12.Deadly.Little.Secrets.2012 (29 page)

Chapter 44

I
n Waco, many were discussing the case. “People began taking sides,” says Nancy. “At church, some would say, ‘We know he did it. They’ll get him.’ Others wanted to stay neutral or thought Matt was innocent. They really wanted to believe in him.”

At the girls’ school in Kerrville, Matt e-mailed the counselor eight months after Kari’s death. Ostensibly it was about Christmas traditions, but what he asked was to meet with her. On the table was a discussion about the Dulins and what part they should play in the girls’ lives. “My attorney needs to know of any detrimental effects Kensi and Grace are forced to undergo due to the visits with their maternal grandparents. As well as the girls’ understanding of the court issues and negative feelings that are manifested toward me, their father, from their maternal grandparents.”

T
hroughout the first months of 2007, motions in the civil suit flew back and forth, involving bank records, the girls’ elementary-school records, and Bill Johnston’s motions to allow him to bring into evidence extramarital affairs and past inappropriate sexual behavior. Matt denied each new charge leveled against him. Through it all, Johnston’s eye was on spurring a criminal action more than continuing the civil one.

Toward that end, in early August 2007, Linda Dulin sat at her computer and composed a letter to Judge Billy Martin, asking for an inquest into her daughter’s death. There’d been much discussion before getting to this point, conferences and phone calls between Linda, Bennett, McNamara, and Johnston, in which they had considered how to proceed. It was the next logical step, the only way to start up the nonexistent investigation. Johnston made suggestions, and Linda incorporated them into her letter to Martin, beginning by focusing on the crux of the situation: “Unfortunately, local police quickly accepted the story provided by Kari’s husband, that the death was a suicide. It was not.”

Over the past year, Linda explained, Mike McNamara and John Bennett had investigated Kari’s death, and experts had reviewed the evidence. To bring Martin up to date, she included a printed summary of what the investigation had uncovered about Matt, his history, his relationship with Vanessa, and the events leading up to Kari’s death. She closed by writing, “My husband and I deeply appreciate the job you do, and we trust this matter to your judgment.”

The response to Linda’s letter arrived in mid-August in the form of subpoenas sent to those involved in the case, ordering them to gather in two weeks in Judge Martin’s courtroom for the purpose of an inquest. Not long after, an Associated Press reporter caught wind of the storm brewing over the death of a young Waco mother. She penned an article entitled: “Parents request inquest in Hewitt teacher’s death.” Matt’s attorney was quoted as saying that Matt had been subpoenaed for an upcoming inquest in the case but would not testify. Backing up his client, he said, Matt “was not involved in his wife’s death.”

Despite Matt’s announcement that he wouldn’t cooperate, Martin’s action could have been interpreted as a triumph for the Dulins. Yet Linda and Jim were keenly aware that this was simply another step into uncertain territory. Although many had worked hard to investigate, the results of the inquest were far from assured. As excited as she was, Linda had a difficult time knowing what to think. Finally, she had what she wanted, the potential that Kari’s death would be looked at logically, in a clinical, unemotional manner in which the evidence could be assessed, not just waved off without consideration. But would that happen?

Evaluating the situation, those involved judged that there were three probable results of Martin’s impending examination. One was that he would hear the evidence and do nothing, leaving a ruling of suicide on Kari’s death certificate. That was the worst possible outcome for the Dulins, for it meant that the case would be difficult if not nearly impossible to prosecute and that the district attorney’s office probably wouldn’t even consider taking it before a jury.

The second was a rather tepid improvement, but one that at least opened the door for an open-minded prosecutor. Martin had the option of coming to the same opinion written on Kari’s autopsy, that the manner of her death was undetermined. What the Dulins hoped was that Martin would consider all the evidence, including the expert opinions. If he did, they believed he had to rule their daughter’s death a homicide.

The main problem, however, continued to be the mistakes made during the initial investigation by Hewitt PD. Unfortunately, much had been neglected and lost, leaving Martin little in the way of concrete evidence to consider. First, there was the autopsy, conducted months after Kari was embalmed and buried, with its inconclusive finding. Next there were the photos taken at the scene, or perhaps the lack of photos. There were no close-ups of the lividity in Kari’s back, arms, and hands. Those in attendance hadn’t even made a sketch of the scene or collected the bed linens. The crime-scene unit wasn’t dispatched, and even the most obvious pieces of evidence weren’t collected, including the Bartles & James bottles.

