The fireflies came out just after sunset.
They danced across the Little League baseball field in Alma, Arkansas, their tiny lights blinking like stars that had fallen to earth. To the children watching the game that warm June evening in 1995, they were magic—nature’s own light show, begging to be chased.
Six-year-old Morgan Chauntel Nick had been sitting patiently beside her mother in the aluminum bleachers, watching the game with the quiet attention of a child who’d been promised she could play afterward. She had blonde hair that caught the last rays of daylight, bright eyes full of wonder, and a spirit her mother would later describe as “pure sunshine.”
When Morgan saw the fireflies, she turned to her mother with that look every parent knows—the wordless plea of a child asking for permission to embrace joy.
“Can I go catch them with my friends?” Morgan asked, pointing toward a small group of children near the edge of the field.
Colleen Nick looked at her daughter, then at the children playing just a few yards away, well within sight. The game was nearly over. The parking lot was right there. What harm could possibly come to a child in those few minutes, surrounded by parents, coaches, and the safe bubble of small-town America on a Friday night?
“Yes,” Colleen said. “But stay where I can see you.”
Morgan’s face lit up brighter than any firefly. She jumped down from the bleachers and ran toward her friends, her little hands already reaching toward the blinking lights.
Colleen turned back to watch the final inning.
She would spend the next 30 years wishing she had said no.
The Moment Everything Changed
It was 10:30 p.m. when the game ended. Parents began gathering their children, folding up lawn chairs, collecting gloves and baseball bats. The crowd thinned. Voices called out goodbyes across the parking lot.
Colleen stood up and looked toward the spot where Morgan had been playing.
The children were still there. But Morgan wasn’t among them.
“Where’s Morgan?” Colleen called out to the group.
The children looked at each other, confused. They’d been playing together just moments ago. Morgan had been right there—hadn’t she?
Colleen’s heart began to beat faster. She walked toward the parking lot, calling her daughter’s name. Maybe Morgan had gone to the car. Maybe she was looking for her brother. Maybe she was in the bathroom.
“Morgan!”
No answer.
Other parents joined the search. They spread out across the field, checking the dugouts, the concession stand, behind the bleachers. Someone checked the restrooms. Someone else ran to the parking lot to make sure Morgan hadn’t gotten confused and climbed into the wrong car.
Nothing.
By 10:45 p.m., someone had called the police.
By 11:00 p.m., Colleen Nick knew with absolute certainty that her daughter had not wandered off. Morgan hadn’t gotten lost. Something terrible had happened in those few minutes when Colleen’s attention had been elsewhere.
Someone had taken her little girl.
The Red Truck
As police officers arrived and began interviewing witnesses, a pattern emerged from the chaos of that night—a detail that would haunt the investigation for decades.
Multiple people had noticed a red pickup truck.
It was parked near the baseball field, close to where the children had been playing. The truck had a white camper shell on the back. Several witnesses remembered seeing a man standing near the vehicle, watching the children with an intensity that, in hindsight, felt sinister.
One mother who’d been at the game told police she’d seen the man staring at the kids and had felt uneasy about it. She’d even mentioned it to her husband, pointing out how odd it was that this man wasn’t watching the game—he was watching the children.
Another witness described the man as white, between 23 and 38 years old, approximately six feet tall with a medium, solid build. He had salt-and-pepper or silver hair, a mustache, and was wearing a white T-shirt, jeans, and white tennis shoes.
The description was detailed. The truck was distinctive. In a small town like Alma, someone should have recognized either the vehicle or the man.
But no one did.
Police issued an Amber Alert—one of the first ever activated in Arkansas. Morgan’s face appeared on news broadcasts across the state, then across the region, then across the nation. The FBI joined the investigation. Search teams combed through the woods surrounding Alma. Volunteers knocked on doors. Tips poured in by the hundreds.
Days passed. Then weeks. Then months.
Morgan Nick had vanished as completely as if the earth had opened up and swallowed her whole.
A Mother’s Promise
In the weeks following Morgan’s disappearance, Colleen Nick made a decision that would define the rest of her life.
She could have retreated into grief. She could have let the darkness swallow her whole, the way it had swallowed her daughter. Many parents who lose children do exactly that—and no one would blame them.
But Colleen chose something different.
If she couldn’t bring Morgan home, she would make sure other parents didn’t have to live through the same nightmare. She would turn her pain into purpose, her loss into action.
