In the small community of Au Sable Forks, New York, sixteen-year-old Kari Lynn Nixon, a White female, was a familiar and friendly face. An above-average student, a dedicated pitcher on her high school's softball team, an avid singer, and an aspiring writer, she was a young woman with a bright future. On the evening of June 22, 1987, that future was stolen in a brief and terrifying window of time.
Around 9:30 p.m., Kari left her home to run a simple errand for her father, a short walk to the nearby Thomas' Country Store. She made her purchases and was seen walking along Palmer Street, just 700 feet from the safety of her house, exchanging a greeting with a neighbor at 10:05 p.m. Merely five minutes later, a group of boys passed the same spot and saw nothing but an empty street. In that short span, Kari had vanished.
The days that followed turned into a nightmare for Kari's family and the close-knit town. Extensive searches by law enforcement and community volunteers yielded no trace of the missing teenager. For nearly seven agonizing years, her family held onto hope, chasing down leads and alleged sightings, including one that mistakenly identified a young woman in a New Kids on the Block concert video as Kari. The painful uncertainty finally came to an end in January 1994, bringing with it a grim and heartbreaking truth.
The break in the case came from an unexpected source. A 29-year-old man named Robert Anthony Jones was arrested for a series of bank robberies in northeastern New York and Maine. During questioning, Jones's wife, Theresa, revealed to the police that he had confessed to her about killing Kari. Faced with this, and in an effort to secure a lighter sentence for his wife who had aided him in one of the robberies, Jones confessed to the abduction, rape, and murder of Kari Lynn Nixon. He recounted how on that June night in 1987, while visiting his hometown from Bar Harbor, Maine, he saw Kari at the store, followed her, and forced her into his car at gunpoint. He took her to a remote cabin owned by his parents in the nearby town of Jay, where he assaulted her for hours. After a failed attempt to strangle her, he shot her in the chest. The next morning, he buried her body in a shallow grave in the woods near the cabin.
On January 28, 1994, Jones led authorities to the spot where he had buried Kari nearly seven years prior. Her remains, along with the groceries she had bought that night, were recovered. In February 1994, Robert Anthony Jones pleaded guilty to first-degree kidnapping, first-degree rape, and second-degree murder. As part of a plea deal, he was sentenced to 18 years to life in prison, to be served concurrently with his 15-year sentence for the bank robberies. Over the years, Jones has been denied parole on multiple occasions, with the community actively protesting his release. His attempts to appeal his conviction have also been rejected by the courts, ensuring he remains incarcerated for the brutal and senseless act that cut short the life of Kari Lynn Nixon.
