Part 19 (1/2)

When she described telling Matt that the relations.h.i.+p was over, Vanessa cried.

Comforting her, the Secret Service agent said: ”I've been interviewing the Matt Bakers of the world . . . What he did is use you. There's no doubt in my mind that he did something to his wife. There's no doubt in my mind that he may have done something to his daughter. Maybe he saw this as getting rid of his wife to have a relations.h.i.+p with you. The person caught in the middle is the twenty-four-year-old divorced woman.”

”He had girls. I had a girl. He was a pastor . . .” Vanessa said. ”I didn't think it would come back to bite me.”

”It didn't, Vanessa,” the agent again a.s.sured her. ”It's just one of those things where it's up to us to get an insight into his life. The Matt Bakers of the world use young women like you who are vulnerable.”

They talked, Vanessa insisting that they had no need to have Ranger Cawthon or anyone else call her, and that she'd talk with them again if they had any questions. ”I was surprised it took you so long to question me,” she said.

”We appreciate your coming in. We all know who Matt is now. He's a dirtbag.”

”Why'd it take me so long to see that,” Vanessa said, again crying.

In their haste to make her feel better, it would later seem there were many questions left unasked that day. The investigators gathered around her in that room never asked the pretty young blonde when she'd first gone to Matt's house. They never asked if Matt had ever told her that he planned to kill his wife. And, perhaps most importantly, they never spelled out that Vanessa needed to be careful. If she wasn't telling the truth, if she lied and they found out, she could be considered a party to a murder. In hindsight, there was much left unasked and unanswered in that dismal interview room in the run-down Hewitt police station.

Two hours after the interview began, the investigators left the room, and Vanessa again waited. Outside of her earshot, they discussed the interview. ”The Secret Service agent said he was sure she was telling the truth,” Toombs would say later. ”He told me there was no reason to ask her to take a lie detector test.”

Back in the room, Toombs and Spear prepared to take Vanessa back to Temple to pick up her car. ”My mother's going to be upset,” she said to Toombs.

”I'll talk to her,” he said. ”You are in no . . . trouble about this . . . you weren't involved.”

How were they all so sure? Was Vanessa Bulls telling the truth? Did she know more than she'd told them? Perhaps the Secret Service agent should have listened to his own warnings, when he'd told her, ”You just never know about people, you really don't.”

Chapter 42.

After Johnston filed his motions for subpoenas, Matt's attorneys filed countermotions, attempting to block Johnston from obtaining the records and depositions he'd requested, including those involving Kari's and Ka.s.sidy's deaths. In the end, the judge ruled that Ka.s.sidy's records weren't relevant to the wrongful death suit but upheld the subpoenas for information on Kari. Quickly, the records began pouring in.

Among the first to arrive were those from Hewitt PD and the EMT service. Once they had those in hand, Johnston and Bennett traveled to Edmond, Oklahoma, to meet with Tom Bevel, a crime-scene and blood-splatter expert who'd worked for twenty-seven years for the Oklahoma City Police Department. With them they carried copies of the scene photos, the autopsy, the EMTs' reports, a DVD of Matt's interview with Cooper, and a time line they'd constructed based on Matt's statement and the receipts he'd produced to police.

”They were basically looking for an independent a.n.a.lysis of what the scene said,” says Bevel, who'd specialized in forensic science for eighteen years, testifying in high-profile cases including that of Darlie Routier, the Dallas housewife convicted of murdering her two young sons.

After they left, Bevel began by looking at the scene photos, taking in any clues he could find based on what he saw of Kari's body and the room itself. After he'd absorbed what he could, he turned to the autopsy, statement, and time line, comparing those to what he'd already gleaned from the photos.

Later, Bevel put his findings into a formal letter for Johnston, writing: ”I would not expect to be able to observe any visible signs of lividity in less than thirty minutes minimum and up to two hours maximum . . . The extent of lividity seen in the photographs of Mrs. Baker and that reported by the EMT personnel does not comport with the time line given by Mr. Baker. In my opinion much more time has elapsed from Mrs. Baker's death until it is reported, than stated by Mr. Baker.”

