‘Nightmare': Family Left With Questions About Case of Missing Maryland Man

Morris Vereen was one of almost 500 adults reported missing in Prince George’s County, Maryland, last year, and his family and friends said they did everything they could to find him but were left worrying for months until they found out the truth.

The day before Vereen disappeared, he wasn’t feeling quite right. He called 911 from his Laurel home eight days before Christmas 2021, the News4 I-Team found. Police records show he was checked out, but not transported. 

The next morning, the last images anyone would see of the 58-year-old alive were caught on the surveillance camera outside his house when he left.

"I came to visit him, and he wasn't there, and I waited around for him," said family friend Bardino Joyner. "When he didn't return, it seemed kind of unusual."

Joyner called him “Uncle Morris.” They were so close for so many years they felt like family.

"We're tight. We're very tight," he said.

But when the holidays came and went, he knew something was wrong.

"No one heard from him,” Joyner said. “Everyone was calling, everyone looking for uncle. ‘Where's uncle?’"

After returning to Maryland from South Carolina to check on Vereen, Joyner called the police to file a missing person’s report Dec. 27.

"Very devastated. Very, very distraught. Very confused,” Joyner said. “I'm calling the Prince George's County Police Department trying to see what's going on. Have you heard anything? Have you located a car? But I'm getting no answers."

The case file in Vereen's disappearance shows a lookout was issued. Police logs show calls were made to hospitals and jails in Maryland and D.C. But by January, with no news, Joyner called police upset he had not been updated, documented in an email from a detective in the case file.

"The detective did call me back in February and said they're still looking, they have the tag reader out, so if his car’s anywhere, it would pop up, they will see it," explained Joyner.

That never happened. Police logs show calls were also made in January and February to the Medical Examiner’s Office in Maryland and also in New Jersey, where Vereen had recently bought a vehicle. But the logs don’t show any calls made to the D.C. Medical Examiner's Office at that time, even though investigators had reached out to other D.C. agencies.

In March, Joyner said it was a shocking call from a neighbor of Vereen that eventually solved the case.

"She was like, I need you to check this website because I think that your uncle may be on it," he told the I-Team.

There, on a website for unclaimed remains, was his name.

Joyner called the D.C. medical examiner, who confirmed Morris had died.

"It took me by surprise, and, you know, it's just, my heart just sank," he said.

The man he called “uncle” had died in a Northeast D.C. parking lot 15 miles from his home. He suffered a heart attack on the very day he went missing, Dec. 18. He also had COVID-19, according to the medical examiner. Police body-worn camera video shows D.C. officers pulled him from his vehicle and tried multiple times to revive him.

D.C. police confirmed they did identify Vereen that day with his ID card and registration, but a spokesperson said only a D.C. address came up, not his Laurel one.

"I was kind of outraged because he had been there all that time and deceased all that time," said Joyner.

"It was definitely a breakdown in communication all the way around," said former City of Falls Church Police Officer Derrica Wilson.

She now runs the Black and Missing Foundation, which provides resources for families and police who are searching for Black people – whose cases she says don't always get the attention they deserve.

"As a police officer, I'm going to go above and beyond to reach out to those hospitals. I'm going to go above and beyond, and as insensitive as it may sound, reach out to those morgues," Wilson said.

The Prince George's County Police Department said in a statement, "Our detectives investigated his disappearance based on the information known at the time," and that, "We were saddened to learn he had passed away nine days prior to being reported missing."

D.C. police also declined to be interviewed about the case, but a spokesperson told the I-Team that after Vereen was found inside his car, "We were unable to immediately locate his next of kin due to limited family connections in our available database."

The I-Team tracked down one of Vereen's sons, who lives in Virginia. He said he never heard from either police department.

"This is a nightmare, just not knowing, you know, not knowing where your loved one is," Wilson said.

"This all could have been avoided," Joyner said.

Four days after he found out what happened to Vereen, logs show he got a call from Prince George's County Police.

"The people that I call called me to ask me, where did I find him and what happened?" Joyner said.

That night the Maryland detective also left a message for the D.C. medical examiner and called D.C. police, who confirmed Vereen died, closing the case according to police records.

Since Vereen had been unclaimed for months, his remains were already cremated by the time Joyner got to him.

"This is a tragedy all around, you know. For my uncle and what he had to go through and what the family had to go through," said Joyner.

Wilson said the first 24 hours are the most critical when someone is missing. She offered the following advice if it happens:

• Contact the local police department and get a missing person’s report filed immediately.
• Make sure they know if the person has any health conditions.
• Get the case number.
• Ask if the case is being assigned to a detective to call for updates. The reporting officer is not necessarily who will investigate.
• Confirm when the case will be entered into the National Crime Information Center, which is how various law enforcement agencies communicate with each other.

Reported by Tracee Wilkins, produced by Rick Yarborough, and shot and edited by Steve Jones.