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

[matou]

Any teen boys living on the penthouse level at the time?

 

[matou]

Gonna guess the perp is currently 46-50 years old. JMO

Into child too, obviously. Still in Toronto area though?

 

[matou]

July 30th 1985 is a Tuesday. She is gone before 11 am. A teen boy or boys would be off school during the summer and parents would be away at work. Hope they interviewed everyone who lived on that penthouse floor.

 

[matou]

http://toronto.ctvnews.ca/cold-case...tment-of-nicole-morin-disappearance-1.1938643

 

[Chorley8]

In the reenactment she is standing the the elevator looking back towards her apt. you can see an exit sign right behind her - are those the stairs?

 

[Woodland]

This will likely be unpopular, but have always felt Nicole was missing for more than 24 hours before she was reported missing to police - ie not at 11:00 am that morning. Jmo.

 

[dotr]

In the reenactment she is standing the the elevator looking back towards her apt. you can see an exit sign right behind her - are those the stairs?

@ 00: 22 it may well be stairs at exit sign, but not sure.

 

[matou]

What about access to the roof?

 

[dotr]

This will likely be unpopular, but have always felt Nicole was missing for more than 24 hours before she was reported missing to police - ie not at 11:00 am that morning. Jmo.

If , that was the case, would it change the game in terms of where Nicole would most likely be located now?

 

[dotr]

http://www.torontosun.com/2014/07/30/toronto-police-update-1985-disappearance-of-nicole-morin
bbm

"Police are treating Nicole’s case as an abduction, not a homicide, Tretter said, because they “don’t want to draw any conclusions.”

There are conflicting reports whether Nicole actually left the elevator where she was supposed to meet her friend, police said. A few persons of interests were interviewed at the time, but later cleared.

“We’ve seen cases in the States where people have been missing for a long time and they have been found alive,” Tretter said. “We are hopeful that, one day, she will be found alive.”

 

[Woodland]

If , that was the case, would it change the game in terms of where Nicole would most likely be located now?

Good question - wish we could learn what Nicole's known activities were 24 to 48 hours prior.

 

[Woodland]

http://www.torontosun.com/2014/07/30/toronto-police-update-1985-disappearance-of-nicole-morin
bbm

"Police are treating Nicole’s case as an abduction, not a homicide, Tretter said, because they “don’t want to draw any conclusions.”

There are conflicting reports whether Nicole actually left the elevator where she was supposed to meet her friend, police said. A few persons of interests were interviewed at the time, but later cleared.

“We’ve seen cases in the States where people have been missing for a long time and they have been found alive,” Tretter said. “We are hopeful that, one day, she will be found alive.”

Imo, Nicole never got on the elevator at that time, nor did she go to collect the mail shortly before, nor did she speak to her friend over the intercom.

 

[Chorley8]

There IS the strange theme in this case of the possibility of "Nicole going away willingly" this seems mostly to be in relation to her father's thoughts - I think much previously in relation to her church - in a recent video with her father it just comes forth as an idea....but is part of the conversation about the experience of his wife's child returning after 15 years. So whereas before I have said the idea is ridiculous it needs to be borne in mind........since there might be a more fully developed idea or bit of knowledge beneath the words being said.

I guess the "I am going to disappear" statement by Nicole could fit here.

Of course the police are calling it an abduction which it probably is....and would be in any case.

 

[Chorley8]

If , that was the case, would it change the game in terms of where Nicole would most likely be located now?

There would have to be dissimulation in that case of course by at least one adult actor.

Answering WL's point tough thing from the adult's point of view if a story was required would be why bring up the meeting with the friend at all? We have to assume the friend was interviewed or asked. The story"Nicole went swimming" doesn't need the addition of the arrival of the friend. I don't know if there were witnesses to the mail delivery but again why add this to the story? Nicole waking up that morning being home is perfectly reasonable. Also there was a day-care in Nicole's apt. so why have Nicole leave as late as 11:00? Some of the kids in the day-care presumably lived in the building so word would get up pretty fast I think if nobody had seen Nicole before 11:00.

LE would know about the story of the missing son and in any case immediate care-givers are always suspected early or first so when they say they parents are cleared I am sure there is some investigative work behind that statement.

Stairs again: there would be no way for the abductor to know if they took Nicole on the 20th floor nobody would get on at the 19th (the likelihood increasing with each floor down). So I am thinking stairs down to a nearby floor. Nobody would use the stairs on those floors.

 

[Woodland]

There would have to be dissimulation in that case of course by at least one adult actor.

