(Author's note: Most investigative reporters deeply investigate a single topic of interest. For me, that topic of interest is true crime.
There are stories I have spent months researching. And there are other stories, like the disappearance of Morgan Nick, that I have spent years and years researching.
As you dive into this series about the disappearance of Morgan Nick, please keep in mind that it’s my job to ask the hard questions. My intention is not to be insensitive.
instead, the questions I ask about this case are meant to be thought-provoking conversation starters.
Let’s begin.)
It was a warm summer day on Friday, June 9, 1995, when Colleen Nick took her then six-year-old daughter, Morgan Nick, to Alma, Arkansas to attend a Little League Baseball game. According to interviews and news articles, there were almost 300 people in attendance at the game that evening.
According to Colleen, at approximately 10:30pm, two of Morgan’s friends, 8-year-old Jessica and 10-year-old Tye [last names omitted] invited her to play in a nearby field approximately 75-yards away to catch lightning bugs. Morgan begged her mother to allow her to go and play and even though she was hesitant, Colleen allowed her to go.
In her green Girl Scouts t-shirt and white tennis shoes, Morgan would have been hard to miss. And according to Colleen, she periodically glanced over to watch the children playing.
At 10:45pm, the baseball game concluded, and Morgan’s friends returned without her. The other children told Colleen that Morgan was in the parking lot near Colleen’s car emptying sand from her shoes.
Colleen immediately ran to her car and looked everywhere for Morgan. However, Morgan was nowhere to be found. Colleen notified one of the baseball coaches who began to ask Jessica and Tye more questions about what happened that evening. According to the children, a “creepy” man had approached the children as they were dumping sand from their shoes.
He had been standing next to a faded red Ford pickup truck with a white camper shell.
An immediate search began for Morgan and the man with the red Ford pickup truck, but neither could be found.
The police arrived and began their own search for the 4-foot-tall, blonde hair, blue-eyed little girl. However, Morgan was nowhere to be found.
Adults in attendance at the baseball game were interviewed and they begin to corroborate the story told by Jessica and Tye: a “creepy” Caucasian male between the ages of 23 and 38-years-old had been seen standing near a red Ford truck.
He was believed to be 6’ tall, 180 pounds with salt and pepper colored hair that was slicked back. He had a mustache and a one-inch thick beard. It is believed that he spoke with a “hillbilly” accent.
The truck he was driving was a low wheelbase, red Ford pickup truck with dulled paint and a white camper shell that had curtains on the inside covering the windows.
The camper shell was described as being too short for the truck bed and there was rear damage to the truck on the passenger side.
This man quickly became the prime suspect in Morgan’s disappearance.
Frightening stories began to circulate immediately about another attempted abduction by a man driving a red truck.
Authorities used this information to help create this composite sketch in Morgan’s disappearance:
This sketch was in circulation for over five years.
This is one of the details that I don’t understand. You see, soon after this sketch was revealed, it was determined that the other attempted abduction was in fact not an attempted abduction at all.
Instead, it was a man that was in a dispute with his estranged wife and he was not trying to kidnap their child. Authorities knew who this man was and yet, the original composite sketch remained in circulation.
And this sketch remained in circulation until 2001.
Then, in 2001, police released a new composite sketch with little information.
In fact, police told the media that they “would not release any information on who provided the details for the new composite sketch…but the new composite is from a different witness than the original composite.”
You can judge for yourself, but in my opinion, those sketches are drastically different.
So who were the authorities looking for during that five year time span?
It appears to me they were looking for the wrong man.
What do you think?
To be continued