In the sterile hush of an interrogation room, where fluorescent lights buzz like accusatory insects and the air tastes of stale coffee and regret, Karla Roselee Garcia broke. It was October 11, 2025—barely 48 hours after police unearthed her daughter’s mummified remains from a weed-choked backyard—and the words tumbled out like shards of shattered glass. “I hit her. I starved her. I thought it would make her better,” Garcia, 29, confessed to detectives, her voice a hollow echo captured in transcripts now unsealed by Hartford Superior Court. Those admissions, laid bare in a 147-page warrant affidavit released yesterday, transform the already gut-wrenching saga of Jacqueline “Mimi” Torres-García’s death from a tale of suspected horror into a documented chronicle of maternal betrayal, a mother’s hands turned weapons against the child she once cradled.

The warrants—filed by Farmington PD lead investigator Detective Elena Vasquez (no relation)—don’t just detail the final, fatal weeks of abuse; they excavate years of escalating torment, painting Karla as both victim and villain in a household riddled with resentment, addiction, and the suffocating weight of poverty. “This isn’t a snapshot of one bad night,” State’s Attorney Gail Collins said at a somber noon presser, her fingers drumming a warrant copy like a funeral dirge. “It’s a roadmap of deliberate destruction—a mother who chose cruelty over care, who silenced her daughter’s light because it burned too bright.” As the documents ripple through Connecticut’s newsrooms and living rooms, they ignite fresh outrage: protests swell outside DCF headquarters, #MimiConfessions trends with 1.2 million posts, and a grieving father vows to dismantle the system that let his “little unicorn” fade into oblivion.

Mimi Torres-García arrived like a burst of confetti on April 14, 2014, in the maternity wing of New Britain General Hospital, her cries mingling with the distant hum of the Connecticut River. Karla Garcia, then 19 and fresh from a high school dropout, held her newborn with trembling hands, whispering promises amid the chaos of a fractured family. Victor Torres, Mimi’s father and a soft-spoken line cook, was there too, his eyes misty as he traced her tiny fingers. “She was perfect—dark curls like Karla’s, my stubborn chin,” Victor recalls in a tear-choked Zoom from his Orlando apartment, where faded crayon drawings of rainbows still paper the fridge. “We named her Jacqueline for strength, but Mimi? That was her magic, her spark. She’d dance to Bad Bunny in the kitchen, hips swaying like she knew the world’s rhythm.”

The magic dimmed swiftly. Karla and Victor’s romance, a whirlwind of late-night drives and bodega dates, crumbled under the strain of parenthood. By Mimi’s second birthday, arguments escalated into shoves; Victor decamped to a cousin’s couch, leaving Karla to juggle diapers and dead-end shifts at a laundromat. Custody ping-ponged through family court, a 2020 ruling granting Karla primary care after she aced a parenting class. “I thought she was ready,” Victor says, regret etching lines deeper than his 32 years. “DCF said stable home, no red flags. God, what a lie.” Mimi, resilient as dandelions, thrived in spurts: preschool finger-paints of family picnics, playground chases at Veteran’s Memorial Park, bedtime tales of Puerto Rican folktales her abuela spun over FaceTime.

Enter Jonatan Abel Nanita in 2021—a 26-year-old Dominican transplant with broad shoulders, a warehouse gig at Amazon’s Bristol fulfillment center, and a smile that masked the storm within. Karla, reeling from a string of ghosting dates, fell hard; by Christmas, he was installed in her Grand Street walk-up, a two-bedroom shoebox where baby cries competed with reggaeton bass. Mimi, 7 and wary, dubbed him “Tío J,” enduring his back rubs that lingered too long and jokes laced with barbs. “He’d buy her Barbies one day, then yell if she didn’t clean ’em perfect,” recalls neighbor Rosa Mendoza, 52, who babysat sporadically. “Karla changed—laughed less, drank more. Those Four Lokos cans piled up like accusations.”

The warrants chronicle the pivot from dysfunction to depravity, Karla’s confessions a confessional litany of small sins snowballing into catastrophe. It started innocuous: 2022 timeouts extended to hours, Mimi’s tears dismissed as “drama queen” theatrics. By 2023, with Nanita’s half-siblings arriving—twins in April, a boy in November—Mimi became the outsider, her Puerto Rican-Dominican heritage a point of petty pride Karla weaponized. “She was jealous of the babies,” Karla admitted in session one, per page 47 of the affidavit. “Said I loved them more. So I made her prove she deserved it—extra chores, no dessert if she sassed.” Punishments graduated: open-hand slaps for backtalk, leaving welts teachers queried but DCF deemed “accidental.” A June 2023 incident—Mimi’s arm twisted during a “wrestle” with Nanita—prompted a hospital visit, X-rays showing hairline fractures. Karla’s story? “She fell off the swing.” The case closed unsubstantiated.

Karla’s unraveling intertwined with substances, the warrants reveal. Seized phone logs show texts to Jackelyn Garcia, her sister and reluctant enabler: “Need a pick-me-up—kids driving me loco” (March 2024). Jackelyn, 28, with her own DCF file thicker than a phone book—neglect citations for leaving her toddlers unattended—supplied oxycodone tabs filched from a boyfriend’s script. “It dulled the guilt,” Karla confessed, her words transcribed at 2:17 a.m. after a polygraph greenlit the floodgates. Highs fueled lows: blackouts where Mimi’s cries blurred into white noise, mornings waking to bruised thighs unexplained. Nanita, the alpha, escalated—belts cracking across backs for spilled Cheerios, his rages peaking post-shift. But Karla? She owned her role. “I held her down once, when he kicked her ribs,” she said, voice flat. “Told her it was for her own good. Like Mom did to us.”