Bevel then pointed out that death is a process that takes time. If Matt was gone for forty-five minutes, and Kari was alive when he left, Kari had to take the pills and the pills had to have time to work. Lividity wouldn't have begun until Kari's heart stopped, until she was dead. ”This does not comport with the time frame as given by Mr. Baker.” Bevel also questioned how Kari had so quickly become cold to the touch.

As troubling was Matt's description of dressing Kari's body before the EMTs arrived. ”I have worked a number of cases in which an unconscious or deceased person has been dressed,” he wrote. ”Due to their 'dead body weight,' this dressing by another is very difficult and usually obvious. The position of Mrs. Baker's panties are much more consistent with her dressing herself, as they appear in a normal position.”

Bevel also noted what appeared to be bruising on Kari's nose and lips in the scene and autopsy photos. When he talked with Johnston, Bevel mentioned that this type of injury suggested that Kari might have first been drugged, then smothered.

After bringing up the typewritten, unsigned suicide note, Bevel concluded: ”There is enough contradictory information in this case that I would highly recommend further action on this investigation.”

Johnston already had the opinion from the toxicologist, Dr. Stafford, who said unequivocally that Kari hadn't died of an overdose. Now the lawyer turned to another expert, William Lee Carter, a Waco psychologist who testified in criminal trials. This time, Johnston supplied his expert with information on Matt's past with women. ”I wanted to know what a professional thought of Matt's personality type,” says Johnston.

When Carter called with his conclusions, they weren't a surprise to any of those involved in the investigation. ”Mr. Baker has a history of serious s.e.xual indiscretion with females. There is an elusive, manipulative quality to his personality. A relations.h.i.+p with a female gave him reason to desire his wife's absence from his life, creating motive for murder.”

Carter pointed out that Matt himself had made it clear to police that he was the only one with Kari on the night of her death. Also not to be discounted were Kari's words to Bristol: ”Research validates that a woman's reports of perceived death intentions by a husband is one of the most telling diagnostic precursors to spousal murder.”

Adding Matt's ”dark personal history” to the other evidence the team had pulled together surrounding Kari's death, including Matt's apparent lack of grief, Carter said, painted a d.a.m.ning picture.

After Johnston filled Linda and Jim in on the reports, she called the experts, wanting to hear firsthand. Afterward, she was ever more certain that Kari had not died by her own hand. ”I thought, oh, my gosh, Matt really is a s.e.xual predator, and he murdered our daughter,” she says. ”Everything my sisters had wondered about, it was all true.”

Off and on, Toombs and Spear went to the DA's Office as Cawthon did, talking to Melanie Walker, asking for guidance. ”I told them that they didn't have enough for probable cause,” says Walker. ”The scene wasn't even processed like a questionable death. Without homicide on the autopsy or death certificate, the potential for reasonable doubt was huge.”

Yet the evidence kept mounting. Matt had suggested that the police talk to a woman named Holly Romano, someone who'd seen Kari the evening before her death at the Y during swim practice. What Matt told Cooper was that Romano remarked about how tired Kari appeared. When Toombs talked to the woman, however, Romano said, ”That's not true.”

In fact, Kari mentioned that she'd interviewed for a new job and it had gone well that day, seeming to look forward to the change to middle school. ”Did Kari leave to go get sick in the restroom?” Toombs asked, repeating what Baker had told Cooper.

”Not that I saw,” Romano replied.

At about that time, Mike McNamara met with the director of the Y, who showed him records doc.u.menting Matt's firing from the staff. Waiting for an official subpoena, which she hadn't yet been served, the woman wouldn't let him take the records, only read them. When McNamara was done, another Y employee approached him. ”I always worried about Kari,” she said. ”Matt has a terrible temper. I was afraid he could hurt her. When she died, I immediately thought something had to be wrong.”

After McNamara left, he filled in Bennett and Johnston, then talked to Spear and Toombs, suggesting they interview the same women. The two officers followed up quickly and left with another piece in the puzzle of Matt Baker's personality.

Then, in mid-August, McNamara returned to WCY, this time with the power of a subpoena, one for everything on the facility's network generated by Matt's missing computer.

