Missing girl’s hair found in suspect’s truck 29 years later, Arkansas police say
.png "Morgan Nick was 6 years old when she went missing in 1995. Now new evidence has developed in the case.")
Police in Arkansas said they have new developments in a missing child’s case from 1995.
The Alma Police Department held a news conference Oct. 1 during which officers released details of new evidence in the case of Morgan Nick, who went missing when she was 6 years old.
The disappearance of Morgan Nick
Around 10:45 p.m. June 9, 1995, Morgan was kidnapped from the parking lot of the Alma Little League ball field, Alma Police Chief Jeff Pointer said during the news conference streamed by KARK.
At the time, police were given a description of a man and a red pickup truck believed to have been involved in Morgan’s disappearance.
Morgan was never found, Pointer said.
From early on in the case, a man named Billy Jack Lincks was considered a person of interest, police said.
On Aug. 29, 1995, Lincks was arrested on a charge of sexual solicitation of a child after police said he tried to lure an 11-year-old girl into his red pickup truck, Pointer said.
Lincks was questioned about Morgan’s disappearance but told officers he didn’t know what happened to her, police said.
New Developments
In July 2019, detectives began looking into Lincks once again. Investigators located the red pickup truck that once belonged to Lincks, along with its new owner, police said.
On July 28, 2020, investigators searched the truck for evidence. During their search, authorities collected hair samples from the truck, Pointer said.
The hair was sent off to a lab for testing, and in September, one strand of hair came back as a positive DNA match to Morgan’s mother, Colleen Nick, police said. The DNA results revealed that the hair either belonged to Colleen Nick, one of her siblings or one of her children, Pointer said.
“The bottom line in this is that the physical evidence collected from the truck that Lincks owned when Morgan was abducted strongly indicates that Morgan had been in his truck,” Pointer said.
“He stole Morgan from me. He stole her from her dad,” Colleen Nick said during the news conference. “But he didn’t see that he could never win. Because our love for Morgan, her memory and her voice outlasted his life.”
Lincks died in 2000, police said. Now they are left with questions.
“How was she taken from the ball field? What happened next? Did Lincks have help in abducting Morgan or concealing his crime all these years? And where is Morgan now?” Pointer said.
The investigation into Morgan’s disappearance is ongoing.
Alma is in northwestern Arkansas, about a 145-mile drive northwest of Little Rock.
This story was originally published October 1, 2024 at 11:59 AM with the headline "Missing girl’s hair found in suspect’s truck 29 years later, Arkansas police say."
