36 years after ice cream man's arrest, a childhood victim helped secure a life sentence

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

Flipping through old photo albums, Amy Birch can't make sense of what she experienced at a young age.

"When I think about it, that's not who I see," she said. "I can only think of how I am now."

She's one of three childhood victims who took the stand in the trial of Nicholas Carney this past January, where he was found guilty of the 1991 kidnapping and sexual assault of an 8-year-old Plano girl.

Witnesses, called by Collin County prosecutors, painted the attack as part of a pattern of behavior by Carney, linking him to similar crimes over the decades.

The ice cream man

Birch's childhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma was fairly normal, she said. Warm summer days were broken up by visits to her neighborhood from the ice cream truck.

"We were always super excited when the ice cream man came down our street. Who, you know, who's not excited?" she said.

On July 17, 1980, at the age of 6, she heard the truck coming.

Her cousin was with her that day, she recalled, and the ice cream man had a request.

"Hey, would you mind go putting some ice and some water in this for me? It's really hot outside," Birch remembers him asking as he held out an empty thermos. "And of course, my cousin was, 'oh yeah, no problem.'"

Suddenly, she was alone with the man.

"He was like, 'Hey while we're waiting, do you want to come see my ice cream truck?' I was like, 'Oh yeah, that's cool.' So I walked over and I was just kind of leaning in, looking inside the truck, and he asked me if I wanted to get in," she said.

Birch said she immediately said no.

"And when I started to step back, he had unzipped his pants, and asked me if I wanted to touch him," she said.

Setting a trap

Birch ran inside where she remembers sitting on the couch for what felt like hours.

"My mom said it was more like 20 minutes, and she said that I just said, 'Mom, when Joe Kelly went to go get water for the ice cream man, he asked me if I wanted to look in his truck.'"

She recounted what had happened for her mother and then her father, who called the police.

Without a name, officers didn't have a suspect, so Birch's father enlisted a friend to help catch the man.

Two days later, when the same ice cream truck driver returned, they were ready.

"My dad's friend Bill was already parked over there," she said, pointing to the driveway of a vacant home across the street from where her childhood home had stood, "and when he passed, they made a roadblock."

The ice cream truck was left trapped on their dead-end road.

"And my mom called 911 and said, 'We got him,'" Birch said.

Nicholas Carney was arrested, but made a deal with prosecutors to plead guilty to a misdemeanor.

"I remember sitting on a bench outside the courtroom," Birch said. "A gentleman came out and said, 'I've got good news. You don't have to testify.'"

She said she assumed Carney went to jail, and did not think about or talk about what happened for decades.

That all changed in 2024, when she got a voicemail.

A pattern of behavior

"It said, 'Hi Amy, my name is detective whatever, and I'm hoping that you remember a case that happened over 40 years ago,'" Birch said. "And instantly, I mean, I instantly got sick. I mean, I instantly knew what it was."

Carney, she would learn, had been sentenced to one year of probation for exposing himself to her. Oklahoma did not have a sex offender registry until years later, so he never appeared on it.

Police in Texas, though, looking into a pair of kidnappings and sexual assaults in 1991 and 1999 involving young girls, had matched previously unidentified DNA found on both victims to Carney.

"I was pretty dumbfounded," she said.

In January, Birch travelled to Collin County where Carney was on trial for the 1991 case involving Ashley Keith, who was just 8 years old when she was snatched while walking to the neighborhood pool with a friend.

Three women – Birch, Keith, and the victim of the 1999 assault – all testified to help Collin County prosecutors establish a pattern of behavior.

"I was very nervous. I have a lot of bad memories," Birch said. "And looking at him, when you're testifying and he's just sitting there kind of with a smile on his face."

Despite how difficult it was, Birch said it was important for her to testify.

"What these girls went through was much worse than I could ever imagine, and, you know, I want him not to get a slap on the wrist again. I want him to be punished," she said.

In an interview with CBS News Texas, Keith spoke of the support she received.

"It was just incredibly moving that, yes, they were there for me, but that they told their stories, and that they were brave enough to do it," she said. "It takes tremendous courage because I know that so many times, people can feel – victims specifically – can feel like, 'I don't know if my words will be enough.' And they were."

Life in prison

The trauma, and the decades that have passed, have left gaps in Keith's memory.

"Getting up on the stand, saying you don't remember things, talking to a jury of people about it," Keith said, "you feel very vulnerable. And so to feel vulnerable again in front of your abuser is hard."

It didn't take long, though, for the jury to return a guilty verdict and sentence Carney to life behind bars.

As the verdict was read, Keith visibly exhaled, dropping her head into her hands.

"It was just an immense relief that they got it right, that they did it right," she said.

Birch sat nearby.

"I think all of us were just trying to hold in our screams and celebration, because it was a long time coming for everybody," she said.

The next chapter

For police, prosecutors and survivors, though, the work of uncovering Nicholas Carney's crimes is not over. Carney is now awaiting trial on charges relating to the 1999 kidnapping and sexual assault in Dallas. 

There are also suspicions among his survivors and law enforcement that he may be responsible for other assaults. A phone call he made from jail has fueled those beliefs.

For our report on the ongoing investigation into Carney, watch CBS News Texas at 10 p.m. on Thursday, July 22.