The Disappearance of Morgan Nick

Morgan Nick was starting to get restless. For the past hour and a half, the 6-year-old had been sitting with her mother at a Little League game in Alma, Arkansas. For a while, she amused herself by repeatedly untying her mother’s shoelaces when she wasn’t looking, but her giggling kept giving her away. When two of her friends stopped and asked if she wanted to play with them, she was happy for the distraction. It took a bit of pleading before her mother agreed to let her, but once she had permission she happily bounded down the bleachers and followed her friends to a sandy area near the parking lot. One minute, she was less than 150 feet away from her mother and the rest of the 300 people attending the Little League game. The next minute, she was gone. It was June 9, 1995, and the tiny town of Alma would never be the same.

Morgan lived in Ozark, Arkansas with her mom, Colleen Nick, and two younger siblings. She tended to be shy around people she didn’t know, but she enjoyed making people laugh and had an infectious smile. She took her role as big sister seriously; she was just learning to read, but would try to read bedtime stories to her younger brother each night. In many ways, she was a typical little girl who loved cats, bubblegum, and the color pink. Although her friends had tried to get her to join them in track and field when she was in first grade, she quit after one practice. She hadn’t realized how sweaty running would make her, and she hated to sweat. She had her mom sign her up for Girl Scouts instead, preferring to sit inside and do arts and crafts. She loved being a Girl Scout, and even wore her bright green Girl Scout shirt to the Little League game.

Colleen had been invited to attend the game by friends who had a child on the team. Although Alma was 30 miles from Ozark, Colleen decided to make the trip. Morgan’s siblings, 3-year-old Logan and 1-year-old Taryn, were too young to enjoy the game, so Colleen left them at home with her mother. She had never been to the Alma Little League field before, but it was located near I-40 and easy to find. After parking in the lot adjoining the field, she and Morgan joined her friends on the bleachers and settled in to watch the game.

Not long after they arrived, Morgan saw two children that she knew, 8-year-old Jessica and 10-year-old Tye. They asked Morgan if she wanted to play with them, but she told them she wanted to stay in the bleachers with her mother. For the next hour, she sat and watched the game while Colleen chatted with her friends. When she got bored of baseball and adult conversation, she started untying her mother’s sneakers. As soon as Colleen retied them, Morgan would untie them again. Eventually, even this game lost its appeal.

After the sun set, Jessica and Tye returned to the bleachers and asked Morgan if she wanted to catch fireflies with them. Morgan asked her mother if she could, but Colleen told her she didn’t think it was a good idea. It was dark, the game was almost over, and she was unfamiliar with the park. As Morgan began to plead with her mother, Colleen’s friends jumped in and assured Colleen it was perfectly safe. Children would always roam around freely at the park and nothing had ever happened to any of them. Reluctantly, Colleen gave Morgan permission. After giving her mom a quick hug and kiss, the little girl left with her friends.

Colleen relaxed a little when she realized she could see Morgan from where she was sitting. The three children had climbed a small sandy hill overlooking the parking lot and were chasing after fireflies. Colleen glanced over three or four times in the next 10 minutes; the children were in the same place each time. As the baseball game finished up, the three children abandoned their hunt for fireflies. They trudged back to the parking lot, stopping briefly to empty sand out of their shoes. As Colleen made her way to the parking lot, she saw Jessica and Tye heading back towards the field. They told her when they left Morgan, she had been leaning on Colleen’s car trying to get all the sand out of her sneakers. They assumed she was going to wait there for her mother. Colleen approached her car but saw no sign of Morgan. She circled the car, willing herself not to panic. She frantically scanned the thinning crowd for her daughter, but it only took seconds for her to realize that Morgan was gone. It was a small ball field, and there was nowhere for a child to hide. Morgan was timid in new situations, and Colleen knew she wouldn’t have wandered off on her own. If she was missing, someone must have taken her.

The police were called, and an officer from the Alma Police Department was on the scene in minutes. Tye and Jessica were the last people to see Morgan, and when the officer spoke with them, he immediately realized the situation was serious. They told the officer a man in the parking lot had been talking to them earlier, and he had been watching them while they were chasing fireflies. When they were dumping the sand out of their shoes, they saw him leaning on his pickup truck, still watching them. He and his truck vanished from the parking lot at the same time Morgan went missing.

The children may not have understood the significance of seeing this man, but the officer did. Earlier in the day, a man in a red pickup truck had tried to abduct a 4-year-old girl from a laundromat in Alma. The child’s mother had realized what was going on and was able to prevent him from taking her daughter, but the man was long gone by the time police were notified of the incident. It was possible this same man had taken Morgan. The responding officer immediately called for backup.

Before the weekend was over, the FBI and the Arkansas State Police joined the investigation. They launched a massive search for Morgan, with searchers on foot, horseback, and in the air scouring the area for anything related to the case. They created a composite sketch of the man Jessica and Tye had seen; by Sunday there would be a nationwide manhunt for him and his truck. The man was described as being anywhere from 23–38 years old, around 6 feet tall and 180 pounds. He had dark or salt & pepper hair, a mustache, and a short beard. He had been wearing only a pair of cut-off jean shorts and had a hairy chest. The children thought he had a hillbilly-type accent. His truck had been an old red Ford pickup with a white camper shell. The camper had possible damage on its right rear side, and was about four inches too short for the truck. The truck had a short wheel base, dull, old-looking paint, and possibly an Arkansas license plate. No one had actually seen the man abduct Morgan, but he was the best suspect they had and they poured most of their resources into finding him.

