Morgan Chauntel Nick was born on September 12th 1988 in Ozark, Arkansas, USA and was the oldest of 3 children of her parents, Colleen and Morris.
Morgan was a happy child who had dreamed of being a circus entertainer or a doctor. She loved apples, cats and anything bubblegum flavoured. She was exceptionally close to her mother, who described her as a very shy and timid child — due to this, she would often stay as close to her mother’s side as possible when out in public.
Her mother recalls how she had enrolled Morgan into an after school running club, but Morgan only lasted one day as she hated being sweaty. She instead decided to join the girl scouts; something Morgan enjoyed very much as she once stated “they get to stay inside and glue things”.
On the afternoon of June 9th 1995, a friend of the family had invited Coleen to watch her son’s little league baseball game in the town of Alma, Arkansas; Coleen had decided to take her eldest daughter, 6 year old Morgan to the game with her, and drop her youngest two children off at their grandparent's house.
Quickly, she made Morgan a grilled cheese sandwich before heading off to the game. Colleen has since recalled how it has always haunted her that Morgan asked for a second sandwich but Colleen refused as she was in a hurry and didn’t think Morgan would finish it.
For the majority of the game, Morgan stayed with Colleen and even declined when some friends asked her to play with them.
Towards the end of the game, the friends once again approached Morgan, asking her to catch fireflies with them. This time however, Colleen told her daughter that she couldn’t go. It was past 10pm now and even though it was the middle of Summer, it was beginning to get dark.
At this point, one of the other parents reassured Colleen that it was perfectly safe and she was being too over-protective. With her daughter now begging to play with her friends, Colleen reluctantly told her that she could go and play.
Morgan was ecstatic and excitedly jumped up off of the baseball stands. Colleen watched as her daughter’s long blonde hair bounced as she ran off into the distance with her two friends, heading towards the car park at the back of the stands.
This would be the last time she would ever see her daughter…
At 10:45pm, Morgan’s two friends returned to the stands without her. Colleen became instantly alarmed and asked where her daughter was. What the two children replied would chill her to the bone.
They went on to explain that Morgan was was by Colleen’s car dumping sand out of her shoe, but that a “creepy man” was talking to Morgan whilst she did this.
Colleen raced to her car but her daughter was nowhere in sight. Frantic, she began to search the small car park, calling for her daughter, but Morgan was not there. Within minutes, the baseball game had finished and parents and children began to pour into the car park. With news of Morgan’s disappearance spreading, many tried in vain to help search for the missing 6 year old. The police were soon called.
The two children who Morgan had last been with were taken to the police station and questioned about the strange man that had been seen talking to Morgan shortly before her disappearance.
According to the children, the man was approximately 6'0 tall, weighed 180 pounds, and was between the ages of 23–38. They were also able to work with a police sketch artist to get a composite made of the man in question.
Morgan was last seen wearing her green Girl Scouts shirt, denim shorts, and white tennis shoes.
Video footage soon came to light from a person who was filming the game. It captured a red pickup truck with a camper parked near the ballfield; this had not belonged to any of the parents or staff members who had attended the game that night and could not be traced back to an individual, despite police’s best efforts.
The owner of the truck never came forward.
A massive investigation turned up thousands of leads, but no solid clues were uncovered. The FBI and local communities offered a $60,000 reward for the recovery of Morgan Nick and the identification, arrest and conviction of subject or subjects responsible for her abduction.
In 1996, Colleen founded the Morgan Nick Foundation, a
non-profit which helps families cope with missing children and aids investigators in finding the lost.
Colleen has become an advocate for missing children and adults across the United States. Morgan’s case has been featured on both Unsolved Mysteries and America’s Most Wanted. In the state of Arkansas, the AMBER Alert system has been named ‘the Morgan Nick Amber Alert.’
In August 1995, police arrested a man named Billy Jack Lincks. Billy was a registered sex offender who had been in and out of prison since 1992.
Just 2 months after Morgan’s abduction, he had tried to abduct an 11 year old girl in Van Buren, around 10 minutes from Alma, where Morgan was last seen. He was also driving a red pickup truck; on top of it, one of Billy’s neighbours claimed that he noticed a camper shell on the red pickup truck just two months before the attempted kidnapping.
Despite insisting on his innocence and pleading not guilty in court, he was convicted of sexual solicitation for the attempted abduction of the 11 year old in Van Buren, and the judge sentenced him to six years in prison in 1995. Billy Jack Lincks was still behind bars when he suddenly fell ill and passed away on August 5th 2000.
Law enforcement impounded Billy’s red truck. They examined it and kept it for decades.
It was only in November 2021, when a forensic team found blood on the dashboard and a piece of blonde hair under the floor cover. They also found blue-green cotton fiber in the mat under the seats and in metal pieces of the truck.
The materials were sent to federal crime labs.
Lab technicians found the blood and the blonde hair did not have enough DNA information for a conclusive match. However, they were able to match the fibre on a microscopic level to a Girl Scout shirt of the type Morgan wore when she disappeared.
Billy Jack Lincks remains the number one suspect in Morgan’s case.
Colleen Nick has dedicated her entire life to finding her missing daughter and has refused to give up hope that one day she will have answers to what became of her little girl that summer night in 1995. She has commented:
“Until the day that someone can prove to me that she did not survive, then I’m going to fight for her.” — Colleen Nick
As of January 2024, Morgan Nick would be 35 years old. The below image shows what she may look like today.
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