Girl Disappears — 29 Years Later, Cops Check This Footage Again | The Case of Morgan Nick
– Pay attention to this footage as it hides two disturbing secrets. It was taken at a Little League baseball game in 1995. The people sitting here in the stands are Colleen Nick and her 6-year-old daughter Morgan. They appear to be watching the game as it runs late into the night. Soon after, the footage shows little Morgan is no longer with her mother.
But look closely. Behind the fence, we see her running to go play with friends. This footage was filmed just minutes before Morgan disappeared. Earlier that day, another parent films the same game. In the back, the video captures a red pickup truck with a white camper. After investigation, police discovered the truck did not belong to any parent there that day.
And what’s worse, the same red pickup truck with a white camper was seen in the parking lot the last time Morgan was seen. Two months later, a man named Billy Jack Lincks is arrested after trying to abduct an 11-year-old girl just eight miles from where Morgan disappeared and Lincks was seen driving a red pickup truck with a white camper.
Three days later, Billy Jack Lincks is cleared of all charges in Morgan’s case. For nearly 30 years, the circumstances in which Morgan Nick was abducted would remain a mystery, until one mother who never stopped searching for her daughter finds that the truth has been hiding in plain sight. Alma, Arkansas, June 9th 1995, Colleen Nick and her 6-year-old daughter Morgan are at home getting ready to go watch the Little League baseball game.
The two younger siblings are staying over at their grandmother’s house that evening, so Colleen can have a night out just her and Morgan. That same day, just a few miles away from the baseball field, a man tries to kidnap a little girl outside the Alma Laundromat, but the mother is able to grab her away. The man drives off, and the incident goes unreported.
It’s night time, Colleen and Morgan are at the baseball field and the game is running late. The kids sitting in the stands are becoming restless. Some are already running around playing behind the bleachers. At one point, two kids run up to Morgan and ask her if she can come play. – Morgan sat with me, you know, she was six years old.
She was a little bit on the shy side, a little bit quiet, and she didn’t wanna go play with them and she just wanted to sit with me and I remember she kept untying my shoes and I had to pretend like, “Oh, my gosh, how did that happen?” And she would just laugh and laugh, you know, it was just the most hilarious thing to her.
– It’s 10:30 p.m., the game is almost over. The two kids return to Morgan and ask her if she wants to go catch fireflies. For the first time, Morgan turns to ask her mother if she can go, but Colleen says no. – I didn’t think it was a good idea that I thought it was too late and too dark. I was thinking about the times that…
I had been told I was too overprotective as a parent, that I needed to find a space to let my kids have a little bit of freedom. – Other parents try to reassure Colleen telling her it’s safe, that kids have been playing there all night. And with the double fence you can clearly see all the way around. – That’s when I had that feeling like something was wrong.
I thought to myself, “I’m being ridiculous. I’m overprotective.” She really wanted to go catch those fireflies and I think the thing I remember most… is, um… how happy she was when I told her she could go. – Morgan throws her arms around her mom’s neck and gives her a hug. She kisses her on the cheek and climbs down out of the stands following the two kids to the parking lot.
Colleen can clearly see her daughter from where she’s sitting. She tries to put her worries aside and turns her attention back to the game. It’s 10:40 p.m., the game is over and she sees the two kids returning from the parking lot, but Morgan is not with them. Colleen is terrified. She runs over and starts looking between the cars, inside and under, but Morgan is nowhere to be found.
Some parents who attended the ballgame take part in the search, but Colleen doesn’t waste any time. She asks someone with a cell phone to call the police. Sergeant Harris is the first to arrive at the scene. – At that time, I was only like a mile away, and as soon as I pull up, I see a group of people. – The mother is frantic.
She tells Sergeant Harris she believes her daughter has been kidnapped. With her are 10-year-old Ty and 8-year-old Jessica, the two kids Morgan left to play with. – And I recall one of the kids telling me, I can’t recall which one it was, but telling me that there’s a man had come up. – A man leaning against his truck while we were playing.
