[Music] [Music] one of my earliest childhood memories is going trick-or-treating around the neighborhood that I grew up in I didn't have much of a costume because I only decided last minute that I wanted to join my big brother I've been terrified at the idea of all these miniature monsters walking around outside but that fear was gradually and eventually outweighed by the promise of a huge Hall of Halloween candy my mom used some leftover monster makeup to paint my face like a skeleton and then I wore a torn up trash bag like I was some kind
of garbage ghoul and I must have looked pretty silly compared to some of the other kids in their Batman and Superman costumes but that didn't really bother me all I was interested in was getting my fair share of candy and boy was there lots of that my brother was 13 at the time so he agreed to escort 9-year-old me around the neighborhood with him and his friends from middle school and I couldn't believe that I'd been so frightened by the whole thing because actually being out there knocking on doors and showing off our costumes it
was some of the most fun I'd ever had in my entire young life people were giving us a ton of candy and not just candy either they were giving us all kinds of things one house we knocked at I think it was the town dentist gave us all toothbrushes and then reveled in our looks of disappointment because they revealed that they were just kidding and gave us some real Candy another place gave us all these miniature Charlie Brown comic books but at one point a man told me to open up my candy bag and then
drop something small and white into it before walking off I didn't realize Halloween was like Christmas only spookier and by the time me and my brother arrived back home I think it had fast become my favorite holiday the next thing I remember remember our mom asked us to empty out our bags of candy at either ends of the kitchen table her plan was to take maybe three quarters of what we gotten and put it somewhere safe so we couldn't eat ourselves into a diabetic coma but shortly after emptying my bag onto the table mom came
over to divide up the spoils and took one look through my candy and then immediately started to freak out she kept pointing at this one particular item and asking me honey where did did you get this who gave this to you then when I told her I didn't know she kept yelling at me to think harder that I had to remember who put it in my bag I remember getting upset and starting to cry and then crying even harder when my mom picked up the phone and told the operator to put her through to the
police because in her words this was an emergency now 30 years before back when my mom was around my age all the kids in the town we grew up in went trick-or-treating on Halloween one little girl went out with her friends but didn't just come home with a bag full of candy she returned home with a little white doll stitched out of cloth Rags the girl's mom didn't think anything of it and let her daughter keep the little white doll but just a few days later there was an incident in a public park the girl's
mom took her to the park someplace that had like a sand pit and a jungle gym and while her kids were off playing with the other children she strikes up a conversation with one of the other moms the whole time some guy had been leaning on the fence surrounding the jungle gym the lady figured that he must have been one of the kids' fathers maybe even grandfathers just watching on as his kids or grandkids played with all the others but then as the mom's looking on she sees the guy get her daughter's attention call her
over towards the fence and then starts talking to her again this all appeared perfectly harmless but then the mom watches the guy who's wearing a long coat hat and a scarf just covered up so his face is slightly obscured reaches out and ask for her hand the mom watches as her little girl gives the man her hand and then when the guy leaned forward and appeared to starts smelling her little girl's hand she starts walking over to intervene she tells her kid to get away from the strange man then starts asking him when his business
is talking to children like that the guy didn't say a word he just turned around and walked off before the mom could actually confront him naturally the mom wanted to know what the man had said to her little girl but when she asked her the answer she got back raised more questions than they answered first off the little girl said she couldn't understand what the man was saying to her but when her mom asked how she knew to walk over and give the man her hand all at his Direction she acted very confused and then
said she didn't know the girl also said that when he raised her hand to the man he hadn't sniffed it like her mom thought he had instead he'd said something to it something which again the little girl couldn't understand the girl's mom then asked if she knew the man from anywhere like if she'd seen him around town and the girl replied yes it was the same man who'd given her the little white doll while she was trick-or-treating as you can imagine the mom was terrified and in discovering the connection between the doll and that creepy
man she rushed to inform the police the cops put out some APB on the guy and almost every cop in town was out looking for him but after no one caught sight of him they figured that he'd been a Drifter that had skipped town at the first sight of trouble none of the moms from the park recognized the guy which in a town our size usually meant that he was not of toer so when 48 Hours went by and there had been no sightings of the guy from either civilians or lawn enforcement everyone just kind
