- 2 days ago
- #truecrime
- #coldcase
- #unsolvedmystery
The disappearance of Morgan Nick shocked America in 1995. Nearly 30 years later, DNA evidence identified Billy Jack Lincks as a suspect. But the case remains open.
#TrueCrime #ColdCase #UnsolvedMystery
morgan nick, morgan nick case, morgan nick documentary, morgan nick update 2024, billy jack lincks, cold case solved, unsolved mystery, missing child case, dna evidence breakthrough, forensic investigation, true crime documentary, real crime story, cold case files, unsolved mysteries, child abduction case, crime investigation, fbi cases, solved after 29 years, crime storytelling, true crime viral, mystery case, crime documentary youtube, emotional true crime, disturbing cases, forensic dna cases
#TrueCrime #ColdCase #UnsolvedMystery
morgan nick, morgan nick case, morgan nick documentary, morgan nick update 2024, billy jack lincks, cold case solved, unsolved mystery, missing child case, dna evidence breakthrough, forensic investigation, true crime documentary, real crime story, cold case files, unsolved mysteries, child abduction case, crime investigation, fbi cases, solved after 29 years, crime storytelling, true crime viral, mystery case, crime documentary youtube, emotional true crime, disturbing cases, forensic dna cases
Category
đź—ž
NewsTranscript
00:07so if you know anything you call and you tell what you know and let's get morgan home and let's
00:14stop this man june 9 1995 a tuesday evening in alma arkansas a little league baseball game was
00:22winding down and in the parking lot beyond the fence a group of children were doing what children
00:28do on warm summer nights in arkansas they were chasing fireflies one of them was six years old
00:34blonde hair blue eyes a green girl scout shirt her name was morgan nick at approximately 10 45 pm
00:44morgan's friends came back from catching fireflies morgan was not with them they told her mother
00:50colleen that morgan was at her car colleen walked to her car morgan was not there
00:57she was not anywhere it would take 29 years 10 000 leads worked and discarded a red ford pickup that
01:06passed through multiple owners across three decades a single rootless hair and a laboratory in texas that
01:14could read what no laboratory could read before to finally give morgan nick's family a name and this
01:22is the dark stories tonight's video covers nine chapters who was morgan nick the night she disappeared
01:31the man who was there the failure that let him walk the truck that outlasted him the dna that found
01:40him
01:40anyway colleen's 30 years and the question that is still not answered before we begin everything in this
01:50video is sourced from verified law enforcement statements court records and confirmed primary
01:55source reporting this channel does not speculate beyond the established evidence
02:08well you just have to constantly talk to children children are very impressionable you know and
02:15they don't regard strangers like they should but you just have to keep reinforcing reinforcing talking
02:21and then when these things come on tv then you let them see this with you and you let them
02:26know this
02:27is the reason why you use precautions we've got the pictures on badges and stuff and we just kind of
02:35keep a close eye on them i think communication with your children and keeping lines open with them and making
02:43sure that they're
02:45aware of what's out there i guess that's the best thing and trusting them we try to teach other children
02:51just
02:52things like don't walk alone watch for obstructions on the street keep the doors locked and don't let any
03:01strangers into your vehicle alma arkansas 1995 a small town in the arkansas river valley about 25 miles east of
03:24fort smith the kind of town where you know your neighbors where kids rode their bikes until dinner
03:30where a little league game on a tuesday evening in june was exactly the kind of thing a family did
03:36together it was the kind of town where parents felt safe letting their children run it was the kind
03:42of town where nothing like this was supposed to happen morgan chantelle nick was born on september 12th
03:501988 she was six years old blonde hair blue eyes a smile that her mother colleen described as the kind
03:58that filled every room it entered she had just completed first grade she was by every account
04:04an ordinary six-year-old girl which is to say she was everything colleen nick was morgan's mother the
04:13thing you need to understand about colleen nick before you understand anything else about this case
04:18is that she did not stop not for one day in 29 years not after the searches ended not after
04:27the leads
04:28dried up not after the case went cold not after the man she would eventually identify as the person who
04:35took her daughter died in prison she did not stop the morgan nick foundation which she created has helped