I mean, it was a little strange, but we were around adults all the time, like, you’re so innocent then, you don’t think anything and you’re just running around laughing. – The man had been standing there, next to his truck, watching them with the door open. After playing there for a few minutes, Ty and Jessica saw that the game was over and they told Morgan they were going back to see their parents.
Morgan followed, but as they leave the sand pile, the three of them stop to empty their shoes. Morgan was sitting by the back of the truck, Ty and Jessica were near the front. When her friends left, they were convinced she was close behind. That was the last time anyone saw her. – And if I just would’ve stopped or, like, we would’ve stayed together better.
Then it wouldn’t have ever happened. – The two kids describe the suspect as a white male with a scruffy beard wearing shorts but no shirt. Jessica also gives a description of the vehicle he was driving, a red pickup truck with a white camper on it. As more officers start to arrive, they secure the parking lot crime scene with yellow tape.
Some officers go knocking door-to-door looking for witnesses, while others organize the search. Knowing Morgan is inside a moving vehicle makes it imperative to find her quickly. Chief of Police Russell White contacts other agencies to ask for help. The State Police and the FBI join the efforts. – We really think we’ve kind of narrowed it down.
We think it’s a good possibility it’s a red truck. There’s still no make. A red pickup with a white camper, white male, dark hair, short, dark beard. And, of course, the last time he was seen, no shirt. – June 10th, the two kids, Jessica and Ty, are brought into the police department to help create a composite sketch of the man they saw.
This sketch is then shared with every news outlet, and soon, everyone in Arkansas is talking about the kidnapping. – It’s been almost 24 hours since Morgan disappeared from the Little League field in Alma. – Morgan was only supposed to be away from her mother Colleen for a few minutes. She said she wanted to hunt for fireflies with her friends.
– We needed Colleen involved, so we convinced Colleen to be involved, basically dragging and kicking and screaming into the press room. “You’ve got to do this.” She did well at it and she got better at it and she learned that it was a tool and she learned how to use it. – My daughter never ran off. She’s very shy and she’s very quiet.
She wouldn’t go off by herself in the dark. She did not run off. Look at everybody you go by, look at every truck you see and think that if it was your child, how much you would want ’em to come home. Standin’ on her head. – How much do you love me? – I really do love you. – How much?! – As the hours pass, the chances of finding Morgan alive decrease.
Colleen can’t stop thinking about the events leading up to the kidnapping, about how she let her daughter go play against her intuition, about how people told her she was too overprotective, and about her last dinner with Morgan before they left the house that night. – What I specifically remember is really making grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner that night because my kids love grilled cheese.
Morgan and I got ready to go to the game, and then I specifically remember… I remember Morgan asking for a second sandwich and I didn’t really have time to cook it, and she wasn’t a real big eater, and so I didn’t really think that she needed it and I didn’t make it for her. That still bothers me. – As the investigators try to locate and identify every person present at the ball game that night, they uncover crucial footage filmed by a parent at the game.
The video was filmed earlier, the same day Morgan was kidnapped. In the back, you can clearly see a red pickup truck with a white camper on it. After further investigation, no one who was at the game can say who the truck belongs to. – A question: can a piece of home videotape help police find Morgan Nick? Well, a viewer may have caught the alleged kidnapper’s truck on tape, but will this help the investigation? – It doesn’t really look like a Ford pickup truck, and we’re not real sure about this camper shell.
And we have tried to examine this pickup truck closely. In fact, we’ve had some enlargements made, in fact, we’ve gone to 400x. – It doesn’t take long for tips to start pouring in. Hundreds of people report sightings of a similar red truck. – Tim Reed of Alma was pulled over twice in his pickup, but he doesn’t seem to mind.
– You know, it was a little hassle, but it’s good to know that they’re out to capture him. – However, there are some people who say they’re being hassled by the public just because they drive a truck that looks like the one police are trying to find. – We’d like to caution the general public from taking any type of enforcement action.
– If you think you see the truck police are looking for, jot down the license plate number and call them. And if you drive a red Ford pickup truck, police say be patient. – The investigation has narrowed the search to Ford trucks only after one witness claimed they saw the pickup that night. The problem is the little girl who was playing with Morgan gave police a different description of the vehicle.