of figured the guy had moved on it took just days before they realized how wrong they were one morning a young mom walked into her daughter's bedroom to wake her up for elementary school only to find that she wasn't in her bed she looked around the house a little then when she realized her daughter was nowhere to be found she alerted her husband who in turn called the cops and within 24 hours almost every cop in the state was out looking for this missing girl but while a whole Army of cops and volunteers are out
searching the fields and woods surrounding town a team of state police detectives performed a search of the girl's bedroom I'm guessing to see if they could find any clues then guess what they found tucked into the missing girl's pillowcase a little white doll one that looked like it had been stitched out of old rags the police then held a press conference asking if anyone else's kid was in possession of one of these little white dolls only only one set of parents came forward saying their little girl also had returned home from trick-or-treating with a little
white doll in her candy bag and that little girl just so happened to be my mom's best friend I bet you thought I was going to say that little girl was my mom didn't you I can't blame you and so did I when I first heard that story from her but even so she was half traumatized by the whole thing because not only did her friend and her parents almost have a nervous breakdown out of fear but they also ended up moving out of town because their kid just couldn't feel safe there anymore mom said
that she and everyone at school was convinced the man would come back in the middle of the night and snatch her up out of bed just like he'd done with that missing girl who by the way was never found no corpse or remains ever showed up any place there were no credible witness sightings of her anywhere despite all the public appeals and they didn't even find any articles of clothing or anything like that it was like that little girl just vanished off the face of the Earth and that only gave Credence to the theory propagated
by local kids that the child snatcher had been some kind of Boogeyman who targeted children with little white dolls on Halloween before eating them alive on the nights that followed obviously that's not what happened but it also wasn't like adults could tell their kids the whole truth all they could say was that the girl was lost and that everyone hoped she'd come home safe one day but no one belied believe that not really anyway in fact a quick death would actually have been one of the more merciful options available given the circumstances of a grown
man abducting a little girl from her bed at night I mean again it's unlikely the guy crept inside and snatched the kid kicking and screaming from her bed the dolls were to win the kid's trust so when the time came they'd come quietly not loudly and go quietly she did because as I said no one found any trace of this girl or her abductor and she was declared legally dead around the same time I graduated college the town moved on but no one forgot especially the ones close to the whole thing which explained why my
mom got so scared when she emptied my bag of candy onto the table and saw a little white doll stitched out of old rags lying among the chocolate bar and candy wrappers as you can imagine she too rushed to call 911 and after the cops got a hold of the little White doll the whole town basically went into lockdown while they searched for the person that might have placed it in my bag no kid was allowed to go anywhere alone for days and when the commotion died down the cops said it was most likely some
kind of CopyCat just looking to scare people they figured it was probably some teenager who'd heard the story of the little white dolls along with that of the girl who went missing just days after they were handed out they didn't think they were seriously going to complete the copycat process and try abduct any kids who received dolls I wasn't the only one but given the weight of police presence on the streets come November 1st there was a good chance it was that and that alone which deterred the copycat from going through with it I didn't
hear the whole story until many years later and while my dad thought the whole thing was Dumb and that it was just kids being kids it had quite a heavy effect on my mom I guess because it brought back all those bad memories from her childhood I mostly believe it was a copycat too as in someone just playing a dumb prank because no one ever tried to snatch any of his kids who got the dolls not even years later but sometimes I wonder how much of a prank it really was if the whole town didn't
take the dolls seriously or the guy hadn't picked my candy bag to drop one into so that my mom didn't see it would things have still happen the way they did or would have another kid have gone missing in the middle of the night snatched up by the man who made the little white [Music] dolls my name's Chris and I'm from Hattisburg Mississippi and I've been a listener since Halloween of last year but by then I guess I'd miss the window to write this up and send it over to you it's a story about a
