CANADA Canada - Nicole Morin, 8, Toronto, 30 July 1985

[georgiagirl]

This is so sad....no new leads



Nicole Louise Morin
Missing since July 30, 1985 from Toronto, Ontario Canada
Classification: Non-Family Abduction



Vital Statistics Date Of Birth: April 1, 1977
Age at Time of Disappearance: 8 years old
Height and Weight at Time of Disappearance: 4'0; 51 pounds
Distinguishing Characteristics: White female. Brown hair; brown eyes.
Marks, Scars: Morin has a birthmark on the right side of her forehead and protruding ears. She has pierced ears.
Clothing: She was wearing a peach, one pieced bathing suit with colored stripes on the front, a green headband, red canvas shoes, and was carrying a peach colored blanket and a purple beach towel.
<LI>Dentals: Gap between her front teeth.



Circumstances of Disappearance</B>:
On July 30th, Nicole left her mother’s penthouse apartment in The West Mall, in Toronto's Etobicoke area, and vanished. There has been no trace of the 8 year old girl who was likely abducted moments after leaving the apartment in the Highway 427 and Rathburn Road area.
At 10:30am Nicole had gone to the lobby of the twenty story apartment building to pick up the mail. She returned to the apartment and got ready to go swimming with a playmate. Before leaving the apartment Nicole had spoken to a friend through the building's intercom and promised to be right down. The playmate waited about 15 minutes before buzzing the apartment again to find out why Nicole hadn't arrived. The two girls had arranged to meet in the lobby and go to a supervised swimming pool at the rear of the building.
About 11:00am Nicole said goodbye to her mother and left the apartment. No one has seen the girl since she closed the apartment door and walked into the penthouse hallway.

 

[Marilynilpa]

Within 15 minutes, this little girl just vanished??? That is so terrible.

Did the little girl actually walk out of the apartment building? I just pulled up an article about this, and it says she vanished before reaching the elevator. In other words, she walked out of her apartment and somewhere along the hallway to the elevator, she disappeared.

Perhaps the article means that she vanished before reaching the elevator of the apartment building where her friend lived???

 

[Richard]

Nicole's parents, Art and Jeanette Morin were separated at the time of Nichole's disappearance. She lived with her mother in an apartment on the 20th floor of the the West Mall condo. That day, Nicole planned to go swimming with a friend and was to meet her in the lobby. She left the apartment some time before 11 o'clock.

Nobody actually saw her enter the elevator.

At about eleven o'clock, the friend called up to the apartment and asked Jeanette, "Isn't Nicole coming down?" Her thought was "Well, she must be on her way."

Jeanette Morin said in an interview once, "It was around three o'clock in the afternoon whin I realized something was going on. I just became in a daze. I kept saying, 'Oh,she's got to be with somebody playing and she forgot.' Around six o'clock, I couldn't put up with it any more. I called the cops."

Police came to believe that it was a crime of opportunity by a predator who happened to be in the building at that time.

The Morins spent many years and much money on private investigators trying to find their daughter, but she has never been seen since leaving her apartment home that day in 1985.

 

[Marilynilpa]

Nicole's parents, Art and Jeanette Morin were separated at the time of Nichole's disappearance. She lived with her mother in an apartment on the 20th floor of the the West Mall condo. That day, Nicole planned to go swimming with a friend and was to meet her in the lobby. She left the apartment some time before 11 o'clock.

Nobody actually saw her enter the elevator.

At about eleven o'clock, the friend called up to the apartment and asked Jeanette, "Isn't Nicole coming down?" Her thought was "Well, she must be on her way."

Jeanette Morin said in an interview once, "It was around three o'clock in the afternoon whin I realized something was going on. I just became in a daze. I kept saying, 'Oh,she's got to be with somebody playing and she forgot.' Around six o'clock, I couldn't put up with it any more. I called the cops."

Police came to believe that it was a crime of opportunity by a predator who happened to be in the building at that time.

The Morins spent many years and much money on private investigators trying to find their daughter, but she has never been seen since leaving her apartment home that day in 1985.

Thanks for providing this information.

It's hard to believe that on this particular day, a random predator just happened to be on the 20th floor of this apartment building at the precise time Nicole is leaving her apartment. Wouldn't he have been noticed by someone? How could he have gotten out of the apartment building with Nicole without anyone noticing them? Were there any security cameras in the lobby? If so, what did they show? Had anyone previously reported anyone lurking around the apartment complex?

This is a bizarre case.

