20/20 - The After Show: Dirty Little Secret

Episode Date: March 24, 2025

Deborah Roberts talks with two producers who sifted through 20/20’s archives to hear how a Texas minister’s story about this wife’s death changed over time. Denise Martinez-Ramundo and Samantha Wanderer also found new voices to take a fresh look at the case. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

With the Fizz loyalty program, you get rewarded just for having a mobile plan. You know, for texting and stuff. And if you're not getting rewards like extra data and dollars off with your mobile plan, you're not with Fizz. Switch today. Conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. Hi there, 2020 podcast listeners. Welcome to the 2020 After Show. I'm Deborah Roberts, and on Friday night we brought you a show called Dirty Little Secret. Matt Baker was a charismatic minister in Hewitt, Texas, and he was leading a life at the center of his community along with his wife, Carrie Baker, who was a Sunday school teacher at the church. They had two little girls. So when Carrie died of what appeared to be suicide,

the community rallied around the grief-stricken pastor. But Carrie's family didn't. They suspected that something was amiss. Calling themselves the Charlie's Angels of Waco, they launched their own investigation revealing something that was pretty shocking in this church community, lies and adultery. And ultimately, of course, they helped law enforcement uncover Matt's plot to kill his wife. Here's a clip from the show. I remember Nancy saying, Linda, have you ever considered that perhaps Carrie didn't take

her life? I remember stammering and saying, oh, what are you talking about? Murder? We don't think Carrie killed herself. We know she didn't. We all hung on those words too on last week's 2020. On today's 2020 After Show, I get the pleasure to talk to 2020 producer

Denise Martinez-Ramundo, who I normally talk to in the field, but today we get to talk a little more formally, and associate producer, Samantha Martinez-Ramundo, who I normally talk to in the field, but today we get to talk a little more formally, and associate producer, Samantha Wunderer. They both were a big part of telling this story, sifting through hours of archival interviews 2020 conducted over the years, really, with Matt Baker and speaking to new voices to help John Quinones take a fresh look at this case. So welcome to both of you. Thank you, Deborah.

Thanks for having us. This is kind of wild. We're actually getting to talk in this formal way. So Denise, let me start with you because you and I have worked on countless stories together and you have this knack for digging, digging, digging into the old files and finding things that maybe either we thought was sort of interesting at the time, or maybe not as much, and then you find something new. So what is it about this story?

And of course, we've covered a lot of stories that involve hypocrisy and ministers in the church and all of that, but what was it about this one? I think this story is really fascinated on so many levels. I mean, here you have a preacher, and he's not only a preacher, he's also a dad of two young girls. Going through the footage, I mean, here you have a preacher and he's not only a preacher, he's also a dad, you know, of two young girls. Going through the footage, I mean, you can see how complex of a character he is. I mean, you have somebody who by day, he is leading his congregation,

and then he comes home, he's a dad, but at the same time, he's having this salacious affair on the side, you know, he's one of the attorneys call him a dark angel, that he has this complex persona. And so it was very interesting to kind of dig deeper and see how many layers the story has and then we can kind of bring it to our audience in a fresh new way. And in small town Texas too, so you're talking a southern town, a fairly youngish preacher with his family, and you know, that just sort of shocked everybody. It shocked everybody in the community. I think nobody expected that.

Even when he was arrested, I think nobody believed that he could be responsible for the murder. No, Samantha, you were deeply involved in this story from the beginning, and you dug through all of the footage, and we're going to talk about that and how that made such a difference. But tell me about what drew you to this one. Yeah, so I grew up Baptist, and I had a lot of pastors and ministers that I was really close to in my church community. And just thinking about how someone in that position could not only murder his wife, but also have an affair and do that with two small children in the home that he knows that he should be taking care of. Yeah. And when you approach this, you know, again,

as I said to Denise, you know, you're talking small town America, and you've got to kind of dig into that psyche too, of just how shocking this is to people when something like this is revealed. Right, right. And it was shocking to see even his demeanor change over the years, the different interviews we did with him.

