30 Years Missing: Morgan Nick's Legacy Lives On
At a Little League game in Alma, Arkansas, the fireflies had just started to pop and blaze, filling the twilight sky with twinkling lights. Six-year-old Morgan Nick left her seat on the bleachers next to her mom to chase fireflies with her friends.
As the evening faded to night and the players began filing off the field, Colleen Nick glanced over one more time to check on Morgan and the other children, but her daughter wasn’t with them. Panic quickly set in, and she frantically began searching for her.
She’s been searching for 30 years.
A break in the case finally came last October, when Alma police announced they had a suspect, Billy Jack Lincks, after advanced genetic testing on a blonde hair found in his red truck matched the family’s DNA. Police said Lincks, who tried to abduct another little girl two months after Morgan vanished on June 9, 1995, died in prison in 2000 at age 72. But Morgan is still missing.
“I always believed she would be found,” said Nick, who spent the last 30 years vowing to bring Morgan home. “The DNA evidence was super heartbreaking. For my family, it took away that last bit of hope. But we still don’t know where Morgan is. We want to find her and lay her to rest where she belongs.”
Morgan Nick’s abduction had a profound impact on families of missing children far beyond Alma. Nick became a longtime advocate for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) and served on its board of directors.
Colleen Nick holds one of many age progressions created over the years of what Morgan might look like as time passes.
During law enforcement trainings at NCMEC, Nick would steel herself – again and again – to tell Morgan’s heart-breaking story, explaining the incredible impact law enforcement can have on families. She and Patty Wetterling, whose 11-year-old son Jacob was abducted at gunpoint in 1989, started NCMEC’s Team HOPE, a peer-support group for families of missing and sexually exploited children. She created the Morgan Nick Foundation, which is thriving today and has helped countless families throughout Arkansas.
She hopes other families of missing children will take solace in the advice she was given. Four days into the search for her daughter, Nick said she felt compelled to meet with the mother of an 18-year-old girl who disappeared from a neighboring community but was found murdered just six months before Morgan was abducted. Nick wanted to know: How did she survive it?
“She just looked me in the eye and said, ‘You can’t give up hope.’” Nick said. “And it was the most powerful thing anybody has ever said to me.”
It gave Nick the strength to search for her daughter every single day – for 30 years.
Read an open letter from Nick when Morgan had been missing 25 years.
Read how Nick and other families of missing children watch their kids grow up through age progressions.