 

[SadieJane]

This is indeed a strange case. It seems the suspect pool is relatively limited. I hope the other residents were all interviewed by the police. We should also consider maintenance men, repair men, delivery men who may have been in the building, friends/relatives of the residents, etc. It's seems to me Nicole was probably stalked by her abductor and he was just waiting for an opportunity to grab her. The crime occurred so swiftly and quietly (no one heard her call out or struggle with her abductor) that they was definitely some measure of planning involved. If it was a spur-of-the-moment action, the perp had either been fantasizing about it for a long time or had done it before.
I wonder if Nicole was friendly with any of her neighbors. If she trusted them, they could easily have lured her into their apartment-- "hey, come look at my new cat," etc.
Are there any similar crimes in this area in this time period?

 

[Richard]

This is indeed a strange case...
Are there any similar crimes in this area in this time period?

Toronto is a very large city, but there are a number of unsolved disappearances of children on the books, and there was a very well known and particularly grusome and well remembered murder of a little 9 year-old girl which occurred there in 1983.

On January 31, 1983, Sharin Morningstar Keenan was abducted from Jean Sibelius park (in Toronto) by one Dennis Melvyn Howe, a drifter and convict on parole, who was living under one of his many aliases in Toronto. Howe raped and strangled Sharin and stuffed her body into a refrigerator before disappearing himself. He has yet to be apprehended. There is a separate thread on him in this forum.

On July 25, 1986, 11 year-old Alison Parrott met with a self proclaimed photographer who claimed that he wanted to photograph her for a track magazine. She was to meet him near Varsity Stadium (in Toronto) on the corner of Bedford and Bloor. Her body was found two days later in Kingsmill Park. She had been sexually assaulted and murdered. The murder was never solved.

 

[georgiagirl]

There does not seem to be alot out there about this case and it is very frustrating.


Alisson Parrot's case was solved. She was raped and killed by Francis Carl Roy and he was convicted. I will try and link an article....

 

[Marilynilpa]

This is indeed a strange case. It seems the suspect pool is relatively limited. I hope the other residents were all interviewed by the police. We should also consider maintenance men, repair men, delivery men who may have been in the building, friends/relatives of the residents, etc. It's seems to me Nicole was probably stalked by her abductor and he was just waiting for an opportunity to grab her. The crime occurred so swiftly and quietly (no one heard her call out or struggle with her abductor) that they was definitely some measure of planning involved. If it was a spur-of-the-moment action, the perp had either been fantasizing about it for a long time or had done it before.
I wonder if Nicole was friendly with any of her neighbors. If she trusted them, they could easily have lured her into their apartment-- "hey, come look at my new cat," etc.
Are there any similar crimes in this area in this time period?

I don't feel this was a spur-of-the-moment abduction. The time frame (15 minutes) doesn't allow much time for an abductor to just happen upon a child in the hallway, subdue her in some way, carry her out of the building and into his vehicle, all without being seen or heard.

To me, there are two likely scenarios:

1. Nicole was lured into a neighbor's apartment. If this is what happened, then my questions are:

a. How did the neighbor get Nicole (or her body) out of the apartment building? I wonder if anyone remembers seeing a neighbor carrying out a locker or trunk, or maybe even a carpet?

b. Was there a service elevator in this building?

c. How was trash taken care of? Was there a dumpster used by all of the tenants?

2. Nicole was abducted by someone who planned to take her. My questions about that are:

a. Was he planning to take her, or just any child? If he specifically wanted her, how did he know her? (My guess - he was a friend of the family).

b. How did he know that Nicole would be alone in the hallway on that day and at that time?

c. How did he get Nicole out of the building?

d. Was there a place he could park his car near the building that afforded some privacy? (Since no one saw Nicole being carried/walked to a car, the vehicle may have been parked in a someone secluded area near the building).

While I'm sure the neighbors were closely scrutinized, I still think it was a neighbor who took her. I wonder if any of the neighbors had sons in their late teens or older living at home?

 

[georgiagirl]

20 years and still no answersHer dad's lonely vigil

By BRIAN GRAY, TORONTO SUN
Sat, July 30, 2005

TWENTY YEARS and not a trace of Nicole Morin.

The little girl with the toothy grin went off to swim with a friend on July 30, 1985, and was never seen again.

Not a clue, not a shred of evidence, not an answer for Art Morin on what happened to his 8-year-old daughter.

"She vaporized," said Art, now 66, from his Etobicoke apartment. It's as good an explanation as anybody can provide him.

"It's been a long time," he said yesterday, dredging up memories of his little girl, accompanied by a few tears. "When she disappeared I really thought we would have an answer by now but there really are no surefire answers."