In 1996, just months after Morgan’s disappearance, Colleen founded the Morgan Nick Foundation. Its mission was simple but powerful: to provide support to families of missing children and to educate parents about child safety.
The foundation created the “Morgan Nick Center for Missing and Exploited Children” in Arkansas, offering resources, support groups, and advocacy for families navigating the unimaginable. Colleen traveled across the state—then across the country—speaking at schools, community centers, and law enforcement conferences about child safety.
She taught children about “stranger danger” without terrifying them. She taught parents about supervision without shaming them. She carried Morgan’s photograph everywhere she went, keeping her daughter’s face in the public eye, refusing to let Morgan become just another statistic in a cold case file.
“I made Morgan a promise the night she was taken,” Colleen said in an interview years later. “I promised her I would never stop looking. I promised her I would never let the world forget her name.”
It was a promise that would sustain Colleen through three decades of unanswered questions, false leads, and crushing disappointments.
But it was also a promise that would prepare her for the moment—30 years later—when the truth finally emerged.
The Long Wait
The investigation into Morgan’s disappearance never officially closed, but as the years stretched on, it grew cold.
Detectives followed thousands of leads. They interviewed registered sex offenders. They pursued tips that took them across state lines and across the country. Every few years, a new piece of potential evidence would emerge—a possible sighting, a suspicious vehicle, a prisoner claiming to have information—and hope would flare briefly before guttering out again.
In 2005, nearly a decade after Morgan’s disappearance, investigators received a tip about a man who’d been seen in the Alma area in 1995, driving a truck matching the description of the red pickup. The lead seemed promising, but it ultimately went nowhere.
In 2010, police announced they were pursuing new forensic testing on evidence from the original investigation. Advances in DNA technology meant that evidence collected in 1995 could now be analyzed with far greater precision. But again, the tests yielded no definitive answers.
With each passing year, the likelihood of finding Morgan alive diminished. Experts told Colleen what she already knew but couldn’t bear to accept: children abducted by strangers are usually killed within the first few hours. If Morgan had been taken by a predator, she was almost certainly dead.
But “almost certainly” wasn’t the same as “definitely.” And as long as there was even the slimmest chance that Morgan was alive somewhere—maybe held captive, maybe suffering from amnesia, maybe having escaped her abductor and built a new life without knowing who she really was—Colleen couldn’t stop hoping.
She celebrated every one of Morgan’s birthdays. She kept Morgan’s room exactly as it had been the night she disappeared. She imagined what Morgan would look like at 10, at 15, at 20, at 25. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children created age-progressed images showing what Morgan might look like as she grew older, and Colleen distributed these images wherever she went.
“I always believed my daughter would be found,” Colleen said. “I had to believe it. The alternative was unthinkable.”
The Breakthrough
In 2024, nearly 30 years after that June evening in Alma, Colleen Nick’s phone rang.
It was the Alma Police Department. They needed to speak with her urgently.
Colleen’s heart lurched. After three decades of waiting, she’d learned to manage her expectations. Most urgent calls from law enforcement turned out to be dead ends—another false lead, another cruel disappointment disguised as hope.
But this time was different.
“We’ve identified a suspect,” the detective told her. “We know who took Morgan.”
For a moment, Colleen couldn’t breathe. The words she’d been waiting 30 years to hear suddenly felt surreal, impossible. After all this time, after all the false starts and shattered hopes, could it really be true?
The breakthrough had come from an unexpected source: Othram Labs, a private DNA laboratory in Texas that specializes in forensic genetic genealogy—the same cutting-edge technology that had been used to identify the Golden State Killer and dozens of other cold case suspects in recent years.
Investigators had preserved evidence from the original investigation, including items found in and around the area where Morgan had been playing. Among that evidence was a single strand of blonde hair.
In 1995, that hair had been almost useless as evidence. DNA testing existed, but it was primitive by today’s standards. The hair lacked a root, which meant investigators couldn’t extract nuclear DNA—the type used in standard DNA profiling. All they had was mitochondrial DNA, which could indicate a maternal lineage but couldn’t identify a specific individual.
But in 2024, forensic technology had advanced exponentially. Othram Labs specialized in extracting usable DNA from degraded, contaminated, or minimal samples—the kind of “impossible” evidence that had once been worthless.
The lab analyzed the blonde hair using advanced DNA sequencing and genealogical analysis. They built a genetic profile, then compared it against public genealogy databases, tracing family trees backward and forward through generations.
And they got a match.
The hair belonged to someone in Morgan Nick’s maternal family line. It was consistent with Morgan herself—or her mother, or her siblings.
