In a decades-long journey for justice, Collin County Criminal District Attorney’s Office announces that Nicholas Carney, a 65-year-old Oklahoma man, has been handed a life sentence for a crime that stretched back to 1991. An 8-year-old child was the victim of a kidnapping and sexual assault in Plano, Texas, a case which remained unsolved for years until DNA revived a trail gone cold. Carney was found guilty of aggravated sexual assault of a child, a vindication that arrives a haunting 34 years after the initial crime, with jurors imposing a symbolic $34 fine—one for each year lost to waiting, reported the Collin County DA’s Office.
The abduction, occurring under the broad daylight of an August day, saw the child taken while en route to a community pool with a friend. After enduring hours of assault, she was discarded 20 miles from her home. Detectives, at the time, gathered DNA evidence and engaged with artistry and imagination, hopeful to sketch the face of terror; yet, the assailant remained a ghost in the justice system. The break in the case came much later, in 2023, when the tenacity of Plano Police Detective Aaron Benzick, Dallas Police Detective Elizabeth DeAngelis, and Texas Ranger Jason Shea resubmitted the DNA evidence for forensic investigative genetic genealogy analysis, a modern-day tool that unwound the spirals of history to reveal Carney’s identity…