Even after Nicholas Carney's life sentence, the hunt for more victims isn't over: "I have an illness"

This story is part 4 of the CBS News Texas series The Long Hunt. Click here for part 1, part 2 and part 3.

Convicted kidnapper Nicholas Carney is already serving a life sentence, but the investigation into his alleged crimes isn't over.

"I have no doubt that there's probably more victims out there," said Ashley Keith, who Carney abducted and sexually assaulted when she was 8 years old.

"Oh, I feel like there's probably hundreds," said Amy Birch, who Carney exposed himself to while working as an ice cream man when she was 6 years old. "That's my whole reason, really, for speaking up."

The crimes of Nicholas Carney

In this series, The Long Hunt, CBS News Texas has retraced Nicholas Carney's crimes across two decades and two states.

In 1981, he was driving an ice cream truck in Tulsa, when Birch said he invited her to take a look inside.

"He had unzipped his pants," Birch said in an interview with CBS News Texas, "and asked me if I wanted to touch him."

After decades under the radar, he was arrested in December of 2024. Earlier this year, a Collin County jury convicted Carney for Keith's 1991 kidnapping and sexual assault.

She was abducted as she walked with a friend less than a block from her home in Plano, Texas. 

"He asked if we'd seen his white dog," Keith said, "just to get us to stop long enough, and then the next thing I remembered is he grabbed me." 

Carney is now awaiting trial for the 1999 kidnapping and sexual assault of a 9-year-old Dallas girl who was taken while walking home with a friend. According to reports at the time, the attacker had gotten their attention by asking if they'd seen kittens in a nearby field. 

Both Keith and the victim in 1999 were released hours after their abductions. 

"This is a man who knew how to manipulate children by either being an ice cream truck driver or by talking about pets," Keith said. "He was doing these things in broad daylight." 

Plano Police Det. Aaron Benzick, whose investigation of Keith's decades-old kidnapping resulted in Carney's life sentence, said his work is not over. "This is a pattern. What's going on in the voids in between?" he said. "I don't know that I have all his victims identified."

Tracking Carney's movements

Benzick has gathered pictures of Carney through the years and identified 23 vehicles he used, in addition to multiple RVs and motorcycles.

Plano investigators have also found five states and 40 specific cities where he either lived or frequently visited, and they have reached out to law enforcement in those locations with details of Carney's past. He worked for auto body shops, as a satellite dish installer and as a door-to-door vacuum salesman.

"He was very transient through the Texas and Oklahoma area for a while," said Benzick, who placed Carney in Dallas at the time of the assaults in 1991 and 1999. 

"I'm not really that person"

Benzick has also continued to keep tabs on Carney as he sits in jail. It's how he heard a conversation in which Carney seemingly addressed his crimes.

A week before the trial in Collin County, Carney called his son.

"You guys don't have to come to trial," Carney said in a recording obtained by CBS News Texas. "I'm sorry it all happened," Carney told his son.

"I did want to let you know why. It's because I have an illness, Chris. It's been with me ever since I was a kid, a little boy," Carney said in the recording. "I just wanted you to know I'm not really that person unless something triggers me. And that's what happened. But I helped, took care of myself for 30 years, being able to understand what my brain is going through."

"He starts talking about having a problem, and he's tried to control it, but sometimes it comes out and he gets triggered," Benzick said. "To me, it's a confession. It's shocking."

The next step

In his upcoming trial in Dallas County, the three women who testified against Carney in Collin County may once again take the stand. 

"The bravery of the other women coming forward, I was so proud of them and so incredibly grateful," Keith said.

Although she may never know how many other victims are out there, she is finally confident there won't be any more. 

"He will no longer hurt anyone else, even his own family, and that is a relief to know that decades of the pain and the chaos that he's caused is no more," she said. 

Keith said she credits a child therapist for helping her heal, so much so that she went on to become a trauma therapist for children who themselves have experienced physical and sexual abuse. She has testified in their cases, too, something she said helped prepare her for taking the stand to tell her own story.

For more, read Ashley Keith's account of survival, learn how law enforcement used genetic genealogy to break the decades old case, and hear from the women who took the stand to hold Carney accountable.