childhood friend of mine named Kevin and how we eventually lost touch and since that story starts on Halloween night of 1993 it's something I often think about at this time of year it's kind of sad in Parts but I find scary stories are like that sometimes because that thing that's so terrible and terrifying it often has consequences and rarely do they make for Happy Endings Kevin and I lived on Dent Avenue on opposite sides of the East Jerusalem Baptist Church and were friends all throughout elementary school and then once we graduated to middle school we
had a solid fourk kid friend group that consisted of me Kevin and a kid named Toby who lived on Frederick Street and then Todd whose parents ran the seafood place up on East Hardy Street we were practically Inseparable and school and at home but especially on Saturday nights and that includes the night of October 30th of 1993 we were planning on some trick-or-treating the following night but just like every Saturday we walked around to each other's homes until the whole crew was assembled we usually just walk around the neighborhood until we found somewhere to hang
out which was usually the ballpark of Rebecca Avenue or some of the dery housing plots near alorn but that night since it was the night before Halloween we had something a little different in mind we were talking about which places in Hattisburg we believed were haunted there was Vernon D's old place no relation to Jeffrey who was murdered by the clan back in the 60s for being a civil rights activist his house isn't there anymore it's just a barel plot but lots of folks said that they'd felt an eerie presence around the place and others
even heard weird sounds but since Vernon's place was at least 5 or 6 miles out of town we weren't about to try and walk out there on a Saturday night we also had the old train yard which was supposedly haunted and the old Hattisburg Cemetery was also an obvious choice for some guaranteed spookiness but at some point someone brought up the old derel house at the end of Elizabeth Avenue the old plantation style two-story home with its wraparound Vera tall columns and large shuttered Windows had been abandoned for as long as I could remember I
don't think it was ever part of an actual Plantation I think it was more of a case that its owner wanting it to look as Grand as possible and it must have been quite a place back when it was still occupied but by 1993 it was nothing but a crumbling termite infested ramshackle ruin and it looked spooky as hell though unlike the old dmer place of the Hattisburg Cemetery we hadn't actually heard any rumors that the abandoned house was haunted and maybe that's what attracted us to it in the first place I mean the place
looked like it should have been haunted so in our minds it pretty much was but that also gave us a free pass to avoid visiting any of the places we'd actually heard were haunted sort of like we're not [ __ ] were just very lazy and so we walk all the way down desent Avenue cross Golfport Street and then we're walking down Elizabeth Avenue discussing what might have happened to result in the home being completely abandoned I remember Todd suggesting that the family patriarch had gone insane slaughtered his family and that the home's bloody history
meant that it couldn't be resold Toby then suggested that some kind of tragic accident had resulted in Restless spirits being anchored to the place and that's why it couldn't be resold we danced around a couple of other theories but the reality was that none of us really knew why that old house on Elizabeth Avenue was abandoned all we knew was that the chances of encountering spectral activity there had to be lower than at the train yard or cemetery and that in all likelihood nothing bad would happen hanging out there but we could not have been
more wrong on the way down the street we'd been full of boyish bravado as they say but once we arrived at the end of Elizabeth Avenue and saw that the old house was looming there before us none of us felt quite so adventurous anymore we talked about exploring it finding ghosts or maybe even buried treasure or some kind of dark Family secret but once we were face to face with it no one felt like going inside I remember thinking how the old plantation house didn't look nearly so spooky in the daytime and that even though
I knew in my gut that there was nothing in there but dust and C webs I still couldn't bring myself to venture inside we all just kind of stood there murmuring to each other about how dangerous it kind of looked and then suddenly Todd dared me to go inside I remember saying something like alone no way man you must be crazy you think I'm going there on my own Todd then dared Toby to go inside and he said pretty much the same thing but then when he dared Kevin to go inside even for just a
minute Kevin replied with and what are you going to give me if I do Todd thought for a moment but Kevin clearly had something in mind already he said that he'd go inside up into a bedroom or down into a basement and bring back something to prove that he'd been there and in return he wanted at least half of Todd's candy haul from that following night on Halloween Todd said something like no way and I even thought that that was a little much of a hard bargain but eventually they settled on this for every minute
