Part 7 (1/2)
Yet during Christmas week, something happened that set the stage for the tragedy that was to come. It was at Crossroads's potluck supper. The church members were in the recreation area eating, while Vanessa Bulls talked on the phone with a friend, saying, ”Oh, a new guy is calling me. You know, I'm getting a divorce. I don't know if I can really like, I can date again. . . .”
Later, Vanessa would say that was when Matt Baker motioned for her to follow him into a hallway. She did, and when they got away from the others, he said, ”Will you really?”
”Will I really what?” she responded.
”Will you really date your pastor?”
Vanessa just looked at him until he spoke again: ”Well, I've had a vasectomy, so I can't get you pregnant. And I don't have any s.e.xually transmitted diseases.”
”Have you done that before?” she asked.
Matt nodded. ”Kari is clueless.”
Chapter 17.
In January of 2006, Terri Corbin suspected that Matt was using one of the other employees to set her up. She'd noticed him talking to a young woman named Nellie, who worked with the residents on the campus. Nellie and Matt appeared to be together a lot, especially after Sunday chapel services, and Terri wondered if there was something going on between them although she never saw any real evidence.
One day, Matt called Terri to his office and handed her a report Nellie had filed with a unit manager, saying that several boys on the campus claimed Terri had pa.s.sed love notes between them and the girls, something that was strictly forbidden.
”This is ridiculous,” Terri replied. ”It's not true.”
Instead of backing up his employee, Matt appeared not to believe her, even when she said, ”I'd never break the rules like this. If you don't believe me, ask the boys.”
As far as Terri knew, Matt, however, did nothing involving investigating the allegations. Instead, they were kept on Terri's record. Making inquiries on her own, Terri spoke to the boys who had allegedly made the claim. ”They didn't know anything about it,” she'd say later. ”They said they'd never said anything to Nellie about my pa.s.sing notes, and that they'd never asked me and knew I wouldn't have done it.”
Terri knew the allegations were serious. ”I believed Matt Baker wanted me to leave Waco Center for Youth, and he was using Nellie to set me up,” she'd later say. Two months after the incident, on February 27, Terri Corbin resigned. As much as she loved her job, she'd grown weary of fighting Matt Baker.
In January 2006, Larry Bulls stood before the members at Crossroads and announced that he and Cheryl were leaving the church. The reason, he said, was that he'd told G.o.d that when Vanessa's divorce became final, he'd go wherever G.o.d led him, which they had decided was back to their church in Troy. Yet even after her parents left Crossroads, Vanessa stayed, showing up on Sundays and sitting in the front row, two rows ahead of Kari and her girls in the sanctuary, listening to Matt preach with a beaming smile.
Early in 2006, Kari took her ExCET, the examination for certification in Texas, to teach English and language arts. She pa.s.sed, and began talking about changing schools the following year. Grace and Kensi had acclimated well into Spring Valley, and from Baylor on, Kari had talked of wanting to teach middle school. Adolescence is a difficult time, and many teachers find it a tricky age group to teach, but Kari felt drawn to the students who were caught between childhood and their teenage years. ”I think that's the population I'm supposed to serve,” she told a friend. ”It's where I can do the most good.”
For the most part, everyday events continued to take center stage in Kari's and Matt's lives, caring for the girls, cooking meals, doing homework, going to work, taking the girls to school, Kensi to swimming practice and meets. At times, the details were mundane, as on January 11, when Matt wrote a report at work saying that he had stopped serving snacks during chapel, to ”better a.s.sist dietary needs of clients,” which translated to not filling them up only hours before WCY served supper.
It was also in January that Kari joined a group of Spring Valley teachers who'd decided to diet. She went to a doctor she'd been to in the past and began taking phentermine, an appet.i.te suppressant. ”Matt and I are sharing the pills,” she told Linda. Concerned, Linda looked the pills up on the Internet and formed the opinion that if used correctly, they were safe.
