A number of scenarios could explain what happened.
1 - someone may have intercepted Nicole before she got on to the elevator and told her 'the lifts are playing up' and then coaxed her into using the stairs. He could then have - once on the stairs - taken her out of the building by a back entrance, maybe to a car.
2 - there is a youtube video by a guy who like us, is greatly saddened but also intrigued by this case. He states that at least one elevator in the apartment block had a *back door* and he says perhaps a maintenance worker had an elevator key. That person could then have been in the elevator with Nicole, but could have sent it directly down to the basement, bypassing all other floors, and then taken her out of the elevator via the back door - so nobody would have seen them.
3 - the same youtuber as above also notes that there was a garbage chute close to the elevator on Nicole's floor. He wonders whether could she, for 'fun', have decided to slide down the chute rather than wait for the elevator? It's not unheard of for kids to do this. He refers to another case where an 8 year old boy did precisely this and then got stuck in the chute. Thankfully his screams were heard by tenants and they called the emergency services.
4 - Is it possible that Nicole was delayed getting into the elevator? Maybe she got chatting to a neighbour? By the time she reached the lobby her friend had gone so maybe someone saw Nicole alone there and used some ruse to get her out of the building?
One woman came forward years later and said she saw Nicole in a local park, talking to a man. The woman was 12 at the time Nicole vanished and she said the man was someone who had abused her, and that's why she'd been too nervous to come forward sooner.
Almost all high rise apartments have elevators with double exit doors, front and back. They are usually used by residents when they move in or move out. They are also used for large item deliveries like fridges and stoves and by the trades working in the building. They are usually reserved these scenarios since there is no need to use them when the regular elevators stop in the basement where amenities like pools, exercise rooms, and resident lockers are, and the parking levels. If Nicole was abducted by someone who brought her out through the parking garage in their own vehicle no one would have seen her.
If the garbage chutes were anything like the ones I was familiar with (I lived in Toronto) they are just a large metal square drop; it's not like a slide. Like this one, although this illustration is a more modern rendition accommodating separation of garbage :
Garbage Chute Systems - Managing Garbage in Large Buildings - Toronto Condo News
Anyone who decided to enter the chutes in Nicole's building would fall about 20 stories to their deaths. A lot of apartments and condos have permanently closed their garbage chutes. That option has been available to each building in Toronto since 2010. Many buildings never incorporated them into the design because there was no oversight as to what was being put down there. It became even more problematic when separating your garbage became a thing. Fires have been set in chutes. Bodies have been disposed of in garbage chutes but I'm not sure if that's ever occurred in Toronto or whether that angle was investigated by LE in NM's disappearance. I'm pretty certain, though, that standard operating procedure would be to ensure garbage didn't get sent to a landfill after NM's absence was noted and sifted through the garbage from that address (627 The West Mall) but hopefully from the alternate address (625 The West Mall) since they are one and the same building.
During that era cameras were rare in the hallways and elevators. Getting on an elevator on the penthouse floor means there were 19 opportunities for the elevator to stop at every floor. Which increases the odds that Nicole was abducted by someone in the building, spirited to an apartment or down to the parking garage and ultimately lost her life. It's usually estimated that when a young child is abducted, the child is dead within an hour. See link:
Predatory Abduction Facts.
So by the time Nicole's mom got the police involved in her disappearance almost 7 hours had elapsed making it a good possibility Nicole was already dead and potentially disposed of. She could have been spirited out of the building before anyone was aware a child was missing by someone in the elevator with a big garbage bag, a suitcase or a cardboard box and no one would bat an eyelash. I am aware that all the people who lived in the building at the time of her disappearance were cleared as suspects be LE.
Another thing I'm not sure of is if the person who stated they saw Nicole at the playground remembered accurately. There are 3 swimming pools in that complex and as far as I can remember none of the lifeguards said whether they remembered her at the pool. And with more than one pool it's not certain which one she went to if in fact she did actually exit the building.
There's always the possibility that Nicole didn't get off at the ground floor but continued down to one of the lower levels, whether that was of her own volition or she was taken down there by an unknown person is the question.
Almost a year to the day, another young girl in Toronto was abducted and murdered. Her name was Alison Perrott and she was fooled into believing she was going to be filmed along with other young athletes at the U of T Varsity football stadium. The difference between the last minutes of Alison's life and Nicole's is that within that year, CCTV cameras were installed all over Toronto, on major streets like Yonge St, Bloor St, subway stations and even Nicole's building. Alison's movements after she left the subway station were tracked until she got to the stadium. Unlike Nicole's abductor, Alison's killer was finally arrested, tried and convicted for her murder and remains in prison.
