By NC WANTED Staff

Posted: Feb 27, 2009
Updated: Apr 1, 2009

GRANVILLE COUNTY — Pat Currin arrived at his daughter’s house in Stem on September 4, 2008 while the fire was still burning. He looked on as authorities battled the blaze. His son-in-law, Scott Morris, was talking to the fire investigators about trouble the couple had been having with some of the brand new home’s light fixtures.

Pat’s wife, Juanita, drove to Nationwide Insurance in Raleigh where Kelly Morris was in her second week of training. They couldn’t reach her by phone to tell her about the fire.

But she wasn’t there. Her car wasn’t in the parking lot and she never arrived at the scene of the fire.

A few hours later, Kelly’s car was found about a mile from her house, parked in an undeveloped subdivision with her purse, keys and cell phone inside.

No one would ever see or hear from Kelly again.

The 27-year-old mother of two daughters lived in Granville County all her life. As a child, she was a bit of a tomboy.

“Kelly was just Kelly… what you saw was what you got,” Pat Currin said. Pat and Juanita laughed, and cried, when they told NC WANTED about Kelly and the nightmare they’ve endured since she disappeared.

“She was not a person that could sit in the house and watch TV and read a book all day. When she got whatever she needed to be doing done, she’d get in the car and ride and see what everybody else was doing,” Pat said.

But despite Kelly’s need for excitement, her parents said there was absolutely no chance that the devoted mother would have picked up and left her children.

Kelly and her then-boyfriend had Taylor nine years ago. That’s when her parents knew what Kelly’s life would be about: motherhood. Taylor and Haley, 5 – Kelly’s daughter with Scott Morris – have not seen their mother in nearly six months. Taylor went to live with her father in Wake County and Haley lives with Scott and his parents in Creedmoor.

“They’ve got questions,” Juanita Currin said. “They’ve got to be confused. They’ve not only lost their mother, but they’ve lost each other and what they knew as a normal life isn’t normal anymore.”

And the questions, for the girls and for the Currins, remain largely unanswered. One thing seems clear, however: no one expects to find Kelly alive.

“It’s not gonna be good whenever we do find her, but we need to find her,” Pat said.

“For me, it’s about the children. They’ve got a long way to go without a mama, so it’s important that they have answers,” he added.

Although police are still publicly calling the investigation a missing persons case, search warrants tell a very different story.

“We have found nothing to suggest it was voluntary with her having two small children. And consistent with everyone, including the family and friends, as well as our investigation, we tend to believe that she would not have left the children or the family,” said Granville County Sheriff David Smith.

The warrants state that Kelly’s disappearance is being treated as a homicide, and inconsistent statements made by her husband have placed him at the center of the investigation. NC WANTED traveled to Creedmoor to see if Scott Morris would tell his side of the story. Although his truck was in the driveway, no one answered the front or side door.

Family and friends of the couple told police their marriage was strained and that they had discussed divorce in the past. Friends of Kelly said Scott had occasionally punched holes in the wall or thrown things during arguments.

Although the Currins themselves said they never saw Scott get violent, they knew the marriage was rocky.

"I think early on in their marriage, that they were happy, " Juanita told NC WANTED. "I would say, over the last couple years is when things probably started shifting."

"Kelly had come to live here for 3 or 4 weeks a month before she got missing, so we knew there were issues there," Pat Currin added.

According to the warrants, Scott told police that Kelly left the house around 9:30 p.m. on September 3, 2008 to look for a missing dog and he went to bed. But phone records indicate that Scott Morris made and received phone calls to and from his father as late as 11:56 p.m.

When police interviewed Scott’s father, Jimmy, he said Scott called him because he was going out to look for Kelly who he suspected was cheating on him. He didn’t say anything about a lost dog.

Scott told police that the next morning, September 4, he took his daughters to school, met a coworker at a storage lot, went to Hardee’s to get something to eat and then straight on to work at the BP station in Creedmoor. Surveillance video near the
storage lot shows Scott leaving around 8:15 a.m. Hardee’s surveillance video shows Scott entering the restaurant at 9:09 a.m., nearly an hour later.

He came and went from Hardee’s in the direction of his home, the opposite direction he would have traveled from the storage lot or to get to work. By 12:30 p.m., the house Kelly and Scott built in Stem had gone up in flames. Investigators determined it to be arson.

Since then, hundred of volunteers have joined in the search for Kelly Morris, a search her parents vow will never end until they find their daughter. But they worry that if Kelly's body is never found, answers may never come.

"I think that if we can find Kelly's body, that an arrest will come soon," Pat Currin said. "Eventually, I believe, somebody's going to answer for this... if not here, they'll answer to the man upstairs."

In the mean time, the search continues while volunteer numbers dwindle every day. For more information about searches or how to volunteer, send an email to helpfindkelly@gmail.com. And, as always, if you have any information that might assist investigators, call NC WANTED toll free at 1.866.43.WANTED (1.866.439.2683) or click on "Report a Tip" Your identity can be kept confidential.

Every tip is important.