At first, he's so soft spoken, and then over time, you see him start to shift the way that he acts. This happened back in 2006. And you know, when we go way back, it's sort of hard sometimes when we're trying to look into this, but archival footage played a big part of this. We're talking about this man who was convicted, his time in prison. Tell me all about that and going back in time.

Yeah, I think this is unlike any other story that I've worked on because here we had three different interviews with Matt Baker. One of them actually took place after he had been arrested and out on bail. So he led us in bed on his home. So we are seeing him playing around with his daughters, helping with homework. And here's the man who had killed his wife. But at that time, of course, he's saying he had nothing to do with it. And I have nothing to hide, right? Yes, and when you look at the footage, me as a mom, I'm looking at him as a very caring dad.

He's helping his daughters, he talks about helping them pick their outfits for the day. So I myself am doubting, could these men have done that? So you can tell how he was comfortable on what he believed and thought that he could convince everybody. It's in Kerrville, about 200 miles from Hewitt, that our cameras catch up with Matt and his daughters. This is a little bit of everything. They have a cafe where they take flowers

and they crush them up and pretend it's chicken noodle soup. 2020 gets a glimpse of life with their father after losing their mother. Each have their own... Mine. You know, and they separate pants from shirts. I pick mine and then he picks hers.

But I have to okay hers. Yes. Why? Because she likes spaghetti straps. So he let our cameras in and it was quite remarkable to be able to see that firsthand with our cameras. Tell us a little bit about him because we talked about in the piece

how he was polite and soft spoken. The community was sort of rallying behind him. To you, did he just seem like a harmless guy? He definitely seemed like a good dad. He seemed somebody who cared. We actually get to go along with them when they go out to a restaurant. He happens to encounter some of his students.

He was a substitute teacher. And they say hello. They talk about what a restaurant, he happens to encounter some of his students. He was a substitute teacher and they say hello, they talk about what a nice guy he was, he really cared about us. So you could really see how he probably had everybody convinced because he actually seemed to be like a nice guy to everybody who know him. But when you're looking through, Samantha, all these tapes and you're seeing things sort of evolve over time. Tell me a little bit about that. You've got to digitize this video, you're working with attorneys. People don't really know how much work goes in. They see what we put on the air. They don't know what's going on behind the scenes for us to be able to bring it. And this story was very largely dependent on all

this video. Right, it's really interesting. It just shows the importance of archiving material properly, which thank goodness the production team who was on the story before me, really archived the story well. So all of those old tapes, we were able to pull back out just different kinds of media,

things I hadn't seen before as a Gen Z-er. I hadn't seen some of this media. Yeah, exactly. Beta tapes. Takes you back. 8 pull boxes. And that was in the court, right? I was allowed access to go into the court and go through the material myself, which

was something that was also new for me. So I was going through piles of boxes, piles of papers, trying to find things we hadn't found before. And in doing that, we found some emails that we hadn't shown in our past coverage. So we found emails that Carrie had sent back and forth with Matt, and which you're able to see in the show. And that's what's interesting about this program, because we get a chance now on this podcast to give people a taste of some things that we didn't put in our show, in our program.

So here's some material from the archive from a 2007 interview with Matt Baker before his trial and before he was convicted, which didn't make it into our program. Take a listen. Everybody knows everybody. Some people don't like that, but I do like that. You walk in a store and most people know you by your first name or know your family and they trust me, they believe me that I'm from here, this is my hometown. They've known me for well over 30 years. They watched me grow up in Sunday school.

They watched me through school. They watched me in all the activities around town. They know I grow up in Sunday school. They watched me through school. They watched me in all the activities around town. They know I'm not capable of this. And his voice, I mean, you know, of course you guys got to see more of him, but to just even hear his voice, it just sounds so small town, southern guy, innocent. Denise, when you're combing through the archives, give people a sense of how we decide like what to present and how we're gonna reveal his personality, you know. As Samantha was just saying, just there was all kinds of stuff that even she didn't even know we had and we uncovered like emails and

things. Give us a sense of what that's all about. Yes, it's interesting because in our past coverage we had only segments, you know. Now we put together this two hour documentaries. So we really have the time to present the viewers like a real time, how the story evolved over time. So we are showing him the way he did. He wanted to present himself as somebody innocent, as somebody who didn't do anything.