Then again, even if everything had been documented, would Martin have pulled it together? Linda and Jim worried that the judge wouldn’t be open to changing his ruling. Still, as she dressed to go to the courthouse, she held out hope that Martin would be flexible enough to consider all the evidence. “Everyone makes mistakes, but the honorable thing to do is to correct them,” she’d say later. “I saw the inquest as an opportunity for the JP to set things right. Billy Martin had made a mistake by not initially ordering an autopsy. Now he had the opportunity to rectify his mistake.”

To get their opinions into the hands of the judge, Johnston asked the experts to lay out their conclusions in writing. The crime-scene expert, Tom Bevel, the psychologist, William Lee Carter, and the retired professor of pathology at the University of Tennessee, David Stafford, all wrote letters addressed to Martin in which they detailed their findings, all pointing to Kari’s death being a homicide. A fourth letter came from the computer guru, Noel Kersh, and it included a long list of the drug Web sites Matt perused in the two weeks leading up to Kari’s death and that he’d put Ambien in a shopping cart. All of the experts added that they would be happy to speak to Martin personally to answer questions should he have any about their conclusions.

Linda also had a letter from Jo Ann Bristol ready for Martin, in which she laid out her final meeting with Kari just days before her death. Reading the letters, Linda couldn’t understand how anyone could consider what had happened and come to the conclusion that Kari had committed suicide.

J
udge Billy Martin opened the inquest the afternoon of August 29, 2007, a year and four months after Kari Baker’s death, in his courtroom in the McLennan County Courthouse. Gathered in the hallway waiting to be called were Jim and Linda, along with Hewitt officers Cooper, Irving, Kasting, and Toombs, Dr. Quinton, who’d performed the autopsy, Texas Ranger Matt Cawthon, and paramedic Shelton Chapman. Linda and Toombs carried with them the experts’ letters to hand to the judge.

Also in attendance was the subject of the discussion, Matt Baker.

Although he never even glanced in her direction, Linda stared at her former son-in-law, assessing him. It surprised her that she felt so unemotional as she watched Matt, dressed in a business suit, laugh with his attorneys.
How does someone like you live with yourself knowing what you’ve done?
she wondered.

The witnesses were called to enter Martin’s small courtroom, and like a teacher calling a class to order, the judge took roll. When Linda’s name was called, she responded with a firm, “Yes, sir.”

“Is there anyone here exercising their Fifth Amendment right not to testify?” Martin asked.

All eyes turned to Matt when he called out, “I am.”

With that, Matt and his attorney approached the judge. After a short discussion, Matt Baker and his attorney left the room. It seemed incongruous. Everyone gathered in Martin’s courtroom would be talking about Kari and Matt and what had happened that night on Crested Butte, but the one person who’d been there had walked away without answering a single question. Still, that didn’t mean that those congregated wouldn’t report what he’d said and done.

After the witnesses were sworn in, Jim and Linda joined the others in a hallway lined with chairs, to wait until they were called back into the courtroom. Linda felt nervous, anxious. So much was at stake. Silently, she and Jim prayed, asking that this inquiry would be the first step in a path that would lead to what they so wanted, for all the questions finally to be asked and answered, and for justice to be done.

In his courtroom, meanwhile, Judge Martin queried the first witness, Dr. Reade Quinton. As the medical examiner testified, he reviewed his records, stating that Kari’s body had been in relatively good condition, considering she’d been buried for months, and that he’d seen no signs of injuries. The important area was the toxicology. While such tests are most accurate when run on blood, in this case that wasn’t possible, since all Kari’s blood had all been drained and replaced by embalming fluid in preparation for her burial.

