The State - News from July 27, 1988

A missing woman in San Jose may have been killed and buried in an isolated grave beneath a crude cross, the victim of her lover’s suicidal obsession with voodoo, police said. Caroline M. Rubia’s disappearance June 2 and the discovery of a makeshift altar and mystical paraphernalia in her boyfriend’s closet have led detectives on a search through the strange subculture of the primitive religion. Police theorize that Rubia, a married 52-year-old grandmother, was killed by her lover of 20 years, a 47-year-old roofing contractor, who changed his name in 1979 from Charles William Turner to Che Francois Toussaint. Toussaint was found dead in his bed of cyanide poisoning when police broke into his barricaded home in a San Jose suburb on June 7, expecting to find Rubia’s body. Investigators found an altar in his closet along with three snapshots of Rubia covered with salt.