Case Profile: Matthew BakerMATTHEW BAKER Matthew Baker photograph by San Antonio Express-News/ZUMA Press/Corbis.
By Chris Opfer
Edited by Kevin P. Allen Matthew Baker is a former preacher and father of three who was convicted of killing his wife so he could be with his mistress. The Baptist minister drugged and suffocated Kari Baker and attempted to make her death look like a suicide. The scheme almost worked.
Watch Video: Kari Baker's Last Days Early Romance Born in Kerrville, Texas, to a contractor and high school teacher, Matt Baker was, as the Waco Tribune Herald reports, "a small-town boy who grew up to be a preacher." When Baker was a 23-year-old Baylor University senior he met Kari Lynn Dulin, then 20, at a Baptist day camp in Waco, Texas, in 1994. By that time, Baker had already developed a proclivity for aggressive sexual behavior. Four women, including an assistant student athletic trainer at Baylor who accused him of sexual assault, would later testify that Baker made unwanted sexual advances toward them. Kari, however, was moved by her future husband's dedication to his religion. "The thing she kept talking about was, 'Mom, this guy's a really good Christian,'" Kari's mother Linda Dulin later recounted to CBS News. The couple wed three months after their first meeting. Tragedies at HomeThe Bakers — Matt, now a Baptist minister and Kari, an elementary school teacher — immediately began a family. Kari gave birth to daughters Kensi in 1995 and Kassidy just over a year later. But their domestic bliss turned sorrowful when, shortly after her first birthday, Kassidy was diagnosed with a brain tumor. She died four months later. The loss of her daughter sent Kari reeling, Matt Baker later told CBS, and although she gave birth again the next year, she struggled with depression and sleeplessness. Matt Baker also claimed the depression ultimately led Kari to take her own life. On April 8, 2006, Baker says he returned home from renting movies to find his wife dead on their bedroom floor. Baker claimed to have found an empty sleeping pills bottle next to Kari's lifeless, naked body and a typed suicide note reading, "Matt, I am so sorry ... Please forgive me ... I want to give Kassidy a hug." Tiny McLennan County didn't have its own medical examiner. Police described the scene over the phone to a justice of the peace who determined Kari had died from a sleeping pill overdose. Authorities didn't perform an autopsy, ruling the death a suicide. Next: The Other Woman |
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