Nick and Nancy Perris are not like other parents.
They barely got a chance to marvel at how quickly their daughter Colleen grew up.
Instead, when they look back, they find a decade of torment since Colleen, 18, vanished, the apparent victim of foul play.
She disappeared the afternoon of Sept. 30, 2000, after she received a mysterious cell phone call and left the family’s Plantation Acres house.
“The worst is always in the back of my mind,” Nick Perris said. “I have thoughts and visions of someone doing something to her.”
Plantation Police Detective Joe Messina has similar thoughts, often using the word “catastrophic” to describe what he thinks happened to Colleen.
He’s been the lead detective on the case from the beginning, enlisting help from the FBI, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, TV’s “America’s Most Wanted” – it aired a segment on Colleen in 2004 — and other investigators.
No one has been able to identify a suspect.
“It’s very frustrating as a police officer, and as a parent,” Messina said. “I wish there was something more we could do.”
Despite all those efforts, the Perrises find that 10 years after Colleen went missing, they are no closer to learning what may have happened to her than they were the day she disappeared.
Police immediately ruled the teen’s disappearance suspicious because she left so much behind.
Colleen had gone to school that summer and was days away from receiving her diploma from Plantation High School.
She had more than $1,000 saved from working as a hostess at a chain restaurant, and she was looking forward to an upcoming family trip to Colorado.
Colleen also adored her boyfriend and her longtime best friend, both of whom helped search everywhere in the days just after she vanished.
A family friend found Colleen’s white, 1994 Mazda MX-6 parked outside an out-of-business Wendy’s in Tamarac at McNab and Pine Island roads. But it was six days after her disappearance, and by then rain had washed away any fingerprints from the car’s exterior. The inside of the car was also devoid of clues.
Although the investigation remains active, there have been no significant developments in several years.
The Perrises had their daughter declared legally dead in 2007 and the next year offered $20,000 from her Florida prepaid college fund as a reward for anyone who could lead them to Colleen. The October 2008 announcement generated only three tips, none of which panned out, Nick Perris said.
“So few tips have come in,” Nick Perris said. “At this point, we’re waiting for something. We’re waiting for the phone call.”
He means the call from authorities if they were to find Colleen alive and determine that she had run away. Or, more likely, the Perrises realize, it would be police calling to say that someone has come forward with new information. That someone has made a confession. That someone found some bones.
Adding to the pain and frustration felt by the Perrises and police are the major advancements in technology in the past decade that, had they been available in 2000, might have helped solve the mystery.
Colleen had an AT&T; cell phone, but back then obtaining call logs, even with a subpoena, was a weeks- or even months-long task. By the time the phone company processed a request from Plantation police, it was too late to trace the signal on Colleen’s phone or get a record of incoming calls to her phone, Messina said.
Facebook and MySpace, now often used by police to track a person’s travels and identify their associates, weren’t around in 2000; they didn’t launch until 2004.
The Perrises said they cope with the pain and frustration through activities that include supporting other families of missing children.
Nick Perris, 63, also works days in his Central Park Postal store in Plantation. Nancy Perris, 62, works at Kemper National Services, a large auditing company for medical bills and insurance claims.
“Keeping busy is key,” Nancy Perris said. “You need to think about something else.”
Police ask that anyone with information about Colleen Perris’ disappearance contact Plantation Police Detective Joe Messina at 954-797-2100, or Broward Crime Stoppers at 954-493-TIPS (8477).