Answering WL's point tough thing from the adult's point of view if a story was required would be why bring up the meeting with the friend at all? We have to assume the friend was interviewed or asked. The story"Nicole went swimming" doesn't need the addition of the arrival of the friend. I don't know if there were witnesses to the mail delivery but again why add this to the story? Nicole waking up that morning being home is perfectly reasonable. Also there was a day-care in Nicole's apt. so why have Nicole leave as late as 11:00? Some of the kids in the day-care presumably lived in the building so word would get up pretty fast I think if nobody had seen Nicole before 11:00.

LE would know about the story of the missing son and in any case immediate care-givers are always suspected early or first so when they say they parents are cleared I am sure there is some investigative work behind that statement.

Stairs again: there would be no way for the abductor to know if they took Nicole on the 20th floor nobody would get on at the 19th (the likelihood increasing with each floor down). So I am thinking stairs down to a nearby floor. Nobody would use the stairs on those floors.

BBM

Did anyone independently verify seeing Nicole picking up the mail that day? If someone did, unaware of that fact.

Did anyone independently verify seeing Nicole in the apartment that morning? A child? A parent dropping off a child? Have never heard anyone did.

When was the last independent (non-parental, specifically maternal) verified siting of Nicole?

Have had my suspicions before hearing there was another child removed from the maternal care. All jmo.

 

[Chorley8]

Woodland (or anyone else who might know) do you know anything about the law and requests for DNA in the U.S.? If Canadian authorities suspect someone is a perpetrator or is a former lost child whose permission do they need to test DNA? I am guessing it is not straightforward but am I correct? If so I am just wondering if Canadian LE would use media to try to coax a US judge to allow testing. But maybe I am way off course here. I am thinking of the splash last summer in the Sharin Keenan case in the N. Post and wondered: why not just investigate the guy? Why go to the media? There has to be a motive, a reason. And just wondering if that could apply here. (?)

 

[LoyalSleuth]

First post on this thread. I am the same age as Nicole and grew up in Toronto. I remember this case and all the Toronto missing and murdered children of the 80's like it was yesterday.

In looking at Nicole's beautiful face, I see some ethnicity, does anyone else? I have tried to find a picture of her mother to no luck. Nicole seems to me to look like she is bi-racial, her father does not look this way to me at ALL.

Theory, Nicole is not her fathers bio daughter, Nicole's bio father came and took her just like the first father did of Nicole's half brother.

 

[matou]

Nicole looks like French Canadian to me but open to the idea that she may be of mixed heritage. I have not seen her father though. Her eyes are totally french to me, a little bit spaced wider and large. Very cute little girl.JMO.

IMO this is completely sexually motivated. Full heat of the summer. Little girl in a bathing suit. JMO

 

[dotr]

Wondering if Nicole was specifically targeted or not, and if so, was it by someone she knew, or did they know of her?
Did Nicole just happen to be the "gazelle', the unfortunate child in a swimsuit, alone and spotted by a predator and snatched?
If the perp was anywhere around the lobby, did they see Nicole's friend waiting for her, and could she have been the original target ? imo.

 

[palisadesk]

The idea that Nicole might have gone off someplace willingly (using her father's words) is not at all surprising or even unusual. Children do this, even street-proofed children, and they go off with total strangers as well as with people they know to some degree. Sharin' Keenan went off with Dennis Howe, who was a complete stranger. Marianne Shuett, kidnapped from Kilbride, ON in 1967, went willingly with a strange man in full sight of a number of witnesses (who presumed he was a family friend or otherwise legitimate).

(see thread here: http://www.websleuths.com/forums/sh...bride-Ontario-27-April-1967&highlight=schuett )

I see some possible parallels to the Schuett case in Nicole's disappearance, though the crimes are not likely connected.

Woodland, I am interested in the reasoning behind your theory that Nicole may not have vanished on the day reported but at least a day earlier -- it certainly explains (if true) why no witnesses reported seeing her leave the building on the day in question, but presumably police put some credibility in the evidence of the friend and possibly others as well. However, reviewing all the evidence in the case, and entering it all in a database, may indeed lead to some potential solutions, as it did in the Schuett case, when new investigators re-opened the cold case 20-some years later.

As for the parent not reporting her missing until hours later, while most parents I know would not be so dilatory, a family friend who was a very laid-back parent allowed her children fairly free run of their (safe) neighbourhood, and when her five-year-old son was late to dinner she did not immediately think anything was wrong; she had his siblings check up and down the street and did not call police until after dark.

They found the boy drowned in the nearby creek. No foul play, an accident. Some parents let their kids have more freedom than we (or certainly I) think advisable. This was around the same time as Nicole's disappearance; I doubt many moms would be so sanguine now.

I suspect if Nicole was abducted by a stranger, she was likely killed within hours, days at most. That makes me think of the Jessop case; some evidence suggests Christine was kept by her kidnapper for at least some period of time -- IIRC one or more of the items of clothing found on her body were not ones she was wearing when she disappeared.