brother Ralphiee, 21, flitted from guest to guest, in and out of houses on the block, pausing to hug a friend or to wipe tears from his eyes. He had stayed up all night, worrying about the party.

"Three years later," he said in a quiet moment. "It's been hard."

He runs a Facebook page in his sister's memory, posts two or three times a week. The page has more than 11,000 likes. It's helped him through the worst of his grief, he says - and connected him with others who have lost loved ones.

"To see him every single day, fighting - he gives me life," said Mia Casting, whose sister, Francesca Alvarado, went missing in Atlantic City a month before Melanie Colon disappeared. Her severed foot was found a year later. The case is still unsolved. Casting first met Ralphiee Colon three years ago, at an antiviolence walk, and went to the Colons' party with her children. She's family now.

"We were united by tragedy, but now we're united by strength," Casting said.

In the kitchen as the party continued outside, Louis Colon and his wife listened to the music out front and kept an eye on a pot of rice on the stove. Melanie Colon's mother died a year after her daughter was killed, of a heart attack that the family says was brought on by grief.

Colon sighed as people weaved in and out of the kitchen. He has hired a lawyer, who has told him that because Dove wasn't charged in his daughter's case, a lawsuit against the city isn't possible.

"I don't care about no lawsuit," Colon said. "I just want to know who killed my daughter."

He worries about where she is - whether there is an afterlife, if his daughter is happy somewhere. He fears that it's more like "a switch."

"You shut it off and you're done," Colon said.

His wife rubbed his shoulders.

"It's exhausting," she said. Melanie "died for a purpose. We just don't know what it is."

Outside, Ralphiee Colon sat with his sister's son, Josh, on a stoop across the street. Josh is 7 now. He was 4 when his mother disappeared. This is what he knows about her: that she was a good mother, that she loved to dance, that she was beautiful. And that he misses her.

215-854-2961@aubreyjwhelan