Mimi Torres-García’s mother admitted abusing her, warrants say

A steady flow of visitors come to place their offerings at the memorial stretched along the front of the abandoned home where the remains of 12-year-old Jacqueline “Mimi” Torres Garcia were found in New Britain, Connecticut on Oct. 14, 2025. Credit: Joe Amon / Connecticut Public

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The mother of “Mimi” Torres-García acknowledged to police that she had stopped feeding her 11-year-old daughter in the weeks before she died of malnourishment and had restrained her with zip-ties when she was “bad,” according to arrest warrants unsealed Tuesday.

Karla García, the girl’s mother, and her ex-boyfriend, Jonatan Nanita, face multiple charges including murder with special circumstances, risk of injury to a minor, unlawful restraint and intentional cruelty to a child.

Torres-García’s aunt, Jackelyn García, was also charged for her participation in the girl’s abuse.

According to the warrants, two people told police that they had contacted the Department of Children and Families in 2024 and 2025 to express concerns about abuse of the children in the household and the whereabouts of Torres-García.

According to DCF, Torres-García attended medical appointments in November 2022, November 2023 and May 2024.

“During that two-year period, the Department did not receive any reports of child abuse or neglect regarding the family,” according to a DCF statement.

“This is an unspeakable tragedy and one that has impacted Jacqueline’s family, friends, and her entire community,” DCF officials said on Tuesday. “This remains an active and evolving criminal investigation and we will continue to be as transparent as possible following the completion of our review. We continue to ask anyone who has information about this matter to contact law enforcement.”

Torres-García was dead for more than a year before her remains were found in a plastic container in New Britain, the warrants state.

Lawmakers and advocates have demanded answers from DCF about the nature of the department’s involvement in the life of Torres-García and her family and how a DCF employee could have been fooled by a 2025 Zoom call in which the agency said a girl posed as Torres-García during a welfare check.

The case of abuse has also renewed calls for reform of Connecticut’s homeschooling laws, since the lack of required monitoring of homeschooled children made it possible the girl’s mother to cover for her absence from public school during the 2024-2025 school year.

According to the warrants, Karla García admitted to police that during the early weeks of September 2024, when Torres-García would have been attending school, she was being starved and abused until she died. A medical examiner told police that because of ammonia put on the girl’s body to lessen the smell of decomposition, as well as the “lack of subcutaneous fat on the body,” due to severe malnourishment, it was difficult to determine how long Torres-García had been deceased. Her remains weighed only 26 to 27 pounds, according to the warrant.

The arrest warrants include multiple interviews with the girl’s mother, Karla García, aunt, Jackelyn García, and her mother’s ex-boyfriend Jonatan Nanita, who is also the father of Torres-García’s three youngest siblings.

The warrants include an interview with Torres-García’s father, Victor Torres, who told police he’d grown concerned about his eldest daughter’s absence from phone calls and visits he had with her sibling. Torres told police that since June 2024, when he asked to speak with Torres-García, her mother “told him she was not home, or at a Friends, or another excuse.” Torres told police he had moved to Florida in the summer of 2025 but had made trips to New Britain and “every time he tried to visit or talk with his daughters, and/or drop of presents,” and he was allowed to talk to Torres-García’s sibling but not with Torres-García.

He told police he contacted DCF about his daughter’s whereabouts in 2025.

Torres “stated that he grew so concerned that he contacted DCF to do a wellness check but was told they could not because he did not know where she lived,” the warrant states.

A person who lived next door to the family in Farmington in 2024 told police she also called DCF because of concerns about abuse heard through a shared wall. She said that she believed at the time that there was an older boy living in the household but now believes that child was Torres-García after seeing photos of her complexion and curly hair — which she said was short during the time the family lived in Farmington. In a separate interview, the girl’s aunt, Jackelyn García, told police she had cut Torres-García’s hair short after Karla García told her to.

Karla García initially acted surprised during interviews with police that her eldest daughter was not with her four siblings, then told several versions of a violent episode in which her ex-boyfriend Jonatan Nanita was responsible for her death. In a third interview, she admitted to not feeding her eldest daughter for two weeks until she died in bed. During that interview, police confronted García with a report by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, which concluded that malnourishment was the likely cause of death. Then García told police that she and Nanita had zip-tied the girl, abused her and starved her before she died.

According to the warrant, “Garcia admitted that Jacqueline died sometime in her bed, but she wasn’t sure exactly when. She stated Nanita came downstairs one day and told her (Karla) that Jacqueline was not breathing anymore. Garcia stated Jonatan moved Jacqueline’s body to the basement, but she never went down there to see what he did with it.”

García also told police that she and Nanita mistreated the girl together “because Jacqueline was ‘bad, she didn’t listen, she didn’t respect them,’” according to the warrant. “García ultimately admitted that they stopped giving Jacqueline food for about two weeks prior to her death.”

Torres-García lived with her paternal grandmother until she was 9 years old, and García and the girl’s father, Victor Torres, had sought guardianship. García eventually got sole custody of the girl, Torres told police.