– I felt like it would look more like a Chevy would, like an old Chevy. At the time I remember thinking, because we had a Chevy truck, it reminded me of that, just the way it was shaped, the squareness, the boxiness of it. – There’s a chance everyone is out there looking for the wrong truck. Days pass, and still, investigators haven’t found any trace of Morgan.
But the search doesn’t lose momentum. The people of Alma and the State of Arkansas have come together to help bring her home. Reminders come in the form of flyers, bumper stickers, t-shirts, and billboards, all of which have been donated by the community. A command center has been set up to collect information, check out leads, and hold press conferences.
Some people even turned it into a temporary home. People also start holding benefits to raise money for a reward fund. Morgan’s parents are overwhelmed by the amount of support they’ve received so far. – They don’t have to care. It doesn’t affect their lives. You know, we have a lot of friends around here who know us and it affects you personally, but these are people who just, they don’t know us at all.
– Yeah, I guess we don’t get a chance to say or appreciate everybody enough. But, you know, I wanna thank everybody who is helping. I’d like to say, Morgan, you know, it’s Father’s Day. I wanna see you before the day’s over. I remember sitting in the car that night and storms had moved in. It was raining, lightning, I mean, it was a bad thunderstorm.
I just sat out there in the car by myself… with horrible thoughts going through my head. I almost didn’t make it through that night. Some periods during the day, you’re more hopeful that she’ll turn up any minute and, you know, some periods of the day, it’s hard to stay hopeful. But you just gotta keep staying hopeful, that’s the only way to keep going.
– The local search goes national and Morgan’s story appears on “America’s Most Wanted.” – I’m John Walsh with an urgent missing child alert. If we ever needed your help, we need it now. – The attention brings in new leads, but there’s one in particular that is the most promising. June 24th, nearly 200 miles away in Stuttgart, Arkansas, a man files a report claiming he spotted a young girl who fits Morgan’s description.
Police mount a large search in the wooded area where the sighting happened. Colleen and her family are flown in awaiting her rescue. – We would like our faces to be the first ones she sees. We want her to know how much we love her and miss her. – But the reunion never happens. The man who filed the report is identified as Albert Harvey.
He admits he just wanted the attention. – I’m so sorry, y’all. I don’t really know really how to explain to y’all and say how sorry I am for y’all. I have wasted your time. – Harvey is charged with interfering with government operations and falsifying a police report. But perhaps his worst crime was to break the heart of Morgan’s mother.
– We are looking for you so hard so you can come home. We were stationed in Europe and Morgan was born there. And the night that we went into labor, the entire four hours that we were there, our nurse only spoke one word of English. The only thing that she could say was “push.” And, you know, I remember Morgan being born and the doctor handed her to me and that was…
that was when I knew that I would always fight for her. – No one ever thought the search would last more than a day, let alone an entire year. What started as a community effort has reached across the country. – In her fight to find her daughter, Colleen created the Morgan Nick Foundation. She launched a personal campaign to help prevent more families from going through the same ordeal.
She also teamed up with other parents of missing children to rally across the country for help, bringing her fight to Washington, D.C. She was there when the President signed an executive order mandating pictures of missing children to be placed in all federal buildings. – The more people who know about her, including the President, knowing that she’s missing, the more we’re gonna get change for missing children.
– And so do you believe your child is alive? – Yes, I believe my child is alive, and I will not give up hope until she comes home because I’m the only person who can fight hard enough to bring Morgan home, I’m the only person who cares enough, and I will not let her abductor win. I will find her and she will come home.
Believe for Morgan, and show the world that we are gonna fight for her and we’re gonna bring her home and we’re gonna end this nightmare because she doesn’t deserve this. I don’t care what the odds are and I do not care what the statistics are because Morgan will come home. – March 2000, five years after Morgan’s abduction, police are no closer to finding her.
Just a few miles away from the baseball field in Alma, a man returns home with his wife and finds his neighbor’s pickup parked in the driveway. – When he walks into the house, he finds the neighbor assaulting his daughter. – Police arrest 36-year-old Charles Ray Vines. After collecting a DNA sample from Vines, investigators compare it to evidence from other crime scenes in the area and they get multiple hits.
