Danny was on a fishing vessel called Newfoundland Tradition for five days before it came to port at the small boat basin on Southside Road. Danny and a coworker headed for George Street in downtown St. John’s, an area of bars and night clubs. At 11 p.m., he walked out of Turkey Joe’s, presumably on his way back to the Cotton Club, a strip joint where he’d been earlier that night. He was never seen again. He planned on sleeping aboard the fishing vessel that night before heading home to Clarenville the next day. There is no evidence that he made it back to the boat that night. Danny called his twin brother (Dennis) at around 10:45 p.m. on the night that he went missing. “He was very nervous at the bar but I don’t know what he was nervous about,” said Mary Pickett, Danny’s younger sister. “He told my brother that he would see him the next day and he told him to tell Mom and Dad he loves them, which he normally said in a phone conversation.” Six months later, a jacket and hat believed to belong to Danny were located by a psychic behind Campbell’s Ship Supplies on Water Street West, about two kilometres from George Street and on the route that Danny would have taken if he planned on walking back to the ship. Danny took $200 from an ATM earlier in the day, and later that evening, he withdrew an additional $40; there has been no bank activity since then. After he was reported missing, the first mate told the family Danny’s watch and wallet were left on the boat. When someone got on board, the watch was missing.
