Original subtitles

I made a mistake here because a manipulative liar

Wearing the mask of god came into my life.

I've prosecuted hundreds,

Maybe even over 1,000 murder cases.

It did not happen.

So I think I've seen it all.

And nothing boils my blood more

Than wolf in sheep's clothing.

And that's what this case is about.

Hewitt, texas is right outside of waco.

So you know, right away it's a super religious town.

A lot of baptists live there.

And I can relate to that,

Because I grew up in blessing, texas,

And I grew up baptist.

When you live in a town like that,

Whether it's your preacher or your priest,

It's not just respect that they get.

They get everything.

Everywhere they go, people just do this to them.

So you're way more than just a normal guy

In a town like that.

And in hewitt, texas, for kari baker,

The wife of the preacher, to commit suicide,

Sure that the people around town

Couldn't believe that that had happened.

But what people found out later

Was even more shocking.

♪♪♪

[calling tone ringing]

Kari's husband met baker,

And says he and kari were at home

After eleven o'clock at night,

She asks him to go rent a movie.

He comes back to the house just before about midnight.

He comes in, kari baker is laying on top of the bed.

She is not breathing. She has no pulse.

He calls 911, and he is desperately

Trying to save her.

When the hewitt police arrive,

They see kari lying on the floor.

There's a wine cooler, bottles on the bedstand,

A pill bottle with two sleeping pills left,

And the suicide note.

Bill: Matt baker tells the officers that his wife

Has been seeing a counselor,

And she had talked about suicide,

More so recently, he says.

The ambulance attendants get there and find,

As he has described, kari baker is lifeless,

No pulse.

According to matt baker, she was on the bed,

But he moved her onto the floor, he's trying to give her cpr,

He's trying to save her life to no effect.

♪♪♪

[suspenseful instrumental playing]

I met kari when I was in sixth grade

And I went to waco christian.

She was always positive, and sweet and kind,

And she was just a nice, giggly person.

Kari graduated in 1993, and after she met matt,

About three months after they met,

She got married in 1994.

She was only 18, 19 years old

When she got married.

In the town of hewitt, texas, matt and kari baker

Were the ideal couple.

Happily married, they had two sweet little girls.

He was the town preacher. I'm sure everybody loved him.

In 2006, matt baker is the preacher

Of the crossroads baptist church.

In a small suburb of waco called hewitt.

Kari believed that faith was very important to her,

That her husband was a representative of that faith,

And that her job was to support him.

Julia: When she had her daughters,

They were the love of her life.

Kenzie was born first, then kassidy,

Then she got pregnant with grace.

Kassidy was kari's daughter who had passed away.

She'd had a brain tumor.

It definitely

Had an effect on kari, she was sad,

But she wasn't "can't get out of bed" sad,

Depressed, that sort of thing,

She had her daughters to take care of.

Matt tells the officers

That their daughter died at this time of year,

And always after that,

Around this time of year,

That his wife became very depressed

Over the death of her daughter.

"matt, I'm so sorry.

"I am so tired.

"I just want to sleep for a while,

Please forgive me."

"tell kenzie and grace that I love them very much.

"tell my mom and dad that I love them too."

"I love you, matt.

"I'm sorry for the past few weeks.

"I want to give kassidy a hug. I need to feel her again.

"please continue to be the great dad

"to our little girls, love them every day for me."

"I am sorry. I love you, kari."

[emotional instrumental playing]

Crawford: After reviewing the scene,

The hewitt police department then made a call

To the justice of the peace...

To see how the rest of the investigation

Should be conducted.

In a big city like harris county,

The bodies are turned over to the medical examiner's office

And they do the autopsy, and rule on cause of death

And manner and means.

In smaller counties, like where I'm from,

Matagorda county, my dad was a jp.

Justice of the peace, someone who's not a lawyer,

Not an md, not a cop, just a regular guy

Who got elected to be the jp.

And they determine cause of death

And whether or not an autopsy needs to be performed.

Which sounds kind of crazy,

But it actually happens like that

All over the south.

Bill: Kari's death,

In the view of the hewitt police,

Was a straightforward suicide.

So he didn't order an autopsy.

The case is opened at 12:03,

And closed at 12:17.

Julia: Waco is a very, very unique place.

It's a baptist town with baylor university,

People gather around, people know one another,

They know what's going on, they take care of one another.

