After more than three decades, the Plano Police Department has made an arrest in a 1991 sexual assault case, thanks to modern DNA testing.
Nicholas Ray Carney, 64, was arrested Wednesday in Oklahoma and is facing charges related to the abduction and sexual assault of an 8-year-old girl.
Carney’s crimes took place in August of 1991 when the victim and a friend were walking in their Plano neighborhood. According to court documents, the man approached the children in his car, claiming he needed help finding his lost dog before abducting the 8-year-old girl and driving off. The victim was later found “unharmed” in Garland, Texas, but the case went unsolved for years.
Plano police collected DNA evidence at the time of the assault, and the young victim was later able to provide a description of her abductor. However, the case remained cold for nearly 30 years, with no further leads that could find the suspect.
That changed earlier this year when a Plano detective took it upon himself to reexamine the case.
With the help of an outside genealogical firm, investigators entered the DNA evidence into a national database. The results then provided a partial match, which led detectives to investigate the family members of the individual identified by the database, ultimately pointing to Carney.
In a breakthrough moment, investigators learned that Carney had been stopped by Garland police a few months after the attack. Detectives traced his location and found that he had been living in Ardmore, Oklahoma, for years, reported Audacity. Police then collected evidence from Carney’s trash and sent it for DNA testing. When the results confirmed the match with the cold case evidence, Plano officials obtained a warrant for Carney’s arrest.
Carney was then taken into custody without incident and is currently awaiting extradition to Texas. According to reports, police believe he may also be linked to a similar sexual assault case in Dallas from 1999.
While the arrest provides some sense of closure, the Plano Police Department is also urging anyone with relevant information about Carney’s possible involvement in other crimes to contact law enforcement.
The Plano Police Department can be contacted through its tip line at 972-941-2148 or by email at [email protected].