But the hair hadn’t been found with Morgan’s belongings. It had been found in a vehicle. A red pickup truck with a white camper shell, belonging to a man named Billy Jack Lincks.
The Monster Among Them
Billy Jack Lincks was 52 years old when Morgan Nick disappeared in 1995.
He lived in Lewisville, Arkansas—just a few miles from Alma. He drove a red Ford Ranger pickup with a white camper shell—the exact vehicle witnesses had described seeing near the baseball field that night. He had a mustache, salt-and-pepper hair, and fit the general description witnesses had given of the man watching the children.
But in 1995, no one had connected Lincks to Morgan’s disappearance. He hadn’t been on law enforcement’s radar. He had no prior convictions for sex crimes. Nothing about him screamed “predator” to the people who knew him.
At least, not until two months after Morgan vanished.
On August 7, 1995—just eight weeks after Morgan’s abduction—Billy Jack Lincks tried to abduct another little girl.
This time, he wasn’t successful.
The 11-year-old girl was walking near her home in Van Buren, Arkansas, when Lincks approached her in his red pickup truck. He tried to lure her into the vehicle. When she refused, he attempted to grab her.
The girl fought back. She screamed. She ran. Neighbors heard the commotion and came running. Lincks fled the scene, but witnesses got his license plate number.
Police tracked Lincks down and arrested him. He was charged with attempted kidnapping. During the investigation, detectives searched his truck—the red Ford Ranger with the white camper shell.
They photographed it. They documented it. They collected evidence from it.
And then, inexplicably, they didn’t connect it to Morgan Nick’s case.
The attempted kidnapping happened in a different jurisdiction—Van Buren instead of Alma. Communication between law enforcement agencies in 1995 wasn’t what it is today. The red truck with the white camper shell that witnesses had seen in Alma never got matched to the red truck with the white camper shell that Lincks had been driving in Van Buren.
Lincks pleaded guilty to attempted kidnapping. He was sentenced to prison.
And there, in 2000, Billy Jack Lincks died. He was 72 years old. He never faced justice for what he did to Morgan Nick—because at the time of his death, no one knew he’d done anything to Morgan Nick.
His death closed one door. But it left another door wide open—the door to the truth.
The DNA Doesn’t Lie
When Alma police informed Colleen Nick in 2024 that they’d identified Billy Jack Lincks as Morgan’s abductor, they walked her through the evidence carefully, knowing that every word would either heal or destroy her.
The blonde hair found in Lincks’s truck was a familial match to Morgan. The probability that it belonged to someone outside Morgan’s immediate family was infinitesimally small.
Lincks had driven a vehicle matching the exact description witnesses had given. He’d been in the area the night Morgan disappeared. He’d attempted to abduct another young girl just two months later, using the same method—watching children at play, waiting for an opportunity.
The evidence was circumstantial, yes. But it was compelling. After 30 years of questions, the answer finally seemed clear.
Billy Jack Lincks had taken Morgan Nick.
For Colleen, the confirmation brought a strange mix of emotions. Relief, because after three decades, she finally knew. Vindication, because her instincts—that Morgan hadn’t simply wandered off, that someone had taken her—had been correct all along.
But also devastation.
Because knowing who took Morgan didn’t answer the only question that truly mattered: Where is Morgan now?
The Truth That Broke Her Heart
When the Alma Police Department told Colleen Nick that Billy Jack Lincks was dead—had been dead for 24 years—something inside her shattered in a way that 30 years of not knowing had never quite managed to break.
“The DNA evidence took away the last bit of hope my family had,” Colleen said in a statement following the announcement.
It wasn’t the confirmation that Morgan had been taken by a predator that destroyed her. Colleen had known that, deep down, for decades. No six-year-old disappears without a trace unless someone makes them disappear.
It was the finality of it.
As long as the perpetrator was unknown, there was a chance—however slim—that he might one day confess. That he might experience a moment of conscience, a deathbed conversion, a spiritual awakening that would compel him to reveal where Morgan’s body had been hidden. That he might give Colleen the one thing she’d been denied for 30 years: closure.
But Billy Jack Lincks had taken that possibility to his grave in 2000.
He would never confess. He would never face trial. He would never look Colleen in the eye and tell her what happened to her daughter that June night in 1995. He would never tell her where Morgan was.
“We still don’t know where Morgan is,” Colleen said, her voice steady but heavy with decades of grief. “We want to find her and bring her home to rest, where she deserves to be.”