And then the viewers can actually see that. They can also see once allegations come forward, you know, he becomes a little more defensive. So I think it's by going through those tapes that we are able to kind of pick and choose so that the viewer can kind of get to experience the same way that the story unfolded back in the day. Yeah, and we were talking about how, you know,

obviously with our 47-year history, I mean, we have all kinds of tapes that sometimes we're able to find every now and again, there's a problem. But we want to make it clear that, you know, you're capturing developments along the way and also both sides, right? Yeah, I mean, you know, we obviously interviewed him. He actually, unlike other people, he had, he went on this kind of press tour. He was happy to open the door to anybody who wanted to talk to him. And actually, that worked against him because he changed his story every time he gave a new interview. Actually, he told us a different story in our show, and that got to be played in court.

Talk about Carey's family too, because they played a big part in this and they called themselves Charlie's Angels. What was that all about? Well, you know, Carey's death was ruled A suicide, but the family, her family did not believe it. So they took it upon themselves to do their own investigation. You know, they wanted to dig deeper and kind of find the evidence and find, you know, an ally and an attorney, somebody that can take the case and really push it to the authorities so they can really look into the case.

So they themselves became the investigators in some way and it was because of their persistence and determination that this case actually was able to get solved and get justice for Kerry. Which we see a lot you and I have covered stories before where people have just stayed on it and stayed on it and that's what actually brought cases to court. What did you make of the family and how have they managed to sort of hold up and what was their demeanor like as they went through this whole process? I mean, I think it was Cari's aunt initially that believed she hadn't killed herself. The mom had a hard time believing that her son-in-law, this pastor, could have done that.

So I think it was to convincing the mom first. But I think once they saw the evidence of phone calls to another woman and him moving on with his life, like weeks after his wife's murder, I think they quickly realized that there was something more there and that they needed to take action. Yeah. Well, it's always so fascinating when there's that turning point for people in these cases. All right. Well, we're going to take a break. And when we come back, what our 2020 team put together to challenge Matt's claims and just how improbable they really were. Now streaming.

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All right. So much of this program featured archival tape, but you guys also got new interviews to round out the picture of this case. And one moment that just stood out to me was a test we did with Texas Ranger Matt Cawthon, another Matt. And this was pretty creative, Denise. I mean, we do a lot of creative things here in the field, but tell us about this idea about the dummy. I mean I wish I could take all the credit but to be honest it was the prosecutors. The prosecutors had wanted to put Matt to the test. They had actually built a replica of the bedroom

with a dummy roughly the size that Carrie was at the time of her death in the courtroom. If he were to testify they were gonna put him to the test so the jury could see could he have done everything he said he did. And tell us what that was that they were trying to unfold. So basically, you know, we have a 911 call where you hear him allegedly, you know, he later tells that he dressed his wife, that he was naked. He dressed her, he moved her to the floor, turned her around and then began CPR.

Trying to save her life. Trying to save her life. Trying to save her life. And all of this in about two minutes. The prosecutors felt that this could not have been done in that timeframe, plus he did not sound that winded at all in the 911 call. So they wanted him to show that. Unfortunately, I think the lawyer had learned about that. They decided not to testify.

So he couldn't, he didn't do it. So we decided like, how about we kind of tried it ourselves. So we decided to kind of do the same thing that we're trying to do. And then we wanted to get a dummy and figure out if the Texas Ranger could have done what he, what Matt Baker said he did. And that was really fascinating. So Samantha, talk about that because you were in charge of this very heavy replica, this dummy, which was just under 200 pounds, right? Right.

