Part 19 (2/2)

Yet if Kersh hadn't found conclusive proof that Matt Baker had bought the sleeping pills, the computer expert had uncovered evidence that someone on the former minister's computer was shopping for Ambien.

After doc.u.menting all he'd discovered, Kersh again returned to the WCY CDs. It didn't take long before he found something else intriguing: Matt's computer had accessed sites that sold hydrocodone painkillers and GHB, a drug similar to roofies, the date rape drug that renders victims unconscious and wipes out their memories.

Yet something else waited for Kersh on the computer. On March 9, a month before Kari's death, mattdb7722 had Googled the phrase ”overdose on sleeping pills.”

Considering what he'd uncovered, Kersh knew he had one more step to pull it all together. While interesting, there was one big question mark: Could Kersh determine who'd been on Matt's computer when the sites were accessed? Could he prove the mattdb7722 who shopped for Ambien was Matt Baker?

To find the answer, Kersh charted the computer's activity. What he doc.u.mented was an interwoven Internet history between Matt Baker and mattdb7722. For instance at 8:30 A.M. on March 9, Matt sent an e-mail to a work a.s.sociate. Thirteen minutes later, he scoured the Internet for pharmaceutical sites. After looking up Ambien, Matt then went to a page that included the safety warnings: The most commonly observed side effects in controlled clinical trials were drowsiness, dizziness, and diarrhea . . . Don't take with alcohol, as it may increase these behaviors.

Then, after Googling ”overdose on sleeping pills” at 9:27 that morning, thirty-six minutes later, Matt sent an e-mail to Kari at school. What those doc.u.ments proved was that on the morning mattdb7722 was scouting for drugs, Matt Baker was sitting at the computer.

One other thing Kersh found wouldn't mean anything to those involved in the case until later, that Matt had used his computer to purchase herbal s.e.xual stimulants, over-the-counter capsules that the Web site described as aphrodisiacs ”ten times better than herbal ecstasy.”

When they heard the news about the Ambien, Johnston, McNamara, and Bennett felt the sky open up. ”We'd found as close as we could to a smoking gun,” says Bennett.

When they told Toombs, his early doubts about the case vanished. ”This is the real deal,” he thought.

With the evidence piling up, Bennett and McNamara dropped in at the district attorney's office and talked to Walker. Cawthon hadn't been successful getting the prosecutors interested in the case in the past, but the two investigators wanted to keep the a.s.sistant district attorney up to date. ”We couldn't prove to her what had happened, but we could show that what Matt Baker said had happened couldn't have happened,” says McNamara.

Walker listened but didn't offer to take it on. ”It wasn't handled as a murder investigation from the beginning. It was handled as a suicide,” she's say later. ”There was a lack of evidence. They had a dead girl and a family who cared about her, and Mike and John were doing their jobs, but the finding on the autopsy was still a big problem.”

Although disappointed, Bennett and McNamara weren't ready to give up. Instead, they pored through the e-mails in the folder marked Dulin Family c.r.a.p. Before long, Mike McNamara thought he saw a pattern. In the fall of 2005, the e-mails from Matt to Kari were sweet, even solicitous. But from February on, during the time Matt was calling Vanessa Bulls, ”You could see the change of att.i.tude on Matt's part. It was sickening,” says McNamara.

Other information kept being produced in connection with the subpoenas Johnston's office cranked out. When they issued one for Kari's Bible, Matt didn't produce it, but when the Hewitt PD records showed up, they found the copy Sadler had made of Kari's plea for G.o.d's protection. ”I read it and thought about how frightened Kari was,” says McNamara. ”How alone she must have felt.”

Like Cawthon, Bennett and McNamara both believed that Vanessa Bulls was the key to the case. On August 30, McNamara called and asked her to meet with them at Johnston's office. She agreed. When they asked questions, she answered much as she had to Toombs and Spear nearly a month earlier, maintaining there'd been no s.e.xual relations.h.i.+p with Matt Baker. Neither McNamara nor Bennett believed her. ”She wasn't being truthful,” says Bennett. You could tell.”

”She claimed everything was lily-white with Baker, no flirting, no kissing, no s.e.xual encounters. It was unbelievable,” says McNamara. ”She kept saying that she had never been attracted to him but that she thought he might make a good father for her daughter.”

One thing Bennett noticed was that Bulls used some of the same phrasing Matt had when describing their relations.h.i.+p. ”I felt like he'd schooled her well,” says Bennett.

Meanwhile, at Hewitt PD, the criminal case was stalled. Toombs sent the suicide note to the lab, and when it came back, the report said that it had been printed on a Hewlett Packard inkjet printer. Although Johnston had asked repeatedly, Matt hadn't turned over the home computer and printer he'd had at the time of Kari's death, so the only one available for testing was the one from WCY, which turned out to be a Hewlett Packard. Yet when the tests were run, it wasn't a match.

On October 6, 2006, Ben Toombs performed his final official act on the Baker investigation: He returned the printer to WCY. ”I felt like Matt had probably killed Kari,” says Toombs. ”I just wasn't sure that we'd ever be able to prove it.”

Chapter 43.