Detectives were assigned to interview Morgan’s family, friends, and the 300 people who had attended the Little League game. As in all missing children investigations, they started with the parents. Collen and John Nick, Morgan’s father, had divorced six months earlier, but they had a cordial relationship and there was no ongoing custody battle between them. Detectives were able to quickly rule them out as suspects.

The small town of Alma rallied around the Nick family and did everything possible to assist in the search. Colleen refused to go home to Ozark without her daughter, so she and her family spent the first six weeks of the search living in Alma’s volunteer firehouse. Located directly across the street from the police station, the firehouse would become the unofficial base for the search. Pink ribbons went up all over town to remind people Morgan was still missing, and every single building displayed both Morgan’s missing poster and the composite sketch of the suspect.

Police received dozens of potential sightings; they followed up on 247 reports of red trucks in the first week of the search. People called from all over Arkansas, as well as from Texas and Oklahoma. Police investigated every tip as it came it, convinced that they would soon find the truck — and driver — that would lead them to Morgan. Each lead, however, turned out to be a dead end.

Two weeks after Morgan went missing, police got a call from a man in Stuttgart, Arkansas who was certain he had seen both Morgan and her abductor. Albert Harvey had been doing yardwork when he saw a man trying to break into his truck. Once the man realized there was someone watching him, he ran off into a wooded area, dragging a small blonde girl behind him. Albert said the man looked just like the composite sketch of the suspect, and the blonde girl was definitely Morgan. Police were elated and immediately sent dozens of officers to Stuttgart, about 200 miles away from Alma. Albert was so certain about the identification that Morgan’s parents were flown in by private jet so they could be on scene when their daughter was found.

Authorities blocked off a 6-square-mile area within Stuttgart and launched a massive search. National Guard helicopters were deployed, and officers combed through the dense brush using infrared light, search dogs, and mounted units. Countless volunteers from the surrounding community came out to offer their assistance. The weather was brutally hot and humid, and there were mosquitoes everywhere. Despite the grueling conditions, the searchers pushed on for more than 16 hours without finding anything.

John and Colleen grew more anxious with each passing hour, but detectives grew more suspicious. They brought Albert Harvey in for questioning. Even after failing two polygraph examinations administered by the FBI and the Arkansas State Police, Albert insisted he had seen Morgan and her abductor. It took two more hours of questioning before he broke down and admitted he had been lying. He had actually seen a man trying to break into his truck, but he had no idea if he looked like the potential abductor and there had never been a blonde girl with him.

Thousands of dollars had been wasted on the search effort in Stuttgart, but Albert didn’t seem to appreciate the seriousness of what he had done. He told police he just got carried away, and apologized to the searchers for having to put up with all the mosquitoes. He was then arrested and charged with filing a false police report. Devastated, the Nicks flew back to Alma without their daughter.

By August, leads in the case were dwindling. Although police vowed that they wouldn’t stop working the case until they found Morgan, the trail was growing cold. Searches would continue to be held sporadically, and detectives still followed up on every tip they received, but nothing brought them any closer to finding Morgan. FBI profilers believed it was possible that the abductor was a professional kidnapper, someone who took children and then sold them on the black market.

Colleen refused to give up on the search, and was confident that Morgan was out there somewhere waiting to be found. Morgan’s siblings were too young to fully understand what was going on; Logan couldn’t understand how his mother had managed to lose his sister and demanded she go out and find her. He was afraid that the people who had Morgan would be mean to her. He worried that they would yell at her all the time and refuse to take her out for pizza. To a 3-year-old, that was the worst fate imaginable.

Years went by, and the investigation stalled. Then, in January 2002, a new tip that came in led police to investigate a property in Logan County, Arkansas. Though they released no information about the tip itself, they said it was specific enough that they felt a search was justified. They brought search dogs to the property and then spent a day digging up different sections, but found nothing.

In November 2010, federal investigators searched a vacant house in Spiro, Oklahoma after receiving a tip from a confidential informant. Spiro was about 25 miles from Alma, and the property they searched had once belonged to a convicted child molester who was currently in jail. Although investigators had nothing linking the man to Morgan’s disappearance, they searched through the home looking for possible DNA evidence that might indicate Morgan had been there. Unfortunately, they didn’t uncover anything related to the case.

In December 2017, investigators returned to the same house in Spiro. This time, their search focused on a well located on the property. They dug around the property for 10 hours before concluding there was nothing to be found. This was the last major search pertaining to Morgan’s disappearance. Her case remains open, and police are still hopeful that they will one day get the tip they need to finally learn what happened to Morgan.

Morgan’s family never stopped searching for her. In 1996, Colleen started the Morgan Nick Foundation. Her main focus remained finding Morgan, but she also lobbied for changes in how missing children cases were handled and worked with legislators to enact laws geared towards child safety. The foundation works to educate children about the dangers of child abduction and offers crisis management to families of missing children. For more information, visit: https://morgannickfoundation.com/

Morgan Nick was 6 years old when she disappeared in 1995. She has blonde hair and blue eyes. At the time of her disappearance she was 4 feet tall and weighed 55 pounds. She had five visible silver caps on her molars that were due to be removed in 2000. When last seen, she was wearing a green Girl Scout shirt, cut-off denim shorts, and white tennis shoes. If you have any information about Morgan, please call the Alma Police Department at 501–632–3333, the Arkansas State Police at 501–783–5795, or the FBI at 202–324–3000.