disappearance of Nicole Morin

On July 30, 1985, eight-year-old Nicole Louise Morin left her penthouse apartment on the 20th floor of an apartment building in the Etobicoke borough of Toronto, Ontario, Canada to meet a friend in the lobby for a swim date. She never arrived and has not been seen or heard from since. The Toronto Police Service launched the biggest missing-person investigation in their history, forming a 20-member task force and investing more than 25,000 man-hours following up leads. No physical evidence has ever been found to solve the disappearance. While it is now considered a cold case, Toronto police and missing-child organizations continue to keep it in the public eye in an effort to garner fresh leads. They have produced several video re-enactments of Morin's last known movements and released age-enhanced photographs coinciding with anniversaries of her disappearance.

Early life Nicole Louise Morin was born on April 1, 1977. She was the only child of Arthur (Art) and Jeanette Morin, who had married 12 years before her birth. Morin had brown hair and brown eyes. Her father lived in Mississauga. Tracking dogs were also brought in to explore the building's underground garages, utility rooms, storage units, and sump pump rooms. A neighbour recalled seeing an unidentified blonde woman with a notebook on the floor that Nicole's apartment was located on about 45 minutes before the disappearance. Police sought her as a possible witness, but she was never identified, nor did anyone come forward claiming to be her. More than 900 neighbourhood residents joined the search. The newly formed Toronto Crime Stoppers organization took on the disappearance as its first significant case. This organization posted a $1,000 reward, printed posters, and produced a video re-enactment of Morin's last known movements which aired on television several weeks later. An unexplained note was found in the apartment on which Morin had written in pencil a few months earlier: "I'm going to disappear".

Although police discouraged it, Art Morin raised funds to hire a private investigator. He also left his job, set up an office, and searched for clues for his missing daughter in Canada and the United States. He moved back in with Jeanette after Nicole's disappearance, but the couple permanently separated in 1987.

In 2004, researchers for a Belgian organization known as Fondation Princesses de Croÿ et Massimo Lancellotti announced that they had tentatively matched photographs of Morin seen on a Canadian police website with pictures on a Dutch website that advocates for sexually abused children. Using biometrical analysis, the researchers claimed a strong resemblance between Morin and a child in a pedophile network in Zandvoort.

Despite the years of investigations and thousands of leads, no physical evidence has ever been uncovered to solve the disappearance.

Ongoing efforts While it is considered a cold case, Toronto police and missing-child organizations continue to keep Morin's disappearance in the public eye in an effort to garner fresh leads. In 2001, Toronto Crime Stoppers disseminated an age-enhanced photograph of Morin as a woman in her mid-20s to more than 1,000 Crime Stoppers programs in 17 countries via the internet.

In 2019, on the 34th anniversary of the disappearance, the Toronto police's missing-persons unit released an age-enhanced picture of Morin suggesting what she might look like in her early 40s.

Morin's mother Jeanette died in 2007. Her father still lives in the Etobicoke area.