Nestled at the edge of the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York, the small hamlet of Au Sable Forks is approximately one-hundred-twenty miles north of Albany and eighty-five miles south of Montreal, Quebec, Canada. On the evening of June 22, 1987, lifelong resident Gary Nixon gave his sixteen-year-old daughter Kari $20 to purchase groceries at the neighborhood market, Thomas’ Country Store, only a few blocks from their home.
Kari did not have her own car, but she enjoyed walking to the store. Gary and his wife, Kathy, had no reservations about sending her out alone during the evening as she and her three siblings had walked to and from the store many times before.
Kari began walking to the market at approximately 9:30 p.m. Her parents went to bed shortly afterward.
When Gary and Kathy awoke the following morning, they fell into a state of fear: Kari had not returned home.
Finding only three of their four children at the breakfast table, Gary and Kathy went to check on Kari. They were alarmed to find her bed had not been slept in.
Kathy called Kari’s friends but none had heard from her daughter. She then called the police.
Kathy Nixon
Kari’s Mother
The store clerk knew Kari and remembered checking her out at approximately 9:55 p.m. The bill for the groceries was just over $3.
Ten minutes later, two neighbors saw Kari walking with the groceries toward her home. After exchanging greetings with one of them, she continued walking. Kari was seen less than seven-hundred feet from her home at roughly 10:05. Five minutes later, a group of boys saw only an empty street.
Kari Does Not Make It Home
Kari had expressed an eagerness to get out of Au Sable Forks. Her desires about leaving home were typical of most small town teenagers, but she seemed an unlikely runaway as she had a great relationship with her family, was doing well in school, was involved in multiple extracurricular activities, and had a wide circle of friends. Subsequent findings further suggested she had not voluntarily vanished.
The only money Kari had when she left home was the $20 her father had given her for the groceries. Her own money lay on her dresser. Summer had officially started, but the evening was cool. Kari had left home wearing sweatpants and a light jacket. Police reasoned she would have taken her own money and dressed more warmly if she had planned to run away.
Not A Likely Runaway
Volunteers from local Fire Departments and Air Force bases aided police in conducting air and ground canvasses covering a fifty-mile radius surrounding Au Sable Forks. The searches produced no evidence as to what happened to Kari.
All indications pointed to a kidnapping until the police received a letter suggesting, as improbable as it seemed, that Kari had run away from home.
More Likely Kidnapped
In November, six months after Kari disappeared, Au Sable Forks police received an anonymous letter postmarked from Flint, Michigan, nearly six-hundred miles away. The writer claimed Kari Nixon was in the Eutawville, South Carolina, area. The contention seemed unlikely as neither Kari nor her family had any connection to Michigan or South Carolina.
Desperate for any news on their daughter, Gary and Kathy traveled to Eutawville, a town of fewer than four-hundred people nearly 1,000 miles from Au Sable Forks, New York. Surprisingly, several Eutawville residents were certain they had seen Kari. One local, Shirley Kannapel, even believed she had spoken to her approximately three weeks earlier.
Shirley said she met several young girls in a local park, one of whom told her she had recently moved to the area from New York. The girl introduced herself as Kari Lynn Nixon, accurately providing the middle name of the missing New York girl. Shirley’s physical description of the girl matched Kari. As the shy young girl was not willing to offer much conversation, Shirley suspected she was a runaway.
Eutawville police received reports from several other residents who said they had also earlier seen a girl resembling Kari but were unable to confirm any additional sightings of her.
Shirley Kannapel
In May 1989, a year-and-a-half later, Au Sable Forks police received two more letters postmarked from Flint, Michigan. Handwriting analysis showed the writing was from the same person who had written the first letter, who again insisted Kari Nixon was in the Eutawville, South Carolina, area. Police conducted another search throughout Eutawville and surrounding communities without finding any confirmed sightings of her.
The case stalled, but hope was restored a month later when a videotape surfaced from across the country showing a girl who resembled Kari Nixon.
Reported Sightings Of Kari
On June 5, nearly two years after Kari had disappeared, the pop group New Kids on the Block filmed their “Hangin’ Tough Live” concert in Los Angeles. After the video was broadcast, several of Kari’s friends believed a girl in the crowd looked like her. An analysis of the video showed the girl had almost identical hair color and length, and facial shape as Kari. In addition, the girl had the same number of earrings in her right ear as Kari had before she vanished.
After viewing the video, Kari’s parents also believed the girl could be their daughter, but they were not certain.
None of the band members, security, promoters, or anyone working for New Kids on the Block recognized the girl. Police identified and interviewed many of the other young girls in the video, but none of them, as well, knew the girl who resembled Kari Nixon.