It was just under 200 pounds. It was roughly the weight of Carrie at the time of her death. So trying to find a dummy that was around that same weight that we could then transport to the scene, which we ended up doing it in a hotel room, was a little challenging. So I went to- Calling that that right? Well right. And thank God I had a firefighter help me get it into my car from the local fire department. Otherwise I don't think I could have lifted it. And I can lift 200 pounds if it's on a barbell, but I can't lift. When you see it in deadweight form it's a lot heavier. So he

helped you lift this like it was nothing. And the whole goal was for John Quinones, our reporter, to sit there and nothing. And the whole goal was for John, a Kenyonis, or a reporter, to sit there and observe. And tell me what that was all about. So they're going to try to hurriedly see if they can beat the clock in terms of dressing this dummy and showing us how prosecutors were able to reveal in the trial

that it didn't seem plausible. Right, so John was supervising and timed Matt Cawthon as he went through and attempted to dress the dummy. And I saw him as he was trying to do this in his full suit, get winded as he was trying to put it on. And he's in pretty good shape for his age. And being able to do it in two minutes and pull the dummy onto the floor

would have been nearly impossible, it seemed. Yeah, and that was critical, Denise, too. I mean, and for us, talk to us a little bit about why we choose to do these things because I think one of the things our listeners find intriguing is how we got to that point and why we thought that was important. So why did we think that would make such a difference in our story? Yeah I mean I think it's um I think it's one thing to kind of say it or say like oh two minutes you know what what can you do in two minutes but I think to put it thing to kind of say it, say like, oh, two minutes, you know, what can you do in two minutes?

But I think to put it to the test in the sense that, you know, prosecutors argue that it couldn't have been done. And so we wanted to see, like, could it be done? So we want, I think visually, it's important for the viewer to kind of see what it takes. And I think, like, even experts say, like, it's not the same thing, like, moving a dead body, like that, like, that moving an actual, you know, live in person. It's just, it doesn't take the amount of effort. And I think like, once you see it,

you kind of can understand what the prosecutors were trying to show to expose, you know, the lies that Matt Baker said on his 911 call. Yeah, I actually had a story like that when I was in the courtroom with a prosecutor who had a stopwatch and was showing me about, you know, how this person had fired a gun. And it is really compelling to see that and have them bring that to us again. Let's talk about one of the key witnesses in this case, Vanessa Bowles. She was critical.

I mean, she was the other woman. Matt Baker had an affair. She had been approached by law enforcement, by investigators, and she was not for coming multiple times. But in the end, she did the right thing. She was given immunity for her testimony. And it was her testimony about the plot, about how he was planning to kill Kerry, that in the end really is what got him convicted. And how does she come across to the jury?

Because you think about she's the other woman, right? You would think that she would have little credibility with them because of what had happened. I mean, I think we spoke to the jury for person. I think they struggle because she had said different stories. She wasn't for coming. But I think in the end, they realized that she was basically exposing herself, that she had nothing to gain at that point.

And I think that was really kind of like a turning point for them. And I think they also realized that what she said in court, that here he was a preacher, you know, who will believe her, you know, who will believe her. So I think that really kind of got to the jury. But they were conflicted at first about how to sort of interpret her testimony. Yeah. And the defense, he had, you know, they were asking, you know, why should we believe you when, you know, you had said so many inconsistent stories in the past. But at the end of the day, they did believe her and her testimony was credible. Yeah, I mean, that's the case. Testimony was key to get him convicted.

Right. All right, we're going to take one more break. And after that, the team that pursued justice for Kerry Baker against all odds. Hear me out. the team that pursued justice for Kerry Baker against all odds. like a white man hailing a cab. This friendship is my love story. Yes, it's sexless and annoying, but what long-lasting love story is? Mid-Century Modern, all episodes streaming March 28th. And for a limited time, get Disney Plus and Hulu for just to hear. As a magician, I'm searching for people with amazing abilities

who will teach me things that I didn't even know were possible. What? Run aboard! Things that you shouldn't do and anything can go wrong. Go, go, go! National Geographic's David Blaine Do Not Attempt, now streaming on Disney Plus and Hulu. We are back with Samantha and Denise, who just really dug into the story and brought

it to air for us at 2020, along with John Quinones. And let's talk about some of the interviews that you got for the show, because a lot of them centered around law enforcement. And I have covered a lot of stories too where, you know, we know that they're cops and we think of them as sort of tough cops. But oftentimes, you know, these are people who are parents who are affected by what they're doing. So let's talk about Texas Ranger Matt Cawthon and Investigator Abden Rodriguez. I was struck by how much emotion Matt seemed to show at the end of our program.