04:44recover thousands of missing children across america the amber alert system in arkansas is named the morgan
04:51nick amber alert her daughter's name saved lives colleen never met on the evening of june 9th
04:591995 colleen drove morgan from their home in ozark to a little league baseball game in alma it was a
05:07journey they had made before a game a summer evening other families children running around normal safe a
05:17tuesday night in arkansas after the game ended the children asked if they could go catch fireflies in the
05:24parking lot parents said yes why would they say no it was june it was arkansas it was warm there
05:33were
05:33fireflies morgan ran into the parking lot with her friends and for the next 15 minutes everything was
05:41ordinary and then it wasn't to catch lightning bugs and um as they were coming back to sit down with
05:51us
05:51she sat down by my car to take sand out of her shoes and um that was the last time
05:56that anyone ever
05:57saw her bring her back we want her home at approximately 10 45 pm morgan nick separated from
06:05her friends she had gotten sand in her shoes she walked back toward her mother's car to empty them out
06:12she sat down near the car she took off her shoe she turned it over and a man walked toward
06:19her
06:20morgan's friends saw him they described him later as creepy a white male approximately six feet tall
06:27medium to solid build a mustache and a short beard he was talking to morgan as she put her shoes
06:34back
06:34on the friends did not think too much of it they went back to catching fireflies and when the game
06:41ended
06:41and they returned to their parents they told colleen that morgan was at her car colleen walked to her car
06:48the car was empty morgan was not there the witnesses also remembered a truck a red ford pickup with a
06:57white camper shell parked at the back of the lot possibly with damage to the right rear when the
07:04parking lot emptied the truck was gone morgan was gone they had vanished at exactly the same time that
07:12truck would become the most important piece of physical evidence in this case but investigators
07:18would not know that for 29 years what most people do not know is that morgan nick was not the
07:25only
07:25child targeted that night in alma a four-year-old girl was lured toward a red pickup truck her mother
07:33saw what was happening she screamed the man drove away in fort smith 15 miles from alma a nine-year
07:41-old
07:41girl was approached at a convenience store she ran back to her brothers three children one night one
07:48area all three descriptions matched according to investigators and contemporaneous law enforcement
07:55reports from 1995 colleen nick did not wait she called police immediately within hours the search began
08:05local law enforcement state police the fbi by morning morgan's face was everywhere by the end of the week
08:13her case had been featured on america's most wanted by the end of the summer investigators had worked
08:19more than a thousand leads none of them led to a red ford pickup with a white camper shell none
08:27of them
08:27led to a man named billy jack links
08:34i believe in a mighty and powerful and awesome god and i believe from day one that he has protected
08:45her
08:46and i know there are a lot of children that are taken and that are not recovered alive but i
08:53tell you
08:53what morgan's going to be different god has kept his hand on her and will until she comes home
09:10two months after morgan nick disappeared on august 29 1995 a man drove to a sonic restaurant in van buren
09:19arkansas eight miles from the baseball field he approached an 11 year old girl in the parking lot
09:26he offered her money for favors she ran back to her brothers screaming he sped away and hit a telephone
09:34pole leaving the lot his name was billy jack links he was 60 years old he had lived in crawford
09:42county his
09:42whole life he had driven a truck for years he was arrested he was charged with sexual solicitation
09:50of a child and two days later on august 31st 1995 investigators from the morgan nick case came to talk
09:59to him the investigators sat across from billy jack links they asked him about morgan nick he denied knowing
10:06anything about her disappearance and here is the detail that has stayed with this case for 30 years
10:14he appeared truthful so investigators moved on those are the words from the official statement he appeared
10:22truthful so they moved on what the investigators already knew when they sat across from billy jack links
10:29links was that he had a prior criminal record in 1992 three years before morgan disappeared links had been
10:37convicted of first degree carnal abuse a crime against a child it was in his file and still he appeared
10:46truthful so they moved on in 1996 he was convicted of the van buren solicitation and sentenced to six years
