The Crime Without the Proof: The Story of Chris Carrier | Viral Storm
This story began 46 years ago, on sunny December afternoon 1974. A ten-year-old boy just got out of the school bus in the Aledo Avenue near his house in the Coral Gables, Miami.
The boy’s middle name was Hugh. His father, who was a lawyer, often called him by that name. That afternoon little Hugh didn’t notice the man that was approaching him until the man spoke to him and said, “Hello, I am a friend of your father. We are preparing a party for him and I need you to help me to buy him a present. We will be back quickly.”
Hugh accepted to help this man. The man took him to a trailer house that was parked a few blocks away. They sat in the vehicle and headed north. After some time the man commented that he thinks they are lost and asked a boy to check the map.
While Hugh was looking at the map he felt a sharp pain in his back. He turned around and he was petrified. The unknown man was standing above him with an ice pick in his hands. He tried to protect himself but the man just kept hitting him.
After he was satisfied he picked the boy and put him in the vehicle. They drove for a while in silence, and then they turned on the dark road and stopped in the woods. Hugh got out of the car and sat down. The man approached him with a low caliber gun, and Hugh didn’t even feel the bullet go through his temple. He was unconscious.
For six days Hugh’s parents didn’t know where he was. The police didn’t have any clue. The boy just vanished. The day after Christmas Hugh was found in Everglades.
Since he was lying in the Everglades for a week the boy miraculously managed to get to the highway where a motorcyclist found him and took him to the city. The bullet destroyed his left eye nerve and Hugh was blind on that eye. It was a miracle that he was even alive.
In the next few weeks, Hugh helped the police to find the man who kidnaped him. He described him to the tiniest details. Detectives were then able to find a suspect. They suspected that the perpetrator was a male nurse who was taking care of Hughs’s aunt. The nurse was fired after it was found out that he comes to work in a drunk state.
The detectives thought that the motive of the kidnapping and attempted murder was revenge. The fired nurse had a trailer and a police file. His name was David McAllister.
Hugh looked through the photos of other suspects for days but due to shock, he couldn’t recognize McAllister. Without that the police didn’t have any proof that McAllister was the perpetrator. The years went by and McAllister continued to live like a free man.
These events left a trace on the young boy. For years he dealt with anxiety and fear. He completely secluded himself. When he was 13 he accidentally went to a church and that was the only place where he felt at peace and secure. This helped him to overcome his insecurities.
After high school, he studied psychology and theology. In 1991 he met Leslie Richi. They got married in 1992, and in 1994 they got their first child.
In 1996 the detective who worked on his case called Hugh to let him know that McAllister is in a nursing home in North Miami. The next day Hugh went to the nursing home to visit McAllister. He wasn’t prepared for what he saw. On the bed laid a fragile old man and not a monster that he often imagined.
Hugh introduced himself and the man was shocked. He started crying and asking for forgiveness and Hugh forgave him. On that same night, McAllister died in his sleep.
Originally published at https://viral-storm.com on September 14, 2020.