Vines is convicted for the murders of 58-year-old Juanita Wofford and 74-year-old Ruth Pearl Henderson, as well as the attempted murder James Qualls’ daughter. All his crimes happened in close proximity to each other and all within a 20-mile radius from where Morgan was taken. Charles Ray Vines immediately becomes a suspect in her case as well.
Before his trial, prosecutors work out a deal with him. If he confesses to all his crimes, they agree not to ask for the death penalty. – The case of Juanita Wofford is now over. Charles Vines admitted before a judge he is guilty. Police would ask Vines questions about unsolved cases, including Melissa Witt, Morgan Nick, Lori Murchison, Dora Doe, and Juanita Wofford.
If Vines tells the truth, he gets to live. – And while he confesses to the beating of a 93-year-old woman in Fort Smith, he denies any involvement in the disappearance of Morgan Nick. – Investigators would love to think the right suspect is finally behind bars, but they have no evidence linking him to the case.
And for Colleen Nick, it’s clear they should keep looking for other suspects. – Everybody would like to think that this is over and that we have, you know, the big bad kidnapper in jail. That means everybody’s safe and there’s not a predator roaming our streets. The problem is it stops the leads. Morgan’s not home.
Even if this is our kidnapper, even if this is our suspect, the leads can’t stop because Morgan’s not home. – As the years pass, it becomes harder to keep law enforcement engaged. Colleen is doing everything she can to make sure her daughter’s case doesn’t go cold. But one thing she succeeds in is ensuring the people of Arkansas keep Morgan in their hearts.
Because of her, the leads have never stopped coming in. – This is where we store the leads in Morgan’s case. – An entire room inside the Alma Police Department is dedicated to the 1995 kidnapping of then-6-year-old Morgan Nick. Thousands and thousands of tips from people across the country. As for Colleen, she has never given up hope that her daughter will come home.
She has kept her room ready for the day she sees Morgan again. – We know that kids survive and we have to keep fighting for them and give them the opportunity to come home. Until someone can show me that Morgan didn’t survive, I’m absolutely going to fight for her. And I do believe that I will look her in the eye someday and I will be able to say to my daughter, “I always knew that I would find you.
” – The year is 2019, 24 years after her abduction. Morgan would be 30 years old. Russell White, the chief of police who was there at the very start of the investigation and who rallied to have every law enforcement agency involved is now retired, but he’s made sure his replacement, Chief of Police Jeff Pointer, won’t give up on Morgan.
– I just came in with open eyes and open ears and took suggestions from other investigators. – That same year, Detective Brett Hartley is assigned as Alma’s lead investigator and he’s determined to look into everything that was done on Morgan’s case since June 9th 1995. – What if someone did miss something? – It’s our duty to protect.
And we have not found her and we have not brought her home. – The first thing Detective Hartley looks at are witness statements from the day of the abduction. He quickly discovers that Morgan Nick and the two kids with her were not the only people that day who had contact with the man driving a red truck. And when you put all the locations of each sighting on a map, it paints a very clear picture.
– The first location is a teenage white female. She has a truck drive past her, pull over in front of her and back up to her. The first thing that this individual says to her is, “Would you like a ride to downtown Alma?” – Downtown Alma is where Morgan was abducted from. When the girl refuses, the driver doesn’t leave and she’s forced to run away, terrified.
Location number two, two young children, five and six years old, who were playing on their front lawn come running inside the house screaming and crying. When their mother looks outside, she sees a red pickup truck with a white camper. – Location number three is going to be in downtown Alma. A couple of teenage boys, they’re walking from the older baseball field.
– The boys see a red pickup truck with a white camper after the man stops and yells at them for being in the road. – One of those witnesses watches the truck turn onto Walnut Street. – Walnut Street leads to the baseball field. Location number four, again, two 10-year-old boys are yelled at by the same male driver in a red pickup truck for being in the road.
– Number five, I would call definitely the parking lot where the abduction occurred. Every thing within that timeframe, it was a very short period of time, it led a track right to downtown, right to the abduction. – Location number six is captured on video by a parent at the game between 5:30 and 7:00 p.m.
