Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / DNA evidence found in truck leads to suspect in Arkansas girl's 1995 abduction

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DNA evidence found in truck leads to suspect in Arkansas girl's 1995 abduction · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, ready to dive into a case that's both heartbreaking
• 0:03
  and well kind of hopeful all at the same time.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Woop Fool's a good word for it. It's Morgan Nick
• 0:08
  we're talking.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: About, right exactly, And if you don't know the name
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  right off the bat, you definitely know the story. Six
• 0:13
  year old vanishes from a little league game back in
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  ninety five Arkansas.
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  Speaker 2: It was huge, massive search haunted that community for what
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  is it, almost thirty years now, and only recently did things.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Really start moving because for the longest time it was
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  like she just vanished, poof, gone, no trace. So where
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  are we starting this deep dive.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Let's rewind to twenty nineteen, new team on the case, right,
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  They're going back through everything and they get this idea.
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  Let's find that red.
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  Speaker 1: Truck, the one witnesses saw at the ballpark with the
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  camper show.
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  Speaker 2: The one and only. Now, obviously a lot can happen
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  in twenty years. Cars change hands, get sold, rust away,
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  who knows, but they somehow managed to track this thing down.
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  Speaker 1: No way they found it.
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  Speaker 2: Found it and get this, the current owner had nothing
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  to do with the case, totally cooperative. Let them search
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  the truck.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, so they find the truck. I'm guessing it wasn't empty,
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  otherwise we wouldn't be talking about it.
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  Speaker 2: You'd be surprised how many cases hinge on a hunch
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  and a bit of luck, they find hairstrands.
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  Speaker 1: Tiny, easily missed, but enough.
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  Speaker 2: And this is where the magic, or I guess, the
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  science of forensic genealogy comes in.
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  Speaker 1: Right on the money. They send these hairs off to
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  a specialized lab Ofuthroom Laboratory in Texas and they're basically
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  DNA whisperers.
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  Speaker 2: Over there, DNA whisperers. Huh, So break it down for me.
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  What do these DNA whispers actually do? Okay, so you
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  know how regular DNA testing it's like trying to find
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  a name in a phone book. You need the exact
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  name to get a match. Forensic genealogy is different. How
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  It's like, imagine you've got a giant family tree, right,
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  but it's got holes, missing branches. Forensic genealogy uses DNA
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  to fill those in. You might not get an exact
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  match to your suspect, but you find their great aunt
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  or a second cousin.
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  Speaker 1: And from there they piece it together like a puzzle exactly.
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  Speaker 2: It's investigative genealogy really use those DNA matches to zero
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  in on your suspect, narrow down the possibilities.
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  Speaker 1: And in Morgan Nick's case, this is what cracks it
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  wide open.
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  Speaker 2: They get a familial match on the DNA, not to
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  Morgan herself, but to her mother, Colleen Wow. So that
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  means it means it's incredibly likely Morgan had been in
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  that truck. And to make things even more clearcut, her
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  family said they didn't even know the original owner, the
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  original owner being Billy Jecklinks. And this, my friend, is
• 2:34
  where it gets really interesting and honestly pretty frustrating. Why frustrating, Well,
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  Lynks was actually on the investigator's radar from the beginning.
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  He fit the profile, drove a red truck, even got
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  arrested for soliciting a miner later on.
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  Speaker 1: So he was the obvious choice, you'd think.
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  Speaker 2: But back then it was the nineties, figure prints, eyewitness accounts,
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  DNA technology was in its infancy.
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  Speaker 1: They couldn't definitively pin him to the disappearance exactly.
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  Speaker 2: It's a good reminder though, of how far we've come.
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  Imagine if forensic genealogy was around back then, it might
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  have been a very different story.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, so what about Links? What happened to him?
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  Speaker 2: Brace yourself because this is the rough part. Links died
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  in prison in two thousand unrelated charges.
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  Speaker 1: So even with the DNA match, with finally knowing who
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  likely took her, they can't even bring charges.
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  Speaker 2: Sadly, no, but there's a bit of peace and knowing
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  right closure for the family. It's bittersweet.
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  Speaker 1: Bittersweet is a good word for it, but it does
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  make you think, if this technology could help solve a
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  case of this cold, what else is out there?
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  Speaker 2: Oh, they're countless cases, families waiting for answers. And the
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  hope is that with every breakthrough like this, we inch
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  closer to those answers and maybe just maybe give families
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  like Morgan's a little bit of peace.