That’s what haunts Colleen now—not the question of who, which has finally been answered, but the question of where.
Where is Morgan?
The Man in the Red Truck
To understand what likely happened to Morgan Nick, you have to understand who Billy Jack Lincks was.
Born in 1928, Lincks lived most of his life in Arkansas. By 1995, he was 67 years old—older than the initial witness descriptions suggested, but not impossibly so. Witnesses under stress often misestimate ages, especially when viewing someone from a distance in fading light.
Lincks had worked various jobs throughout his life, mostly manual labor. He kept to himself. Neighbors would later describe him as quiet, unremarkable—the kind of man you’d pass on the street without a second glance.
But beneath that unremarkable exterior lived something dark.
The attempted abduction in Van Buren on August 7, 1995, wasn’t a sudden impulse. It was a pattern continuing. Predators like Lincks don’t suddenly start abducting children at age 67. They escalate over time, their crimes growing bolder as they refine their methods and grow more confident they won’t be caught.
The fact that Lincks attempted another kidnapping just two months after Morgan disappeared suggests he believed he’d gotten away with it. He felt safe. Untouchable.
And he very nearly was.
When Van Buren police arrested Lincks for attempting to kidnap the 11-year-old girl, they had him. They had his truck. They had evidence. But they didn’t have the connections—literal or figurative—to link him to Morgan’s case.
In 1995, law enforcement databases weren’t interconnected the way they are today. An attempted kidnapping in Van Buren didn’t automatically trigger an alert in Alma, even though the two towns were only about 20 miles apart. The description of Lincks’s red Ford Ranger with the white camper shell sat in one case file while an identical description sat in another, and no one drew the line connecting them.
It’s one of the great tragedies of Morgan’s case—that the answer was there all along, hiding in plain sight in a different jurisdiction’s records.
Lincks pleaded guilty to attempted kidnapping and was sentenced to prison. He served several years before being released. Then, in 2000, while incarcerated again on an unrelated charge, he died at age 72.
The state buried him in a prison cemetery. His death went unnoticed by everyone except, perhaps, a handful of family members.
And Morgan Nick’s case stayed cold for another 24 years.
Reopening Old Wounds
The announcement in September 2024 that DNA evidence had identified Billy Jack Lincks as Morgan’s abductor sent shockwaves through Arkansas.
For the residents of Alma—a small town of about 5,800 people—Morgan’s disappearance had been a defining trauma. Every parent in Alma remembered exactly where they were the night Morgan vanished. They remembered the fear that gripped the community, the way parents suddenly started walking their children to the bus stop, the way Little League games felt different, more watchful, less innocent.
For 30 years, they’d lived with the question: What happened to Morgan Nick?
Now they had an answer. But it wasn’t the answer anyone wanted.
The 11-year-old girl that Lincks had attempted to abduct in Van Buren—now in her 40s—came forward after the announcement. She’d lived for decades knowing that she’d escaped something terrible, but she hadn’t known about Morgan Nick. She hadn’t known that two months before Lincks tried to grab her, he’d succeeded in taking another little girl.
“I’ve thought about Morgan every day since I learned about the DNA match,” she told reporters. “I got away. She didn’t. That could have been me.”
Her statement resonated with parents across America. The randomness of predatory crime—the arbitrary nature of who escapes and who doesn’t—is part of what makes it so terrifying. Morgan Nick wasn’t taken because she did anything wrong. She was taken because she was in the wrong place at the wrong moment, and a monster was watching.
The Search Continues
In October 2024, following the DNA announcement, the Alma Police Department and FBI renewed their search efforts for Morgan’s remains.
They focused on areas where Billy Jack Lincks had lived, worked, and traveled in the mid-1990s. They searched properties he’d owned or had access to. They used ground-penetrating radar, cadaver dogs, and forensic archaeologists.
They interviewed people who’d known Lincks—former neighbors, coworkers, family members—asking about places he frequented, land he might have had access to, unusual behavior they might have noticed in the summer of 1995.
Every lead was pursued. Every tip was investigated. But the land doesn’t give up its secrets easily, especially after 30 years.
Bodies buried in the Arkansas wilderness—in forests, near rivers, in remote rural areas—can be nearly impossible to find. Weather, wildlife, and time erase evidence. Landscapes change. What was a recognizable landmark in 1995 might be overgrown and unrecognizable now.
Still, investigators persisted. Because they knew that somewhere out there, Morgan Nick was waiting to be found. Waiting to be brought home.
