 Rachel Barber was 15 years old in 1999 when she went missing after a dance recital. She was last seen alongside her babysitter that afternoon, but investigators found no trace of her after this. But detectives did find a disturbing diary entry written just days before she vanished, in which her babysitter confessed to what really happened that day. Rachel Barber was born on September 12, 1983. She was the oldest of three sisters and had parents who were deeply involved in her life, doing their best to provide her with everything she could have ever wanted. Her mother Elizabeth and her father Michael had been together for many years, and Rachel's home life was the very definition of healthy and typical for a girl her age. Sometime around 1992 or 1993, Rachel and her family moved to Mont Albert, hoping for better opportunities. It was around this time that the family met a young girl named Carolyn Reed Robertson. Carolyn quickly became a friend of the family, with Rachel's parents often hiring her to help babysit the children. Carolyn would grow up alongside Rachel and her siblings, but she was around four years older and certainly more mature than the young Barber girls were at the time. Rachel was just 15 years old by 1999. She spent much of her childhood training to become a dancer, and she was incredibly talented. Not only was she a great dancer, but she aspired to be a model as well. Her goal in life was to eventually interact in classes and work her way into musicals across the globe, particularly musicals in the US, as most of her favorite venues and performances were taking place in Chicago. Rachel had become a full-time student at the Dance Factory in Melbourne, Australia. She was known for her beauty, as well as her popularity and her athleticism. She was in great shape and was often in the top of her class, becoming a world-class dancer at a strikingly young age. While Rachel may have been quite popular in school, she was actually a quite shy young girl. She didn't take too well with strangers and would often seem withdrawn around people that she didn't know very well, but she was always very nice and respectable. Even though she was quite shy, Rachel had been dating her boyfriend Manny for several months, and it seemed that the two were closer than ever. Despite her timid nature, she had no problems opening up to Manny, who seemed to make it easy for Rachel to just be herself. Carolyn Robertson, the babysitter I mentioned a moment ago, was right there alongside the Barber family for about seven years or so. She watched Rachel turn from a shy young girl into a vibrant young woman who was bound for success in her dance career. Carolyn adored Rachel, but she had other feelings towards Rachel that were less than loving. Carolyn was a very jealous teenager. She had trouble dealing with other people's successes, especially considering that, in all honesty, she didn't have much going for her at the time. She was a perfectly good looking girl, but she didn't have the magnetic energy and charisma that Rachel had, and this bothered Carolyn deeply. As she watched over the girls for most of their childhood, it seemed that this resentment toward Rachel grew. What had begun as a simple feeling of jealousy, something all of us struggle with from time to time, grew to something far more dangerous and far more sinister. Carolyn wanted to live Rachel's life, and if she couldn't live it, either could Rachel. Carolyn's troubles with self-worth and jealousy would reach new heights as her teenage years drew on. By the time she was in her mid teens, she began to feel horrible about herself and not just in the typical way that most teens will at some point or another. It seems that, by all means, she had begun to develop a genuine hatred toward herself. She didn't look the way that she wanted to look, she didn't feel smart enough, and she certainly didn't feel worthy of being loved. According to those around her, she'd always put herself down, referring to herself as a loser, as unwanted, fat, dirty, or even dumb. In fact, she created a self-portrait around the age of 14 that had several of these words written on it, with misfit being written in bold letters at the very top. Carolyn was reaching an all-time low and was happening quickly, but as she got a little bit older, some of this hate turned away from herself and was beginning to surround her father, this being after her father walked out on the family, leaving Carolyn and the rest of her loved ones to fend for themselves while her dad started a new, better life elsewhere. Carolyn would take her anger and write it down in letters to her estranged father. I don't know if she ever mailed these letters or if they were purely therapeutic, but the letters grew very vicious, with her one time blaming her father for her feelings of alienation, writing, quote, I feel like a troubled, tortured, lost soul that's been thrown into an alien environment full of angels. These terrible feelings of self-hatred that Carolyn held on to would eventually lead her to plotting a crime of disastrous proportions. Her anger and rage would soon be taken out on someone who didn't really have anything to do with her situation. It was March 1st, 1999. Rachel's father drove her to a tram stop that morning around 9.30 am so that she could attend her classes at the dance factory in Melbourne. She left home wearing her favorite gold necklace, having only $13 in her wallet. She told her boyfriend, Manny, that after classes she was going to head out for a secret job offer that she wasn't allowed to talk about. The sheer fact that she even mentioned the job to Manny was against the rules, but she