Girl In The Video Kari Nixon
After several other sightings of the girl resembling Kari were reported at New Kids on the Block concerts across the country, band members Jonathan and Jordan Knight made a video, broadcast nationally, asking the girl believed to be Kari to call her mother and father.
Kari did not call and the sightings at the concerts proved to be false hope.
Jonathan And Jordan Knight
New Kids On The Block
In 1993, the girl seen at the New Kids’ concerts who resembled Kari Nixon was identified as Lynette Melanchon of California.
The following year, seven years after her evening errand to the grocery store, it was learned that Kari Nixon had never left Au Sable Forks.
Kari Was Not The Girl At The New Kids’ Concerts
In January 1994, twenty-nine-year-old carpenter Robert Jones was arrested on federal bank robbery charges for two robberies committed in northeastern New York and two in Maine between 1987-93. Kevin Stevens, an accomplice in two of the robberies, told authorities Jones had told him he had abducted and murdered the missing Kari Nixon. During questioning, Jones confessed to doing so.
Jones led police to property owned by his father in Jay, New York, approximately six miles south of Au Sable Forks. There, police found Kari’s remains buried along with the groceries she had purchased on the evening she disappeared.
Living in Bar Harbor, Maine, at the time of Kari’s disappearance, Jones was a native of Au Sable Forks who was in his hometown visiting his parents. He told police he saw Kari at the grocery store that evening and followed her and abducted her at gunpoint. After forcing her into his car, he took her to a camp near a cabin on his father’s property in Jay where he raped and strangled her before shooting her to death.
In 1990, three years after the murder, Jones, his wife, Theresa, and their two children, Anthony and Caitlin, moved to Jones’ old stomping grounds, settling only approximately two-hundred yards from where he had buried Kari. Each year, Jones had taken his family for a picnic at the site. He said his reason for doing so was to see if the grave had been disturbed.
After pleading guilty to the four bank robberies, Jones confessed to Kari’s murder in an effort to get a lighter sentence for Theresa, who had driven the getaway car at one of the heists during which their children, then ages seven and five, were in the back seat. He also said, however, he killed Kari because he was mad at Theresa for cheating on him. She subsequently divorced her husband-in-crime.
Gary and Kathy Nixon did not know Jones, and Kari had also likely never met him. Jones’ murder of Kari was a crime of opportunity.
Under a plea agreement, for leading investigators to Kari Nixon’s remains, Robert Jones was sentenced to eighteen-years-to-life in prison to be served concurrently with a fifteen-year sentence for the robberies. He is incarcerated at the Wyoming Correctional Facility in Attica, New York, adjacent to the better-known Attica Correctional Facility.
Jones has been denied parole five times, most recently in August 2023.
Robert Jones
The person who mailed the letters from Flint, Michigan, has never been identified. It is not known whether the writer believed Kari was in Eutawville, South Carolina, or if the letters were a prank.
The reported sightings of Kari in Eutawville were apparently of a similar-looking girl. Police never found the girl who identified herself as Kari Lynn Nixon to Shirley Kannapel. They believe she was a girl resembling Kari who, perhaps in conjunction with the writer from Flint, Michigan, had learned of her disappearance and thought it would be cute to pretend to be Kari.
The Sightings Were Not Of Kari
Sightings of Kari Lynn Nixon in South Carolina and California seemed credible for several years but ultimately provided only false hope.
For six-and-a-half years, instead of roaming through Eutawville or attending New Kids on the Block concerts, Kari Nixon lay lifeless under a pile of dirt on property only six miles from where she disappeared.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/73254206/kari-lynn-nixon
Never In South Carolina
Never In California
When the disappearance of Kari Nixon was profiled on Unsolved Mysteries, she was portrayed by her younger sister, fifteen-year-old Lori.
Lori Nixon Portraying Her Sister
Kari’s younger brother, John, died in 2007 at age twenty-nine from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), AKA Lou Gehrig’s Disease. His daughter, Kari Lynn, was named after his slain sister.
John Nixon
Kari’s Brother
Kari Nixon and Kathy Hobbs were born only twelve days apart from one another.
Kathy was murdered in Las Vegas on July 23, 1987, exactly one month after Kari Nixon was murdered. The cases are not related, but they have similarities as Kathy was also accosted late in the evening after walking home from the neighborhood market.
SOURCES:
- Bangor Daily News
- Press-Republican
- New York Times
- Unsolved Mysteries
- UPI
- Washington Post
Such a sad story 😢