At 11 a.m. that morning Nicole said goodbye to her mom, Jeanette, in their penthouse apartment on The West Mall and told her she was going to meet a friend for a swim at the apartment complex's pool.

She got on the elevator and vanished.

A police search team went door to door. Hundreds of volunteers scoured the neighbourhood and nearby fields.

They all turned up nothing.

"It has to have been someone in her building," Toronto Police Supt. Tony Warr said this week. "The chances of a stranger being on that elevator are very slim."

When Nicole disappeared Warr was a sergeant with five years under his belt in the homicide squad.

"I can remember talking to her distraught mother in Nicole's bedroom," he said. "I can still remember there was a poster on the wall."

Warr and his partner, then-Staff Sgt. Jim Jones, spent weeks on the case working out of the basement of 22 Division looking for something to illuminate Nicole's whereabouts.

Nicole's vanishing was one of a series of mysterious disappearances of girls.

Christine Jessop, 9, went missing from her Queensville home the October before Nicole vanished. Sharin' Morningstar Keenan, also 9, was snatched away in January 1983 and Alison Parrot disappeared July 1986. All turned up dead, their bodies found. All except Nicole.

The police and the Morins went through every scenario they could think "until we were blue in the face," said Art, who has been divorced from Jeanette since 1989.

'SHE WASN'T FORGOTTEN'

"I don't want to be dwelling on these things," he said. "I find bringing all these memories back doesn't do much good."

But he still keeps a box of what he calls "the most personal things," full of notes and schoolwork and Father's Day cards.

"Hey, what if she walks in the door?" he asked, his mood becoming more upbeat. "What if someone has taken her and she decides she wants to return? If Nicole should ever return I want to be able to show her she wasn't forgotten."

Not knowing what happened to a missing child makes it almost impossible to ever heal the gaping hole in parents' hearts, said Jan Barr, a case manager with Child Find Ontario.

"Without resolution it remains as raw as the day it happened," Barr said.

Nicole isn't the oldest case in Child Find's files but it's one of the most baffling. Her picture still runs regularly along with an age-enhanced photo done in 2000 to indicate what Nicole might look like at age 24.

"Typically there's more evidence when a child goes missing," Barr said. "That's what makes this one so unusual; there was nothing."

Art said he knows there's at least one person out there who knows what happened to his little girl.

And he's certain that person has told others.

What he can't understand -- and what still angers him -- is why no one ever said anything to the police or the family.

It's a problem of the spirit, Art said, and it's a problem that is getting worse with every passing year.

He watched as other children have gone missing -- Kayla Klaudusz, Andrea Atkinson and more recently Holly Jones and Cecilia Zhang -- and he feels despair with every single one.

"We've learned that diligence is required on the part of all parents," Art said.

"There are people out there who don't give a hoot for your child's life because they have no moral scruples."

The police learned greatly from Nicole's disappearance and in child abduction cases since, Warr said, such as the importance of staying focused on the crime area and being on top of things instantly. (Warr and the homicide squad were not called until a week after Nicole vanished.)

"These things (abductions) only take seconds," Warr said.

http://torontosun.com/News/TorontoAndGTA/2...153215-sun.html

 

[Marilynilpa]

20 years and still no answersHer dad's lonely vigil

By BRIAN GRAY, TORONTO SUN
Sat, July 30, 2005

TWENTY YEARS and not a trace of Nicole Morin.

The little girl with the toothy grin went off to swim with a friend on July 30, 1985, and was never seen again.

Not a clue, not a shred of evidence, not an answer for Art Morin on what happened to his 8-year-old daughter.

"She vaporized," said Art, now 66, from his Etobicoke apartment. It's as good an explanation as anybody can provide him.

"It's been a long time," he said yesterday, dredging up memories of his little girl, accompanied by a few tears. "When she disappeared I really thought we would have an answer by now but there really are no surefire answers."

At 11 a.m. that morning Nicole said goodbye to her mom, Jeanette, in their penthouse apartment on The West Mall and told her she was going to meet a friend for a swim at the apartment complex's pool.

She got on the elevator and vanished.

A police search team went door to door. Hundreds of volunteers scoured the neighbourhood and nearby fields.

They all turned up nothing.

"It has to have been someone in her building," Toronto Police Supt. Tony Warr said this week. "The chances of a stranger being on that elevator are very slim."

When Nicole disappeared Warr was a sergeant with five years under his belt in the homicide squad.

"I can remember talking to her distraught mother in Nicole's bedroom," he said. "I can still remember there was a poster on the wall."