Somebody has a baby, there's a meal chain.

If someone gets sick, if someone passes away,

Same thing, everybody rallies together.

Tommy: Well, after kari's death, matt baker's church family,

They were devastated.

They were a close-knit congregation.

He'd lost a daughter, now he'd lost a wife.

In the book of job, he's a very righteous man.

But his wife is taken away,

And all of his children are killed.

Everything is taken away from him, but through his faith,

He's able to rise again, and he gets another family.

And god gives everything back to him sevenfold.

A lot of people, and matt himself

Kind of looked at himself as a modern day job in that way.

Kari baker was found deceased early Saturday morning,

And matt wanted the funeral as quickly as possible.

And so it was held

On the first day after Sunday on a Monday.

A week to the day after kari had passed,

Matt was back preaching, and people were just,

"oh, we just got to be there for you.

"we have to take you in,

"have to take care of those girls."

And everybody rallied around matt.

It wasn't too long after kari's death

That the shock wore off of the family members.

They don't think that kari would leave her two daughters

Behind like that.

Yes, kassidy did take a toll on her,

And, yes, every year during when she passed away,

She thought about her.

It doesn't mean that you stop life.

You keep going, and especially growing up

Where we grew up, you rely on your faith,

And you keep going.

It just didn't seem real

That kari would have killed herself.

Bill: Within a couple of weeks of kari's death,

The dulins, kari's parents,

They're going back to the police,

Giving statements.

[suspenseful instrumental playing]

Now, this is a statement from james dulin,

Kari's dad gave it to the city of hewitt police department.

He says, "in the beginning, I believed my sweet daughter

"took her own life, I no longer believe that."

They asked the police to look into this further,

To talk to matt baker again,

To consider doing an autopsy.

Hewitt police weren't interested in helping.

They had reached their conclusion,

And "what do you need to know?

"this was a suicide."

Kari's parents needed help, and they called me.

I'm a former federal prosecutor,

Been a lawyer for 30-some-odd years.

[suspenseful instrumental playing]

Kari baker's mother, linda dulin, came to my office,

And she wondered if I could help her.

She's telling me that there were strange little hints

That there's something afoot here.

Two or three weeks after kari's death,

The daughters say the pictures of their mother

On the refrigerator in the house are gone.

And matt baker tells kari's parents,

The girls, they need a new mom, they're ready to move on.

It appears that matt's

Erasing kari's existence.

Another thing that made the family even more suspicious.

Matt and kari were on the dulins' phone plan.

They received a phone bill,

And they noticed that after kari's death,

There were a lot of phone calls made from kari's phone.

When kari's parents confronted matt

About this new activity on the cell phone

That used to belong to kari,

His answer was that he had given his wife's phone

To another member of the church that he had

Recently begun counseling.

Tommy: Matt tells him that he's given it to vanessa bulls,

Who is going through a divorce, and they were just friends.

And the dulins started wondering,

Is there a little bit more to this

Than he's just counseling a divorced woman with a child.

Bill: As I'm talking to linda,

I'm respecting immediately her assessment,

And I thought, "this family deserves answers."

Simply doing it was the right thing to do.

That's why I became the dulins' lawyer.

And so we decide

To do a private investigation of an unsolved death.

Not just in small towns, but anywhere,

If you're a family member, and you think that you need

To have your own private investigation done to try

And overturn law enforcement's thinking on a case,

You have a very, very steep road to climb.

First difficulty is always going to be,

You don't have any access to the real file.

You might think you know what somebody said or saw or did,

But you really have no clue.

Bill johnston knew what I'm telling you right now.

"this is going to be harder to do than y'all think."

We need something

To use the law to get documents,

To perhaps talk to people.

And I came up with a notion.

I think I'll sue matt baker for wrongful death.

The crime scene photos are not consistent,

Because of the condition of her body.

State calls vanessa bulls.

What she was telling was so horrible,

And in fact, it gets worse.

♪♪♪

Through the dulins, I decide to sue matt baker [suspenseful instrumental playing]

For wrongful death,

Which is a texas civil cause of action.

We didn't want to collect money from him.

He didn't have any money.

We wanted to know what happened.

Do we think he did kill her, or was it a suicide?

I'll use the lawsuit subpoena power,

The power of a deposition, to see what more we can learn.