The family’s 2024 exodus to Farmington—a cul-de-sac condo buoyed by Nanita’s overtime—heralded isolation. Mimi’s Slade Middle School withdrawal, masked as homeschooling, severed lifelines; no more teacher eyes spotting the hollow cheeks, the flinching at loud voices. The warrants detail the basement “time-out room”—a windowless nook stocked with zip-ties from Home Depot, puppy pads from Petco, a single bulb swinging like a noose. From July onward, Mimi logged 20+ “sessions,” per Karla’s calendar app forensics: wrists bound to radiator pipes, ankles hobbled, fed bread crusts doled like rations. “She’d beg, ‘Mommy, please,'” Karla recounted, detectives noting her pause, a single tear tracing mascara ruins. “I’d say, ‘Earn it tomorrow.’ But tomorrow never came right.”

September 2024: The apocalypse. Two weeks of zero calories beyond sips of Pedialyte—Karla’s “mercy” nod—reduced Mimi to a wraith, her 60-pound frame evaporating to 27 at autopsy. Confessions cascade: Karla clipping dreadlocks with kitchen shears “to stop the boys noticing her too soon” (August 15); forcing gulps of hot sauce for “stealing” a sibling’s toy (September 5); the final night, September 18, where Mimi, feverish and delirious, soiled her bonds. “I cleaned her up, but she wouldn’t stop shaking,” Karla said. “Jon said let her sleep it off. Morning, she was gone—cold like a doll.” No pulse check, no panic—just ammonia sprays to mask rigor, sheets bundled around her slight form, and the 40-gallon Sterilite bin from a Target run, once for holiday ornaments, now a sarcophagus.

The cover-up’s choreography, per warrants, was Karla’s masterstroke of denial. As decomposition bloomed—adipocere waxy blooms on skin, maggots feasting in folds—the bin migrated: basement shelf, Acura trunk during the New Britain move, finally the Clark Street eyesore after a “weird smell” tip from a landlord. Lye from Jackelyn’s drain cleaner dusted the payload, corroding plastic and flesh alike. Deceptions layered: Victor’s worried calls fielded with “She’s at camp”; DCF Zooms featuring a neighbor’s niece, scripted to giggle “Homeschool rocks!”; school records forged on a library PC. “I convinced myself she ran away,” Karla claimed, but texts betray: “Mimi’s problem solved—peace at last” to Nanita (October 2024).

Discovery shattered the facade. October 8: SWAT’s pry bar cracks the bin, revealing Mimi’s fetal curl amid Disney tatters, a unicorn hairpin tangled in curls long shorn. DNA swabbing confirms; Karla’s arrest at dawn October 11 follows Nanita’s taqueria brawl. In the box—mirrored walls, recorder whirring—she folds after three hours, water breaks turning to sobs. “I abused her from the start,” she admits, detailing slaps at 5 for tantrums, isolations at 8 for bedwetting. “Thought tough love worked—my mom starved me for days once. But Mimi… she was too good for that. I killed my baby.” Warrants include her sketched timeline, shaky lines mapping bruises to dates, a self-indictment prosecutors call “gold.”

Jackelyn’s role emerges in tandem: “auntie backup,” clipping hair, snapping Polaroids of bound Mimi “for proof she learned.” Her October 12 surrender yields partial corroboration—”Karla led, I followed”—but she pins the starvation on Nanita. He, from Hartford lockup, denies via lawyer: “Fabricated sob stories.” Bonds hold firm: $10 million apiece, trials slated for March 2026.

The confessions’ release—ordered by Judge Harlan Thorpe amid public clamor—rips open Connecticut’s underbelly. DCF’s 18 interactions since 2019? Dismissed on Karla’s tears, Victor’s distance. “We trusted parental word,” Commissioner Joette Katz laments in a leaked memo, but stats scream failure: 2,500 substantiated abuses in 2025, 40% Latino-disproportionate, homeschool voids swallowing oversight. Child USA’s Marci Hamilton blasts: “Karla’s admissions? DCF’s mirror—systemic starvation of safeguards.” Governor Lamont pledges $50 million for in-home AI monitors; vigils at Clark Street morph into policy marches, unicorns clutched like talismans.

Victor Torres, arriving stateside November 10, clutches warrants like scripture. “She admitted it—my girl’s pain, handwritten,” he says at a New Britain rally, 500 strong under sodium lamps. “But admissions don’t bring her back. I’ll sue DCF into dust, build ‘Mimi’s Haven’—shelters where moms get help, not judgment.” Sofia Ramirez, Mimi’s teacher, unveils abuse-detection curricula: “Her drawings screamed help—stick figures with locked doors. We failed to decode.”

For Karla, locked in York CI’s maternal ward—ironically, for “rehab”—letters to foster-placed siblings plead forgiveness: “I was broken, not evil.” Psych eval? Borderline personality, untreated trauma from her own abused youth. But Collins scoffs: “Confession or not, malice trumps mercy.” As snow dusts Connecticut, Mimi’s shrine blooms: photos, poems, a mural of galloping unicorns. Karla’s words—cold ink on yellowed paper—aren’t absolution; they’re a siren, wailing for reform. Will we heed, or let more mothers’ shadows swallow their stars? Mimi Torres-García, the girl who dreamed in colo