Warr and his partner, then-Staff Sgt. Jim Jones, spent weeks on the case working out of the basement of 22 Division looking for something to illuminate Nicole's whereabouts.

Nicole's vanishing was one of a series of mysterious disappearances of girls.

Christine Jessop, 9, went missing from her Queensville home the October before Nicole vanished. Sharin' Morningstar Keenan, also 9, was snatched away in January 1983 and Alison Parrot disappeared July 1986. All turned up dead, their bodies found. All except Nicole.

The police and the Morins went through every scenario they could think "until we were blue in the face," said Art, who has been divorced from Jeanette since 1989.

'SHE WASN'T FORGOTTEN'

"I don't want to be dwelling on these things," he said. "I find bringing all these memories back doesn't do much good."

But he still keeps a box of what he calls "the most personal things," full of notes and schoolwork and Father's Day cards.

"Hey, what if she walks in the door?" he asked, his mood becoming more upbeat. "What if someone has taken her and she decides she wants to return? If Nicole should ever return I want to be able to show her she wasn't forgotten."

Not knowing what happened to a missing child makes it almost impossible to ever heal the gaping hole in parents' hearts, said Jan Barr, a case manager with Child Find Ontario.

"Without resolution it remains as raw as the day it happened," Barr said.

Nicole isn't the oldest case in Child Find's files but it's one of the most baffling. Her picture still runs regularly along with an age-enhanced photo done in 2000 to indicate what Nicole might look like at age 24.

"Typically there's more evidence when a child goes missing," Barr said. "That's what makes this one so unusual; there was nothing."

Art said he knows there's at least one person out there who knows what happened to his little girl.

And he's certain that person has told others.

What he can't understand -- and what still angers him -- is why no one ever said anything to the police or the family.

It's a problem of the spirit, Art said, and it's a problem that is getting worse with every passing year.

He watched as other children have gone missing -- Kayla Klaudusz, Andrea Atkinson and more recently Holly Jones and Cecilia Zhang -- and he feels despair with every single one.

"We've learned that diligence is required on the part of all parents," Art said.

"There are people out there who don't give a hoot for your child's life because they have no moral scruples."

The police learned greatly from Nicole's disappearance and in child abduction cases since, Warr said, such as the importance of staying focused on the crime area and being on top of things instantly. (Warr and the homicide squad were not called until a week after Nicole vanished.)

"These things (abductions) only take seconds," Warr said.

http://torontosun.com/News/TorontoAndGTA/2...153215-sun.html

Thanks so much for posting this informative article. I was not aware that the homicide squad wasn't called until a week after Nicole was abducted. Just think about how much evidence may have been lost in that week's time.

From what I'd read before, I thought Nicole vanished from the hallway and never entered the elevator. But the article says she stepped into the elevator, and Toronto Police Superintendent says "The chances of a stranger being on that elevator are very slim."

If in fact she was on the elevator when she was abducted, that widens the possibilities somewhat. Instead of the abductor being someone on her floor, it could have been anyone in the apartment building who used that elevator. Also, if Nicole did get into the elevator, how do we know she didn't leave the elevator and go outside the building? Was there a doorman, or a security camera? There must have been something concrete to prove she didn't leave the elevator and go outdoors.

I cannot imagine the grief her parents have gone through over the years.

The police seem to feel as I do, that the abductor had to be someone in the building.

 

[Mr. E]

I wonder why they say the chances of a stranger being in the elevator are slim? In an apartment building, there could be visitors, people to look at For Rent apartments, people apartment sitting for friends, boyfriends/girlfriends, even salesmen.

I wonder, did the apartment have a basement or sub-basement? A parking garage? How far down did the elevator go?

 

[Marilynilpa]

I wonder why they say the chances of a stranger being in the elevator are slim? In an apartment building, there could be visitors, people to look at For Rent apartments, people apartment sitting for friends, boyfriends/girlfriends, even salesmen.

I wonder, did the apartment have a basement or sub-basement? A parking garage? How far down did the elevator go?

You are right, there could be lots of visitors using the elevator. But the chances are slim that any one of those strangers would be a pedophile who happened to be there at the moment Nicole stepped on the elevator.

 

[smile22]

i feel the same way to i have questions some of you might not be able to answer

did they check out every single person in that building at that time did they interview everyoe who lived their? were there people who suddenly moved after all this happend?

 

[georgiagirl]

I wish there was more info available about this case. I wonder how sophistocated forensics were at that time.... I feel like she was targeted by a neighbor or someone who worked in the building. It may have been someone she encountered on the elevator.