Location number seven, within a 10-minute period of the abduction, a group of teenagers are parked near the river when they see the same vehicle come in. – One of them went as far as to say that they felt like they observed the adult male driving the truck, potentially holding a child down in the front seat of the truck.
– The teenagers come forward, and the next day, officers return to the location with them. Unfortunately, there’s been a heavy rain in northwest Arkansas, so the teenagers are unable to find the exact spot because of the flooding. – I’m very comfortable that from location number one, all the way to location number seven, I’m looking at the same truck.
I’m also very confident I’m looking at the same subject. We face the fact that there is a potential that Morgan was washed away with flood waters. – As it turns out, some of the witnesses who had provided information on the red truck had also given license plate numbers. – In August of ’95, they ran those tags.
Every one of these tags have returned no record. – Detective Hartley runs those tags again, this time through the FBI’s national database. – And I get some hits. I pull a photograph out and I’m looking at a red truck with a white camper. I think, “Oh, my God, I’m looking at the truck.” – As Detective Hartley tries to contact some of the witnesses from that day, one of them shows up at the station.
The man appears irritated because he says he’s already shared this information before. – He immediately tells me that, “I’m the one with the information that you need.” Starts talking to me about an individual that he believes could be responsible for Morgan. – August 29th 1995. An 11-year-old girl is with her two brothers at the local Sonic when a drunk man driving a red Chevy pickup truck stops in front of them to talk.
At first, he offers the boys money trying to get them to leave so he can be alone with the girl. They refuse and start walking away. But the man insists. He offers the girl money. – She naturally tells him no. She says she’s going to call the police. – The man then drives off in a hurry, crashing his car into a telephone pole before fleeing the scene.
However, one man witnessed everything from the bank across the street. He takes down the license plate and files a report. Police identify the suspect as 71-year-old Billy Jack Lincks. When they show up at his house, they find the red pickup truck with damage to the front. Lincks is immediately put under arrest and sent to the FBI for further questioning in relation to Morgan’s case.
What’s more, one neighbor who was interviewed by investigators reveals another damning piece of the puzzle. – That witness tells the State Police investigator up until a couple of months ago, that truck had a white camper on it. – When Detective Hartley reads into the case files. he finds out Lincks’ red pickup truck was searched by state police after his arrest.
Documents show investigators found duct tape, a tarp, rope, and a machete inside the truck. They also found hair fibers and blood. But in 1995, DNA technology was still in its infancy. So samples of the blood and hair were kept for future analysis. And Billy Jack Lincks was cleared of all charges in Morgan Nick’s case.
– And what it looks like is that he was given a polygraph exam and apparently passed his polygraph, and that was the end of the lead being ran on him. It was very apparent to us this person looked very interesting then in Morgan’s case as well. – Lincks was sent to jail in 1995, two months after Morgan’s disappearance and was sentenced to six years for attempted kidnapping of the 11-year-old girl at the Sonic.
He died in jail on August 5th 2000. – Where we are 25 years later is unfortunately not able to put our hands on those items. – To Detective Hartley, Lincks is the most obvious suspect, but without any physical evidence, the case cannot be solved. – I have always believed that they’re going to solve this case.
They’re going to find Morgan and that we’re going to get justice for her. You know, the probability says that 2% of missing children like Morgan who are abducted by a stranger who are missing more than two years, the probability that they will come home is only 2%. The possibility is that 2% do survive. That means that until someone can prove that Morgan didn’t survive, the possibility remains that she survived.
– Colleen Nick has never stopped looking for her daughter and every day since, she’s been committed to protecting children in her community. In 2019, she helped launch a new program called the Child Abduction Response Team, or CART for short. – We now have 12 trained CART teams spread around the state. Each one attached to State Police headquarters.
– In January 2020, 6-year-old Julian Boyd went missing after his parents were found murdered in their home. – Our local certified Child Abduction Response Team, also known as CART, helped in the search. Just two hours later, the boy was found. – When this child went missing in Sherwood this morning, they could gather their CART team and they could immediately call out all the resources they need.
