On a warm evening in August 2010, 16-year-old Carlee Jade Morse vanished from her Westland, Michigan, apartment complex. She had asked her mother for permission to step outside to make a phone call and was last seen between midnight and 1:00 a.m. on August 20, 2010. Carlee left without any personal belongings, including her money or purse, and was barefoot, wearing only her pajamas. There was no activity on her cell phone after she disappeared. Standing at 5 feet tall and weighing around 90 pounds, Carlee had brown hair and brown eyes. She had a scar on her left side and a burn scar on the inside of her right ankle.
Months went by with no sign of Carlee. Then, in December 2010, a significant break in the case occurred when two local men, Nicholas Jay Cottrell and Justin Lee Yoshikawa, confessed to her murder. Both men knew Carlee, and Yoshikawa had previously been in a relationship with her that ended on bad terms over the summer. According to the confession, this acrimonious breakup led to the plan to end her life. On the night she disappeared, Cottrell lured Carlee into his car with an invitation to smoke marijuana. Hidden under some clothes in the backseat was Yoshikawa. Cottrell drove to an isolated location where Yoshikawa then emerged and strangled Carlee with a dog leash.
Following their confessions, both Cottrell and Yoshikawa were charged with first-degree murder. Cottrell's mother was also charged as an accessory after the fact for having knowledge of the murder and not reporting it to the police. In January 2011, Cottrell agreed to a plea deal, pleading guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for his testimony against Yoshikawa. However, during Yoshikawa's trial in November 2011, Cottrell refused to testify, claiming his confession had been coerced. Despite this, the transcript of his prior testimony was allowed to be read to the jury. Subsequently, Yoshikawa pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 35 to 70 years in prison. Cottrell received a sentence of 20 to 50 years. The two men stated that they wrapped Carlee's body in garbage bags and disposed of it in a trash bin behind a church, but claimed to be unable to recall the exact location due to being under the influence of drugs. Carlee Morse's body has never been found. The case is a somber reminder of a young life cut short, and while convictions were secured, the inability to recover her remains leaves a painful lack of closure for her loved ones.
Carlee Jade Morse was a 16-year-old girl who disappeared from Westland, Michigan, during the early morning hours of August 20, 2010. Between midnight and 1:00 a.m., Carlee received permission from her mother to step outside their apartment in the 7000 block of West Bonnie Avenue so she could make a telephone call. She left wearing pajamas and no shoes or socks, carrying none of the possessions a person would normally take when planning to go anywhere. Her purse, money, clothing and other belongings remained inside. Carlee never returned to the apartment, and there was no further activity on her cellular telephone after she vanished. What first appeared to be the unexplained disappearance of a teenager would, within several months, become a murder investigation built around betrayal, planning and the concealment of her remains.
Carlee was approximately five feet tall and weighed between 90 and 100 pounds. She had long, straight brown hair, brown eyes and pierced ears. She also had a burn scar on the left side of her waist and another burn mark on the inside of her right ankle. She was receiving medical care for an unspecified condition at the time she disappeared, making her sudden absence even more alarming to those responsible for her well-being. Nothing about the state of the apartment suggested that she had packed, prepared to run away or intended to remain gone. She was barefoot and dressed only for the privacy of her home, reinforcing her family's belief that she expected to be outside for only a few moments.
The initial investigation focused on locating Carlee and determining whom she had gone outside to speak with. Police and relatives sought information from her friends and acquaintances, while her photograph and description were circulated publicly. Because she had left willingly to make a call, the case did not initially reveal the violence that had taken place. Her telephone fell silent, no reliable sighting placed her elsewhere and weeks passed without any contact. The complete absence of activity became increasingly difficult to reconcile with a voluntary departure, particularly because all of her belongings remained behind and she had no practical means of caring for herself.
Investigators eventually focused on two young men who knew Carlee: Nicholas Jay Cottrell and Justin Lee Yoshikawa. Yoshikawa had dated Carlee during the spring of 2010, but their relationship ended badly during the summer. According to the account later provided in court, Yoshikawa became angry over the breakup and decided to kill her. He and Cottrell developed a plan to draw Carlee outside without alarming her. Cottrell used his familiarity with her to persuade her to enter his 1998 Ford Escort, reportedly inviting her to smoke marijuana with him. Yoshikawa was concealed beneath clothing or blankets in the back seat so that Carlee would not see him before getting into the vehicle.
