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

But Kelly was always much more than a one-dimensional picture next to an age-enhanced depiction. Anyone who knew Kelly, and those, like me, who only learned about her after her disappearance, still feel her impact on our lives.

Vanished Without A Trace

I knew from the first time I learned about Kelly’s disappearance that her story would be a complicated one, filled with mysteries that might never be answered. But I also felt a compelling need to not stop researching. Her story was different, maybe because she was so young, maybe because of all the unanswered questions that would come to haunt me, maybe because I had two young children and I needed to know what happened to her and why.

One problem was that different people would relate conflicting accounts of the same incidents. No one seemed to see Kelly before she went missing, despite the fact she was on a busy street. Most of her acquaintances would only relate superficial stories about her. It seemed that either they didn’t know, or they could not get past her outer defenses to understand who Kelly really was. Getting to know the real Kelly Morrissey was not an easy task.

Learning about Kelly meant talking with her best friend, her parents, and other people who were involved in her life. It meant spending endless hours and days with the one man who would never give up on finding her—Det. Terry Quinn of the Nassau County Police Department. Kelly was as real for him as she was for the people who knew her before she disappeared.

I don’t remember when I first met Quinn. Sometimes the days just seem to blur into years. I know I liked him from the start. He was gracious, sincere, a little shy and best of all truly interested in Kelly’s case. We hit it off immediately. Whether it was our common obsession with Kelly’s story and the need for closure, or just him being a really nice guy I’m not sure. Maybe it was just a little of both.

Hot Skates, Lynbrook

What I do remember is that, after we had worked together for a few months, he welcomed me into his home, something many cops would not allow a reporter to do. When I met his wife, she was just as wonderful as he was. There was no pretense, no hesitation about saying the wrong thing. They were two honest, caring people.

Described by his colleagues as the “all-American boy,” Quinn was a quiet, modest man, with thick brown hair and reflective blue eyes. He had spent most of his time becoming an expert on Kelly. He knew her likes and her dislikes. He knew her friends, her temperament and her reason for the things she did. He seemed to know her better than anyone else.

He told me that in some ways, she was like many of the other children he had dealt with in the police department’s Juvenile Aid Bureau.