HUNTER: Cops offering $50Gs reward on 40th anniversary of Nicole Morin disappearance
On July 30, 1985, eight-year-old Nicole left her penthouse apartment to meet a pal to go swimming. She never arrived in the lobby.
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They were terrible times when a bone-chilling fear gripped the city.
One child after the other, murdered, kidnapped, or simply vanishing into the ether.
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HUNTER: Cops offering $50Gs reward on 40th anniversary of Nicole Morin disappearance Back to video
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People of a certain age know their names: Christine Jessop, Sharin Morningstar Keenan, Alison Parrott, and Nicole Morin. They were cautionary tales for a generation of parents and their shell-shocked children.
We know what happened to Christine, Sharin and Alison and who their killers are.
Nicole Morin’s family, friends and a frightened community, however, remain in a decades-long limbo.
On July 30, 1985, eight-year-old Nicole left her penthouse apartment on the 20th floor of an apartment building on The West Mall in Etobicoke to meet a pal to go swimming. She never arrived in the lobby and has never been seen or heard from since that terrible day.
Wednesday marks the 40th anniversary of Nicole’s disappearance, and cops and the community are not letting the dark day pass without honouring the beloved little girl who detectives and the city took to their hearts.
A ceremony is slated for Wednesday at 627 The West Mall, her former residence, with the theme “Honouring Nicole, Raising Awareness, and Promoting Child Safety.” In addition to honouring the little girl who never came home, the event hopes to raise public awareness around the importance of timely reporting in missing persons cases and to highlight child safety initiatives.
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A new $50,000 reward for information leading to answers in Nicole’s disappearance is also being offered.
Among the police officers and community members in attendance will be Toronto Police Staff-Sgt. Stella Karras, who has been the Nicole Morin case manager since 2021.
“It never looked like Nicole just wandered away,” Karras told The Toronto Sun in 2022.
That year, investigators were digging at an undisclosed location north of the city where it was suspected the bright little girl with the Chiclet teeth may have been buried. A year later, an Etobicoke park was searched.
For Karras and many other detectives who worked the Morin investigation, their quest for answers — and justice — became deeply personal.
“I remember this from when I was a young girl. I was scared to death, everyone was,” Karras said, adding that there was very little physical evidence out of the gate.
The disappearance of Nicole Morin is being investigated as a homicide, but cops don’t know that for sure.
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The head of the Toronto Police cold case unit, Det.-Sgt. Steve Smith, who solved the Christine Jessop case, told the Sun that the Nicole Morin investigation was a heartbreaker from that terrible morning in 1985 onwards.
“The Nicole Morin investigation is one of the most complex and extensive in Toronto Police history,” Smith said. “Nicole’s family and the community at large have wondered what happened to Nicole for decades. We’ve looked at every possible scenario and explanation.
“We know that someone in the community knows what happened to her, and we want them to come forward and help us get the answers we all deserve.”
On the day Nicole vanished, contractors were installing a surveillance system in her 20-storey complex. Had the cameras been installed a day earlier, detectives may have had the answers they were looking for.
She stepped onto the elevator and did not get off. That leaves just two possibilities: Someone in the building grabbed her on the way down, or a predator did, whisking her via the stairwell to the parking garage.
“We hit a brick wall. We haven’t had any evidence that really takes hold,” Smith added. “We still don’t know what happened. Over the years, she became our special little girl and still is. We desperately want to solve this.”
At the time, detectives questioned every sexual predator who lived in or was visiting the area that day. Nothing.
Memories are fading, and bodies are aging. The clock is ticking. The desperate quest for justice for a child who went for a swim and never came home, however, burns as brightly as it did on July 30, 1985.
Anyone with information about the disappearance of Nicole Morin is asked to contact the Toronto Police Homicide Unit at 416-808-7411, or Crime Stoppers at 416-222-TIPS (8477) or www.222tips.com.
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