On the night of June 9th 1995, Colleen Nick was at home with their three children, and they made grilled cheese for dinner. She and Morgan headed out to a baseball game in Alma, some thirty minutes away.
At the time, Colleen was amicably divorced from her husband, John Nick. Due to the stress of dealing with two young toddlers, she needed a break.
They had been invited by a family friend whose children were playing. She chose to take Morgan along and leave the other two children with her grandmother. Morgan and Colleen had a ‘girls’ night out’.
Events Leading to the Disappearance of Morgan Nick
It was a late one, starting out at 9pm, and they made their way through the bleachers to find Colleen’s friends.
They sat down, and Morgan understandably lost interest in the game soon after it began. She began a new one of untying her mother’s shoes when she was not looking.
Colleen, knowing what her eldest daughter was doing, pretended to be dumbfounded and kept tying her laces when they were undone, to Morgan’s cheeky delight. Then went on for more than an hour.
Her mother described her as being shy and quiet. Apparently, she did not initially want to interact with the other kids, preferring to sit with her mom and keep untying her shoes.
Two kids came and asked if Morgan would like to catch fireflies with them.
Morgan turned and asked her mother if she could go with them. At first, Colleen said no. She did not think it was a good idea because it was too late and dark.
Then she reconsidered because it was out of character for her daughter to ask to play with others, so this was an opportunity to help her break out of her shell. Colleen also thought back to times when she was called overprotective.
As if to drive the point home, other parents reassured her that the kids were safe and they had been playing there all night. There was also a double fence, so you could see all around.
Colleen remembers how happy Morgan was when she gave her permission to go. She threw her arms around her mother and kissed her on the cheek before running off with her friends. Colleen could clearly see her daughter from where she was sitting.
At 10.40 pm, when the game was over, the two kids came walking back from the parking lot, but Morgan was not with them.
That’s when the panic began. She ran over and started looking for her daughter in between the cars and even under them. Morgan was nowhere to be found.
The two children who were with her, Jessica and Tye, were immediately asked where they had left Colleen. Both said they had been playing in the sand, so they all walked to Colleen’s parked Nissan Stanza to empty their shoes.
Jessica and Tye leaned against the front, turning their shoes upside down, while Morgan did the same at the back of the car.
When the two were done, they started walking back, but Morgan did not follow, so they assumed she was just waiting for her mother. It was plausible, given that the game was ending.
Immediate Search and Police Investigations
Some of the parents immediately started helping with the search, but Colleen asked someone with a cell phone to call the police to the scene. Sergeant Harris was the first to arrive at the scene.
Harris encounters Colleen, who is in an emotional state in the parking lot. She is accompanied by the two kids, Jessica and Tye, but most of the other people were already clearing out by then.
Years later, during an interview, Harris mentioned that one of the children told him a man was leaning against his truck.
They were constantly around adults, so it was difficult to determine what made this individual different. He did not appear to have children at the event, but he did give off a ‘creepy’ energy.
Jessica went on to describe him as having a scruffy beard, wearing shorts, and no shirt. He was driving a red pickup truck with a white camper. The vehicle was no longer in the parking lot.
More officers arrived at the scene and secured it. Others went door to door as they determined the search area. The fact that Morgan could have been in a moving vehicle made the case more urgent.
The chief of police, Russell White, asked for a collaborative effort from other agencies, including the State Patrol and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
On June 10th, Jessica and Tye went to the police station, where they submitted a description of the strange individual to a sketch artist. This was shared with every news outlet in the area.
A description of the red pickup truck was also provided. The camper may have been damaged on the right rear and was about 5 inches too short for the truck. The vehicle was believed to have Arkansas tags.
As the FBI and other agencies joined the investigation, a $60,000 reward was offered for information leading to the recovery of Morgan Nick.
The investigators reviewed records of every person present at the ball game that night and uncovered footage filmed by a parent. The video was from earlier that day, but showed a red pickup truck with a white camper in the background.
They could not identify the owner. But it did not take long for the tips to start coming in. Hundreds of leads poured in about red pickups and white campers.