Georgiagirl

 

[Marilynilpa]

I wish there was more info available about this case. I wonder how sophistocated forensics were at that time.... I feel like she was targeted by a neighbor or someone who worked in the building. It may have been someone she encountered on the elevator.


Georgiagirl

I'm not sure about the forensics capabilities at that time, but the fact that homicide wasn't brought into the case until Nicole had been gone for a week makes me wonder what kind of initial investigation was being conducted.

I agree with you, I believe this little girl was targeted by either a neighbor or someone who was frequently in the building, such as a workman or delivery person who saw the little girl often enough for her to consider them "friendly". I tend to lean towards a neighbor.

 

[shadowangel]

Nicole's parents, Art and Jeanette Morin were separated at the time of Nichole's disappearance.

At about eleven o'clock, the friend called up to the apartment and asked Jeanette, "Isn't Nicole coming down?" Her thought was "Well, she must be on her way."

Jeanette Morin said in an interview once, "It was around three o'clock in the afternoon whin I realized something was going on. I just became in a daze. I kept saying, 'Oh,she's got to be with somebody playing and she forgot.' Around six o'clock, I couldn't put up with it any more. I called the cops."

Something there just doesn't sound right.....

 

[Marilynilpa]

Something there just doesn't sound right.....

I feel the same way. I've tried to walk through that day, as far as the mom is concerned, and I keep having questions.

Okay, put yourself in her place. Her daughter left to go swimming with a friend. The friend calls up and says, "where's Nicole?" Mom assumes Nicole is on her way. The friend never calls back and says, "Nicole never showed up", so as far as Mom knows, everything is fine. She gets busy around the house, doesn't keep her eye on the clock, and before she knows it, it's 3:00 in the afternoon and you realize your 8-year-old daughter hasn't come home. You tell yourself she's out playing with someone and hasn't made it home, so you wait three more hours before calling the police.

Now, here are the parts I have trouble with:

1. After Nicole's friend called and said Nicole hadn't turned up, why didn't the mother go to the pool and verify that Nicole was okay?

2. Your 8-year-old daughter leaves at 11 a.m. to go swimming, and you don't realize "something was going on" until 3 p.m.? What the heck was she doing that kept her from realizing her daughter had been gone for four hours?

3. You wait until 6 p.m. to call the police. Why wait so long? By now, the mother should have already called Nicole's friend and found out that Nicole never showed up, so now you know your little girl has been missing seven hours.

I'm sure the parents were both looked at very closely by the police, and were ruled out as suspects. But I do have questions about the mother's actions.

 

[Mr. E]

According to this website, Nicole was recognized on a Dutch pedophile ring's CD-ROM.

http://groups.msn.com/fondationprincessedecroy/votrepageweb7.msnw

 

[Marilynilpa]

According to this website, Nicole was recognized on a Dutch pedophile ring's CD-ROM.

http://groups.msn.com/fondationprincessedecroy/votrepageweb7.msnw

I wonder how credible that website is, and if anyone has looked into this.

What a terrible thing, if true. It would certainly explain why her body was never found.

 

[shadowangel]

I feel the same way. I've tried to walk through that day, as far as the mom is concerned, and I keep having questions.

Okay, put yourself in her place. Her daughter left to go swimming with a friend. The friend calls up and says, "where's Nicole?" Mom assumes Nicole is on her way. The friend never calls back and says, "Nicole never showed up", so as far as Mom knows, everything is fine. She gets busy around the house, doesn't keep her eye on the clock, and before she knows it, it's 3:00 in the afternoon and you realize your 8-year-old daughter hasn't come home. You tell yourself she's out playing with someone and hasn't made it home, so you wait three more hours before calling the police.

Now, here are the parts I have trouble with:

1. After Nicole's friend called and said Nicole hadn't turned up, why didn't the mother go to the pool and verify that Nicole was okay?

2. Your 8-year-old daughter leaves at 11 a.m. to go swimming, and you don't realize "something was going on" until 3 p.m.? What the heck was she doing that kept her from realizing her daughter had been gone for four hours?

3. You wait until 6 p.m. to call the police. Why wait so long? By now, the mother should have already called Nicole's friend and found out that Nicole never showed up, so now you know your little girl has been missing seven hours.

I'm sure the parents were both looked at very closely by the police, and were ruled out as suspects. But I do have questions about the mother's actions.

Thank you. (Great minds DO think alike!) When the friend called to ask where Nicole was, wouldn't most parents go into panic mode at that point? I wonder if the friend was ever spoken to by police, or if they just accepted the mother's word. The whole timeframe is suspect to me.
The building should be searched by cadaver dogs, in my opinion.