The biggest challenge in investigating a case

That's been determined to be a suicide

Is that the police looked into this.

They've already decided, and it wasn't questioned,

Because he was a preacher,

A baptist preacher in their town.

Law enforcement likes to think that they know everything,

And they're the experts.

I understand that thinking, because I was that same way.

I didn't want private investigators

Trying to tell me what to do either.

We need a little horsepower here somehow.

And so a texas ranger who had done some great work for me

Named matt cawthon came to mind.

Kelly: Texas rangers are legendary.

Their look, their reputation,

Some of them are the very best at what they do.

Bill johnston reaching out to a texas ranger

Was to see if he would help

Reopen the law enforcement side of this case,

Because somebody had to convince local law

That maybe they didn't know everything.

I get there, and I'm not only met by a team,

I'm met by a war room.

Pictures and diagrams and timelines.

[suspenseful instrumental playing]

The first red flag

Regarding the initial investigation

Was that there were fewer than ten photographs

Taken of the death scene.

Even if something appears like it's suicide,

Be cautious, because you have one chance to get this right.

If you don't gather evidence,

You can't go back later, and redo it.

To the untrained eye,

This did look like a classic suicide scene.

It looked like marilyn monroe's bedside.

You have the source of the suicide,

The pill bottle, and then don't use them all,

Have a couple of examples, here's a note.

Matt: To look at a suicide note that was unsigned,

Typed on a computer instead of handwritten,

I would think that that would be cause for alarm.

And she was a teacher, there's no way

She would spell "too" with one o and not two.

It praises matt, and blames kari.

Those tones

Are very suspicious.

And put them on an unsigned type note,

And they scream at you.

The questions that are very important,

But are beyond us, we need experts.

Could someone ingest 29 sleeping pills,

And could that kill them?

How long would that take to kill them?

How long does it take to get cold, to get blue?

We had tom bevel helping us,

Who's one of the premier experts in crime scene analysis.

We sit down with tom bevel,

And show him the crime scene photos.

And tom bevel states

That the crime scene photos

Of kari baker do not match, are not consistent

With the time frame given by matt baker,

The 45 minute to an hour time frame,

Because of the condition of her body.

The condition of being cold, the condition of being blue,

The condition of lividity.

Lividity is a discoloration

Where the blood pools in the human skin

After someone has died, just a process of gravity.

Kari had substantial lividity

In her body.

Two or three times what matt baker gave himself

For a time period to be gone.

[suspenseful instrumental playing]

Also, we learned it is possible that someone

Could ingest 29 sleeping pills, and die, it's possible.

But that process is, of course, to take,

To let it break down in the stomach,

To make you sleepy, to make you pass out,

And ultimately, perhaps to die,

That's a long process.

Matt baker was given

Great latitude in his story,

And it wasn't questioned.

You hold your preachers up to a higher standard.

You never think that your preachers

Are going to do anything like this.

You don't even want to suspect them.

It's got to be a sin to suspect your pastor, right?

Word had gotten around town about the circumstances

Of kari's death and her suicide.

And then someone came forward

With good information.

Around the time her funeral happened,

Another preacher was flipping through kari's bible

Prior to the service, and found something

Very interesting inside.

This is dated April 2nd, 2006.

"peace! Lord, grant me peace.

"calm my soul, I feel like I have so much worry,

"and I can't get a hold on it.

"lord, be the center of our relationship.

"lord, I'm asking for you to protect me from harm.

"I'm not sure what is going on with matt,

"but lord, help me find peace with him."

She prays to god to protect her from harm.

And then she also says,

"I'm not sure what's going on with matt."

After her death, kari's therapist

Contacted the family, and said,

"listen, in some of my sessions with kari,

"she spoke about her husband having an affair."

[eerie instrumental playing]

We need to find out, was there an affair going on?

After her death, kari's phone was still being used.

There was hundreds of phone calls

Between matt baker

And vanessa bulls.

Vanessa bulls was younger,

Was very attractive, newly divorced.

She was a single mom.

Why would matt baker give kari's phone

To a single woman?

Bill: Now, we're very interested to know,

Did this relationship with vanessa bulls

Predate the murder?

When you have a suspect, and you want to know

The nitty-gritty details of the murder,

You have to talk to all the people

That live in that world.

So, the closest people of the suspect are always

Potentially going to be your best sources of evidence.

