The Mysterious Murder of Nima Carter, Kidnapped from Her Cradle
Infants rarely become victims of murderers, but each such crime is shocking in its senseless ruthlessness. Usually, small children suffer at the hands of maniacs or become objects of revenge. But there are also special cases that have not been solved or even explained. One of such mysterious cases was the murder of 19-month-old Nima Carter, which occurred in 1977 in Oklahoma.
On the night of October 31, 1977, little Nima was acting up. She was crying and keeping her parents awake. Rose and George Carter were determined not to pick up their daughter because they didn't want to spoil her. The couple lay in their bedroom and waited for the baby to calm down. By the middle of the night, the crying had stopped and the couple finally fell asleep.
And in the morning the baby's crib was empty. The parents couldn't believe their eyes. The girl had barely learned to walk and was unlikely to have gone far. George and Rose searched the house from top to bottom - from the basement to the attic, walked around the garden and yard several times, but to no avail. In the baby's room, everything looked normal: the windows were closed, things were in their places. Only Nima herself was missing.
The kidnapped girl's parents were sure that the front door was securely locked and no one could enter the house from the outside. This meant that the attacker was already inside. The only suitable place to hide was a large closet. Apparently, the kidnapper sat there for a long time among the things, patiently waiting for the family to fall asleep. Later, in an interview with the press, George said:
The search for Nima Carter began that morning, involving Oklahoma police and hundreds of volunteers. The Carters' home town was small, and if the child had not been taken outside of it, the chances of finding her were high. But the search was unsuccessful, despite the fact that the search operation expanded to the entire state and neighboring Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico.
Nima Carter was found only a month later. All this time she was in the city - her body was lying in a refrigerator in one of the abandoned houses. Experts determined that the child died of asphyxia. Nima simply suffocated in a hermetically sealed refrigerator chamber. The first thing the police did was test Nima's parents on a lie detector. But Rose and George were not involved in the murder. But the investigators found out several interesting details.
Two months before Nima disappeared, strange and frightening events began to occur in the Carters' home. First, someone poisoned their dog. Later, while the family was away, an intruder entered the house through the back door and went on a rampage. It was strange: things were broken and thrown around, but nothing was stolen. This kind of senseless cruelty was especially disturbing.
Police began questioning the townspeople and learned another important detail. A year before Nima's murder, a woman named Thelma McCaig had encountered a teenage girl named Jacqueline Rubidoux on the street. She was holding two three-year-old girls by the hand, crying and struggling. Rubidoux was babysitting the twins, so McCaig decided not to interfere and simply walked past.
The police knew the rest of the story. Two days later, the twins Tina and Mary Carpitcher were found in an abandoned house, locked in a refrigerator. Only Tina survived, breathing through a tiny crack. Her sister, alas, suffocated. Years later, ten-year-old Tina told the little she remembered to reporters:
Tina was saved by a miracle. Her cries were heard by children playing in a nearby vacant lot. The two days spent in a cramped refrigerator next to her sister's corpse forever left an imprint on her mind. When 11-year-old Katie, who discovered the twins, asked Tina who had locked them in, the three-year-old girl repeated: "Jackie Boo, Jackie Burr...".
The police had no trouble making sense of the childish babble. They were obviously talking about the underage nanny, Jacqueline Rubidoux. The teenager denied any involvement in the crime, and the testimony of a three-year-old who could barely speak was not adducable. If Thelma McCaig had gone to the police immediately after that incident on the street, things might have turned out differently. But there was not enough evidence against Jacqueline Rubidoux, and she had to be released.
Oddly enough, after the incident, Rubidoux found work as a nanny again. In 1977, she was hired by an American couple with Indian roots, Rose and George Carter, to look after their daughter Nima. They knew nothing about Jacqueline’s past, and no one warned them. During the day, the couple was busy at work, and their daughter was left in the care of the nanny. Later, the public and journalists repeatedly criticized the Carters for their carelessness. In fact, the Carters were not exemplary parents.
They spent the week at work, and on weekends they threw noisy parties for friends and colleagues. It was the nanny who spent most of her time with Nima. Thirty years after the tragedy, George Carter gave a frank interview. In it, he expressed deep remorse:
Of course, everyone immediately remembered the story with the twins, and Jacqueline Rubidoux was questioned. The nanny stated that on the day of Nima's disappearance, she was not at the Carters' at all and spent time with friends playing bingo far from their home. Investigator Davidson, who led the case, later spoke about his communication with the suspect:
There was no evidence or testimony. Rubidoux's friends confirmed that they had played bingo that evening and then gone to their rooms to sleep. Everyone believed that Jacqueline had spent the night with them in the same house and no one had any reason to believe otherwise. Incidentally, not everyone believed that Jacqueline was the killer. The father of the deceased Nima was sure that the nanny was not involved in the crime.
The murder of Nima Carter remains unsolved. Jacqueline was tried in 1983 for the murder of Mary Carpitcher and the attempted murder of her sister Tina. The court sentenced her to life in prison. Rubidoux died in a prison hospital in 2005 from liver cancer, never confessing to the crime. The likelihood that Nima Carter's horrific murder will ever be solved is extremely small.
This tragic case still raises many questions. Was Jacqueline Rubidoux involved in the murder of Nima Carter or was someone else behind the crime? Could the parents or the police have prevented the tragedy by noticing strange events before the girl’s disappearance? Do you think it is possible to find the truth in this case decades later, or will it remain one of the darkest mysteries of the past? Share your opinion in the comments.