Afterward, McNamara took the CDs to Johnston's office and began looking through them on a computer. But he and Bennett couldn't open the files. Deciding it must be encrypted, they returned to WCY and asked to have the doc.u.ments transferred into ”something we can read.”

From there, McNamara and Johnston went on to other matters while Bennett and Johnston's secretary searched the files. Before long, what Bennett saw gave him chills: Internet searches on drug sites. ”We've got something,” he said, calling out to McNamara and Johnston.

That evening, Bennett and Johnston worked late, combing through the disks. ”We found what looked like a history of Matt shopping for drugs, and we couldn't be sure, but it looked like he'd purchased Ambien.”

In July, after Linda had taken the disks out of Matt's garbage, the one with the chilling description of Ka.s.sidy's blue eyes, Johnston had hired another expert to work the case, a computer guru named Noel Kersh, a Texas Tech grad who worked with Pathway Forensics, a Houston-based consulting firm. Now, Johnston called Kersh, asking him to come to Waco. When he did, Kersh and Johnston met with Linda at the office. A short time later, Kersh left with the WCY disks and the Crossroads Dell laptop, the one Waco police had found nothing of interest on.

Back in Houston, Kersh began with the laptop. He wasn't looking long before he found a history that seemed unusual for a man of the cloth. Baker had been using the computer to access dating and p.o.r.nographic Web sites, among them private.camz.com and coola.n.a.lsite.com. It wasn't shocking news. Besides Linda's description of the p.o.r.n that had shown up on Matt and Kari's home computer, Bennett had looked at the laptop earlier, finding the p.o.r.n sites intermingled with Matt's searches for Internet sermons. ”Look at what that idiot's been up to,” Bennett had told Johnston.

From the laptop, Kersh turned to the WCY disks. Over a period of days, he slowly worked through the material. One of the first things he found was a folder marked Dulin Family c.r.a.p. In it were e-mails between Kari and Matt and Linda and Matt. He copied those to a disk and kept going.

As he delved even further, Kersh saw more records ill.u.s.trating that the chaplain's eye often strayed from the heavens. Matt's work-computer trail also led to a long list of dating and p.o.r.nographic Internet sites. The URLs were descriptive of where the minister's interests lay, from widewomen.com, to s.e.xlist.com, hotmatchup.com, s.e.xtracker.com, s.e.xdatenetwork.com, bustydustystash.com, playboy.com, iwantanewgirlfriend.com, and h.o.r.n.ymatches.com.

While that was interesting, perhaps opening the window wider into Matt's mind, it didn't answer the important question: Had Matt murdered Kari? Rather than Matt's s.e.xual leanings, what Johnston was interested in was any computer activity that indicated that Matt Baker had shopped for drugs, most importantly Ambien, the drug found in Kari's body on autopsy. Before long, there, too, Kersh hit pay dirt.

The list of drug Web sites Matt had visited was long, including drugs.com, medicinenet.com, search.drugs.com, Rxlist.com, hydrocodone.com, drugslist.com, and 1stmeds.com. He'd even dropped in at ambien.com. As Kersh combed through the information, one site stood out, and that was the one Kersh mentioned to Johnston when he called with the results. Explaining that to complete an Internet purchase a buyer had to go to a shopping cart, Kersh pointed to one Web page in particular that popped up on Matt's history: secure.rx-cart.com. On March 23, two weeks before Kari's death, Matt's account accessed that page on the site of a Canadian-based, online pharmacy. It appeared that he'd placed an order in his shopping cart.

After talking to Johnston, Kersh followed through and contacted the company. Before long, he was put in touch with the owner, a man named Mark Henry. ”Can you make sure that all of it checks out, find out what he put in the cart?” Kersh asked.

When Henry called back, he confirmed that it was the WCY computer that logged on with the user name mattdb7722. What was even more interesting was the item in mattdb7722's shopping cart: generic Ambien.

”Did he buy it?” Kersh asked.

It was there that it became more complicated. The purchase was never completed, Henry explained, but that wasn't unusual. Many potential buyers backed out at that particular juncture, after they had the drugs in their cart. Henry attributed the lost sales to the fact that it was at that very point that buyers learned of a two-week delay before the drugs could be delivered.