Former Van Buren detective recounts 1995 interview with Billy Jack Lincks

Yahoo

19 hours ago

VAN BUREN, Ark. (KNWA/KFTA) — Billy Jack Lincks was a father, husband, World War II veteran and airline employee, but, most notably, he's the suspect in Morgan Nick's disappearance.
Lincks had a prior criminal history, being convicted of sexual solicitation of a child in 1996 and first-degree carnal abuse in 1992, which was later repealed by Arkansas Act 1738 of 2001. His 1996 conviction was met with a six-year prison sentence, serving only four of those before dying at Tucker Unit on Aug. 5, 2000 at 75 years old.
Kevin Johnson, a former detective with the Van Buren Police Department and now a pastor at Home Church in Barling, said he always saw Lincks as an alcoholic, crossing paths with him for the first time when he arrested him for Driving Under the Influence in 1984.
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'You can take the nicest person there is and give them alcohol, and they become a lunatic or a maniac or a total angry person that you don't want to be around,' Johnson said. 'When he started drinking, I think the demons, so to speak, came out and he did the things he shouldn't have done.'
On Aug. 29, 1995 — two months after Nick's disappearance — Lincks drank a fifth of rum, drove from Fort Smith to a Sonic on the corner of Fifth and Broadway streets in Van Buren and attempted to lure an 11-year-old girl into his 1986 red Chevrolet truck, court documents said.
An incident report from Aug. 29, 1995, stated Lincks offered four boys—three of whom were brothers and another being a friend—money to leave, while he talked to their sister on the corner of Fifth and Webster streets. While at the street corner, Lincks offered the 11-year-old money in return for sexual favors before she turned around and ran back to the Sonic screaming and crying for her brothers to call the police.
Lincks sped away and hit a telephone pole in the process. Johnson said the red paint from Lincks' truck scraped off onto the pole. That clue, coupled with descriptions from the 11-year-old girl, led investigators to Lincks, Johnson said.
Johnson brought Lincks in for an interview at the Van Buren Police Department Aug. 30, 1995, one day after the incident.
'He was never combative. He was never argumentative, anything like that,' Johnson said. 'It was a very casual conversation. It wasn't like there was any rub against each other.'
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However, the one thing Johnson was looking to get out of Lincks — the truth — was hard to come by.
In the interview, Lincks recalled being in Fort Smith before going to the Sonic, descriptions of what the children looked like, offering the children money and hitting something when driving away, all despite claiming he was too drunk to remember what he talked about with the 11-year-old girl.
'He did remember it,' Johnson said. 'He was just withholding that because of the seriousness of the moment.'
Nearly 25 years after his death, Lincks was named a suspect in Nick's disappearance by the Alma Police Department on Oct. 1, 2024, after a hair sample from his truck linked back to her DNA.
Johnson has been a pastor for 26 years. He believes in the afterlife, but he's unsure of where Lincks' spirit may be.
'Hard for me to say because I'm not the judge,' Johnson said. 'Everyone who passes this life, if you're related to them, no matter what, you have hope.
'Maybe he turned his life around in prison, we don't know, but certainly, that's always the hope,' Johnson said.
Police ask the public to contact them at 1-800-843-5678 if they have anything that can help further the investigation into Nick's disappearance.
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