Despite what was developing behind the scenes, at least on the surface, and as far as Kari apparently knew, in the burgeoning New Year, 2006, their lives remained unchanged. At Crossroads, too, all seemed to be churning along. During a Wednesday evening church service, Matt discussed an upcoming mission trip to Brazil and stressed that they'd need to raise funds to help pay for school supplies for the children in the village. ”Nothing seemed unusual,” Kimberly Berry would say.
The first indication that all wasn't well in the tidy redbrick house on Crested b.u.t.te appeared in an e-mail Matt sent Kari on Wednesday January 18. That morning, Matt arrived at WCY early to work on a sermon on the benefits of ”living a meek life.” Afterward, he e-mailed Kari, attempting to smooth over an argument they'd apparently had the day before. ”I was in no way trying to tell you that I couldn't talk or that I did not want to talk to you,” he said. ”I was in someone's office. I love you, and I love talking to you.”
Two weeks later, by early February, Matt was calling the Bulls's household often when Vanessa was home alone with Lilly, and the pressure began to build between Kari and Matt. On February 6, she e-mailed him, talking of not feeling well, yearning for spring break. She'd wanted to go on a family vacation, but he refused, saying that someone in Crossroads was expecting a death and that he'd have to conduct the funeral.
Certainly, she was overtaxed that winter, stretched thin between teaching college and third grade and chauffeuring the girls. On top of everything else, Kari worried about her students' performance on an upcoming standardized test. This was the first year she'd taught a grade level that had to take the TAKS test (Texas a.s.sessment of Knowledge and Skills). She was nervous and was tutoring ten of her students to help them pa.s.s.
A day later in a series of e-mails, Matt asked Kari why she was feeling so stressed. He was the one who brought up the upcoming anniversary of Ka.s.sidy's death, writing: ”Are you feeling depressed? Are you feeling lost? Do you want to stop something? If so, what could you stop? I don't know how to help you any more than I already do. The last time you sounded like this was close to an anniversary of Ka.s.sidy's death. I am just asking so I can help. What can I do? Love you, Matt.”
In past years, friends and family had judged that Kari was improving, better able to handle the painful anniversary as each year pa.s.sed. But for some reason this particular year, with so much on her mind, would prove a step backward. In response, she wrote: ”Well, this might sound crazy, but I think for the first time I have realized that [Ka.s.sidy] is not coming back. So I guess I am feeling like I have lost her all over again. I just have a lot on my plate, and I feel like I am just sinking. So am I depressed or lost? Yes, all of the above. I feel like I am getting sick, and I hate myself because I should be happy because I have you and the girls, but I just can't get going.”
In his responses, Matt again professed his love and offered to help, but Kari told him there was nothing he could do. ”I will get through this on my own . . . You are wonderful. I couldn't ask for a better husband, but right now I am just sinking, and I have to find out how to pull myself up. So I don't even know how I am going to do it.”
Days later, Matt e-mailed apologizing for leaving dirty dishes in the sink the night before, while Kari was teaching her cla.s.s at Tarleton. ”I need to work harder,” he said, but she disagreed, saying that it was a combined effort and that they were both too busy. Matt agreed. ”I am so ready for summer,” she said. ”This summer, I am really going to work on things to make it better teaching next year.”
The afternoon before Valentine's Day, Kari put together packages for her daughters and students, ones with cards and the traditional small mints in the shape of hearts that read BE MINE and LOVE. She e-mailed and asked Matt, who was doing the grocery shopping, to pick up c.o.kes, Dr Peppers, and strawberry sauce for the sundaes she planned for her cla.s.s. But by then the strain between them was building.
While not knowing about Matt's relations.h.i.+p with Vanessa Bulls, Kari had apparently picked up on the fact that something had changed in her marriage, and she'd begun feeling estranged from Matt. Later that day, she sent him an e-mail expressing her inner confusion: ” . . . I just want my soul mate back with me forever, and h.e.l.l YES, I will do whatever it takes to make sure that happens. I just need you to know that I LOVE YOU MORE THAN ANYTHING IN THE WORLD, AND MY HANG UPS [sic] ARE SOMETHING I NEED TO WORK ON.