Once Carlee was inside, Cottrell drove away from the apartment and took her to an isolated location. Yoshikawa then emerged from hiding and strangled her with a dog leash. The attack ended the life of a girl who had stepped outside expecting a brief conversation, unaware that the invitation had been used to lead her into a carefully arranged trap. According to Cottrell's testimony, the two men then wrapped Carlee's body in garbage bags and transported her away from Westland. They disposed of her in a trash container behind a red brick church believed to have been located approximately one or two hours south of the city.
The disposal site was never identified with enough precision to recover Carlee. Cottrell claimed that he had been under the influence of drugs and in shock and could not remember exactly where the church was located. His description was broad enough to cover a large area containing many communities, roads and churches. By the time investigators learned the account, trash from the container may already have been collected, transported, buried or otherwise processed. The inability or unwillingness of those involved to provide a specific location left Carlee's family facing an additional cruelty: police could establish that she had been killed, yet they could not bring her remains home.
In December 2010, approximately four months after Carlee disappeared, Cottrell and Yoshikawa confessed to killing her. Both were initially charged with first-degree murder, an offense carrying a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment without parole in Michigan. Cottrell's mother, Tina Marie Lowe, was also accused of knowing about the killing, failing to report it and interfering with the investigation. She was charged as an accessory after the fact. The arrests transformed the case from an open search for a missing teenager into a prosecution for a planned homicide, but they did not end the physical search for Carlee.
In January 2011, Cottrell entered into an agreement with prosecutors. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and promised to testify against Yoshikawa in exchange for a sentence of 25 to 50 years in prison. During the proceedings, he described how Carlee was lured into the Escort, how Yoshikawa hid in the rear of the vehicle and how she was strangled after they drove to an isolated place. Cottrell maintained that he had participated because he feared Yoshikawa and believed Yoshikawa might kill him if he refused. The court nevertheless held him responsible for helping create the circumstances that allowed the murder to occur and for assisting in the concealment of Carlee's body.
At Cottrell's sentencing, Carlee's relatives spoke about the devastation caused not only by her murder but also by the continued refusal or inability to reveal where she had been left. Her mother pleaded for information that would allow the family to recover her and give her a respectful burial. The court sentenced Cottrell to the agreed term of 25 to 50 years. Although his guilty plea established his legal responsibility, it did not produce the detailed directions investigators needed to identify the church or trash container described in his account.
Yoshikawa's case continued toward trial in November 2011. Cottrell was expected to testify against him under the terms of the plea agreement, but once on the witness stand, he attempted to withdraw his cooperation. He claimed that his confession and guilty plea had been coerced and refused to repeat his earlier testimony. The judge permitted the transcript of Cottrell's prior sworn statements to be read to the jury. Before that reading was completed, Yoshikawa changed his plea to guilty of second-degree murder and admitted that Cottrell's description of the crime was true. He was later sentenced to 35 to 70 years in prison.
The guilty pleas answered the central question of who was responsible for Carlee's death, but they left the final chapter of her story unresolved. No publicly announced search has recovered her body, and neither man has provided information sufficient to locate it. Because her remains have never been found, Carlee continues to be maintained in missing-person databases even though the criminal cases established that she was murdered. Her direct DNA profile was developed so that any unidentified remains discovered in the future can be compared with her genetic information.
Carlee's case remains deeply painful because the crime began with an act that should have been safe and ordinary. She stepped outside her home to make a telephone call, dressed in pajamas and without shoes, never imagining that people she knew had arranged to lure her away. The men responsible were convicted and received lengthy prison sentences, but the absence of her remains has denied her loved ones the ability to place her in a known resting place. In overview, Carlee Morse disappeared from her Westland apartment during the early morning of August 20, 2010, after Nicholas Cottrell lured her into a car where her former boyfriend, Justin Yoshikawa, was hiding. Yoshikawa strangled her, the two men disposed of her body in a trash container behind an unidentified church, and both later pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. Justice was imposed through the courts, but Carlee has never been recovered, leaving her family with the truth of how she died while the search to bring her home remains unfinished.
Last Seen: Aug 20, 2010