Colleen Nick participated in the searches whenever possible. Now in her 60s, she walked through woods and fields, holding Morgan’s photograph, refusing to give up the way she’d refused to give up for three decades.
“I need to find her,” Colleen said. “I need to bring my daughter home.”
The Weight of “What If”
One of the cruelest aspects of Morgan’s case—the detail that has haunted Colleen and will continue to haunt her—is how close law enforcement came to stopping Billy Jack Lincks before he could claim another victim.
If the Van Buren police had connected Lincks’s red truck to the witness descriptions from Alma, Morgan might have been found. If interdepartmental communication had been better, if databases had been linked, if just one detective had made the connection—everything might have been different.
But they didn’t. And it wasn’t.
Colleen has been asked many times over the years whether she feels anger toward law enforcement for missing the connection. Her answer has always been the same: “I can’t live in anger. Anger doesn’t bring Morgan home.”
Instead, Colleen channeled her energy into changing the systems that failed Morgan.
Through the Morgan Nick Foundation, she advocated for better communication between law enforcement agencies. She pushed for improved database systems that would flag similar crimes across jurisdictions. She supported legislation that would mandate cooperation in child abduction cases.
She couldn’t save Morgan. But she could help save other children.
A Legacy of Protection
Since its founding in 1996, the Morgan Nick Foundation has become one of the most respected child safety organizations in America.
The foundation’s child safety programs have been taught in thousands of schools across Arkansas and beyond. They’ve distributed hundreds of thousands of child identification kits to parents—kits that include fingerprints, photographs, and DNA samples that can be used immediately if a child goes missing.
The foundation provides financial assistance to families of missing children, helping them with expenses that most people never consider: travel costs for searches, printing costs for flyers, legal fees, counseling services. It’s the kind of practical, unglamorous support that makes a real difference in the darkest moments of a family’s life.
Colleen has spoken at hundreds of events over the past 30 years. She’s trained law enforcement officers, taught parents, and comforted families whose children have vanished. She’s shared her story over and over, each retelling reopening the wound, because she believes that if her pain can prevent even one other family from experiencing the same nightmare, it’s worth it.
“Morgan’s case changed laws. It changed how we investigate child abductions. It changed how we protect children,” said one FBI agent who worked on the case. “Colleen turned her daughter’s tragedy into a shield for thousands of other children.”
The impact is measurable. In Arkansas alone, the Morgan Nick Foundation’s safety programs have reached more than 150,000 children. Nationwide, the number is in the millions.
How many of those children are alive today because they remembered something Colleen taught them? How many parents kept their children a little closer, watched a little more carefully, because they heard Morgan’s story?
There’s no way to count the tragedies that didn’t happen. But they exist nonetheless, silent testaments to Morgan’s legacy.
The Burden of Public Grief
Living in the public eye for 30 years while carrying unimaginable private pain requires a strength most people can’t comprehend.
Colleen Nick has given thousands of interviews. She’s appeared on national television programs, true crime documentaries, and news broadcasts. She’s posed for photographs holding pictures of Morgan, smiling for cameras even when she felt like collapsing.
Every Mother’s Day, reporters call. Every June 9th—the anniversary of Morgan’s disappearance—the calls come again. Every time there’s a new development in a missing child case anywhere in the country, media outlets want Colleen’s perspective, her expertise, her reaction.
She’s expected to be strong. Inspirational. A beacon of hope for other families. And she is those things—but she’s also a mother whose child was stolen, whose grief never ends, who goes to bed every night for 30 years wondering what happened to her daughter in those final moments.
“People see me giving speeches and they think I’m so strong,” Colleen once said in a rare moment of vulnerability. “But they don’t see me at home. They don’t see the nights I can’t sleep. They don’t see me talking to Morgan’s photograph, telling her I’m still looking.”
The burden of being “The Mom Who Never Gave Up” is heavy. It means you’re never allowed to break down completely, because others are watching you for inspiration. It means your grief becomes public property, dissected in comment sections and true crime forums. It means well-meaning strangers approach you in grocery stores to tell you they’re praying for you, and you have to smile and thank them even though their prayers haven’t brought your daughter home.
But Colleen carries the burden because she made Morgan a promise.
And Colleen Nick keeps her promises.
Other Victims?
One question that emerged following the 2024 DNA announcement was whether Billy Jack Lincks might have been responsible for other disappearances.
