Father of Nicole Morin clings to hope thirty years after she vanished

Art Morin pulls a photo of his daughter out of his wallet and stares. It was thirty years ago to the day that he last saw her in person.

The photo may have faded over the decades, but his hope that the mystery of her disappearance will be solved in his lifetime, hasn’t.

“When there’s absolutely nothing, you have to keep your hopes up that one day, you’ll find out,” he said. “You’ll find out one day.”

Nicole was just eight when she left her Etobicoke apartment to meet a friend and go swimming on July 30, 1985. She hasn’t been seen since.

“She just…walked down the hall and that’s it,” he said.

“I never thought that it would run so long,” he adds. “You just keep going one year at a time, and you keep hoping.”

Police haven’t given up either.

Det. Sgt. Madelaine Tretter was only on the job for one year when she volunteered to help search for Nicole back in ’85.

Three decades later, she continues to probe new clues in the case, searching for closure.

“We did a canvas of the building and I kept thinking that we would have answers,” she says of the initial search. “At no point did I imagine that three decades down the road I would be standing here appealing to the public and still not knowing where Nicole is.”

Last July, Toronto police and the OPP descended on a rural area north of Barrie after receiving a tip in the case.

They scoured the area, but nothing was found.

Against the odds, police refuse to close the case.

“My hope is that I will have those answers so I can let her father know what happened to his little girl,” said Det. Sgt. Tretter.

Art Morin says there’s one element to the story that continues to haunt him. On the day she disappeared, a mysterious blonde woman was seen on the Penthouse floor where Nicole lived.

“Who she was on that floor, at that time?”

“Nobody knows.