[door clicks open]

- Sorry to keep you waiting. - It's okay.

When you meet a witness the first time,

Like vanessa, to try and get them to talk

Is a huge challenge, 'cause they might realize

That society is not going to judge them nicely.

And number two, they might actually be involved

In the commission of the murder.

Or maybe it was just that she's the trigger,

She's the motive, what is it in that spectrum?

And that's why they needed to talk to her.

Officer: It's extremely important for you

That you're honest with me about everything.

Vanessa bulls is the daughter [suspenseful instrumental playing]

Of the music minister at the church

Matt baker was affiliated with.

There's something going on here,

Because there's so much contact between the two.

He told me she attempted it once before.

After kassidy passed away, she attempted...

We didn't know if she was an active part of this murder

Or was she just someone

Who caught his fancy.

No. No.

About a month, month and a half after kari passed away,

He came and said, "well, I just wanted to ask you

"if we could start the dating process."

And I just thought we were taking our kids out.

He really wasn't my type, though,

To be completely honest, so--

But I was thinking, "well, he'll like my daughter, I guess,"

And I loved his kids, you know, I think--

As we're talking to her, we're not immediately thinking

She's a big liar, we're thinking, "well, shoot."

I mean, I wonder if he saw more than she did.

Did he kill kari because he hoped to get her?

He kind of made me believe that jim and linda

Were the horrible people

Who were pushing the whole investigation.

I was like, "oh, my gosh." I felt sorry for him.

She was courteous. She wasn't rude about anything.

He was upset, 'cause he said that he thought

That me and my family were going to be there

While everyone was spreading rumors about him.

No.

Couple weeks ago.

I think the investigators

Feel like there's more there,

But they didn't see the vulnerable spots to go into.

[ominous instrumental playing]

After talking to vanessa, we wanted to talk to matt baker.

Let me have him bring with him

His computer and his printer.

Kelly: Bill knew, as a civil lawyer,

He could depose matt baker.

A prosecutor could never do that.

Because in texas, the prosecutors

Do not have a right to discovery

Of what the defense strategy is.

In other states like florida, it's mutual discovery,

So they can depose each other's witnesses,

And know exactly what everybody's going to say.

In this state, we do not get to do that.

And the only way bill johnston could get access

To any of that information was through depositions.

We get matt baker notice for the deposition,

And his lawyer is letting me know

He's probably not going to answer any of your questions.

I said "I want him to bring the items."

So, we're in the room.

The deposition starts.

"matt, you're under oath.

"did you bring your computer?"

"don't have it," he says. "quit working.

"crashed. It crashed."

"all right, where is it?"

"threw it-- threw it away." okay.

"now, matt, subpoena also calls for you

"to produce your printer."

"don't have it."

When he deprived us of the objects

With silly stories and excuses,

It's more damning than if we'd have gotten it.

Matt baker had a second job.

He worked at the waco center for youth.

He was supposed to be their chaplain, and we said,

We'd like to look at his computer there.

Well, something strange happened.

"we don't have it."

His computer was stolen.

But one of our investigators went to the head

Of the it department at the waco center for youth

And learned that, of course, everything goes to a server,

So we've got what was on matt baker's computer.

We had a great computer forensics expert,

And he was able to actually go in

And follow all of these trails,

These little ghostly trails that the internet leaves.

We determined that along with a lot of pornography, um,

Matt was searching for overdosing

On sleeping pills.

And ultimately, we found matt baker...

Ordering...

Ambien from an offshore pharmacy.

A month before kari died.

The internet search

Is beautiful circumstantial evidence.

The only thing about that is we need to exhume the body

To see if you can find the presence of ambien.

We need that body out of the ground.

Matt cawthon goes to the hewitt police chief

Hat in hand, as we say here,

Asked could he get his help.

They needed to request exhumation and an autopsy.

And the chief looks at him and says,

"well, ranger, would you be working for us

"or bill johnston?"

And I said, "I'm working for the dead lady.

"and that's who you ought to be working for, too."

Finally, three months after kari died,

There was an exhumation of her body.

[vehicle beeps]

To exhume a body,

They have to graciously remove from the ground

And remove from the casket

And take to the medical examiner.

It's a, you know, grisly process,

But it-- it's just part of what has to be done.

There's a huge risk to the exhumation of kari's body.