Instead, the toxicology screen was run was on muscle tissue, a less accurate option. The result was that the lab was able to document what drugs were in Kari’s system at the time of her death: alcohol, phentermine, Unisom, and Ambien. The embalming process accounted for the alcohols, which left the phentermine, Unisom, and Ambien. Because there were so few good studies exploring drug levels in muscle tissue, however, Quinton didn’t have enough information to calculate how much of each drug was present in Kari’s body at the time of her death. The result was that the M.E. couldn’t say if any or a mixture of all of the drugs could have been responsible for Kari’s death.

After the M.E. left the courtroom, the first officer on the scene the night Kari died entered. Officer Michael Irving recounted how he had arrived shortly after the first two EMTs. “I met Mr. Baker outside,” Irving recounted. “He did bring us inside, to where his wife was in the bedroom.”

As the EMTs worked on Kari, Irving described how Baker detailed the situation, including that he’d found his wife unresponsive and nude, dressed her and removed her from the bed to do CPR. When he looked about the room, there were things that caught the officer’s attention, including the nearly empty Unisom container and the note.

“And how many pills would the bottle have normally contained?” Martin asked.

“Thirty-two,” Irving said. “When Sergeant Cooper arrived, he found the pills in the bathroom, prescribed by the Waco Weight Loss Center.”

“And they were prescribed to?” Martin asked.

“Her. Kari Baker,” Irving responded.

Although admittedly early in the inquest, it didn’t appear to be going well for the Dulins. First, the medical examiner had said that he couldn’t determine what caused Kari’s death, and now the first officer on the scene talked about pills on the nightstand as well as diet pills in the bathroom, both used by Kari.

After Irving, his superior, Sergeant Kasting, testified. One of the first things the sergeant recounted was something that could have given him pause as he stood in the Bakers’ bedroom the night of Kari’s death; one of the first EMTs on the scene, Gates, had told Kasting that the condition of Kari’s body suggested she might have been dead for quite a while. “He said he felt that she’d been unresponsive for some time,” Kasting said. “They ran a strip, a test to determine if there were any signs of life at that time. It was negative.”

Perhaps to remind the judge of the part he’d personally played in the decisions made that night, Kasting then pointed out that he’d contacted Martin and told him what he’d seen at the scene, including reading the suicide note to the judge, “word by word.”

“Was the note typed?” Martin asked, as if he were still unsure.

“Yes, sir,” Kasting said.

“Was it signed?”

“I don’t remember,” the officer admitted.

As to what the officer had heard from Matt, it would be what others echoed throughout the day, that Kari had been depressed since Kassidy’s death and in the preceding weeks talked of suicide. And then there was that incident in the car, when Matt contended that his wife tried to jump out on the freeway.

If that were true, why hadn’t Matt sounded the alarm then? Why hadn’t he gotten help for his wife? As to Matt’s demeanor, did it indicate a man grieving for a dead wife? Kasting saw a man he judged to be saddened and in shock. Yet, was he? On the scene, Matt wasn’t crying. In fact, he wasn’t even “tearing up.”

Next, a paramedic testified to the condition of Kari’s lifeless body. On his report, Shelton Chapman had described Kari as without a pulse, cold, and not breathing. The cardiac monitor showed no electrical activity in her heart, no signs of life, and he’d noted lividity visible in the back of her neck. “On our protocols, she was D.A.S.,” Chapman said. “Dead at scene.”

One by one the witnesses answered Martin’s questions. When it was his turn, Sergeant Cooper, like Kasting before him, it seemed, wanted the judge to remember his part in the decisions made the night of Kari’s death. When Cooper arrived, he and Kasting called the judge again, inquiring about an autopsy. After giving a quick rundown of the situation, Cooper told the judge: “An autopsy still was not ordered.”

Yet the critical information that the note was typed and without a signature, had Cooper told that to Martin during that middle-of-the-night conversation? “I can’t remember,” the sergeant said.

Was the decision not to autopsy Kari’s body simply the result of a lack of communication between an officer who didn’t divulge all the information and a justice of the peace who didn’t ask all the questions? At the inquest, Martin didn’t add any personal explanations into the official record.

At the scene, Cooper wrote down the details Matt told him about the events leading to Kari’s death. “I did find records that his debit card had been used [to buy gas] and at Hollywood Video during the time he stated,” Cooper offered.