Investigators began reviewing cold cases of missing children from the 1970s, 80s, and 90s in Arkansas and surrounding states. They looked for patterns: young girls, rural areas, witnesses reporting red trucks.
So far, no definitive connections have been made. But the investigation continues.
The uncomfortable truth is that predators like Lincks rarely stop at one victim. If Lincks successfully abducted Morgan in June 1995 and then attempted another abduction in August 1995, it suggests a pattern of behavior that likely didn’t begin with Morgan.
But Lincks had no prior convictions for sex crimes. Either he’d been extraordinarily careful in avoiding detection for decades, or Morgan was his first—his testing ground, the moment when fantasy became action.
We’ll likely never know the full truth. Lincks took it to his grave.
What we do know is that after his arrest for the attempted abduction in Van Buren, he was incarcerated. If there were other victims, they came before Morgan, not after.
It’s cold comfort for other families with missing children, but it’s something: Billy Jack Lincks, whatever else he did, wasn’t able to hurt any more children after August 1995.
The Science That Solved It
The technology that finally identified Billy Jack Lincks as Morgan’s abductor didn’t exist in 1995.
Forensic genetic genealogy—the method used by Othram Labs—combines traditional DNA analysis with modern genealogy databases and advanced computational techniques. It’s the same technology that identified the Golden State Killer, the Bear Brook victims, and dozens of other cold case suspects and victims in recent years.
Here’s how it works: Scientists extract DNA from evidence—in Morgan’s case, the blonde hair found in Lincks’s truck. They sequence the DNA to create a genetic profile. Then they upload that profile to genealogy databases like GEDmatch, which contains DNA information from millions of people who’ve taken commercial ancestry tests.
The system looks for matches—not exact matches, but partial matches that indicate distant family relationships. It might find a third cousin, or a second cousin twice removed. Then genealogists build family trees, working backward and forward through generations, narrowing down the possibilities until they identify the specific person whose DNA matches the evidence.
It’s painstaking work that can take months or even years. But it’s revolutionizing cold case investigations.
In Morgan’s case, the hair provided mitochondrial DNA, which traces maternal lineage. The genealogical analysis confirmed that the hair came from someone in Morgan’s maternal line—Morgan herself, or her mother, or her siblings.
Since Colleen Nick and Morgan’s siblings were all accounted for and had never been in Lincks’s truck, the logical conclusion was that the hair belonged to Morgan.
It’s not a perfect science. DNA evidence can be contaminated, misinterpreted, or subject to innocent explanations. Defense attorneys have challenged genetic genealogy evidence in court, with varying degrees of success.
But in Morgan’s case, the DNA evidence combined with the circumstantial evidence—Lincks’s truck matching witness descriptions, his location near the baseball field, his attempted abduction two months later—creates a picture that’s difficult to dismiss.
Billy Jack Lincks took Morgan Nick. The science says so. The evidence says so. And in the absence of any alternative explanation that makes sense, that’s the conclusion investigators have reached.
A Mother’s Statement
In October 2024, Colleen Nick released a statement through the Morgan Nick Foundation addressing the DNA findings.
“For 29 years, I have lived with hope that Morgan would be found alive,” the statement read. “I have imagined her as a teenager, as a young woman, as an adult. I have wondered what she would look like, what she would be doing with her life. I have never stopped hoping for a miracle.”
“The DNA evidence has taken that hope away. It has given me an answer I never wanted to receive. But it has also given me something I have needed for three decades: the truth.”
“I know now who took my daughter. I know that the man responsible will never face earthly justice, because he died 24 years ago. But I also know that somewhere, Morgan is waiting to be found. And I will not stop searching for her.”
“To the families of other missing children: Do not give up. Keep searching. Keep hoping. Keep your child’s name alive. Technology is advancing every day. Cases that seemed unsolvable are being solved. Your miracle might be waiting just around the corner.”
“And to Morgan: Mommy is still looking for you, baby. I will never stop looking. I will bring you home.”
The statement was read by millions. It trended on social media. It was covered by every major news outlet in the country.
But the person it was really meant for—Morgan—would never read it.
Unless, somewhere, somehow, against all odds, she’s still alive.
The Impossible Hope
Logically, rationally, Colleen Nick knows that Morgan is almost certainly dead and has been for 30 years.
Children abducted by strangers are usually killed within hours, sometimes within minutes. The statistical probability that Morgan survived beyond that first night is infinitesimally small. The probability that she survived for 30 years—held captive, or living under another identity, or suffering from amnesia—is essentially zero.
