A month after graduating high school, a woman met her mother and then headed to the bank to get money to buy a vehicle. The grad told her mom she’d pick her up later.
The teen never made it and was found dead in a tire left in a Rhode Island pond.
Today, police have yet to solve her killing that is now a cold case.
On July 19, 1988, Lauren Morris left Bristol, Rhode Island, on a bus to meet her mom in Providence, Rhode Island, to borrow a vehicle, according to Bristol police.
She was last seen at a bank on Francis Street in Providence, where she withdrew cash for a down payment on a vehicle she was going to buy that same day, police said. Morris was supposed to return home later but never made it.
Her vehicle was found abandoned on Route 10 hours later, and Morris was found dead in the nearby pond, police said.
There have been no arrests in the killing. Today, more than 30 years later, it’s now a cold case. Anyone with information is asked to contact authorities at (877) 747-6583.
An article in the Bristol Phoenix after her murder shed more light on the details of the night.
As Morris left for the bank, she told her mom she would pick her up at 4 p.m. Her mom took a bus home when she never showed. Around midnight, the mom filed a missing person report with the police, according to the report.
“Mrs. Morris told me that her daughter had never done anything like this before,” then-Police Chief Thomas Moffatt told the newspaper. “She said her daughter would always call if she was going to be late.”
Police found the vehicle abandoned and Morris’ purse was still in the backseat.
A motive has never been released, though Morris was found partially clothed in the pond.
A month before her death, Morris graduated from Bristol High School, where officials described her as an above-average student with a pleasant personality, according to the Phoenix.
In her yearbook, Morris wrote what would become an ominous last will— never knowing soon after graduation it would be her final testament.
“I, Lauren Morris, leave to my sister, Patrice Morris, my attitude toward life, and to all my teachers my patience for another Morris,” Lauren wrote, according to the report. “I dared to be different. I dared to be me.”