that Kevin spent out of our sight anywhere in the house he got one Fistful of candy from Todd's trick-or-treating bag the next day and Kevin said that he wanted a souvenir from the place anyway something that proved that he was the bravest of all of us but we were all convinced that he wouldn't last more than 2 or 3 minutes with Todd being perhaps the most confident of all of us that he wouldn't have to give up more than maybe a few fistfuls of candy we watched Kevin walk off through the overgrown grass towards the
steps of the porch which creaked as he climbed them before he walked toward the home's open threshold I remember the door had been completely taken off the hinges so there was nothing but an ominous black orifice waiting for him and when he reached it Kevin looked back at Todd and told him to be ready to count the minutes Todd then checked his watch and gave Kevin the thumb thumbs up and then after flicking on the cigarette lighter that he borrowed from Toby Kevin crept into the darkness to say that first minute was tense would be
the understatement of the century I remember half expecting Kevin to suddenly scream and then come running out of the house yelling at us to just scram and I also remember thinking how that would be an incredible way to prank us but running out too soon would mean forfeiting a whole bunch of Todd's candy but I guess that if he did weigh it up in his head he figured getting his hands on more candy was a superior outcome to scaring the living crap out of us because when it hit the end of that first minute there
was no sign of him when the second minute ended then the third and then the fourth and none of us had heard so much as a peep from Kevin I remember Toby looking at Todd and saying something like if he keeps this up you're not going to have any candy left after all that trick-or-treating tomorrow and Todd actually started to panic because five or six handfuls was going to be quite a lot of candy and they hadn't yet negotiated if fistfuls meant two fistfuls or just the one etc etc and by the time Kevin had
been in that house for a full 5 minutes Todd marched around halfway through the grass towards the house and yelled something out like all right Kevin you made your point you got your candy now come on out I almost expected Kevin to just appear from around the door frame right then and there and show us how he just tricked us into thinking that he'd been lost in the bowels of the basement or something when really he'd been standing feet away from us probably stifling laughter while listening to Todd getting increasingly frustrated but after Todd called
out for him to come out and give it up the entire house stayed quiet quiet as the grave and Toby started to laugh very nervously telling Todd that Kevin was going to stay in there so long that Todd would be practically working for him during trick-or-treating the following night I laughed but Todd didn't find it very funny and yelled at again for Kevin to come outside before the spiders started climbing up the leg of his pants and the idea of that sure would have motivated me to skip out of there at full speed but Kevin
didn't make a sound it was like he couldn't even hear us at all we were coming up to 10 minutes when the mood shifted from nervous excitement to minor concern and by then all three three of us were much closer to the old plantation's house and were all calling out Kevin's name in the hopes that he'd come out if he' heard all of us calling him and not just one of us and we started to sound scared too I remember Toby's voice kind of trembling as he called out one time and how his fear was
almost infectious we called out a little longer and then Todd suddenly announced that he'd have to go inside and actually look for Kev I think Toby knew as well as I did that it wasn't about the candy anymore we were just scared for our friend by that point Todd started up the steps with me and Toby reluctantly following but when he finally got within a few feet of the open doorway we started to hear a movement from with inside Todd called out again Kevin is that you but when we got no response that fear came
back tfold we started backing up half expecting some rotten stinking monster thing to come lurching out into the Moonlight with Kevin's blood on its claws and teeth whatever it was moved very slow without urgency just these slow steady footsteps as it came closer and closer to the door we kept on walking backward getting ready to run but then suddenly who steps out into the Moonlight but Kevin we all breathe this huge sigh of relief because he was walking fine not running and he had no signs of any wound or injuries either and Todd says what
the hell dude you scared the crap out of us and I was waiting on Kevin to just burst out laughing before calling all of us a bunch of Scaredy Cats he'd secured at least seven or six handfuls of Todd's candy and managed to have all of us on the verge of wetting our pants if that was me I'd be doing a Victory lap of the place's overgrown front yard but Kevin didn't do anything like that instead he just walked right past us across the grass and then started walking back down Elizabeth Avenue with me and
the others asking him Kevin Kevin where you going dude Todd Toby and I all just kind of stood there looking at each other for a moment as if to ask what the hell's gotten into him and then we followed him up the street asking what had happened inside that house like I said we hadn't heard so much as a mouse's fart up there and had been complete silence the whole time so we wanted to know what Kevin had been doing for so long he also wasn't acting scared either at least he wasn't running he was
