Nicholas Carney, 65, will spend the rest of his life in prison after a Collin County jury convicted him of kidnapping and sexually assaulting an 8-year-old girl in Plano in the early 1990s. The life sentence effectively closes a cold case that lingered for decades and, investigators say, firmly links Carney to a second, near-identical attack on a child in Dallas in 1999. Modern DNA work and genealogical sleuthing are being credited with finally breaking the case open and spurring a wider search for other possible victims.
According to The Dallas Morning News, the Collin County District Attorney’s Office announced this week that jurors found Carney guilty of aggravated sexual assault of a child and returned a life sentence. Prosecutors said the conviction stems from a 1991 abduction in Plano, and that the same investigation also tied Carney to a March 1999 child abduction in Dallas.
How investigators cracked two cold cases
For years, both cases sat in police files with little more than aging evidence and haunting composite sketches. That changed in 2023, when detectives submitted preserved biological evidence from the two attacks for forensic investigative genetic genealogy, according to CBS Texas. The genealogical work built out a family tree that eventually pointed to Carney as a possible suspect.
Investigators then went old-school: they quietly collected DNA from discarded cigarette butts and other items outside an address in Ardmore, Oklahoma, where Carney was believed to be connected, officials said. Lab testing of those discarded samples matched the DNA profile from both the 1991 and 1999 crime scenes, providing the key link that allowed prosecutors to move forward.
The crimes tied to Carney
Authorities say the first attack happened on August 15, 1991, when an 8-year-old girl was kidnapped from an alley near a neighborhood pool in Plano, held for hours, and then left about 20 miles from her home, according to The Dallas Morning News. The second case, in March 1999, involved a 9-year-old girl who was abducted while walking home from school in Dallas and later found roughly 40 miles away, officials said…