You can do an exhumation and then open it up

When you get it down to the morgue

And it's filled with water

And hasn't been perfectly preserved.

And you did all that for nothing.

The body had already been prepared by the funeral home,

Been embalmed and that sort of thing.

But that didn't stop us

From looking for forensic evidence through dna.

Autopsies can detect

Things from your liver and kidneys

All the way into your bloodstream,

But so much later they can't.

And you certainly don't want someone embalmed.

If matt baker is checking boxes in his mind

Of, "I'm going to get away with this,"

I guarantee you, he checked the largest box on his list,

Not having an autopsy done right after kari's death.

They were unable to test her blood,

But they were able to test her muscle tissue.

The exhumation autopsy

Toxicology report showed...

There was ambien in kari's system.

They caught it. It was in her system.

Matt: Kari baker did not have a prescription for ambien.

The picture on the puzzle is matt baker.

We've got enough evidence to reopen this,

Which now means, for matt baker,

What all of us have known for a long time

Is that you,

My little preacher under the microscope,

You're the suspect.

Each piece of this case,

You know, sort of stood on its own,

But then was buttressed by the other pieces.

Each one standing alone is helpful,

But together they were fantastic.

We felt very confident

Of asking for what's called an inquest.

It was the texas ranger, matt cawthon, who persuaded

The justice of the peace to reopen this.

18 months after kari's death,

Judge billy martin ruled

That her death was not a suicide.

It was undetermined.

Investigators knew as we're rolling along,

This is a murder case, this is not a suicide.

What's in the way is this suicide ruling.

Everybody was already on board and in agreement

That we're talking about a murder investigation,

We have enough evidence, it's circumstantial,

It's strong, it's compelling.

The ruling got changed

To undetermined from suicide.

Let's file the warrant and that's what happened.

Matt: When I first got involved, I'm meeting with kari's mother.

I said, "listen, I'm going to work this thing.

"I'm going to work with bill and his investigators.

"the only promise I can make you

"is that I will arrest matt baker."

18 months after the fact, we get a warrant for his arrest,

And I got the satisfaction of seeing matt baker in jail.

Crawford: My name is crawford long.

I was an assistant district attorney

For mclennan county for 30 years.

Bill: Crawford long is a career prosecutor.

His acclaim to fame was a serial killer case

Against kenneth mcduff, a horrible serial killer.

And crawford tried that case,

Got the death penalty on mcduff, and became,

Really one of the state's best homicide prosecutors.

I never had a suicide brought to me

That was later believed to be a homicide.

That was a first for me.

Texas ranger and the police department

Arrested matt baker for the murder of kari baker.

Which means, at that time,

They thought they had probable cause

To believe he committed the murder.

At that point,

Crawford long didn't take the case

To the grand jury of 12 citizens to get it indicted

Because he wanted to see

If he could make the case stronger

By getting vanessa bulls on board.

So, he put the case on hold

Until he could see if he could get that to happen.

Our office had a very good investigator

Named abdon rodriguez, who was known

For being able to question people

And get information out of them

That they wanted to conceal.

And so we asked abdon

To see if he could get her

To give more information

Than she had been willing to give.

Abdon talked to her several times,

And at that point, she admitted

That she had been having an affair with matt baker.

After abdon had had the conversation with vanessa,

We felt like we may have a break in the case.

We need to get her before a grand jury.

Grand jury proceedings are confidential and a secret,

But I was able to find out

That they granted her immunity for her testimony.

I'm thinking she's going to say something pretty fantastic

Or-- or why does she need immunity?

Crawford: We bring her up before the grand jury,

I questioned her, and all of a sudden

There we had it, under oath, before the grand jury.

I went down and talked to the district attorney

And told him

Vanessa just dropped the nuclear bomb on him.

To me, vanessa bulls is the icing on the cake.

If you have vanessa bulls, and she can tell you everything

That matt baker thought or did or wanted to do.

Wow.

Matt baker grew up near waco,

The people there were really supportive of him

And didn't believe he could have done it.

Before the trial,

Matt baker was trying to influence the public

By giving his version of events.

Never desire of me to ever,

Ever hurt my wife, ever.

He gave a number of different interviews.

He enjoyed the celebrity of it.

This case had so much attention

In the country and then in texas,

And more particularly in the waco area,

That we were concerned that they couldn't get a fair jury.