”Let's just make it a real habit to try and spend a little time together everyday [sic] to just talk about us and life and just holding each other. I love you, Matt, and I can't even think what my life would be like if you weren't in it.”
A minute later, he responded: ”Thank you-I needed to hear this . . . I LOVE YOU!”
”I guess we are meant to be since we are always thinking alike,” Kari answered.
”Hopefully so, ,” he responded. ” . . . I love you 2.”
While Kari didn't know about her husband's new interest, on Crested b.u.t.te some neighbors noticed a strange car pulling up to the Baker house on Fridays, when Matt had the day off and Kari and the girls were all at school. The garage door opened, the car with the pretty blonde inside drove directly in. The garage door closed behind her.
Meanwhile, the nervous tension in Kari and Matt's marriage mushroomed, evidenced by e-mails in which she complained that he was increasingly distant and not interested in her physically. They bantered about s.e.x, Kari saying that Matt wasn't reaching out to her, and Matt responding that she was pus.h.i.+ng him away. ”You know me-I will never ever, ever, ever have enough!!!!!!!!” he wrote.
”Please know that I am thinking of you today. Try not to stress out too much. Your kids will do fine. You're a great teacher, and you've taught them well. I love you!” Matt wrote to Kari on the morning of the TAKS test.
Days later, the tests were over but the results weren't in on the afternoon that Jill and Stephen Hotz and their children drove through Waco and dropped in at the Family Y, where Kensi had swim team, to see Matt, Kari, and the girls. They weren't there long when Jill said, ”I could feel the tension between Matt and Kari.”
From the Y, they drove to a Chili's restaurant and ordered lunch. Kari talked about her cla.s.ses' TAKS scores. ”I have some kids I'm pretty worried about,” she said.
While the visit started out stiff, the old friends quickly fell into a familiar rhythm, laughing and joking, more at ease. When they split up that afternoon, Jill hugged them and said good-bye. Jill had no way of knowing that she'd never again see Kari alive.
Chapter 18.
On February 24, 2006, days after Kari's students took the TAKS test, Matt called the Bulls's house at 9:07 A.M. and talked for fifteen minutes and eighteen seconds. The call was initiated from his telephone at Crossroads Baptist.
As she had earlier in the month, Kari confessed to feeling sad as the anniversary of Ka.s.sidy's death loomed. She e-mailed Kimberly Berry one day admitting that there was a time soon after Ka.s.sidy's death when she had briefly considered suicide. ”The thought left me when I thought of the girls. I have to live for my girls,” Kari wrote. As upsetting as the approaching anniversary was, Kari said she'd accepted her daughter's death. ”I felt at peace with it, with Ka.s.sidy being gone.”
As the days wore on, the phone calls from Matt to the Bulls's residence continued, sometimes from Crossroads and other times from WCY or his cell phone. At the same time, he e-mailed Kari, closing each with ”I love you.” Always, he acted concerned about his wife's mood and pegged her building anxiety on something other than him. On March 21, the day before the seventh anniversary of Ka.s.sidy's death, Matt e-mailed Kari at school, inquiring if on her diet her sugar intake could be low. Kari responded that she didn't know what was wrong, except that her hands shook, and she couldn't stop it: ”I haven't felt this bad in a long time.”
In an e-mail that followed, Matt offered to do what he could to help, then said something that would seem infinitely more important years later: ”Do you want anything special tonight? How about a chocolate shake with even MORE chocolate syrup? Just joking. :-) Love you!”
”No, I will be okay,” Kari responded. ”I just want to sleep tonight.”
At school, Shae noticed that Kari looked sad and asked if she was all right. Kari gave her a big hug, saying, ”I'm okay. I do this every year. It's just hard.”
The next day, the actual anniversary, Jenny called Kari at the house, knowing that she would take the day off work. ”If there's anything I can do, I'm here,” Jenny said.
”You know what day it is?” Kari asked, sounding pleased.