just walking away like he was tired and wanting to go home Toby and I ran around the front of him because he wouldn't respond to a word we were saying and we say hello Kevin what's going on what happened in there it was only then that I saw how Kevin had tears in his eyes both Toby and I were saying dude what the hell what's going into you and then Toby tried to physically get him to stop but I remember how Kevin instead of stopping went from all calm to furiously violent as he shoved Toby
off of him and screamed get the hell away from me he screamed at so loud his voice broke like it started as a Roar and ended in some kind of squeal and we were so stunned that we stopped dead in our tracks and just let him walk on for a second before we carried on following him no one knew what to say at first it was kind of scary to see him freak out like that in the first place but as we carried on following Kevin up the Avenue we started calling after him again we
asked him to stop asked him to talk to us and then asked him to at least slow down a little bit but again he completely ignored us and until it was Todd's turn to jog ahead of him in an attempt to BL his path Kevin tried to avoid Todd by walking around him without saying a word but then Todd stepped in front of him again Kevin started swinging Todd leaned back so hard to avoid the punches that he fell on his ass and then me and Toby ran over trying to separate them and Kevin started
swinging on us too he started screaming don't touch me keep away from me again his voice was cracking like he was fighting back tears and all the time I'd known him I'd never known Kevin to act like that he looked crazy his eyes were wild his face was red and he was serious about hurting us if we got too close I mean he moved on Todd so fast that he fell on his butt and if me and Toby hadn't have blocked off when we did then we'd probably end up fighting him we wanted nothing more
than for him to just tell us what had happened in that house but if he didn't want to tell us then there'd be no getting him to do it I guess we just had no choice but to let him go I mean he had nowhere else to go but home so after Todd got to his feet we let Kevin walk on a while before he turned off in the direction of his house and disappeared from view Toby Todd and I then walked back towards their houses cuz I didn't want to follow Kevin back in the
direction that he was going just in case he saw me following him and decided that he wanted just beat me up I guess I was pretty badly shaken up from still seeing him like that in the first place so I walked with Toby and Todd for a while while we tried to work out what had happened back in that old plantation house Toby was convinced that Kevin had seen some kind of ghost or spirit because to him nothing else explained why he was so scared but Todd didn't buy it he thought Kevin had seen something
something scary enough for him to react the way that he did but it couldn't have been a ghost because as he put it ghosts aren't real he figured it might been maybe a dead body an old blood stain or even like a man-sized cage in the basement it was something creepy enough to scare the crap out of him but there's no way that Kevin saw a ghost then just walked out of the building without telling us it had Disturbed him very deeply but I guess it wasn't a threat it seems ridiculous all these years later
but at no point did any of us even think to go back and take a look around that house ourselves you know so we could actually know for ourselves El what Kevin had seen but we were just kids man just scared young kids and all we wanted to do was just go home and hope Kevin would just tell us what had happened the following evening when we went out trick-or-treating the next day I remember calling Kevin's house to see if I could talk to him his mom answered the phone and she sounded just fine at
first but when I asked if I could talk to Kevin she said that he was feeling under the weather and couldn't come to the phone I asked if he was okay and she said yes but that he was upstairs taking a nap after complaining of feeling very sick I remember pausing for a few moments so long that Kevin's mom asked if I was still there and only then did I find it in myself to ask her if he'd been acting strange when he return home the previous night it was her turn to pause just long
enough to let me know that her answer wasn't as natural as she wanted it to sound and then told me no Kevin had been just fine he just woke up that morning feeling a little worse for wear she wasn't lying but she wasn't quite telling the truth either she was covering for him understandably so she was his mom but why and before I hung up Kevin's mom said that she had no reason to believe he wasn't coming trick-or-treating with us and that she'd get him to call me back whenever he woke up from his nap
I waited and waited but got no call from Kevin so I decided to just call him a second time and that's when I got the news that he was still feeling under the weather and wouldn't be coming out trick-or-treating with us I was devastated but not so much because he wasn't heading out with us it was more because I knew that whatever happened was still affecting him and in a deep enough way that he turned down the opportunity to grab as much candy as he could carry trick-or-treating was huge for all of us so for
