I am healthily obsessed with Strangetown lore and in this essay I will defend Olive Specter's innocence. Olive Specter did NOT kill her husbands!!
It's established that Nervous Subject gets taken away from Olive Specter by Social Workers when he's a toddler.
On Sims 3, she moves to Midnight Hollow with a toddler-sized Nervous Subject.
Olive denies the serial killer allegations. She has the unlucky trait on Sims 3, which means she'll only die of old age.
It's possible she was a disaster magnet, died along with her past husbands on every freak accident but was brought back to life each time by the Grim Reaper.
What caught me off-guard was realizing Nervous Subject had literally all toddler skills developed. From all the toys, to potty training, to walking and talking. So Nervous was raised exceptionally well up till this point.
It's said that Olive moved out of her previous place to Midnight Hollow to escape rumors.
When you boot the game she's employed as a vegetable slicer in a local diner, the third level of the culinary career, working from 15h to 21h.
She has the bookworm and friendly traits, which make her a better journalist than cook.
Her lifetime wish is living in the lap of luxury: having a net worth of ~188k simoleons. Her current house is worth around ~79k simoleons.
So where did it go wrong?
Olive's work hours. 15/21. That's the whole day outside. She can't look after Nervous herself.
With Sims logic, you can fix her life. Have her quit work at the diner, start working as a journalist where she'll climb up the ladder super quickly, pay a nanny, watch if the nanny isn't negligent, ensure Olive's work performance is high with: cheats lifetime rewards; skill classes; skill books; and the godsend University EP tabcast.
Realistically, that would never happen.
Olive Specter is a black middle aged single mother, in a completely new city. She's working at a diner, which isn't her thing, but she can't simply quit her job. She'll never make it as a journalist with the nasty rumors about her. Even with her potential, her reputation is disgraced.
She pays a nanny who definitely doesn't look after Nervous properly, because who would work in a house with a graveyard for a backyard, even without the serial killer branding?! People who can't be picky with their clients!
She doesn't even realize Nervous Subject's situation since she comes back home utterly exhausted in the middle of the night. Bonus: she's friendly! She isn't expecting a teen to mistreat her son so badly it's equal to him being home alone the whole day.
So she'll lose her kid. But how will Nervous Subject end up with the Beakers?
-> The Sims 2 spin-off for console says that Nervous Subject went to work for the Beakers as a test subject - the actual first step in the Science career - which can be read as a teen who grew out of foster care/orphanage and had to find a job immediately.
-> There are fan theories where Nervous got adopted by the Beakers and aged up during experiments, to match the other Strangetown residents' memories vague timeline.
You see, in Midnight Hollow, there's this guy Roderick Synapse. Fine, it's a spoof for that Tim Burton movie, but it's canon in the sims 3. And here, this mad scientist kidnaps the local top bachelorette to dissect her brain for groundbreaking research: to understand love.
This man risked his life and career, kidnapped a lady to dissect her brain to understand... Love?! Just that!! A simple emotion!! Imagine if he caught wind of the rumors surrounding Olive Specter, her actually haunted graveyard-backyard, and the son she bore from the Grim Reaper!! He'd kill for that! He literally would! He kidnapped for less!
Now. Onto my headcanons...
Roderick Synapse only read Twilight,
I like the idea that Roderick Synapse is the missing connection between Nervous Subject and the Beakers.
Roderick can tip the Beakers to adopt Nervous, or to hire Nervous for getting to read the research results, or he can trade Nervous's information to be able to escape from the police!
Elaborating on the last scenario, Roderick's kidnapping plan is bound to bite his ass VERY soon. His victim, Sarah, has a lover, Jack, who's bound to rescue her according to household descriptions. Then shit will hit the fan and Roderick will lose his job, will lose science for jail time, his life will be over. Unless...
Unless he has connections that can get him out of SimNation for just a tip: the opportunity of studying the only known offspring of the Grim Reaper - since grimborns only appear in sims 4.
The Beakers must be influentional to have Tesla Court. A big house in a secluded place (strangetown), with their own private laboratory and basement for experimenting. For such a specific test subject like Nervous, the only known grimborn at the time, they probably had to pull strings, to either adopt him or lure him to their facility.
After losing her son, Olive spirals. With reason. It's so traumatizing she may even become an actual serial killer. The service sims buried in her lot may be the way she tried to reach Grim for help after losing Nervous' custody.
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