10:55he
10:56served four on august 5th 2000 billy jack links died at tucker unit prison he was 75 years old he
11:06died without
11:07ever being charged with morgan's disappearance he died believing he had gotten away with it
11:19in the weeks months and years after morgan disappeared investigators worked more than 10
11:2510 000 leads 10 000 every tip called in every person who remembered a red truck every person who had
11:35seen
11:35something on june 9th searches were conducted in boonville arkansas in oklahoma in fields and wooded areas
11:43across the region dogs were brought in search teams divers aircraft morgan's face appeared on milk cartons
11:52across america her case was featured on unsolved mysteries on america's most wanted on every platform
11:59that existed in the 1990s to find missing children none of it led to morgan while the official investigation
12:08worked its leads colleen nick built something she founded the morgan nick foundation an organization
12:15dedicated to finding missing children to educating families and communities to making sure that what happened
12:22to morgan would not happen to someone else the amber alert system in arkansas the emergency
12:28notification that goes out when a child is abducted is named the morgan nick amber alert her daughter's
12:35name saved lives colleen never met she continued searching she continued speaking she continued pushing for
12:4429 years the years the years the leads dried up the detectives who had worked the case retired
12:53and were replaced billy jack links died in a prison cell in the year 2000 the red ford pickup that
13:01witnesses
13:01saw in that parking lot changed hands multiple times across decades the trail went cold but there were
13:11detectives who would not let it go who kept going back to the beginning who believed that the truck if
13:18they could ever find it held the answer in 2019 investigators went back to the evidence they had a
13:25new tool that had not existed in 1995 they had authrum technologies the same laboratory that would later
13:33solve the mary teresa simpson case the same forensic genome sequencing technology that could find a killer in
13:40evidence invisible to the naked eye the first step was the truck they needed to find it
13:51in 2020 the fbi located the current owner of the red ford pickup the truck had passed through multiple
13:59owners in the 25 years since morgan disappeared it had traveled across state lines changed hands been
14:06repaired been repaired been used and through all of it in the crevices and seams of that truck
14:13something had survived the current owner had no connection to billy jack links no connection to the
14:19case no idea what the truck represented they allowed investigators to search it investigators collected
14:26evidence from the truck hair samples fiber samples everything that could be found
14:32in december 2023 those samples were submitted to authrum technologies in the woodlands texas
14:39authrum technologies the lab founded specifically to solve the cases that everyone else said could not be
14:46solved whose forensic grade genome sequencing technology could extract dna from samples so old so degraded so
14:55microscopic that no other laboratory in the world could read them then they waited
15:02forensic genome sequencing is not fast it is not simple it requires rebuilding a dna profile from fragments
15:10that time and degradation have broken down into pieces so small they should not be recoverable
15:17the lab worked through the samples the investigators waited colleen nick waited
15:22on september 27th 2024 29 years three months and 18 days after morgan nick disappeared from a baseball
15:33field in alma arkansas the report came back
15:42the dna extracted from a hair found in the truck revealed a parent-child relationship the hair belonged to
15:50colline nick or one of colleen's siblings or one of colleen's children
15:56authrum ceo david middleman confirmed there was a parent-child relationship the nick family had no
16:03connection to billy jack links they had never been in a truck similar to his there was only one explanation
16:10for
16:10that hair being in that truck on october 1st 2024 alma police chief jeff pointer stood at a podium in
16:18arkansas
16:19and named billy jack links as the first and only named suspect in the disappearance of morgan nick
16:27in 29 years the first named suspect
16:33he said the evidence strongly indicated that morgan had been in the truck
16:37he said the nick family had never known links had never been in a similar vehicle
16:42he said the investigation was ongoing and then he named four questions that still did not have answers
16:51chief pointer named them directly four questions how was she taken from the ball field what happened