Kevin to miss it was a big deal and Todd and Toby knew that too it was almost impossible to enjoy ourselves out there though so much so that we ended up heading over to kev's house to give him a share of our candy we were desperate to see him desperate to make sure that he was at least kind of okay but when we got to his door his mom told us that he was too sick for visitors and he stayed sick and I put that in quotation marks for about a week before I got a
chance to get him on the phone and I asked but one time if he wanted to talk about what had happened back in that house he told me word for word that if I ever asked about it again he wouldn't be my friend anymore so I didn't I resisted the Temptation for as long as I knew him but Kev was never the same kid he walked into that house as one guy and came out as a different one and for the life of us no one could figure out why Todd and Toby and I were
too scared to head back into the house on Elizabeth Avenue for fear of the same thing happening to us Kevin had also also told the two guys the same thing he told me that he didn't want to talk about it under pain of excommunication so they ended up biting their tongues about it too that wasn't the end of the story though and we didn't think it was any coincidence that the old plantation house on Elizabeth Avenue ended up getting demolished not even 6 months after Kevin walked into it and that was the closest I ever
came to breaking my promise and asking what he saw on there cuz that demolition day really was the last chance to see for ourselves and again there wasn't any way in hell that I was going in there alone not even in the daytime and maybe I should have asked but I just didn't want to lose a friend as old as Kevin even though he was a little different from the kid I knew before Kevin's family stayed in Hattisburg for about another year long enough to graduate 8th grade and then he told us one day that
he was moving away Kev moved up to Jacksonville apparently because his mom wanted to be closer to her parents during their old age and we tried to keep in touch with him but we always seemed way more interested in continuing the Friendship than he did like we'd asked him on the phone if he ever wanted to come back and visit us and he'd always say I don't know I'll have to see what my mom has to say he was just never very enthusiastic about it and eventually Toby and Todd and I just kind of took
that hint and before long we lost touch for good and many years later I found a Facebook account on what I thought was his name but it had no picture of attached to the profile so there was no way of me really knowing for sure I sent a friend request but it was never accepted and I guess Kevin just didn't use it all that much I hoped that he'd accept it one day maybe get my number off of somebody and give me a call but about 10 years back we got some bad news Kevin had
passed a drug overdose heroin they said and he hadn't even hit 40 yet and at that funeral we heard from folks who knew him up and Jackson that he'd been struggling with addiction for years none of us had any idea but it really hit home when we heard people say that he begged almost everyone for money whenever he was broke he never begged any of us and hell I'd probably have given him all the money he needed just to talk to him after all those years but he didn't reach out even in his worst desperation
he never came back to Hattisburg and I think that has everything to do with what he saw in that house on Elizabeth Avenue on the night before Halloween all those years before at the funeral I ended up getting the phone number of kev's old Narcotics Anonymous sponsor he was the guy who probably knew Kev the best up in Jackson as he spent a great deal of time with him in the Years leading up to his death he talked about his addiction at the funeral and the guy told me that if I ever wanted to see
a few less depressing anecdotes regarding kev's last few years I should give him a call well I did give him a call but it was only to ask him if Kev have ever mentioned the night of October 30th way back when we were young and more specifically what happened in the house he told me no that Kevin had never mentioned it not even once and he and Kev had talked about all kinds of things from his childhood even mentioned us a couple of times I thanked the guy hung up the phone and cried not because
I didn't get to find out kev's terrible secret but because I realized guarding it so hard might have just ended up killing him rest in peace Kev I still miss you [Music] buddy on Halloween 9th of 1977 the parents of 19-month-old Nema Louise Carter laid her down in her crib and kissed her good night the Carter lived in Lon Oklahoma a city of around 990,000 that serves as the sea of kamanche County developed on former reservation lands of the CA kamanche and Apache peoples lton was incorporated in 1901 it was named after Major General Henry
wear lton who served in the Civil War where he earned the Medal of Honor before being killed in action in the Philippine American war lon's landscape is typical of the Great Plains with flat topography and gently Rolling Hills while the area north of the city is is marked by the Witchita mountains although lon's economy is still largely dependent on Fort Sill it has grown to Encompass Higher Education Health Care retail and Manufacturing the latter of which employed nema's father George Carter after laying their young daughter down to sleep the Carters retired to their own bedroom