In the warrants, García told police that “she was hurt from her daughter not wanting her so she would stop talking to her, stop feeding her, and restrain her in zip-ties.”

Jackelyn García, who went to prison in late 2024 for separate child abuse convictions, initially told police that Torres-García and her siblings were “well fed and well dressed,” attended school regularly, that she would get up with them to do their hair and take them to the school bus, and that she had seen Torres-García the morning of the interview.

But during that interview, she was so intoxicated, according to the warrant, that she “stated her pants were wet and that she thought she peed herself.” When confronted with information from García’s former roommate about a photograph that García had shown her of the girl “zip tied, severely malnourished, and laying on dog pee pads to use as a bathroom,” García admitted to the abuse, acknowledged that she had helped zip-tie the girl and was aware that “she suffered malnutrition for a long time.” She also said that she had observed Torres-García being physically beaten.

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In the quiet suburbs of New Britain, Connecticut, a discovery has reignited a chilling mystery that has haunted families, investigators, and communities for over a year. On a crisp autumn morning last week, a routine patrol along the overgrown remnants of an old railway path—now little more than a weed-choked trail snaking through abandoned lots—yielded an unexpected find: a weathered blue bracelet, its clasp slightly tarnished but intact. Etched into its surface in delicate script were the initials “J.T.G.” Sleuths from the New Britain Police Department bagged the item as potential evidence in an unrelated vandalism probe, but forensic cross-referencing would soon thrust it into the spotlight of one of the state’s most heartbreaking cold cases.

The bracelet belonged to Jacqueline “Mimi” Torres-Garcia, an 11-year-old girl whose disappearance in the fall of 2024 had baffled authorities and torn her family apart. But here’s the twist that has investigators scratching their heads: when Mimi vanished from her family’s Farmington apartment on September 19, 2024, a meticulous inventory of her personal effects—conducted as part of the initial missing persons report—made no mention of this bracelet. No blue beaded accessory with her initials. It wasn’t among the stuffed animals, sketchbooks, or favorite sneakers cataloged that day. How, then, did it end up discarded miles away, near a disused rail line that locals whisper is a forgotten vein of the city’s industrial past? As the probe deepens, this seemingly innocuous trinket is emerging as a potential Rosetta Stone, hinting at layers of deception in a saga of neglect, abuse, and unimaginable loss.

Jacqueline Torres-Garcia—affectionately called “Mimi” by those who loved her—was a bright-eyed child with a penchant for drawing fantastical worlds and collecting shiny oddities from thrift stores. Born on January 29, 2013, to Karla Roselee Garcia and Victor Torres, Mimi’s early years were marked by instability. Court records show she was placed with paternal relatives shortly after birth due to concerns over her mother’s capacity to care for her. From infancy until age nine, she thrived under the care of her grandmother, Yaxi Torres, in a modest Waterbury home filled with the aroma of homemade empanadas and the laughter of extended family. “Mimi was our light,” Yaxi recalled in a tearful interview with WFSB last week. “She’d dance around the kitchen, pretending to be a ballerina-detective solving mysteries. We fought for her, but the system… it slipped away.”

In 2022, custody shifted dramatically. Karla Garcia, then 27, petitioned for full guardianship, citing improved circumstances after entering a relationship with Jonatan Abel Nanita, a 30-year-old handyman with a spotty employment history. Against the protests of Victor Torres—who shared joint custody sporadically—Mimi was relocated to a cramped condominium on Wellington Drive in Farmington. Victor, a truck driver who hadn’t seen his daughter since her ninth birthday, later told police he attempted wellness checks through the Department of Children and Families (DCF), only to be stonewalled by jurisdictional red tape. “I called, I emailed, I drove by,” he said, voice cracking during a recent court appearance. “They said she was ‘homeschooled’ and fine. How do you not know your own kid is gone?”

The first signs of trouble surfaced in August 2024. Mimi was withdrawn from New Britain’s Consolidated School District on the eve of sixth grade, with Garcia notifying administrators of a switch to homeschooling and a new address in Farmington. Neighbors on Wellington Drive began noticing anomalies: muffled cries echoing from the unit at odd hours, the acrid scent of bleach wafting through vents, and a young girl’s silhouette vanishing behind drawn curtains. On December 29, 2024—months after Mimi’s actual disappearance—Farmington police responded to a 911 call reporting “heavy thuds, screams, and chemical smells.” Body-cam footage, released just days ago, captures officers knocking politely, met by a disheveled Garcia and Nanita who dismissed the noise as “kids playing rough.” No welfare check was conducted; the family appeared intact, with Garcia even volunteering a tour of the tidy living room. Unseen in the basement, investigators now believe, lay the horror.

Unsealed arrest warrants, made public on October 29, 2025, paint a nightmarish portrait of Mimi’s final weeks. According to affidavits, Garcia confessed to interrogators that she and Nanita had withheld food from Mimi for two agonizing weeks as “discipline” for minor infractions—like spilling milk or forgetting chores. The girl, already frail from chronic malnourishment, was zip-tied to a corner of the basement, forced to lie on absorbent pee pads like an animal in training. “She was bad,” Garcia allegedly stated flatly, echoing Nanita’s directives. “We had to teach her.” Autopsy reports, preliminary and graphic, confirm starvation as the cause of death on September 19, 2024. Mimi’s body, weighing barely 40 pounds at the end, was allegedly stored in a 40-gallon plastic tote in the basement freezer, moved covertly during the family’s relocation to New Britain in early 2025.