16:58next did links have help in the abduction or in concealing what he had done for all these years
17:06and the question that carries everything where is morgan now billy jack links died in 2000 he took the
17:15answers with him the investigation continues but the man who could answer those questions is gone
17:26colleen nick was at the press conference on october 1st 2024 she had spent 29 years as the mother of
17:33a
17:33missing child not the mother of a child who died not the mother of a child who was found
17:40the mother of a child who is still missing
17:43there is a particular weight to that a particular kind of grief that does not have a shape
17:49because it does not have an end you cannot mourn what has not been confirmed you cannot close
17:56what has not been answered you can only carry it and keep going colleen said this about the man who
18:04took her daughter he stole morgan from me he stole her from her dad he stole her from logan and
18:12taryn
18:13he didn't see that he could never win because our love for morgan her memory her voice outlasted his life
18:22and that love continues to shine morgan's heart shines on the dna result was in colleen's own words
18:33super heartbreaking because confirming that morgan had likely been in that truck
18:39was not finding morgan it was as colleen said taking away the last bit of hope
18:46the hope that maybe somehow morgan was somewhere alive living a life she could not remember a hope
18:55that no parent in her position could entirely extinguish the dna result named the man it confirmed the
19:03truck it closed one chapter but it did not find morgan that question is still open it may always be
19:12open
19:12but here is what colleen nick also said she said she was grateful to have had a front row seat
19:19to
19:20watching forensic technology evolve over 30 years because it meant that even cases that seemed impossible
19:27could eventually be answered a six-year-old girl who was catching fireflies on a june evening in 1995
19:35five changed the way america finds missing children that is not enough nothing is enough but it is real
19:45and it is morgan's
19:53good morning ladies and gentlemen first i would like to thank you all for joining us today
20:00my name is jeff warner and i'm the chief of the alma police department
20:06we called you here today to report a significant development in the investigation of the 1995
20:13kidnapping of morgan nick
20:20you'll recall that morgan was kidnapped kidnapped from a parking lot of the alma little league ball field
20:28just about a block away from here around 10 45 pm on june the 9th 1995 a suspect description was
20:39provided
20:39as was a description of a red truck with a white camper shell that was allegedly involved
20:47since then we along with allied local state and federal law enforcement officials have spent
20:55thousands of hours working more than 10 000 leads in this case
21:02one of the early persons of interest in this case was billy jack lynx
21:08lynx was arrested for sexual sexual solicitation of a child on august 29 1995 in van buren arkansas
21:16the law on that occasion lynx tried to lure an 11 year old girl into his red pickup truck this
21:25was
21:25roughly 12 weeks after morgan's disappearance police questioned lynx on august 31st 1995.
21:34he denied any knowledge of morgan's abduction and at that time appeared to be truthful
21:41investigators at that time moved on
21:45in july july 2019
21:49then alma police department lieutenant brett hartley decided to go back to the beginning of this case
21:56to review the case from the beginning during that process lieutenant hartley spoke with an individual
22:03who provided information inspiring him to revisit the possibility that billy jack lynx might be morgan's
22:09abductor
22:13investigators worked to locate the truck lynx owned in 1995 and we were able to contact the current owner of
22:22that truck we determined that the owner had no knowledge of lynx he gave permission for us to examine
22:32that the truck for evidence at that time to that end investigators arranged for the fbi evidence response
22:41team to examine the truck and they did so on july the 28th 2020
22:50i'm sorry among the collection methods the team used was that of vacuuming various locations within the vehicle
22:58in doing so they produced several vacuum canisters containing various forms of matter including hair from
23:06the vehicle upon completion of the collection process the fbi retained custody of the evidence
23:17in july 2023 detective sean taylor with the animal police department learned of advanced analysis
23:24processes that's available at orthom laboratory which is based in texas
23:29detective taylor conferred with a representative of the lab and learned a mother among other things
23:38they have been successful in developing dna profiles from hair with or without roots
