The Babysitter From Hell I Bizarre Buffet Podcast
Halloween night 1977 in Lawton, Oklahoma. When 19-month-old Nima Louise Carter’s parents put her down to bed that night, they didn’t notice anything strange in her room. Upon entering Nima’s room the following morning, all they would find was an empty crib.
A year prior In 1976, the Carpitcher family had their twin daughters Mary and Augustine being babysat by the girls babysitter, Jackie Roubideaux. The girls would later be found at the most unlikely of places, with quite an unlikely situation.
What do these two stories have in common? …..Jackie Roubideaux.
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” The Babysitter From Hell ” I Episode Credits
Hosted By Mark Tauriello , Jen Wilson , & Marc Bluestein
Original Episode Art By Mark Tauriello
Original Episode Story Concept By Jen Wilson
” The Babysitter From Hell ” I Episode Show Notes
Question:
It’s 1977, what are you dressed up as for Halloween ?
Nima Louise Carter
On October 31, 1977 in Lawon Oklahoma little 19 month old Nima Louise was put to bed on Halloween night by her parents as they did every night.
The following morning, Nima’s mother Rose, HORRIFIED, found Nima’s crib empty with Nima vanished from their locked house. The window in Nima’s bedroom was intact and locked, meaning that whoever broke in, had to enter from another place.
The police were called, and were just as baffled as Nima’s parent’s were as there were no obvious signs of a break in. It wasn’t until they discovered the large wardrobe in NIma’s bedroom that was large enough for a full grown adult to hide within. Hello Daniel LaPlante
There parents hypothesised that shortly after they left the room, Nima saw the figure, cried out for help, while being kidnapped.
So What happened Next ?!
As time went on, there was no new evidence found and speculations started to form that the parents staged the kidnapping. This is the shit I always feel bad for because the parents ALWAYS become the prime suspect in a child abduction case.
Nima’s parents are called in for an interrogation, and go through a lie detector test. They were found to be innocent. BUT while being interrogated, the Carters recalled 2 months prior to Nima’s abduction that they had found their dog dead from poisoning, and two days after that, their house was vandalized.
So I just want to take a moment here and ask why do you think prime suspects will hold valuable information like that from police? I will say that I believe that even if they are 100% innocent, they are in fear that that when something like that emerges, police will focus the entire investigation on the parents.
The Carters were in fact baffled after the murder of their dog and vandilization of their home, as they had great relationships with all of their neighbors.
Jackie Roubideaux
Police began to observe people who were close to the Carters who may have known the insides of the Carter household or even Nima’s routines.
VERY QUICKLY, their attention turned to Jackie Roubideaux, Nima’s 17 year old babysitter.
When Jackie was summoned, to the station, she appeared surprised that she was on the suspect list. While being questioned, she didn’t raise any red flags. Due to the lack of evidence, she was soon released.
The Case Became Dormant For a While
It was about a month after everything happened, that there was a breakthrough in the investigation!
There were some children playing in a local abandoned building, when they discovered a fridge. Within the fridge, they found a dead body of a one and a half year old girl. The children rushed home and told their parents who called the police.
Rose Carter identified the body as Nima, and it was discovered that she died of suffocation inside the fridge.
However it was still a mystery as to who in fact committed this heinous crime.
Let’s go back a year before all of this madness
Nima’s case was very similar to a case that happened a year prior. On April 8, 1976 a set of 4 year old twins went missing from their grandmother’s home in Oklahoma. Their names were Mary and Augustine Carpitcher.
Two days later, a group of children were playing in the same abandoned house, and heard a cry coming from a closed fridge.
Upon opening the heavy fridge door found twins, unfortunately only one of them was still breathing
The children notified their parents who notified the police, and the twins were rushed to the hospital. Augustine survived and was able to by breathing through a crack in the fridge. Mary sadly did not make it.
Later on, when Augustine was asked who did this to them, she pointed to her 16 year old babysitter, Jackie.
Jackie was interrogated but defended herself by claiming “oh the twins were playing in the garden in front of the house andI must of taken my eyes off them for a few moments. When I returned the twins were nowhere to be found.” She seemed very shaken by the whole ordeal and helped the search efforts before they were found.
Unfortunately even with Augustine having literally pointed at her wrongdoer the police didn’t have any other evidence to convict or interrogate Jackie further. The police concluded that a four-year-olds testimony was not trustworthy enough to get a conviction and Jackie was released.
Jackie moved on from the Capitchers, following the twins’ demise, to work with the Carters’ young daughter Nima. Even having been a suspect in the twins’ murder she never received a ban for working with children.
SO I JUST NEED TO STOP HERE AND SAY “WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK”. I get it, it was the 70’s, but like a background check or something? LIke I can’t even work in a school until a background check is done no matter how amazing my resume looks. Also this was a time where there was a rise of serial killers in the United States. Like come on.
But We’ve Got Ourselves a Witness, Y’all !
A few months later, once Nima shared Maria’s fate, a witness came to the police station to give a statement as she believed she knew who had murdered Nima.
Thelma McCraig was a neighbour of the Carpitchers. She testified that on the day of the twins’ disappearance she saw their babysitter drag them out of their house by force. She assumed that Jackie was trying to merely take them somewhere where they didn’t want to go, like the doctor, and didn’t think much of it.
I don’t know about you guys, but any time I see someone dragging a kid, I stop and stare. Like when I was in Spain and a kid was throwing a full on tantrum, and the mom was trying to pick him up off the floor with a cigarette in her hand.
It was only after she found out about Jackie being a suspect that she realised what she had seen on that fateful day. If Thelma had informed the police during the search for the twins there is a chance things could have ended differently, her withholding information was found to be highly irresponsible however the information was crucial.
Thanks to Thelma’s eyewitness account there was enough evidence to conclude that the murders of Nima Carter and Mary Carpitcher were not just a coincidence. Two years later, Jackie was charged with murder.
LET’S GO TO TRIAL BITCHES !
One of the witnesses testifying in court was the now six-year-old Augustine Carpitcher, she had to mentally go back and retell the story of how she lost her beloved sister. She explained how Jackie took the twins to a white house by the railroad tracks, a place where neither of the twins had been before, but they trusted their babysitter. After a while, they grew increasingly distressed as there was a mess in the house and all of the furniture was destroyed. Jackie told the pair to get into the
fridge and promised them that soon their auntie would come to take them out for ice cream.
It seemed inevitable that Jackie was guilty on both counts of murder. In the 1976 case there were two witnesses, however, in the 1977 case, there was no evidence or witnesses. So Jackie never stood trial for the murder of Nima Carter.
In 1979 Jackie Roubideaux was found guilty of murdering Mary Carpitcher and was sentenced to life in prison. She died in 2005 after having appealed her innocence several times, she was denied every request to shorten her sentence.
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