Billy Jack Lincks
It would be more than 20 years before any substantial leads surfaced in the Morgan Nick case. Russell White retired but informed his replacement, Jeff Pointer, concerning the case in hopes it would eventually be solved.
In 2019, Pointer assigned Detective Brett Hartley as Alma’s lead investigator. He decided to take a fresh look at the case and focused on the witness statements surrounding the incident.
Brett realized that Tye and Jessica were not the first ones to encounter the strange man with no shirt that day.
Several children encountered the man earlier that day at various points. In the first instance, a red pickup stopped in front of a teenage girl.
The man inside asked if she wanted a ride downtown. Downtown Alma was where the baseball game was happening later that day. She declined and ran away.
Later, two young children, aged five and six, came running into their house after playing on the lawn. They were screaming and crying. When their mother looked outside, she saw a red pickup truck leaving. This was also on the way to downtown Alma.
The same day, another account described a man in a red pickup truck in downtown Alma yelling at two boys for being in the road. He was heading down Walnut Street to the baseball field.
Following the timeline of the abduction, a few teenagers saw a red pickup truck headed to the river. One of them said they saw the driver potentially holding a child down in the front seat.
The teens reported the information to the police, but the next day, when they returned, it was hard to determine where the truck had been due to ongoing flooding in the area. However, Hartley was convinced these data points were of the same truck and the same suspect.
Though the search for the license plate yielded no records in 1995, Detective Hartley ran the same tags through the FBI database and found a red pickup with a white camper.
In August of 1995, a man in a red pickup truck tried to solicit a girl who was with her two brothers. They threatened to call the police, and he hit a telephone pole while trying to flee the scene.
This was about eight miles from where Morgan was last seen. A few days later, the police identified the truck’s owner as Billy Jack Lincks. They also questioned him about his involvement in Morgan’s disappearance in connection with the truck.
He denied any connection and was released because he ‘appeared to be telling the truth’.
Lincks was out of jail but still facing formal charges for the incident with the girl and her two brothers.
A jury convicted him of sexual indecency with a child in March 1996, and he was sentenced to six years. However, he died in prison at the age of 72 in 2000.
Hartley, while going over the evidence, found that investigators found duct tape, tarp, rope, and a machete in the red truck. They also found hair and blood, but since DNA matching was still in its infancy at the time, they kept it for future reference.
According to Hartley, Lincks was the most obvious suspect, but he did pass the polygraph given in 1995 for the disappearance of Morgan, and that’s why he was cleared of that case.
In 2020, Detective Hartley found Linck’s truck, which had spent years in a tow yard before being auctioned to a private owner. They found it matched the truck in the 1995 home video.
While checking the truck, the FBI team removed the truck’s original floor covering and found a blond hair strand. Unfortunately, the tests proved inconclusive.
Three years later, acting on new information about emerging DNA technologies, Detective Hartley submitted the blonde hair sample to Othram Labs.
The hair’s DNA profile was a match for Colleen Nick’s children, herself, or immediate relatives. This was conclusive evidence that Morgan Nick was in Linck’s truck.
From Shy Mother to Abduction Advocate
At first, Colleen did not like the media attention brought by Morgan’s abduction. However, over time, with help from the police department and the community, she became adept at mobilising for her daughters’ search.
She also camped at the volunteer fire station, next to the Alma Police Station. Her goal was to be as close to the place where Morgan was last seen.
For years, Colleen searched for her, enduring unimaginable adversity. Her personal tragedy led to a transformation where she created an initiative for others.
She launched the Morgan Nick Foundation in 1996, which advocates for families of missing children. The foundation focuses on interventions and legislation related to missing children. It has also been instrumental in bringing children home safely.
In 1996, the Arkansas missing child alert system was named in honour of Morgan Nick.
In June 2020, Colleen marked the 25th anniversary of Morgan’s disappearance.
The National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children also released a progress photo depicting what Morgan would look like at 31.
Morgan has yet to be found, but Colleen has not yet lost hope. She can take comfort in the fact that her daughter’s abductor was brought to justice and imprisoned for his actions, even if they were on another victim.
“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 said. “Her heart, Morgan’s heart shines on.”