And maybe, Samantha, you can jump in on this. Talk about what that perspective was like, working on this case with him and seeing how it really affected him. Right, well, I like to say he's like the softest tough guy. He's a Texas Ranger. He walked in, snake-skinned boots, showed us his hat, everything.

And he walked in with purpose. He really knows what he's doing. He's been working for a long time in law enforcement. But he is really down to earth and cared deeply about the people that he was trying to help. He cared deeply about Carrie. And he really was moved by the love of her mother, Linda, that she had to push for justice throughout this entire case.

We also spoke to Abdon Rodriguez. He was the investigator from the district attorney's office. He's known as the human lie detector, apparently. He knew right away that Vanessa Bulls was not being truthful, and he felt that she was the key to solving this case. He was able to get her to testify in front of a grand jury, and that was the turn for this case. That changed everything. Yes.

Denise, what about Matt and Carrie's daughters? Because at the core of this case, they're children who have lost their mother and now lost their father, essentially, because he's away in prison. Talk to us a little bit about Carrie's daughters. Yeah, I mean, at the time of the trial, they obviously believed their dad, they believed that their mom had died of an accidental overdose so it really was a long journey for them they eventually carry his parents again custody of the daughters and we've known that it was a long journey for them to understand what really happened to their mother. Yeah yeah something really really heartbreaking. When you are covering these stories Denise and I think sometimes our viewers and in this case our listeners are wondering how it affects you. I mean, your

mom, we talked about this earlier, and these girls. I mean, what was that like for you as a mom and a producer to hear their story? I mean, it was really hard. I mean, because their daughters were roughly the same age as my two older daughters are now. So thinking about how they've lost their mom and obviously, you know, if the mom is gone, they will turn to their dad. Their dad is the other figure that is there to protect them, to care for them. And I saw that on the video. And then to know that then he's the one that killed their mom and now he's gone.

It must have been so difficult for them to kind of go through that process and then kind of lose both of those people that are supposed to care the most about them. Yeah, yeah. And we take that with us too. So we're thinking about these stories long after they're done. Samantha, this was an interesting one for you. A lot of work, a lot of digging, carrying around this dummy. You've worked on a lot of stories here at 20-20. Is this one that kind of will stick with you for a while? Yeah, I think what always does it for me, I mean, obviously going through the archive,

there's little nuggets you can find that are new and interesting, but I think what will always stick with me is the home videos and seeing Carrie interact with her daughters while she was alive and then seeing, thinking about how they're having to go through life without her now. I mean, that was hard to see. Yeah, yeah. Well, at the end of the day, there are victims out there when we cover these stories and we can't forget about them. Samantha, Denise, this was a lot of fun. We'll have to do more of this. Yes. Thank you, Deborah. Of course. Thanks for doing this. Denise Martinez-Ramundo is a producer for 2020 and Samantha Wanderer is an associate producer. Okay, that does it for us for 2020 The After Show.

This time, we hope you're going to tune in on Friday nights at 9 for all new episodes of 2020, of course, on ABC. This episode was produced by Cameron Chertavian, Sasha Azlanian, and Joseph Diaz, Brian Mazursky, and Alex Berenfeld of 2020. We also had help this week from Amira Williams and Meg Fierro. Janice Johnston is the executive producer of 2020. And we should add that Josh Cohen is the director of podcasting at ABC Audio and Laura Mayer, executive producer. You think she's faking? She has adult teeth? There are signs of puberty? Inspired by the shocking stories that tore a family apart. I don't know what's going on.

How old are you? You should get a lawyer. You have no idea how those people hurt this girl. The Hulu Original Series, Good American Family. New episodes Wednesdays, streaming on Hulu.