![\"\"](\"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Cayley-Bruce-STORY.jpg\")
<\/a>Bruce<\/p><\/div>\n
Anna, the oldest daughter, was 7 years old when she watched her father wave goodbye.<\/p>\n
She never saw him again.<\/p>\n
Her father\u2019s mysterious disappearance has haunted her and the family since. Was Morton alive somewhere? Did he die on the road? Was he the victim of foul play?<\/p>\n
Decades later, Anna Nichols\u2019 granddaughter, Cayley Bruce, was determined to get those answers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI swore that I\u2019d figure this out before my grandmother dies,\u201d she said. \u201cI didn\u2019t care what I had to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
A junior studying criminal justice at The University of Toledo, Bruce, n\u00e9e Nichols (she was married last year), had more than a promise to keep \u2014 she had the resolve and experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just questioned everything about it,\u201d she said. \u201cWith me being a criminal justice major, unsolved mysteries like that just eat at me. I mean, how can someone just disappear and fall off the face of the Earth like that?\u201d<\/p>\n
The challenge was rather daunting.<\/p>\n
Her family had tried to solve Morton\u2019s disappearance several times in the 67 years since he vanished. They sent letters to the FBI and to every state asking for any information and even hired a private investigator in the late \u201980s \u2014 all to no avail.<\/p>\n
But she was well-prepared for the task, said Dr. David Lilley, one of Bruce\u2019s UToledo faculty mentors.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the most important things that I stress in my classes is for students to gain the ability to attempt things in life that seem difficult,\u00a0unfamiliar or even a bit scary,\u201d Lilley said. \u201cI stress that our goal \u2014 both in school and in life \u2014 is to become the best person that we can be.\u00a0So, we should not shy away from challenges like taking a difficult math course or, in this case, searching for clues that others have missed.\u00a0Anything good or useful in life comes through hard work and persistence.\u201d<\/p>\n
There were all kinds of theories about what happened to him, including that Morton was murdered by his own father. Everyone agreed that Morton didn\u2019t leave his home state on that trip \u2014 everyone but Bruce.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were thinking all of these things, but they were not thinking out of the box,\u201d she said. \u201cI knew he wasn\u2019t in West Virginia.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bruce gathered the clues in the paperwork the family had collected. She learned, for example, that Morton\u2019s date of birth on his birth certificate and marriage license did not match: The former said May 14, 1926, the latter said March 15, 1923.<\/p>\n
Her grandmother also provided important information through her childhood memories in the days following her father\u2019s disappearance.<\/p>\n
Morton\u2019s wife, Opal \u2014 who was Anna\u2019s mother and Bruce\u2019s great-grandmother \u2014 called her husband\u2019s employer in South Bend shortly after he disappeared. The company told her that Morton had not worked there in four years.<\/p>\n
Bruce\u2019s grandmother also recalled Opal talking to her mother about a letter she had received from her husband. Morton wanted her to mail him a photo of Anna. Opal told her mom, \u201cIt will be a cold day in hell before I do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those were important clues, but they were not enough for Bruce to crack the mystery. So, she reached out to a blogger in West Virginia, Sean McCracken, who works to solve missing person cases in the state.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Photo of Wilford E. Morton, Cayley Bruce’s great-grandfather, who vanished after saying goodbye to his wife and four children in February 1954.<\/p><\/div>\n
Intrigued, he agreed to work with Bruce to solve the mystery. But the answers still proved elusive.<\/p>\n
He put together all the clues he had for a video<\/a> he premiered on his YouTube channel, \u201cMysterious WV,\u201d on a Friday evening in August 2021.<\/p>\n At the end of the video, McCracken asked his viewers if they knew anything about this case.<\/p>\n Exactly seven minutes later a man named \u201cEdward\u201d posted in the comments underneath the video: \u201cSomeone by the name of Wilford Eugene Morton died in an auto crash in 1956 in Massena, NY.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt was wild. It was so random and weird,\u201d Bruce said of the moment. \u201cI wondered how someone would come up with that so fast.<\/p>\n \u201cStill, I didn\u2019t want to get my hopes up,\u201d she said. \u201cI thought that it could be someone else.\u201d<\/p>\n McCracken corresponded with Edward online. He wished to remain anonymous and didn\u2019t provide any more information.<\/p>\n Bruce, who had been watching the video with her grandparents, told them she would make calls about the lead on Monday. That night, she was texting a cousin about what Edward said.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s like, \u2018OMG, Cayley. I just found the newspaper article.\u2019 Then she sent it to me,\u201d Bruce said. \u201cThere was a car in the picture, the one in the car crash. The story says \u2018Wilford E. Morton of Norfolk was killed when the car he was driving went off the curve.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n The story noted that Morton was staying in a boarding house in Norfolk, a tiny town near the village of Massena, which is next to the Saint Lawrence River. And that he was survived by his wife in South Bend.<\/p>\n Bruce sent the new information to McCracken, who was certain that Morton was the same man named in the newspaper obituary. Bruce still wasn\u2019t convinced.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t want to get my hopes up,\u201d she said. \u201cThis had been 60-plus years.\u201d<\/p>\n The newspaper story mentioned the cemetery where Morton was buried and the funeral home that handled the burial. On Monday, Bruce called the funeral home.<\/p>\n They confirmed they had the record of a \u201cWilfred\u201d Morton, who had been employed in a local construction company. The funeral home emailed Morton\u2019s death certificate to Bruce. In addition to misspelling his first name, they also had the wrong date of birth.<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n Bruce, who had memorized her great-grandfather\u2019s Social Security number, saw the match on the death certificate.<\/p>\n \u201cEven though \u2018Wilford\u2019 was misspelled and his date of birth was wrong, I knew that was him,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n In the weeks that followed, Bruce and McCracken were interviewed by newspaper and TV reporters in West Virginia. That she had helped solve a 67-year-old family mystery made for a feel-good feature story.<\/p>\n For Lilley, Bruce\u2019s efforts reflect her putting her classroom education into real-world practice.<\/p>\n \u201cIn research methods, we emphasize the importance of being systematic, careful and persistent when we approach complicated problems,\u201d he said. \u201cCayley adapted these principles to her unique life challenge and took the initiative to do something that others had not been able to do.\u00a0She just kept opening doors until she found one that held some vital information.\u00a0We are so proud of her efforts.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, just as Bruce solved one mystery, she also created another.<\/p>\n \u201cYes, my grandmother needed [the closure], but she\u2019s still very hurt,\u201d Bruce said. \u201cHer father had four young children he never saw again \u2013 why?\u201d<\/p>\n Bruce is ready to try and answer that question and others as best she can.<\/p>\n She knows nothing about Morton\u2019s wife in South Bend, other than her name and street address at the time of his death. The 1950s census will be publicly available in April, so she plans to dive into that in search of more information.<\/p>\n \u201cI would like answers for all the questions,\u201d she said. \u201cI think that I really just have to come to a complete resolution and then I\u2019ll stop. I think we just need to find out a little bit more of a timeline and then put the pieces back together.\u201d<\/p>\n Given her success so far, she\u2019s certain that she can ferret out those answers.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that anything is possible,\u201d Bruce said. \u201cI don\u2019t think that there\u2019s anything that I can\u2019t do. This was a 67-year-old mystery and now it\u2019s done. That\u2019s given me a lot of confidence that I can do anything.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Was Wilford Morton alive somewhere? Was he the victim of foul play? Cayley Bruce made a promise to her grandmother and to herself that she would get the answers. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":878,"featured_media":71727,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,61,1,71,7],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71665"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/878"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71665"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71671,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71665\/revisions\/71671"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>