Britney Ujlaky was a free spirit.

The beautiful 16-year-old loved riding on horseback through the picturesque hills of Spring Creek, Nevada, where she lived. She was close with her friends, wasn’t afraid to stand up for herself, and had an exceptionally tight bond with her gold-miner father, according to Dateline: Unforgettable.

But on Sunday, March 8, 2020, Britney mysteriously vanished, leaving her family desperate for answers.

“Some stories are memorable for their twists, or their characters, or where they happened,” correspondent Josh Mankiewicz said in the “Open Desert” episode of Dateline: Unforgettable. “This one checked all three boxes.

“Spring Creek is in Elko County, Nevada, a place I’d never been,” he added. “It’s genuine cowboy country and its natural beauty is stunning. It’s also where the Ujlaky family came face to face with a cold hard truth: You can do everything possible to keep your child safe and sometimes that still won’t be enough.” 

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The day Britney Uklaky disappeared 

Sunday, March 8, 2020 started out just like any day for the Uklaky family. Britney, a self-appointed music critic of her dad’s heavy metal band File Not Found, accompanied him to his weekly band practice.

“She’d storm in like she owned the place,” Jim remembered of her frequent advice, telling the band members every time they missed a note or didn’t sing something right. 

But she was also a typical teen and eventually tired of the middle-aged musicians. Britney arranged for her friend Bryce Dickey to pick her up at a nearby park in the mid-afternoon, promising her dad that she’d be home later, likely even beating him home from practice. 

Jim grabbed dinner with the band and then drove home, calling Britney along the way. But his calls went unanswered, something that was highly unusual for the teen.

“After the third time, [I] started getting a little panicky,” Jim said. 

It was now nearly 7 p.m. and Jim hadn’t heard back from Britney. He called her mom, Alisha, thinking maybe she’d gone to visit her, but she hadn’t heard from their daughter either.

Britney’s younger brother James Jr. called Dickey to find out what time he last saw her.

“He told me he’d dropped her off with some new friend at the high school,” James Jr. said.

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Bryce Dickey tells story of cowboy

Dickey later told the same story to the Elko County Sheriff’s Office, insisting that after hanging out with her for about three and a half hours that afternoon, he dropped Britney off at the school.

“He said that she wanted to get dropped off at the Spring Creek High School because she was going to meet a new friend and he saw her get into a truck with an unknown cowboy,” Nick Stake, then a detective, told Dateline.

Dickey — who had been a close friend of Britney’s since middle school and acted as a big brother of sorts — described the truck as an older model green Ford F-150 and said the man was a tall, white cowboy, adding that Britney never told him the stranger’s name.

As news of Britney’s disappearance began to spread, her mom got a tip on social media that her daughter may have been out with a man named JT. 

That tracked with what Ashby knew about her friend. 

“She had started talking to a guy named JT,” she recalled. “She had told me about him.” 

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Detectives set out to try to track down the mysterious stranger driving a green pickup truck, who possibly went by JT. But after combing through databases and DMV files and chasing down false leads, they weren’t able to find anyone that appeared to match the description.

They also knew that Britney had been bullied by a group of girls at her high school and found video of Britney getting into a physical altercation with two of them at a rodeo about a year before she disappeared. 

They considered the possibility that Britney had been the victim of foul play at the hands of one of the girls, but that theory didn’t pan out either. 

Search widens for Britney Ujlaky

Investigators and Britney’s family launched an extensive search effort through the vast Elko County wilderness. Britney’s friends, including Dickey, came out in droves to try to find any sign of the missing teen.

Jim took his truck, driving through the remote woods looking for any sign of her. By then, he had a sense that his daughter was no longer alive.

“We’re looking in the sky for birds cause we were out looking for a body,” he said. “We couldn’t see anything, couldn’t find anything.”

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Britney Ujlaky’s body found

But on the third day of the search, someone stumbled on a blue tarp and discovered the teen’s body hidden underneath it. She’d been strangled, had a single knife wound to the neck and there were signs of a possible sexual assault.

Britney’s mom Alicia was at the sheriff’s office when Stake got the news.

“I couldn’t walk,” she said. “My legs didn’t work and he just had this look on his face, just this, such tortured look on his face and he’s like, ‘I gotta go, I gotta go, are you ok?’” 

For Jim, it brought a sense of relief, knowing his daughter wasn’t out in the elements any longer, but he also deeply grieved the loss of his daughter.

“I lost the only person who ever truly loved me, without any conditions, nothing,” he said. “My son loved me too, but she was the first born and you know living the life I led didn’t think anyone ever cared. She did.” 

At the crime scene, detectives found what looked like chewing tobacco on the ground and recovered a used condom about 60 feet away from the body.

Investigators shift focus back to Bryce Dickey 

After still finding no sign of the mysterious stranger that Britney allegedly went off with, detectives turned their attention to the last known person to see the teen alive: Dickey. 

Dickey was two years older than Britney and had been a close friend for years.

“He’s kind of just one of those geeky kids, just a shy little cowboy kid that would kick his feet and look at the ground when you talked to him,” Britney’s mom, Alisha, recalled. “He’d come sit over at the house while Britney was getting her makeup on to go to the rodeos. He was always her ride to places.” 

The family had no reason to worry when Britney left that day with Dickey, since she had done the same thing so many other days. Britney even posted a picture of the pair smiling from Dickey’s truck on the last day of her life.

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Investigators noted that the desert landscape in the photo was eerily similar to their crime scene. They called Dickey in for more questioning and he agreed to hand over his phone and give a DNA sample. It turned out to be a match to the condom and the chewing tobacco left at the scene.

Surveillance footage also confirmed he’d been lying to investigators about where he was that day and put his truck going in the direction of the crime scene, not the high school. 

Confronted with the information, Dickey admitted to having sex with Britney, but said they both immediately regretted it. He insisted he didn’t kill her. 

Bryce Dickey charged in Britney Ujlaky’s murder

Dickey was arrested and charged with sexual assault and murder.

Authorities were never able to determine exactly why Dickey turned on his friend that afternoon, but those who knew him suspect he may have been tired of being relegated to the friend zone.

“You know, unfortunately, or maybe even fortunately, we’ll never know exactly what happened, but I know that the evidence supported that Britney and Bryce went out there willingly,” Elko County District Attorney Tyler Ingram said. “I think Bryce didn’t get what Bryce wanted and he took it into this own hands.” 

Dickey went on trial in May of 2022 and was found guilty of murder and sexual assault. He was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole at the age of 64 years old.

For Jim, it could never be enough of a punishment. 

“There’s no justice,” he said. “She’s not coming back.”