felt like he needed to know. This secret job was supposedly to pay incredibly well, but this was the only information that she was willing to share with anyone. She left the dance factory that afternoon headed off for this secret location. Her parents had no idea that she had any other plans after classes that day, outside of hanging out with her friends as she normally did. The last reported sighting of Rachel came just after she left the dance factory, when she was spotted walking around a tram station with a woman. Hours passed by and Rachel had not returned to the tram station to meet her father that evening, and their parents grew very worried. Rachel had never missed curfew before and she was reported missing right away. Manny quickly opened up to Rachel's parents and the police and admitted that she told him about a secret job offer, but he didn't know anything else about this job, so this information wasn't very helpful with the investigation. By all means, Rachel simply vanished off the face of the earth and no further updates would be released until 13 days later, when some shocking news would leave the Barber family in shambles. It was March 14th when police approached the Barber family with news that they could have never expected. Keep in mind at this point the Barbers had no idea that police were investigating the case as a potential homicide, so you can imagine their surprise when officers knocked on the door of the Barber family home and revealed that they'd arrested a suspect in connection with Rachel's disappearance. When police revealed that the suspect was none other than Carolyn Robertson, their jaws hit the floor. Carolyn had been a close family friend for the better part of a decade, so how could she have been involved in Rachel's disappearance? Unfortunately, the follow-up statements from detectives only made things far worse. Carolyn had been arrested because police had found remains buried in a shallow grave near Killmore, and they had evidence connecting Carolyn to the scene of the crime. Investigators would soon learn that Rachel had been ambushed with a telephone cord, then buried under less than 12 inches of dirt. One of the most unexpected twists in this case came after police brought Carolyn to the station for questioning. It didn't take them long to get Carolyn to open up and she admitted to everything. Well, almost everything. Within a few short hours, Carolyn admitted that she had in fact taken the life of Rachel Barber, but she claimed it was an accident. Carolyn says that she met up with Rachel that day, shortly after her classes at Inden. I'll admit, I don't fully understand the specifics of what Carolyn was explaining here, but the best I can make out is that she explained to police that she'd convinced Rachel to come to her apartment for some sort of psychological exercise. But it's not clear why Rachel thought this was a job offer, or why she thought she'd be receiving any payment for this. Now, the rumor is that Carolyn had invited Rachel over and promised her $500 to take part in a highly confidential survey of some sort. But this was only mentioned in one source, so I can't verify that this is true. But either way, Carolyn explained that the two rode the tram together, then got out at her apartment after promising Rachel that she'd have pizza and drinks ready for them. And sure enough, when Rachel entered the apartment, pizza and drinks were ready. But Rachel was blissfully unaware that Carolyn had spiked the pizza with high doses of anihistamines, causing Rachel to become more and more delirious the more she ate. After Carolyn was satisfied with Rachel's impairment, she began her attack. She told Rachel that she was ready to begin the psychological survey, asking Rachel to close her eyes and think of happy and pleasant thoughts. As soon as Rachel was lost in a dream state, Carolyn ambushed her from behind with a telephone cord. Carolyn then stuffed Rachel inside of a wardrobe, keeping her there for several days while she worked out the next steps in completing the crime. She would eventually wrap Rachel in two rugs and enlisted the help of an innocent taxi driver to help her move what she called a heavy statue to her father's property. Obviously, what the taxi driver helped her haul away was no statue. But once the two arrived at Carolyn's father's house, Carolyn took the so-called statue out to the back of the property. And after the taxi driver left, she buried the remains in the family's pet cemetery next to Carolyn's former dog, Lucy. In the days after Rachel Barber had gone missing, Carolyn became very withdrawn from her normal activities. She went to work the day after the crime, March 2nd, but one of her coworkers ended up driving her home after Carolyn reportedly looked very ill and wasn't able to function well enough to get her job done. Carolyn would call out of work for the next few days as well, claiming that she was sick. During this time, investigators were hot on the trail of Carolyn, tracing Rachel's last moments and getting witness testimonies from everyone who had seen her at the tram station that day. As they dug into phone records, they soon noticed that Rachel had spoken with Carolyn on the day of her disappearance. In fact, she'd spoken with her within hours of her last known whereabouts, meaning Carolyn may have been the last person to see Rachel alive. Witnesses from the tram station also reported that they'd seen Rachel walking alongside a, quote, plain-looking young woman. Detectives went to Carolyn's apartment on March 12th, but they weren't getting any response at the door, even though they knew that Carolyn was inside. They eventually