Kelly: I think you could always find a jury of unbiased people

To sit on a case.

But waco, baylor, mclennan county,

That's about as baptist as you can get in texas.

So, you have a baptist preacher that everybody's looking at

And knows it's the defendant,

It's going to be more of a challenge.

The court process can be slow,

But it was worth the wait,

Because so much effort had gone in,

We wanted it to play out just the way it was supposed to.

Julia: When the trial began, we were all glued to the tv

Because we wanted to know answers.

It was on the tip of everyone's tongue.

I mean, this was the biggest thing that had happened

Since david koresh to waco, texas.

Initially, we were going to open the trial

With the hewitt police department coming to the scene.

And the more I thought about it, the start of the trial,

I don't want to put in the jury's mind

That she committed suicide.

So, we called several of her friends

That told about her state of mind

That she was looking forward to things

Rather than being terribly depressed.

She had requested that her daughter

Be put in my first grade classroom

For the next following year.

Did y'all talk about the new job prospect

- That she had at midway? - Yes.

She was very excited about that.

And then we presented evidence

Of lividity and the crime scene.

Most people would say within a few hours

Is when you really start to see lividity.

It showed that statements that matt made

Were not accurate

As to what the evidence was showing.

We presented testimony

Of the drugs in her system.

We found three different drugs.

Fentamine, diphenhydramine and zolpidem.

And its common name is ambien.

Looking at the case,

I didn't want to try it at this time

As a purely medical case.

I felt like vanessa

Was really the key to the case.

State calls vanessa bulls.

The prosecutor's hope with vanessa bulls testifying ♪♪♪

Was that she would tell the down and dirty.

She would talk about the romance,

That she would talk about the sex,

That she would throw him under the bus.

The problem is, she looks bad, too.

Woman: So, you were somewhat implicit in all of this.

For keeping my mouth shut and not doing the right thing,

Yes, I was.

There's a huge risk when you have

A very crucial witness

That you know the jury is going to hate.

I have very good experience with that.

In my case, it was a lady named mary gipp

Who knew that a cop was about to have his wife killed,

Because her boyfriend was the middleman,

And she also knew the shooter.

And I hated her, and she hated me.

You have to get them to admit what they did.

Because if you don't do that, a huge part of your case

Is going to crumble and fall apart.

Vanessa finally admitted that,

Yes, she and matt had a sexual relationship

Before kari's death

And it had been going on for some time.

Vanessa testified

About how she and matt first met.

Like he said, "oh, don't date other guys.

"just date your pastor," and kind of smiled.

Vanessa told about her relationship with matt,

How it progressed.

Woman: What happened in early March as you and matt

Started to spend fridays at the baker home?

It started off talking about my divorce.

He started quoting scripture, and then he asked

If he could hold my hands to pray,

And he did.

Then afterwards, he started to kiss me.

Then he just took my hand and led me to the bedroom.

Woman: And you said that in March,

He said something about finding a way

- Out of the marriage? - Correct.

He talked about making it look like

She'd hung herself.

He talked about tampering

With the brakes of her car.

He even talked about setting up

A drive-by shooting to kill her.

Since she had attempted suicide before,

He said he may be able to make it look like

She committed suicide.

She just asked matt, "why are you trying to kill her?

"why don't you get a divorce?"

And he told her that he would never be able

To preach again.

I guess in his mind, divorce was worse

Than actually committing murder.

Woman: One to two weeks before kari's death,

Did he mention putting something into kari's drink?

He did.

He sent an email and said she did not drink the drink.

She took a sip of it and said that it tasted like lead.

What she was telling was so horrible.

And, in fact, during her testimony,

It gets worse.

The Wednesday after kari's death,

Matt talked to her

About how he had accomplished kari's murder.

Earlier that day,

He had gotten sex stimulus pills,

They were capsules that you could open,

He said that he emptied out all the contents

And put crushed ambien in them.

He used handcuffs

As sort of a date night thing with her.

He handcuffed her to the bed, started kissing her,

And touching her all over until she fell asleep.

He said he kissed her on the forehead and said,

Give kassidy a kiss for me.

Then he said he got the pillow and put it over her face.

Kelly: He is a preacher.

He is a man of god. And look who he murdered.

The mother of his children.

What in the world did matt baker have to fall back on

To justify turning into the monster that he truly was?

