Did an Oklahoma Babysitter Who Locked Twins in a Refrigerator Do the Same Thing to a Toddler on Halloween Night?

Lawton, Okla., residents should have been shocked when they learned that a baby was abducted from her home and locked in a refrigerator in 1977—except that they had already dealt with an eerily similar incident. The previous year, twins were kidnapped and locked in a fridge, one of whom died. 

Their teenage babysitter was found guilty of one homicide but never charged with the other.

As new parents, Rose and George Carter didn’t want to spoil their child. On Halloween night of 1977, 19-month-old Nima Louise was crying in her crib, but Rose and George held firm and didn’t succumb. They figured she would eventually go to sleep, which she did.

The following morning, Rose went to check on Nima. “Have you seen the baby?” she asked George, according to The Oklahoman. He hadn’t. Rose began to panic. They checked the closets, kitchen cabinets and the doghouse outside. 

Since there was no sign of forced entry, authorities determined that the kidnapper was brazen enough to walk past the couple as they slept in the living room.

The parents became the first suspects. "Naturally, we called them in for questioning,” Cecil Davidson, a former Lawton police detective, told The Oklahoman. 

Statistically, nearly one third of babies murdered are victims of fillicide. 

The Carters agreed to take lie-detector tests and “passed with flying colors,” Davidson said. The family babysitter Jackie Roubideaux, and another local sitter, Joy Smith,  also came under scrutiny. 

One month after Nima was abducted, neighborhood children stumbled upon a fridge in an abandoned house four blocks from the Carter home. They opened the door and a decomposed body fell out, scaring them away. Soon after, a soldier from nearby Fort Sill saw the body and notified authorities. 

Detectives determined that Nima was left to suffocate. It would not be the first time they handled such a tragic murder.

On April 8, 1976, twin sisters Mary and Tina Carpitcher were watching television in their grandmother’s home. A kidnapper lured the 3-year-olds outside and walked with them a few blocks. Neighbor Thelma Craig noticed a teen “had hold of the two girls by the wrists, and they were trying to pull loose," she told The Oklahoman. 

The twins were taken to an abandoned home and locked in a fridge. Two days later, kids playing in the house heard crying and opened the fridge. Tina jumped out. She survived by breathing via a small hole. Mary died of asphyxia. 

Tina told authorities that she and Mary had willingly followed the perpetrator initially because she was their babysitter, Roubideaux. "We could never get her to confess,” Davidson recalled. “The frustrating part was we had no physical evidence—no fingerprints, no footprints, no hair, no blood, nothing.”

The district attorney felt there was not enough evidence to prosecute. Roubideaux walked free.

Frustrated by the lack of progress on the Carpitcher case, Ray Anderson, an investigator with the district attorney’s office, attempted to extract a confession from Roubideaux. "She never really came out and admitted to sticking the Carpitcher twins in that refrigerator, but she said enough,” Anderson said. "She confirmed things we already knew and some things we didn't.”

Roubideaux was charged with the first-degree murder of Mary in October 1979. The judge presiding over her trial in 1982 allowed mention of Nima’s death, but Roubideaux didn’t confess to either crime.  

"I'm convinced Jackie Roubideaux murdered Nima,” Davidson said.

Still, Roubideaux was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for Mary’s death. 

During a 2003 parole hearing, Roubideaux claimed that she and a friend went to another friend’s house to do drugs, which is where Tina and Mary were watching TV. She said they took the twins for a ride. “We drove around and drove around and the kids were crying,” Roubideaux said, per The Lawton Constitution. 

Roubideaux and her friend decided to take the girls home, but “it was the ice box instead of the house,” she claimed. “We thought we put them to bed.” 

However, the babysitter’s story did not jibe with Tina’s, who testified that she and Mary were instructed to get in the fridge with the promise that their aunt would “be there to get us out and take us for ice cream later.” Her parole was denied.

Roubideaux died at age 46 in 2005 from liver cancer.

George Carter couldn’t believe their babysitter was the culprit. “It just doesn't add up,” he told The Oklahoman . “I never sensed that about her. Whenever Jackie came over, Nima would run up to her and give her a hug.”

He suspected that whoever killed his daughter “was already in her room, probably hiding in the closet.”

Though George said he and his wife, who died in 2000, “lived for years with the what-ifs,” whoever killed Nima no longer preoccupies him. "I'll never forget the act, but I forgive the person,” he said. “And that alone has set me free.”