to get some well-deserved rest but upon waking the next morning they discovered they stepped out of their Dreams and into every parents wor nightmare little nema's crib was empty and she was nowhere to be found after contacting the police officers were dispatched to the Carter's home where statements were taken and a search was performed the officers primarily wished to identify the method by which nema's abductor had gained entry to the Carter family home but after a thorough analysis of the house they came to a deeply chilling conclusion since neema's bedroom windows had apparently remained locked
during the night of her abduction and the possibility of forced entry had been ruled out officers were faced with a horrifying possibility that nema's abductor had surreptitiously entered the home during daylight hours before hiding in her bedroom closet until her parents were asleep then and only then would they have been able to carry little Nema out of the house without ever alerting her adoring parents nema's abduction sent shock waves through the local Community with police encouraging members of the public to be on the lookout for signs of suspicious activity no one could fathom why someone
would want to abduct a 19-month-old child but it seemed inconceivable that the suspect's intentions were murderous the entirety of the search effort that followed hinged on the possibility that little Nema was still alive and that someone was holding her with the intention of transporting her out of state but the reality was far more horrifying around a month after nema's abduction a group of school children were exploring an abandoned house around four blocks away from where the Carter family lived the house had been heavily vandalized its insides a mess of broken glass and rough graffiti but
whoever had once owned the home had left most of its Furnishings behind as the kids explored the house their curiosity drove them to open cabinets and closets and cupboards all in the hopes of uncovering some long lost loot yet until they wandered into the home's dilapidated kitchen their finds were all trash and no trinkets suddenly one of the kids noted the H's fridge and wandered aloud if there was any food inside with ghoulish inquisitiveness the boy's friends encouraged him to open the appliances door the boy did as they willed him approached the fridge and then
swung open the door but instead of being greeted by the sight of rotten vegetables and maggot ridden meat e what the children saw that day would haunt them for the rest of their lives lying on one of the frid's bare glass shelves was the suffocated decomposing body of little Neema Carter lton has always been something of a Rough and Ready place and was no stranger to Petty and sometimes violent crime but the Abduction of children in the middle of the night was unheard of or at least almost unheard of just the previous year on April
8th of 1976 twin sisters Mary and Tina carpenter were abducted in broad daylight while they watch TV in their grandmother's house according to the report a friend of the carpenter twins unlatched the living room door before coaxing the two girls outside the two three-year-olds followed but were soon met by 16-year-old Jacqueline M rubido who began dragging the girls down the street in phone calls to the police Witnesses claimed the carpenter Twins were crying and trying to free themselves from rubo's grip they urged the police to hurry but by the time officers arrived at the scene
rubido and her two victims were nowhere to be found several years later in an interview with local law enforcement a 10-year-old Tina Carpenter said she took us to a house it was white near railroad tracks there were broken Furniture inside when we got in there she took us to the refrigerator and told us to get in she said her aunt will be there to get us out and take us for ice cream later the carpet twins did as they were told too terrified of rubido to risk her ey but once inside rubido simply slammed the
door closed and ran away 2 Days Later a group of children were playing in a deserted house when they heard weak groans coming from a grungy refrigerator an 11-year-old girl named Cathy Ford and another Neighborhood Child bravely opened the refrigerator door and Tina carpitcher tumbled out exhausted terrified but alive miraculously Tina had survived by breathing through a tiny hole in the refrigerator her twin sister on the other hand was not so fortunate and passed away as a result of prolong asphixiation when police questioned Cathy Ford she claimed to have immediately asked the exhausted Tina who
locked you in the fridge Tina's reply was almost instantaneous and used the 16-year-old rubo's nickname when she stated Jackie Buu rubido who happened to be Cathy Ford's babysitter on account of being friends with her aunt instantly became the target of a police investigation yet under the assumption that three-year-old Tina would prove an unreliable witness a lack of physical evidence left the authorities desperate for a straightup confession and without it the investig ation quickly stalled in the end the police had no choice but to release Jackie rubido without charge but the news was met with apprehension