Enter Jackelyn Leeann Garcia, Karla’s 28-year-old sister and Mimi’s aunt. Warrants accuse her of complicity, alleging she helped conceal the body during the move and even participated in the restraints during visits. “Jackie knew,” a family source whispered to NBC Connecticut. “She’d bring groceries, see the girl tied up, and say nothing.” When police raided the Clark Street abandoned house on October 8, 2025—prompted by vagrant reports of a “foul odor” from the backyard—they unearthed the tote, its contents in an advanced state of decomposition, wrapped in trash bags and duct tape. DNA confirmation came swiftly: it was Mimi.

The arrests followed like dominoes. Karla Garcia and Nanita face capital murder with special circumstances, conspiracy, and tampering with evidence, held on $5 million bonds each. Jackelyn Garcia is charged with first-degree unlawful restraint, risk of injury to a minor, and intentional cruelty—her $1 million bail a testament to the revulsion felt by prosecutors. All three entered not-guilty pleas during a tense arraignment on October 14, their faces gaunt under fluorescent lights. Nanita, stoic in a ill-fitting jumpsuit, reportedly muttered, “It wasn’t like that,” as he was led away. Garcia, tears streaking her mugshot, has yet to speak publicly.

Yet amid this cascade of revelations, the blue bracelet stands as an outlier, a spectral clue that doesn’t fit the narrative of basement horrors. Discovered on October 23, 2025, by a K-9 unit sweeping the railway path—a linear park project stalled since the 1970s—the item was initially dismissed as litter. But a routine engraving scan matched it to a missing persons database entry for Mimi. Family confirmation came from Yaxi Torres, who gasped over the phone to detectives: “That’s her bracelet! I gave it to her for her 10th birthday—a custom piece from a local jeweler, blue beads like the ocean she loved, with ‘J.T.G.’ for Jacqueline Torres-Garcia.”

The anomaly? The original inventory from September 2024, compiled by Farmington PD with input from Garcia herself, listed Mimi’s jewelry as “one silver locket necklace, assorted hair clips.” No bracelet. “It’s as if it was erased,” muses retired detective Elena Vasquez, consulting on the case pro bono. “Did someone remove it before the search? Hide it to sever ties? Or—and this chills me—did Mimi have it on when she… when it happened, and it was discarded later, in a moment of guilt or haste?”

Theories abound in online forums and X threads, where #JusticeForMimi has amassed over 50,000 posts since the discovery. Some speculate Nanita, during the body’s transport, flung the bracelet from a vehicle near the rail path—a hasty bid to distance himself from the crime. Others point to Jackelyn Garcia, who lived blocks from the site and might have “cleaned house” post-relocation. A darker hypothesis, floated by true-crime podcaster Karen Lee on X, suggests the bracelet was planted: “A red herring to humanize the monsters? Or a cry from beyond?” Forensic analysis, ongoing at the state lab, tests for DNA traces—hoping to link it to the tote or the basement floor.

This isn’t just about one artifact; it’s a microcosm of systemic failures that allowed Mimi’s suffering to fester unseen. DCF’s involvement, detailed in a scathing internal review released October 27, reveals missed opportunities. In March 2025—six months after Mimi’s death—caseworkers conducted a video “wellness check” at Garcia’s insistence, where a stand-in child (possibly a niece) was paraded as Mimi. “Homeschooling shielded her,” admitted Interim Commissioner Susan Hamilton. “We failed to verify.” Governor Ned Lamont, nominating a new Child Advocate amid backlash, called it “unconscionable,” vowing reforms including mandatory in-person verifications for at-risk youth.

Victor’s side of the family, long estranged, has channeled grief into action. On October 25, they petitioned to raze the Clark Street eyesore and erect “Mimi’s Memorial Park”—a green space with a playground, art installations, and engraved benches bearing her favorite quotes from The Little Prince. “She dreamed of adventures,” Victor said at a vigil attended by 200 locals, candles flickering against the boarded-up facade. “We’ll make this her playground eternal.” Community fundraisers have raised $15,000, with murals of blue waves—echoing the bracelet’s hue—adorning nearby walls.

As arraignments loom and warrants unravel more threads, the blue bracelet remains a poignant enigma. Was it a cherished talisman Mimi clutched in her final moments, symbolizing the freedom she craved? Or a discarded remnant of a life extinguished too soon? In a case where every detail screams betrayal, this one whispers of innocence lost. Investigators urge tips via a dedicated hotline (860-826-5561), promising that even small clues could illuminate the shadows.

Mimi’s story isn’t over—it’s a clarion call. For every child like her, hidden in plain sight, may this mystery compel us to listen harder, look closer. Justice, like a forgotten path overgrown with secrets, demands we tread it fully.