Cold case solved: Plano police arrest man for 1990s child sex assualts
What we know:
Plano police arrested a 64-year-old man in Oklahoma on Dec. 19, charging him with the sexual assault of two young boys in separate incidents in North Texas during the 1990s.
Nicholas Ray Carney was arrested in Ardmore, Oklahoma, on charges of abduction and aggravated sexual assault of a child connected to incidents in 1991 and 1999.
Carney is currently being detained by the Plano Police Department. His bond is pending.
The Backstory:
On Aug. 15, 1991, an 8-year-old boy was walking with a friend in the 1700 block of Lake Hill Lane in Plano when a man approached them in an alley. The man, later identified as Carney, who was 35 years old at the time, lured the boy into his car and drove away.
Carney forced the child to view pornography and threatened him by saying he would "never see his family again" if the boy didn’t do what he ordered, according to the affidavit.
The boy was sexually assaulted and later found at a residence in Garland. He suffered neck and throat injuries.
On March 25, 1999, a 9-year-old boy was walking home from school with a friend in Dallas when Carney approached them in his car. He lured the boy into his vehicle and sexually assaulted him.
In both cases, police collected DNA evidence from the victims' clothing.
Police developed composite sketches of the suspect in both cases, describing him as a man about 6 feet tall with brown eyes, brown hair, a mustache, and a heavy cigarette smoker. The boys were also both lured into Carney’s car with animal-related manipulation tactics.
Timeline:
1991: Aug. 15: First assault (8-year-old boy).
1999: March 25: Second assault (9-year-old boy).
2004: March 8: DNA evidence from both cases linked.
2023: May: Investigators began using new technology to review the cases.
2024: February: Another search conducted; no DNA matches found.
October: Investigators began searching for possible family members of the unidentified suspect.
November: Police began investigating Carney at his Oklahoma residence.
December 16: DNA evidence matched Nicholas Carney.
December 19: Carney arrested.
Nicholas Carney Mugshot: Plano Police Department
How police solved the case:
Investigators explored a potential family connection to a deceased woman with 6 children.
This led to the identification of Keith Carney, a man convicted of murder in Utah in 1990.
Investigators then searched for Keith Carney's siblings, which led them to Nicholas Carney.
Background checks revealed a 1980 indecent exposure arrest for Nicholas Carney in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
A comparison of Carney's 1996 driver's license photo with the composite sketches further supported his identification.
DNA from a discarded trash bag belonging to Carney confirmed the match to the assault cases.