– What Colleen has built will go on to save countless children who, like Morgan, need the public’s help to be found. She knows that if all this had existed in 1995, her daughter might still be here with her. – You know, there are days when the grief of this, just, it takes me to my knees, I’m just telling you.
But at the end of that moment or at the end of that day, I know that I have to keep fighting for Morgan. If I’m not fighting for Morgan, honestly, eventually nobody else will. My job is to make sure that anybody who is involved in her case continues to fight for her with passion. That they feel her in their hearts, and that they want to do everything in their power to fight for her.
And if I don’t do that myself, I can’t expect other people to do that. – It’s the year 2020 when Detective Hartley and his team finally locate Billy Jack Lincks’ truck. After spending years impounded in a tow yard, it was auctioned to a private owner. – When first arriving at the truck and seeing the truck for the first time, I was actually pretty surprised with how decent of a condition it was in.
You can actually see where a camper shell used to be on the bed of the truck. – The red pickup truck is not a Ford, but a Chevrolet Scottsdale. The same make 8-year-old Jessica said she saw. – I felt like it would look more like a Chevy would, like an old Chevy. At the time, I remember thinking, Because we had a Chevy truck, it reminded me of that.
– It’s also a clear match to the truck from the baseball field video footage. – FBI ERT, while processing, actually removed what is believed to be the original floor cover of this truck. And under that floor cover, they located a blond hair. – The blonde hair is sent to the FBI lab to be compared with a sample of Morgan’s hair provided by Colleen.
If it matches, then they can say with confidence that Morgan was in Billy Jack Lincks’ truck. After months of waiting on the lab results, Detective Hartley’s team finally receive the report. – After a review, we were able to look at the documents and see that the hair that was involved in the trace evidence, it came back inconclusive.
There just wasn’t enough information to pull anything from it. – This doesn’t mean the hair is not Morgan’s, but because it was too damaged, they can’t prove that it is. And for the next three years, the truth remains hidden until 2023. When Colleen is researching new DNA technologies, she stumbles upon Othram Labs, a company who has been pushing scientific boundaries.
– I called our detective and said, “Have you ever heard of Othram Labs?” And he said, “No.” So I sent him the article and I said, “Read this.” – Othram Labs promotes their use of newly developed methods that have helped solve decades-old cases. – Then he said, “Yes, let’s try it.” – Detective Hartley agrees to send the blond hair found in the truck to Othram Labs.
It’s a Hail Mary, but it’s the best chance they’ve got to solve Morgan’s case. On October 1st 2024, nearly a year after the evidence was sent to the lab, the Alma Police Department holds a press conference. Colleen is there with her family. – On September 27th 2024, Othram Laboratory sent a report to Detective Taylor that the hair contained in the evidence was that of Colleen Nick, one of her siblings or one of her children.
The bottom line in this is that the physical evidence collected from the truck strongly indicates that Morgan had been in this truck. Did Lincks have help in abducting Morgan or concealing his crime all these years? And where is Morgan now? I can tell you today that this investigation is not over. – After 29 years, Billy Jack Lincks has finally been identified as the man who kidnapped Morgan.
– What I have to say about Billy Jack Lincks is that he stole Morgan from me. He stole her from her dad. He stole her from Logan and Taryn. But he didn’t see that he could never win because our love for Morgan, her memory, and her voice outlasted his life. And that love continues to shine. – Colleen has dedicated her life to improving child safety across the country.
And although she now knows what happened to her daughter, her fight is far from over. – We can change that children wouldn’t be taken and that communities are educated and that law enforcement knows how to respond and that predators get jail sentences that don’t allow them to get out again and commit these kind of crimes.
– She was told she was too overprotective and that she should let her child go and chase the fireflies. And for years, Colleen has held on to that guilt. – It just lives in the back of my head, and I can’t let it rule my life. I won’t let it rule my life. I will not let the person who took Morgan steal anything else from us.
You know, Morgan loved fireflies. That was the thing that made her willing to leave my side that night, was to go catch fireflies. Fireflies have become really a symbol of shining a light in the darkness. – Today, she carries a message of hope for other parents. She doesn’t want the fear of what happened to Morgan to stop other children from chasing the fireflies.
