Kelly Morrissey: The Search for Kelly Morrissey Continues 26 Years Later

Shelly Feuer Domash was a reporter with The New York Times and POLICE magazine when the Kelly Morrissey story and subsequent Lynbrook teenage girl disappearances first broke. She worked closely with the lead detective on the case, Nassau County Police Det. Terry Quinn, from its outset. Like the late Quinn, who spent the better part of the past quarter century attempting to solve the case, so too had Domash never given up on the story. So, 26 years later, as Nassau police announce the reopening of the mystery following new leads and Internet chatter regarding a Facebook page, we felt there would be no better authority than her to tell us about it.

MISSING LYNBROOK TEENAGER KELLY MORRISSEY AS SHE LOOKED AT THE TIME OF HER DISAPPEARANCE IN 1984 AT AGE 15.

By Shelly Feuer Domash

In most ways, Kelly Morrissey’s life was not that different from many other 15 year olds’. Her parents were divorced, she went through a litany of boyfriends and she spent most of her time searching for acceptance and love. She could be a tough teenager one day or a vulnerable child the next.

By her own diary accounts, she was also a rebellious, confused young girl who drank, smoked marijuana and often skipped school—continually searching for something she would never obtain. Her diary was filled with entries that described a rollercoaster of emotions. She wrote about running away and taking three aspirins to kill herself; she also described the good days, hanging out with her friends.

Kelly’s life would probably have gone unnoticed, except for the events that occurred on June 12, 1984.

The petite blond blue-eyed girl started her evening the same way she had done hundreds of times before. She ate dinner, ironed some clothing and got dressed to go out to meet some friends. At approximately 8 p.m., she took her pocketbook, said good-bye to her mother and walked more than a mile from her Lynbrook home to meet her girlfriend, Gail Cole. What happened after that depends on who you talk to, but the one fact that does not change is that Kelly was never seen, nor heard from, again.