Morgan Patten was the only child of Steve and Renee Patten, with a future that included law school and a wedding to her Marine fiancé. In November 2019, hours before she was set to see him for Veterans Day weekend, she was killed under circumstances her family has never accepted as a simple accident.
On November 8, 2019, Morgan traveled to Jacksonville, North Carolina to visit her fiancé, Phil, a Marine stationed at Camp Geiger. Because he was living in the barracks during training, Morgan checked into a nearby hotel that evening, texting family and friends throughout the day to keep them updated. Her last message to her parents said she was heading to bed. She never made it back to her hotel room. Instead, Morgan ended up in a truck with two men she had just met — something her family says was completely out of character for her — and was killed in a car crash roughly 15 miles from her hotel.
Steve and Renee have said the circumstances of the crash raised more questions than answers from the very beginning, and that they have been met with resistance from both civilian and military authorities in their search for the truth about what happened to their daughter in the hours between her last text message and the crash that killed her.
Steve and Renee have made repeated trips to North Carolina in the years since Morgan's death, pursuing evidence and pushing for real investigation into her case. To honor the future she should have had, they founded Morgan's Miles To Go Foundation, a nonprofit that provides educational, recreational, and artistic opportunities for youth and young adults, and hold an annual "Miles to Go for Morgan" run in her memory near her hometown of Bradford, New Hampshire.
Morgan's family continues to seek the truth about the hours before her death. Updates on her case are shared at morgansmilestogo.com and on the Miles For Morgan Facebook page.