and unease from those in the local community people were scared real scared recalled Ray Anderson investigator for the kamanche County district attorney they were asking themselves how could this happen why would someone Target such a young and innocent child like that folks were going out and buying guns new locks for their doors fitting bars to their kids Windows you could feel how scar they were following her arrest and release Jackie maintained a quiet unassuming presence around town and somehow she managed to claw back enough of her reputation that folks began hiring her to babysit for
them again and by the fall of 1977 she was a regular babysitter for the Carters the young Native American couple who led active weekend social lives and was well acquainted with their infant daughter n she was also their first choice of babysitter During the period an intruder lifted Nema from her crib with the windows locked crept down the hallway of the tiny loton home past her sleeping parents and out through the front door I remember the next morning like it was yesterday neema's father George later recalled it was one of those cool crisp Oklahoma mornings
a day I might have otherwise enjoyed immensely instead he and his wife wife were condemned to endure the worst nightmare of young parents everywhere someone had snatched their infant child George later said his heart raised so bad that he thought he was having a heart attack and that in her Panic his wife Rose began frantically searching the most irrational of places she ran between kitchen cabinets closets and the family dogghouse she even checked underneath the house and in the field behind the backyard fence but little Lima was nowhere to be found during the initial phases
of the investigation and given the high percentage of Parental involvement in missing child cases detectives had no choice but to consider George and Rose neema's own parents as preliminary suspects naturally we called them in for questioning recalled Cecil Davidson a retired Lon police detective who worked the case they agreed to take lie detector tests and each passed with flying colors once the parents were r pulled out as suspects almost everyone fell under the net of Suspicion including neighborhood babysitters Joyce Smith and Jacqueline rubido it's amazing that it took us that long to put it together
recalled Davidson but someone eventually remembered that Jackie rubido had been implicated in an almost identical crime not even a year before and after that it was all eyes on her when detective Davidson finally confronted rubido regarding Nema Carter's ABD uction and murder her response was Cy to say the least rubido claimed that she was playing bingo the night Nema disappeared and at first her Alibi seemed airtight but as Davidson continued to question her he began to doubt rubo's innocence she was very quiet Davidson recalled she never looked you in the eyes her gaze was always
somewhere else or looking at the ground she would always get real close to telling you something critical and then she'd back right off like she was scared to incriminate herself in light of this detective Davidson remains almost convinced of rubo's guilt but laments the case's lack of closure we can never get her to confess he later said the frustrating part was we had no physical evidence no fingerprints no Footprints no hair no blood nothing the only thing I think we really had was this odd response I got from her about Bingo she was very angry
about the fact that everybody got to play bingo while she would get stuck babysitting Davidson explained and to this day I'm convinced Jackie rubido murdered Nema but the district attorney never felt that we had enough to prosecute detective Davidson might be unshakable in his belief but on everyone is convinced Jackie rubido abducted and murdered little Nema Carter including her own father George two months prior to nema's Abduction the Carter ERS found their dog poisoned a few days later they returned home to discover it was Trashed by vandals I find it hard to think all those
events were mere coincidence George said the Jackie rubido we knew no it just doesn't add up I never sense that about her whenever Jackie came over Nema would run up to her and give her a big hug but several years ago I saw an interview with Jackie in a newspaper and she said that she was on drugs that time in her life was it someone we knew George was asked I think so someone who was familiar with our house but I've never been fully convinced it was Jackie George whose wife Rose Carter died in 2000
is plagued by The Haunting reality that no one was ever charged with his infant daughter's murder he claimed the passage of a long three decades had helped ease his pain a little but as he so poetically phrased it quote unanswered question still burn within in the initial aftermath of her murder detectives became convinced they' positively identified nemus killer and their suspect Jackie rubido yet they too have been left with a sense of unfulfilled Justice my wife and I lived for years with the wha ifs said George Carter who was now an active member of his
local church Nema cried that night when we put her down to sleep and we never got up to check Che on her we figured that we didn't want to spoil her that she would eventually go to sleep he continued and now I think that person who took her 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 brought her into sleep with us what if what if hey friends thanks for listening click that notification Bell
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