Dana’s featured guests will also include Retired FBI Criminal Analyst Clint van Zandt , Richard Muti and Charles Buckley – former New Jersey Prosecutors and National Authors of “The Charmer” and Editor In Chief “Red” of www.scaredmonkeys.com
Evansdale Iowa- the remains of two individuals have been located by a hunter .
Sources speaking on the condition of anonymity have confirmed that the remains are that of Elizabeth Collins and Lyric Morrisey.
The cousins were last seen riding their bikes together and Lyric’s parents have endured multiple confinements and very public scrutiny of their involvement with illegal drugs.
The FBI stated early in the case they were confident the girls were alive.
Check back to blinkoncrime.com for this developing story.
Evansdale, Iowa- Lyric Morrissey and Elizabeth Collins have been missing from what their Grandmother Wylma Cook described as “within her view from the home” for over one week. Myers Lake, approximately a 27 acre body of water surrounded by a Nature bike trail which yielded the tweens bikes and purse, has been cleared after consultation with the Elite FBI CSI dive team.
Courtesy WH8T
On July 12th, the day before the girls disappeared, Daniel Morrissey was due to enter a guilty plea in a pending Federal drug arrest. Instead, he requested the matter be scheduled/reset for trial. In response, prosecutors swiftly requested the court place Morrissey under appropriate pre-trial supervision for his alleged crimes.
On Thursday, prosecutors with the Black Hawk County Attorney’s Office asked a judge to review Morrissey’s release, pointing out that Iowa Code state people charged with conspiracy to manufacture meth being a second offender — one of the charges Morrissey is facing — shall be under supervision as a condition of their release.
Occurring almost simultaneously to Morrissey’s plea filing which he did not attend personally, a Black Hawk county prisoner broke out of jail, robbed a pharmacy and was on the lam for over 18 hours.
Jeremy Alan Mask, fond of controlled substances which led to his arrests is now in custody and additional charges related to the escape were filed against Mask the following day. Mask was sentenced to a residential treatment center following a burglary of a Walgreens last April.
Are the incidents connected? Investigators are not talking. Except to say they now have video footage of the girls at about the time they were both seen. No mention as to whether or not the girls were on their bikes.
Investigators may be tight lipped- But they ARE acting.
Yesterday Black Hawk County detectives revised a no contact order barring Dan Morrissey from being near his wife Misty- although they have appeared together and have been living together for weeks- following a domestic violence assault which landed both Dan and Misty back in prison last August.
As reported exclusively last week on www.blinkoncrime.com, Dan Morrissey for the assault and Misty Cook-Morrissey for extensive probation/parole violations.
The pair are now permitted to be in each other’s company, provided LE agents are as well.
Misty Cook Morrissey’s sister Tammy Brossueau has confirmed that detectives have directly confronted Dan Morrissey with information they developed pointing to him as a suspect and as a result the estranged couple have refused to cooperate further in the investigation to locate their daughter and her cousin Elizabeth.
Black Hawk County Sheriff’s Office Captain Rick Abben officially declared the case an abduction at a 4 PM press conference yesterday afternoon.
Abben also announced a $50,000 reward is being offered leading to the person or persons responsible for the disappearance of the girls. He confirmed said evidence has been seized in the investigation and sent to the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation crime lab in Des Moines. While he would not comment on the evidence specifically, sources inside the investigation speaking on the condition of anonymity to www.blinkoncrime.com have confirmed that items from the home including a computer and other electronic devices are among the listed property inventory.
Missing since Friday July 13th from right outside the Lederal Safety Shoe shop since about 12:15 PM, Lyric Morrissey, 11, and her cousin Elizabeth Collins, 8 are the subject of an exhaustive air and foot search for the third day.
Both girls bikes were found 2 miles away from where they were last seen at Meyers Lake next to route 27. About 20 yards away, the bag and cell phone of one of the girls was also located.
Misty Morrissey, mother of Lyric, believes the girls have been abducted.
Investigators are stumped and frustrated they have not found any sign of Lyric and Elizabeth whatsoever and compared the disappearance to” vanishing into thin air”.
Heather Collins, Elizabeth’s mother, is Misty Morrissey’s sister. Lyric Morrissey also has a brother, Dillin.
As with any alleged abduction, family becomes the initial focus of investigators in an effort to rule them out.
Daniel Eugene Morrissey, Lyric’s father and Elizabeth’s former Uncle by marriage, has had a very long and varied criminal past.
While it is of course not known if Mr. Morrissey has had any recent contact with his daughter, court records show that he was investigated for a dismissed domestic abuse battery with a weapon /mental illness charge less than one year ago.
He has been in and out of the corrections system since as early as 1997.
The search for two Iowa cousins, Lyric Cook and Elizabeth Collins intesifies following the 30 hour mark. The girls were last seen together in downtown Evansdale riding their bikes at around noon Friday.
The girls bikes were found near a bike trail next to Myer’s Lake and Lyric’s mother Mistyl Cook Morrisey believes the tweens were abducted. By Sunday morning, investigators believe at least 40% of the lake had been searched with no sign of the girls. A bag and cell phone belonging to Lyric was found nearby.
Rick Abben, chief deputy sheriff for Black Hawk County, said the girls were last seen by their grandmother when the two left her Evansdale home at about 12:15 p.m. Friday to ride their bicycles.
The girls’ grandmother notified police two hours later when they hadn’t returned. A firefighter located their bikes on a trail close to nearby Meyers Lake at about 4 p.m. Friday.
Aerial search equipment formatted with thermal infared technology has not produced any possible leads on the ground.
Please check back to www.blinkoncrime.com for this developing story
Update From Blink: Having had an opportunity to review the map of the last known location, their are two areas of great immediate concern I am focused on.
1. The area where they were last seen on their bikes is next to a safety shoe ( think workboot) store, and adjacent to the rear or parking area of a bar at lunchtime on a Friday and likely a payday. Lefty’s Lounge is also a truck stop. This location is just a few blocks from the Grandmother’s residence and some areas of it can be seen from the home if one was standing outside. The residence also appears to be the office of Planetary Tree Services, unclear if employees report directly for the day’s jobs but the map reflects what could be utility trucks used for tree cutting. It is not uncommon for some day laborors
2. The girls bikes and bag/cell phone are located together, in an area approximately 2 miles from the area where they were last seen. Their are no bike trails on the roadway and only heavy traffic “highway” leading straight to the lake, alternative routes through the neighborhood are possible, but then they likely would have been seen.
The girls apparently rode bike s close to home frequently with no report of wandering off and the mother’s first reaction upon hearing the bike’s locations were that the girls were abducted. That tells me that she is reasonably certain that the children would not chosen the lake as a bike riding destination as it is a natural tendency for a parent to want to NOT believe a child has been abducted as a first “option”. She also has knowledge about what time the grandmother began calling the girls with no answer, and the call to police came at 2. Were they sent for anything from a store?
I would recommend that the neighborhood closest to the home be canvassed and each shop at the strip mall be visited for customers and employee timecards be reviewed with specific emphasis on any surveillance footage, traffic cams and of course, Lefty’s Lounge logs, immediately. Close attention should be paid to anyone leaving any of the merchants between 12:15 PM and 1:15PM abruptly, anyone leaving a shift early, or anyone taking their break out of turn, etc.
This is an incredibly tight window of time for an abduction of two , if it is one, the bikes are found near an unfenced section directly on the other side of Route 20 with no evidence of foul play. The trail itself is paved and very visible from the road.