Nothing. To me, he's as bad as they come.

He said that he thought she was dead, so he stopped.

And then a couple of seconds later,

She just took one big gasp for air,

And that he said,

"oh, [bleep]."

And then he showed me his hand.

He said he put the pillow on her face,

But then he said he did this with his hand

Where her nose was,

So he would be sure to suffocate her.

The fact that she gasped for air,

And he went back in to kill her again.

He even had that chance to back out or whatever,

And he went in and he finished her off.

Woman: Let's talk about a day in July of 2006.

- Did you call matt? - Vanessa: I did.

I decided I was going to call him,

And I was going to end things.

He started saying, "I killed my wife for you,

"and now you're leaving."

When she decided that she wanted to break up,

He sent her a song.

"dirty little secrets" by the all-american rejects.

"don't tell anyone

"or you'll just be another regret."

I made a mistake here

Because a manipulative liar wearing the mask of god

Came into my life,

And this testimony is going to put him

Where he needs to be.

We made our final arguments.

The devil can quote scripture for a purpose,

And the jury was discharged to go deliberate.

I think that vanessa's testimony in this case

Should put the nail in his coffin.

But I don't know what the jury is thinking.

How many people on the jury

Would want to give him less punishment

Because he's a preacher, a beacon of the community

That led people to god?

♪♪♪

The longer a jury's out,

The more you're worried about it.

But finally, after seven and a half hours,

Late in the evening, they returned.

The judge flips the papers, looks over the papers,

Has the defendant stand,

And reads the verdict.

We, the jury, find the defendant,

Matt d. Baker,

Guilty of the offense of murder

As alleged in the indictment.

Matt baker is guilty of the offense of murder.

Murder.

In texas, of course, if a defendant's found guilty,

There's a second phase of the trial,

The punishment phase.

And the jury will hear testimony about matt

That they haven't heard before

To determine what his sentence should be.

Some say that's even harder for a jury to make a decision,

Because in texas, the--

The range of punishment for murder is so wide,

It's from five years to 99 years, or life.

At that time in texas, if you were convicted of murder,

You could get as little as five years' probation.

That's your concern,

Because he's not just a first offender,

He's a preacher.

[indistinct], your sole issue is,

Did you commit the crime, did you commit the murder?

So, whatever horrible person you were otherwise

Is not relevant, is not admissible.

Once you're found guilty of the crime

You're on trial for every other bad act

That you've committed in your life

Can come into evidence at that point in part two,

The punishment phase of the trial.

The gate is open and other things walk in.

On the punishment phase of the trial

We called several young women

Who testified

That matt was a sexual predator.

Man: How did you come to know matt baker?

- I worked with him at the y. - Man: Okay.

Woman: We'd gone back into the youth rec room.

He tried to kiss me, kept trying to grab my crotch,

Um, put my hands on his penis.

I remember having to use all my strength

To try to keep him off of me and from taking my clothes off.

We were student trainers together.

I turned around at one point, and he was standing behind me.

And that's when he took his hand and began running it up my thigh

And between my legs

And touched my vagina area.

Twelve women. That's a lot of women.

That's more women than I've had witnesses

Talk about guys I put on death row.

The other thing that made me sick

Is that a lot of that happened in mclennan county,

The home of baylor university,

Waco, texas, baptist capital of texas.

And nobody listened to those women

And did anything to stop him, to file charges,

Because law enforcement didn't want to mess with it,

Or for whatever reason.

Those women had a right to be angry,

And they had a right to be heard,

And I'm glad they were.

He was using what he was in the community

To become a predator.

That's what he was. He was a predator.

Ultimately, the jury returned a verdict

Of 65 years.

We were very satisfied that justice had been served

For the dulin family, for kari,

For the community.

She had not committed suicide.

And the dulins received custody

Of kari's two daughters.

They were no longer under the influence

Of their father.

While I appreciated the true story

Of what happened to kari baker

And the fact that her murder was brought to justice,

I give complete credit to bill johnston

And kari's family picking him to hire as their lawyer.

Because he was a former federal prosecutor,

He knew law enforcement wasn't going to want him

Butting in on their business.

But he also knew, as a civil lawyer,

The way to get it done almost the same way,

Getting access to the real file and the real evidence.

He couldn't have done a more beautiful job,

And matt baker is sitting behind bars today

Because of bill johnston.