Father keeps searching for missing daughter

CREEDMOOR -- Pat Currin spent Sunday morning the way he has spent nearly every morning of the last 90: scouring acres of fields and forests where a killer might have stashed his daughter's body.

For three months, Currin has roamed pastures and cemeteries, peered into lakes and wells, hunting for clues to what became of Kelly Currin Morris. Morris is grown, a mother herself, but she is still Currin's baby daughter, and he wants her home.

"We'll only be done when we find her," Currin said Sunday.

Morris, 28, vanished sometime after her stepmother hugged her goodbye the night of Sept. 3 and before firefighters rushed to her Granville County house the next day to subdue a raging fire. Morris had not shown up to work that day. Firefighters found no trace of her in the charred house.

The next day, deputies found Morris' car, with purse and keys inside, abandoned in an unfinished subdivision near her house in Stem. Authorities later determined that someone had torched the house she shared with her husband, Scott Morris, and her two girls.

That's when Pat Currin started searching for his daughter. At first, he hollered, hoping his daughter would yell back. These days, he just looks. He is searching for bones and tattered clothes.

Other family members and friends joined the search. Then, days later, strangers showed up. They came with good shoes and silent pats on the arm. Those who couldn't walk cooked for the search crews.

As time wears on, the hope and the numbers of volunteers diminish. September brought more than 50 searchers. Sunday, there were fewer than two dozen.

Weekdays now, it's mostly Currin and a few others. Currin has stopped working; his son Carl manages the family's construction company.

Currin invested in sonar equipment to search rivers and lakes; he and others have searched all of Falls Lake. He bought scopes to look down in wells. Still, no luck.

"We need a durn break," Currin said.

Juanita, his wife of more than 20 years, finished his thought: "I don't understand how someone could put a family through this. We hurt so bad."

Granville County sheriff's investigators named Morris' husband "a person of interest." No arrests have been made. Scott Morris could not be reached for comment Sunday.

A stranger helps

Al Mignacci, a retired IBM engineer, walked into the Currins' lives in September when he saw on television that another mother in the Triangle was missing. Since then, he has taken over as commander of the search efforts, leading crews that slowly nibble at a radius of more than 15 miles around Morris' home.

In the workshop of Currin's construction company on the outskirts of Creedmoor, Mignacci leans over a map colored with yellow highlighter marks. Every week, the circle around Morris' house gets a little brighter. On Sunday, Mignacci filled in another inch around a cattle farm west of Stem. Those yellow lines offer about as much hope as searchers get. Every day, they know a bit more about where Morris is not.

At 71, Mignacci is nonchalant about his work for the strangers.

"They needed help," he said. "I had it to give."

He has watched the Currins' hope rise with each small discovery. An article of clothing here or there. In November, they found bones. Investigators later ruled that the bones were an animal's.

For now, the Currins have nothing to bury. No place to go to bid farewell. In the world of police and courts, bodies define crimes, and Morris is just missing.

The Currins know their daughter wouldn't vanish without her girls, without saying goodbye.

So they walk, looking for a sign of Morris that lets them let go.

(News researcher Brooke Cain contributed to this report.)

HOW TO HELP

Anyone with information on the whereabouts of Kelly Currin Morris is asked to call Granville County Crime Stoppers at 919-693-3100. E-mail can be sent to searchers at helpfindkelly@gmail.com.

The family is offering a $36,000 reward for any tip that leads to the discovery of Morris.