Despite the disappointments and the lack of encouragement from law enforcement, Linda and Jim remained steadfast, hopeful that eventually they'd prevail. ”We weren't going to just let this fade away,” Linda says. ”We were convinced that Matt Baker murdered our daughter.”

With the District Attorney's Office unwilling to take on the case, the wrongful death suit continued, each side filing motions and countermotions. The first depositions took place in October, beginning with the EMTs. What came through loud and clear was that when they arrived on the scene, Kari's body was already cool. When it came to being any more precise than that, the shoddy investigation was a problem. Since it had been so quickly written off as a suicide, no one had inserted a thermometer into the liver to record Kari's core body temperature. They hadn't even noted the ambient temperature of the bedroom.

Yet common sense said that what the EMTs and paramedics saw contradicted Matt's account. As a rule, dead bodies only lose 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit per hour. With average human body temperature at 98.6, if Kari had been dead for an hour or less, her body should have been 96 degrees or warmer, not so unnaturally cool that the EMTs noted it on their reports.

Finally, at 9:03 on the morning of November 3, seven months after their daughter's death, Linda and Jim arrived at the offices of Matt's attorney, James Rainey. The date for the depositions had arrived, including one the Dulins had antic.i.p.ated for a very long time. Both Matt and Linda were scheduled to be deposed that day, but it was Matt's questioning that loomed the largest.

While Matt's deposition was officially for the wrongful death suit the Dulins had brought on behalf of their granddaughters, everyone gathered knew that the stakes were much higher. Linda and Jim weren't pursuing money but justice. Matt had successfully sidestepped them for a long time, but on this afternoon, that finally promised to be over.

For the first time, Bill Johnston would be able to question Matt, putting him on the record about so many things, from his relations.h.i.+p with Vanessa Bulls to his account of the events on the night Kari died. That information could help on many levels. Locking Matt into his story on videotape during a sworn deposition could allow Johnston to show inconsistencies with his prior statements to police and with the physical evidence. As important, Johnston could ask questions relating to all Mike and John had uncovered about important topics, including Matt's tawdry past. Everything they learned could open up more leads and potentially move the investigation forward.

The conference room filled. Both of Matt's attorneys, James Rainey for the civil case and Gerald Villarrial for the criminal investigation, were there, along with Johnston and the Dulins. Matt looked different than he had in the months following Kari's death. His hair was longer, and he had bangs, but it wasn't all gelled up, as it had been when Linda judged he was attempting to look younger for Vanessa. Johnston didn't recognize a woman with thick, coa.r.s.e gray hair and a placid countenance, who'd accompanied the others, but Linda did. She was perhaps a little surprised to see Barbara Baker in the room but thought little of it. For his part, Matt barely looked in Linda's direction.

As they congregated around a table in the conference room, before beginning his questioning, Johnston inquired about evidence Matt had been ordered to bring, items he'd promised to produce. Despite the subpoenas, Matt had arrived empty-handed.

”You felt that you didn't have adequate time to search for them?” Johnston asked.

”That's correct,” Matt replied.

At that point, Johnston asked about the individual items: First, Kari's photographs, journals, diaries, notes, greeting cards, and writings. ”Will you agree to diligently search for same, for those and provide them?” Johnston asked.

”Yes,” Matt agreed.

Category two included Matt and Kari's home computer and printer and everything a.s.sociated with it, including CDs and memory devices.

”I can search for them, I can,” Matt said. ”But I've told my attorneys that that computer is no longer in my possession.”

”Can you state what happened to the computer?” Johnston asked.

In Matt's account, the computer became slow and wasn't working property, so he used the church laptop instead. Later, he gave the home computer to his father, but the hard drive had crashed and he'd had to rebuild it. ”But it does exist?” Johnston asked.

”It does exist,” Matt agreed, saying that he would turn it over. When it came to that crashed hard drive, Matt said he no longer had it but had thrown it into the trash.

The printer was a similar story. Matt said that it wasn't compatible with his new computer, so he'd disposed of it. ”I believe it was a Canon,” he said. The brand was important, because the a.n.a.lysis of the suicide note indicated it had been printed on an HP inkjet. Still, the only evidence of the brand name was Matt's word. When Johnston asked about the missing computer from the Waco Center for Youth, Matt said simply, ”That is unknown . . . I am not sure when they were switched.”

”Do you possess or have you ever possessed an HP printer?” Johnston asked.

”Yeah,” Matt said. Yet, he said he didn't know when they'd had one or what had happened to it. He said he didn't believe that he had an HP at the time of Kari's death.

The final items on Johnston's list were any Bibles or religious materials of any sort owned or possessed by Kari Baker. ”Do you agree to look for those?”

”Correct,” Matt said.

After a series of additional questions about circ.u.mstances surrounding the missing WCY computer, Johnston turned to the other important purpose of the deposition: ”I would really like to ask you a number of questions about your life and your life with Kari Baker, of the events over the last few years, and the events of this last spring. Will you answer those questions for me today?”

Matt pursed his lips and shook his head slightly. ”I will take the Fifth Amendment. I will a.s.sert my right for the Fifth Amendment.”

”You previously spoke with the Hewitt Police about this matter?” Johnston prodded.

”That's correct,” Matt agreed.

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