Solved Halloween Murders: #2 The Kidnapping And Murder of Nina Louise Carter And Mary Elizabeth and Augustine Lena Carpitcher

Nima Louise Carter was born on March 23rd, 1976 to George and Rose Carter.

On October 31st, 1977, 19-month-old Nima's parents placed her inside her crib at their Lawton, Oklahoma home. She fussed when her parents put her to bed but was left to cry it out. 

When they awoke the next morning, Nima wasn't in her crib or anywhere to be found. The Carter family home showed no signs of forced entry.The windows remained locked from the inside, as did the house's front door. George and Rose checked the kitchen cabinets, the closets, outside by the doghouse, underneath the house and in the field behind the backyard fence. There was no sign of Nima anywhere and so they called the police. Police searched the local area, but found no trace of Nima either.

The police theorized that culprits were either her parents, or that her abductor had been hiding in her closet and spirited her away while George and Rose were sound asleep in the living room. A lie detector test exonerated George and Rose. Besides Nima's parents, neighborhood babysitters Joy Smith and Jacqueline Roubideaux were on their list of suspects, since they had access to the house as well. 

A month later, a group of kids were playing in an abandoned house four blocks away from the Carter home. When they opened up the house’s refrigerator, they received a horrifying shock when Nima's decomposed body came tumbling out. It was determined that she died of suffocation.

Two months before Nima's abduction, someone vandalized their home and poisoned the family dog. No one ended up taking the blame for either of these incidents

This brings us to what happened to three and a half year old twin sisters Mary Elizabeth and Augustine "Tina” Carpitcher. On April 8th, 1976, Mary and Tina were living with their grandmother in Lawton Oklahoma. They were watching TV in the living room while their grandmother vacuumed in a different room. It was during this time that a female teen the children knew unlatched the living room door and coaxed the children outside. Since they knew their abductor, the twins followed her at first, but then became scared. A neighbor noticed the teenager dragging the twins by their wrists while they tried to pull loose. The neighbor never called the police.

The abductor then took the twins to a abandoned, white house that was near railroad tracks. When they got inside she took them to the refrigerator and told them to get in. She told the twins that their aunt would be there to get them out and take them for ice cream later. And with that the abductor shut the refrigerator door and left.

It was around 2 p.m. when the twins' grandmother was done vacuuming and she came into the living room to check on the girls and noticed the twins weren't there. She frantically searched the house, but couldn't find them anywhere. The grandmother thought that maybe the girls were with their mother, so she didn't call the police until several hours later. The police immediately started searching the neighborhood for the twins, but found no trace of them. 

Two days later, children were playing in a deserted house when they heard the cries coming from a old refrigerator. 11-year-old Kathy Ford and another neighborhood child opened the refrigerator door, and Tina  jumped out alive. Tina survived by breathing through a tiny hole in the refrigerator. Sadly, Mary wasn't so lucky and suffocated to death. 

Kathy asked Tina who put her and her sister in the refrigerator, and she replied, "Jackie Boo or Jackie Burr,” meaning Jacqueline Roubideaux, the twin's babysitter and friend of her aunt. After being taken to the hospital, Tina was interviewed by police and she confirmed again that Jacqueline was the abductor.

Jacqueline became the main suspect, buy with a a lack of physical evidence the investigation stalled after a few months. During this time, Jacqueline found an occasional job as a babysitter. By 1977, she agreed to sit for George and Rose Carter. They were a young American Indian couple known within her family circle. George and Rose both held full-time jobs but they'd party on weekends.

After Nima's death, someone remembered that Jacqueline had been questioned in the Carpitcher case, which had almost identical circumstances. Finally Jacqueline was confronted about Nima's abduction and murder. Jacqueline said she was playing bingo the night Nima disappeared.

Investigators believed that Jacqueline was the culprit, but could never get her to confess. She did however comment on Nima's kidnapping and murder with details only the murder would have know. There was also no fingerprints, no footprints, no hair, no blood, no physical evidence of any kind tying her to Nima's abduction and murder and Jacqueline again walked free.

No one was ever charged with Nima's murder.
"My wife and I lived for years with the what-ifs,” said George. "Nima cried that night when we put her down to sleep. We never got up to check on her. We figured we didn't want to spoil her; that she would eventually go to sleep. I now believe that person was already in her room, probably hiding in the closet. What if we had opened the closet? What if we had gotten up to check her that night? What if we had brought her in to sleep with us. What if? What if?”

As for Tina and Mary's case...

In 1979, Jacqueline stood trial for first degree murder, which ended in a mistrial due to the jury being deadlocked. Over a year later she went to trial again and this time convicted of Mary's death and sentenced to life in prison. Jacqueline died from liver cancer in 2005.