It was 1983 when I first learned that children could go missing. Tania Marie Murrell was only 6 years old when she disappeared on her way home for lunch from Grovenor School on 20 January 1983, in Edmonton, Alberta.
I was only 8 years old and that horrifying realization left such an impression, that I was driven to take action. I have heard time and again from families of missing children that we cannot let their names and faces fade from the public. This is the mission of We the Missing!
About a month ago I was updating my database of long-term missing children (which shockingly and devastatingly contains thousands of children's cases in North America alone), when I stumbled across a young teenager missing from my hometown of Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia.
Jeffrey Gordon Murray went missing on 23 January 1986 - almost three years to the day after Tania Murrell. How is it that in 1983 I heard of a child who went missing in a city on the other side of the country, and only by chance, 38 years after he went missing, come across Jeffrey's disappearance that occurred in my hometown, way too close to home?
Jeffrey's family and friends are desperate for answers but sadly, they do not have many. Jeff, as they call him, disappeared that day and has never been seen or heard from again. Law enforcement actively worked the case but without new leads, Jeff's case seems to have gone cold.
There is very little information available on Jeff's case except for some Child Find ads in newspapers from the 1990s and one in 2000. Some sites who profile missing children's cases have listed Jeff's but provide no more information than the Child Find ads.
As he went missing from my hometown, I reached out to that community to gather as much information as I could. Here is what I found out.
Jeffrey Gordon Murray was 13 years old in January 1986, set to celebrate his 14th birthday on 20 February 1986. He was a grade 8 student at Graham Creighton Junior High and caught the bus to school daily from the parking lot of Scotia Stadium (now Cole Harbour Place). He lived in the Forest Hills area of Cole Harbour with his mother, father, and older sister.
Jeff enjoyed sports, and like many children growing up in Cole Harbour, played hockey and baseball. His father even coached Jeff and his friends in baseball. Most of his friends and community members seem to remember that the impression at first was that Jeff ran away.
The few reports I read stated that at first law enforcement listed Jeff as a runaway but he is now considered endangered missing. Police did track down some leads that Jeff had runaway to Ontario to live with friends or relatives but Jeff was not found in Ontario. There were many reported sightings of Jeff in Dartmouth after he was reported missing but none were ever confirmed. I have learned that on the day he went missing he and a friend went to the friend's house, about 5 minutes away from Jeff's house, instead of going to school. At some point, the principal called the home of the friend and the friend's mother told Jeff to return home but he did not. Later that night, he hung out with other friends. The next day, he was never seen or heard from again. The time of his disappearance is noted by Child Find Canada as 10:30 pm on Thursday, January 23, 1986. His family thinks of him daily and would like to know what became of him.
Jeffrey was last seen wearing a navy blue jacket, black sweat pants, gray seat shirt, and work boots.
If anyone has any information about Jeffrey Gordon Murray please contact:
Halifax Regional Police Service 902-490-5020
RCMP Cole Harbour 902-244-7208
Crimestoppers 1-800-222-TIPS (8477) or report online at crimestoppers
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