Morgan Nick DNA found in truck driven by suspect Billy Jack Lincks (Updated)

Almost 30 years after the abduction of Morgan Nick in Alma, a suspect has been named. Alma Police Chief Jeff Pointer said Tuesday (Oct. 1) that DNA testing shows Nick was in a truck once owned by Billy Jack Lincks of Van Buren and he is now an official suspect in the kidnapping.

Lincks died in prison in 2000 at the age of 72. Lincks, who was arrested in 1995 for solicitation of a minor for sex, was questioned in 1995 about Nick. He denied any knowledge of the abduction.

“The most important thing here is Morgan is still missing, but we have reached a point where we can concentrate on one suspect to determine the circumstances surrounding Morgan’s abduction,” Pointer said.

Questions the police are hoping to answer are how Nick was taken from the ballfield, what happened next, did Lincks have help in the abduction or concealing his crime and where is Nick now.

“The end goal is to bring Morgan home,” Pointer said.

Nick, 6, was last seen playing with two other kids at a youth baseball park in Alma. She was in the stands watching a game with her mother, Colleen, when she reportedly left to chase lightning bugs with friends in another part of the park just after 10 p.m. that night.

The youths chased lightning bugs for a while and then decided to return to the stands. During the walk back, Morgan Nick, clad in a green Girl Scout shirt, blue denim shorts and white shoes, stopped to kick sand out of her shoes near her mother’s car. When her companions turned to look for Morgan they saw a man standing near her.

Around the time she vanished, a red Ford truck with a camper on the back, also left the baseball park, according to witnesses. A massive investigation ensued. Thousands of tips were gathered but few substantial leads were generated.

Through the years, there have been numerous reported sightings of Morgan Nick but none have been confirmed. The FBI offered a $60,000 reward for information that leads to the girl’s abductor or abductors.

In July 2019, then Alma Police Lieutenant Brett Hartland went back to the beginning of the case. During that process, he spoke with someone who provided information inspiring him to revisit the possibility that Lincks was involved, Pointer said. The red truck that Lincks owned in 1995 was located.

“The owner had no knowledge of Lincks. He gave permission for us to examine the truck,” Pointer said.

On Sept. 27, DNA testing of a hair collected along with other evidence from the truck was proven to belong to Colleen Nick, one of her siblings or one of her children, he said.

“We spent the next few days doing followup interviews with the Nick family, which revealed none of them knew Billy Jack Lincks and none of them had been in a truck that similar to this one,” Pointer said. “The bottom line is that physical evidence collected from the truck that Lincks owned when Morgan was abducted strongly indicates that Morgan had been in this truck.”

The home Lincks lived in while living in Van Buren has been searched, but no other evidence has been found, Pointer said.

Lincks was born and raised in Crawford County. He served with the U.S. Army during World War II and then worked at Braniff Airlines in Dallas, Texas, from 1962 to 1974. He returned to Van Buren sometime in the late 1970s. Approximately two months after Morgan’s 1995 disappearance, Lincks attempted to abduct a young girl in Van Buren at a location eight miles from the Wofford baseball field where Morgan was last seen. Lincks died in prison in 2000.

At this time, Lincks is the only suspect identified in the case, and the Alma Police Department has a part-time investigator assigned to the case and to this case only. Anyone with information is asked to call 1-800-THE-LOST.

“What I have to say about Billy Jack Lincks is that he stole Morgan from me. He stole her from her dad. He stole her from Logan and Taryn. … But he could never win because our love for Morgan, her memory and her voice outlasted his life,” said a tearful Colleen Nick Tuesday. “Morgan’s heart shines on us.”

In 1996, Colleen Nick launched The Morgan Nick Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping other families with missing children and other advocacy efforts to prevent children from being taken. The state’s child abduction alert system, commonly known as an Amber Alert was named in 1996 the Morgan Nick Alert System.

Her case has been profiled on numerous television shoes including “Unsolved Mysteries” and “America’s Most Wanted.” Morgan’s case was recently in the news after the launch of the Hulu documentary series “Still Missing Morgan.”

“Our job is to fight for children we will never get to meet so they’ll get the chance to go home every night … so that there’s not an empty seat at the dinner table,” Colleen Nick previously said.

Talk Business & Politics reporter George Jared contributed to this report.