But hope doesn’t operate on logic. Hope is the irrational, stubborn thing that keeps parents searching long after reason says to stop. It’s the voice that whispers “maybe” even when everything else screams “no.”
As long as Morgan’s body hasn’t been found, that whisper persists.
Colleen has heard all the stories. She knows about Elizabeth Smart, kidnapped at 14 and found alive nine months later. She knows about Jaycee Dugard, taken at 11 and found alive after 18 years. She knows about Amanda Berry, Michelle Knight, and Gina DeJesus, the three women held captive in Cleveland for a decade.
She knows these cases are exceptions, not the rule. She knows the circumstances are different—Elizabeth Smart’s abductor was religious fanatic, not a pedophile; Jaycee Dugard’s captor kept her to create a twisted “family”; the Cleveland women were held by someone who wanted to control, not kill.
Billy Jack Lincks doesn’t fit any of those profiles. His attempted abduction two months after Morgan disappeared was brazen, impulsive—not the behavior of someone maintaining a long-term captive.
But still, that whisper remains: Maybe.
Maybe Lincks didn’t work alone. Maybe he sold Morgan to someone else. Maybe she was taken out of the country. Maybe she’s living somewhere under another name, with no memory of being Morgan Nick.
Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
It’s torture. But it’s also what keeps Colleen going.
The Community That Never Forgot
In Alma, Arkansas, Morgan Nick’s disappearance remains a defining moment in the town’s history.
The baseball field where Morgan vanished is still there, still hosting Little League games on warm summer evenings. But there’s a memorial now—a small plaque with Morgan’s photograph and the words “Gone but never forgotten.”
Every June 9th, the community holds a remembrance ceremony. Residents gather, light candles, share memories. Colleen usually attends, standing beside the memorial to her daughter, surrounded by people who’ve made Morgan’s case their own.
“Morgan belongs to all of us now,” one longtime Alma resident said. “She’s our daughter too.”
The local elementary school has a safety program named after Morgan. Students learn about staying safe, about trusting their instincts, about the importance of the buddy system. Morgan’s face looks out from posters in the hallways—not as a warning, but as a reminder.
At the Alma Public Library, there’s a section dedicated to missing children’s cases, with Morgan’s story prominently featured. It’s curated by volunteers who’ve spent decades keeping Morgan’s case alive in public memory.
These might seem like small gestures. But to Colleen, they mean everything.
“Alma has never forgotten Morgan,” she said. “When I go back there, people still ask about the case. They still care. After 30 years, they still care. That’s remarkable.”
It’s what every parent of a missing child fears most—not that their child won’t be found, but that they’ll be forgotten. That the world will move on, that the case will fade from public consciousness, that their child will become just another name in a database.
Alma hasn’t let that happen to Morgan.
The Question That Remains
Where is Morgan Nick?
It’s the question that has haunted Colleen for 30 years. It’s the question that will haunt her until the day she dies, unless—by some miracle—it’s answered first.
Investigators have theories. If Billy Jack Lincks took Morgan that June night in 1995, he had to do something with her. He lived in Lewisville, about 25 miles from Alma. He would have had to transport her from the baseball field to… somewhere.
The most likely scenario, based on similar cases, is that Lincks took Morgan to a location he’d scouted in advance—somewhere remote, somewhere he felt safe from discovery. He likely killed her quickly, then buried or concealed her body in a place only he knew.
The Ozark region of Arkansas is vast, heavily forested, with thousands of acres of remote wilderness. Finding a single burial site without specific information about its location is nearly impossible, even with modern technology.
Lincks’s former properties have been searched. The forests near his home have been searched. Rural roads he was known to travel have been explored with ground-penetrating radar and cadaver dogs.
Nothing has been found.
It’s possible that Morgan’s remains will never be discovered. It’s possible that she’ll remain one of the many missing children whose families never get complete closure, never get to bury their child, never get to say a final goodbye.
But Colleen refuses to accept that possibility. She continues to push for new searches, new technologies, new approaches.
“Morgan deserves to be brought home,” she says. “She deserves to be laid to rest with dignity. I will search for her until the day I die. And if I don’t find her, then I trust that someone else will continue the search after I’m gone.”
It’s both heartbreaking and inspiring—this refusal to surrender, this insistence that Morgan still matters, that finding her remains is still important even after 30 years.
Because it is important. Not just to Colleen, but to everyone who believes that the dead deserve respect, that families deserve closure, that even the smallest victims deserve justice.