23:44what was his age at the time of death uh his age at that time would have been i believe
23:5172 years old
23:56now that he's passed is this open a whole portfolio of looking into his past and other databases to see
24:02um any you know leads to this or just looking into his past okay this investigation yes we're you know
24:10we're looking into his past um
24:12um we're um you know we're hoping that that someone has the missing puzzle that we need that that can
24:20come
24:20forward we know that he did a attempted kidnapping have we talked to that family just to see if he
24:27mentioned
24:27anything of where they would take her or do these of where they would yes that that investigation has been
24:33looked at
24:35okay moving forward what kind of law enforcement presence will be dedicated to this case well you know
24:44obviously um you know we we have someone that's that's dedicated to this case we you know almond's a
24:52small department but um some of us multitask and but we do have an investigator that's dedicated this
24:58case we have a part-time investigator that's dedicated to this case in this case only we have good allies
25:05with the local state and federal law enforcement agencies that has offered any assistance that we need
25:14is it safe to say this is the most significant breakthrough we've added in my opinion yes
25:24and just for clarification is that you have morgan nicks associated with the truck and with links but
25:33it doesn't necessarily mean that links had you know you don't have any evidence of what that link
25:39actually did jump into is that right that is correct we believe strongly that morgan was in this truck
25:50has the leo or any officials having searched once property there have some been some searches done in
25:58the past yes anything that links him to that ballpark in the past or that particular evening
26:07not to my knowledge other than some sightings of a similar pickup if not the truck in the area
26:17okay one last question was there any other evidence found inside that truck that ties morgan
26:24to the truck other than the hair um i can't answer that right now because i'm i'm honestly not sure
26:32what
26:33all evidence was collected out of that truck you know it was processed by the fbi evidence response team
26:40we were present for that but there was some evidence that was was tested by the fbi
26:45and so some of that is that i don't know uh chief i see you're going to state police uh
26:53local
26:53prosecutor fbi this is everybody who's actively assisting with this is that correct did i miss anybody
27:00now the you know the as i mentioned um the state police was a big help in funding this this
27:07testing um so
27:09they're they're here with us today is as assisting us and um have offered their resources for us
27:16would any members like to talk not not at this time i'm going to turn it over to colleen that
27:23wants to
27:52say something
27:54and what i have to say about billy jack lynx is that he stole morgan from me
28:00he stole her from her dad
28:04and he stole her from logan and taryn
28:10but he didn't see that he could never win
28:13because our love for morgan her memory and her voice outlasted his life
28:22and that love continues to shine her heart morgan's heart shines on
28:30i want to be honest with you about something before this video ends
28:37the mary teresa simpson case ended with a name
28:40a dna match of one in 320 billion a press conference a killer confirmed the morgan nick case is different
28:51we have a name billy jack lynx we have dna strongly indicating morgan was in his truck
28:59we have a man who had a prior record of crimes against children who was arrested eight miles away
29:05two months after morgan disappeared who drove a red pickup with a white camper shell who was interviewed
29:12and moved on but we do not have morgan the four questions chief pointer named at that podium
29:20are still open how was she taken from the ball field what happened in the hours and days after
29:28did lynx act alone or did someone help him and where is morgan now
29:34lynx died in 2000 he cannot answer them but the investigation has not closed morgan's case remains
29:43active morgan chantel nick was six years old she was catching fireflies on a summer evening in arkansas
29:52she had sand in her shoes she sat down near her mother's car to empty them and a man walked
29:59toward her
30:00if morgan is alive today she would be 36 years old if you have any information about her whereabouts
30:07contact the alma police department if this story stayed with you if morgan's name means something to you
30:15subscribe to the dark stories we cover the cases that demand to be understood nothing invented
30:22nothing speculated the truth as the evidence tells it morgan nick born september 12th 1988 still missing
30:34never forgotten
30:35never forgotten
30:3710.
30:3810.
30:3811.
30:39You
Comments