made their way into Carolyn's apartment and found her unconscious on her bedroom floor. They soon learned that she had suffered an epileptic seizure which had likely been caused by the severe stress that she'd been under while trying to hide Rachel's body. While inside the apartment, they searched through Carolyn's belongings and soon came across her diary. Now, if you've been watching true crime stories for the last few weeks, you'll know that this is the third case I've covered in less than a month where the criminal was found because either they or the victim kept a detailed diary of events leading up to the crime. I don't know how so many of these cases ended up leading to the exact same situation, but that's exactly what happened here as well. When investigators took a closer look at Carolyn's diary, they realized that she'd been deeply obsessed with Rachel. And certainly not in a playful way or in any sort of innocent infatuation, Carolyn had kept detailed records of Rachel's recent life and had even written down several possible ways that she planned on taking Rachel's life. She scribbled several options down with one of the options claiming that she planned on incapacitating Rachel then placing her into an army bag and dumping her out in the middle of the woods somewhere. These clues were a bit too suspicious for investigators and they soon began investigating Carolyn's recent movements, tracking down her connection with her father's property and the aforementioned taxi driver. Detectives were able to prove that Carolyn had been spending days, maybe even weeks, plotting to take Rachel's life and in essence become Rachel. This was only amplified when detectives later found an application for a copy of Rachel's birth certificate in Carolyn's apartment. This is likely why she tricked Rachel into thinking she was offering her a job, as it would have been the easiest way to get personal information about Rachel, including her social security number, ID cards, and everything else she needed. Well, everything except for her birth certificate obviously. Alongside this application was documentation for a bank loan for $10,000, as well as detailed plans on what Carolyn had planned to do. Her plans for the day claimed that she needed to clean up her father's farm, including the area where she had placed Rachel in the pet cemetery. She also planned to secure the bank loan on the following Tuesday, as well as rent a moving van, dye her hair to match Rachel's then thoroughly clean her house and carpet. She then planned to disappear and begin life under Rachel's name. By October of 2000, Carolyn was still in police custody in a surprising twist, Carolyn had opened up to investigators and admitted to taking Rachel's life, even pleading guilty during her trial. She was ultimately given 15 years behind bars. During her court sessions, she explained how much she hated herself and wanted to be someone else, so much so that she was willing to go to great lengths to achieve this. She was diagnosed with a personality disorder just before the trial, with a judge claiming that she was a danger for anyone that she became fixated with. But what's really interesting about her time in prison is that she never once showed any kind of remorse for her actions. In fact, while she was in prison, she progressively made herself look more and more like Rachel. She began styling her hair differently. She appears to have lost weight and did her best to become the spitting image of Rachel, at least as much as she realistically could. Rachel's own mother even spoke out about the uncanny resemblance after Carolyn was released from prison in 2015, after fulfilling her sentence. Carolyn is now a mostly free woman. She still lives under the surveillance of the court system, but she's now allowed to continue on with her life, or rather Rachel's life. While she never successfully claimed Rachel's identity, she's done her best in the years since to continue living in the shadow of Rachel, and her fixation doesn't seem to have faded over the last 23 years. Honestly, I don't understand how someone like this is allowed to live in the free world after there was such a massive amount of evidence proving that she'd been plotting this crime for years, but I guess the laws in Australia only allowed the court system to do so much to someone so young. Thankfully, after all this, Rachel's memory is still very much alive in the minds of those who knew her, but unfortunately one of those minds belongs to Carolyn Robertson. Before we close out today's video, it's time to announce the winner of last week's true crime stories mug giveaway. The winner was chosen completely at random, and the winner is Misty Waters. So Misty, all you need to do to claim your mug is email me at tieknotsyyt at gmail.com with your address, using the same email as what you use here on YouTube, and I'll get your mug shipped out right away. And for everyone else who entered and didn't win, be sure to continue tuning in each week because I'll likely be doing more giveaways like this in the very near future, maybe even next week, so be sure to stick around. But with that, thank you guys for tuning into another episode of True Crime Stories. If you're liking the channel and want to see more videos just like this one, be sure to hit the like button and leave a comment below. Comments are the best way to help support a small channel like this and they're incredibly appreciated. If you'd like to help out the channel financially, you can hit the blue join button below or even support me over on Patreon. But with that, I thank you guys again for watching and I'll catch you in the next video.