The Legacy of Morgan Nick
Morgan Nick was six years old when she disappeared. She never got to turn seven, never got to lose her baby teeth, never got her first bike, never went to middle school, never experienced her first crush, never graduated high school, never went to college, never fell in love, never had children of her own.
All of that was stolen from her on a June evening in 1995 by a man who saw a little girl chasing fireflies and decided to take her.
But Morgan’s life—short as it was—has mattered in ways that ripple outward still.
Because of Morgan, thousands of children have learned how to stay safe. Because of Morgan, law enforcement agencies communicate better across jurisdictions. Because of Morgan, forensic technology advanced and cold cases that seemed unsolvable are being solved.
Because of Morgan, Colleen Nick transformed grief into purpose, pain into protection, loss into legacy.
“Morgan was sunshine,” Colleen often says. “She was joy and laughter and innocence. I want people to remember that. I don’t want her to be defined by what happened to her. I want her to be remembered for who she was—a beautiful, bright, happy little girl who loved chasing fireflies.”
That’s the tragedy and the triumph of Morgan’s story. The tragedy is that she was taken, that her life was cut short, that she never got the chance to become whoever she might have been. The triumph is that even in death—even missing for 30 years—she continues to protect other children, continues to give families hope, continues to matter.
Thirty Years of Waiting
As of 2025, Morgan Nick has been missing for 30 years.
Thirty years is a lifetime. Children born the year Morgan disappeared are now adults with children of their own. The world has changed in ways that would have seemed like science fiction in 1995—smartphones, social media, DNA genealogy, instant communication across the globe.
But some things haven’t changed.
Children still go missing. Predators still hunt. Families still wait, hope, pray, and search.
And Colleen Nick still wakes up every morning thinking about her daughter.
“People ask me how I’ve done this for 30 years,” Colleen said in a recent interview. “How I’ve kept going, kept searching, kept hoping. The answer is simple: I’m Morgan’s mother. That’s what mothers do. We never give up on our children. Ever.”
She’s in her 60s now. Her hair has gone gray. She’s had health scares, moments where she’s wondered how much time she has left, whether she’ll die without ever knowing what happened to her daughter’s body.
But she keeps going. She keeps searching. She keeps Morgan’s name alive.
Because that’s what she promised. That night in 1995, when she realized Morgan was gone, she made a promise: I will find you. I will never stop looking.
Thirty years later, that promise remains unbroken.
If You Have Information
The Morgan Nick case remains open. Despite the DNA evidence identifying Billy Jack Lincks as the prime suspect, investigators are still pursuing leads and searching for Morgan’s remains.
If you have any information about Billy Jack Lincks, his activities in the mid-1990s, or properties he may have had access to, please contact:
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Alma Police Department: (479) 632-3333
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Morgan Nick Foundation: (479) 968-4825
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FBI Little Rock Field Office: (501) 221-9100
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National Center for Missing & Exploited Children: 1-800-THE-LOST (1-800-843-5678)
Even the smallest detail—a memory of seeing Lincks’s red truck in an unusual location, a conversation he had about remote areas, a property he visited—could be the key to finally bringing Morgan home.
“Someone out there knows something,” Colleen believes. “Someone saw something, heard something, or knows something that could lead us to Morgan. I’m asking that person to please come forward. It’s been 30 years. If you’ve been carrying this secret, now is the time to let it go. Help me bring my daughter home.”
The Fireflies Still Dance
On summer evenings in Alma, Arkansas, when the sun sets and twilight settles over the Little League baseball fields, the fireflies still come out.
They dance across the grass, blinking their tiny lights, magical and innocent and beautiful—exactly as they were on that June evening in 1995.
Children still chase them, laughing and running with their hands outstretched, trying to capture a little piece of that magic.
And parents watch—a little more carefully than they used to, a little more aware that danger can come from anywhere, that you can do everything right and still lose everything that matters.
That’s Morgan Nick’s legacy. Not just the foundation that bears her name, not just the laws that changed because of her case, not just the technological advances that finally identified her abductor.
Her legacy is in the watchfulness. In the parents who say “stay where I can see you” and mean it. In the communities that refuse to forget. In the mother who has searched for 30 years and will search for 30 more if that’s what it takes.
Morgan chased fireflies one June evening, and in doing so, she became eternal.
Not in the way anyone would choose. But eternal nonetheless.
Somewhere in Arkansas, a little girl named Morgan Nick is waiting to be found.
And her mother is still looking.
