48 Hours - Preacher’s Secrets: The Duplicity of Matt Baker | My Life of Crime
Episode Date: January 25, 2023On the evening of April 7th, 2006, Matt Baker, a Baptist preacher from the small town of Hewitt, Texas, goes out to get gas and rent a movie for the night. When he returns home, he finds his ...wife, Kari Baker, dead in bed with a suicide note nearby. Local authorities rule it a suicide, but Linda Dulin, Kari's mother, and her family begin their own investigation. Matt maintains he had nothing to do with Kari's death, even as his story seems to unravel. 48 Hours correspondent Erin Moriarty takes you inside the investigation into the death of Kari Baker on her podcast, My Life of Crime. Based on the 48 Hours episode, "Dirty Little Secrets”.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to this podcast ad-free right now.
Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app today.
Even if you love the thrill of true crime stories as much as I do,
there are times when you want to mix it up.
And that's where Audible comes in, with all the genres you love and new ones to discover.
Explore thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time.
thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time.
Listening to Audible can lead to positive change in your mood, your habits,
and even your overall well-being. And you can enjoy Audible anytime, while doing household chores,
exercising, commuting, you name it. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free.
Visit audible.ca.
In 2014, Laura Heavlin was in her home in Tennessee
when she received a call from California.
Her daughter, Erin Corwin, was missing.
The young wife of a Marine
had moved to the California desert
to a remote base near Joshua Tree National Park.
They have to alert the military and when they do, the NCIS gets involved.
From CBS Studios and CBS News, this is 48 Hours NCIS.
Listen to 48 Hours NCIS ad-free starting October 29th on Amazon Music.
It's Erin Moriarty, and we have a special episode for you today
from my original podcast,
My Life of Crime.
I'm taking you inside true crime investigations like no one else, taking on killers and those
accused of crimes.
Here's an all-new episode of My Life of Crime that takes you deeper into dirty little secrets.
Follow along as I go beyond the scene of each crime,
beyond prison walls, and into the killer's inner thoughts. It's all on this season of My Life of
Crime. It was right at 12 o'clock by the time I made it home. I had that eerie feeling when I walked in the room that something's not right here.
I don't think my wife is okay.
And I go to her side and I touch her and she doesn't move.
She doesn't respond.
And I call out her name and there's no response.
And I immediately pick up the phone and call 911.
Okay, 911, do you have an emergency?
My wife is laying in the bed and her lips are blue.
There was no pulse. There was nothing. I'm on the phone. Is she conscious? No, she's not. No,
no, no, she's not breathing at all. On April 8th, 2006, at midnight, Matt Baker called 911 for help.
He told the dispatcher that he had just found his wife Carrie naked and unconscious in their bedroom.
There was a note on a side table along with an empty bottle of sleeping pills.
The detective that night pulled me into the kitchen.
He goes, well, she took her own life.
There's a note. There's pills. There's no signs of struggle.
It's pretty obvious what happened.
And at that point, my heart sunk. I couldn't believe it.
Carrie's death appeared to be a suicide.
Baker told investigators that his wife had been despondent for years,
ever since their second child, Cassidy, had died of a brain tumor in March 1999.
It really was a very hard, hard thing to cope with.
I don't think it was a split second.
All of a sudden, she was completely different.
It was a gradual changing of a person.
She had almost two personalities in a way.
Not negative, but when she went to work,
she had the ability to put issues behind her
and focus on work.
And the other personality? The other personality
was a little bit more withdrawn at home. Baker told the investigators that the demons his wife
had struggled with finally got the best of her, and they believed him. Because Matt Baker was no
ordinary husband, he was a Baptist preacher, a man of God. The Bakers and their young children lived in Hewitt, Texas.
That's right outside the city of Waco.
There was no medical examiner in their county,
so police described the case over the phone to a justice of the peace,
who without seeing the body or the scene,
determined that Kerry Baker died from an overdose
of an over-the-counter
sleeping medication.
No autopsy was needed.
Two days later, Carrie Baker
was buried.
Everyone accepted Matt's story.
Everyone, that is.
Except for a group of
tenacious women who lived
in Waco.
I'm Erin Moriarty, 48 H hours, and this is my life of crime.
We wanted to clear Carrie's name.
Matt was going around talking about what a depressed, suicidal person she was.
We knew she wasn't.
That's Nancy Lanham.
She's one of Carrie Baker's aunts.
She didn't believe that Carrie
took her own life, but she knew that if Carrie didn't take her life, there was only one other
possibility. He killed her. Killed her? Carrie's mom, Linda Doolin, couldn't believe that Matt was
capable of murder. After all, Matt was part of the family, the man that Linda's daughter Carrie loved.
We kept trying to convince ourselves
what other alternative was there.
The idea that Matt could have taken her life
was more horrible.
But those who knew Carrie,
two other aunts, Kay and Jennifer,
and Carrie's cousin, Lindsay,
were convinced that Matt was somehow involved.
I immediately thought Matt did it. You believe that?
Oh, yeah, with all my heart.
Carrie loved her life. She loved her family. She would never have left those girls. At first, Carrie's mom refused to listen to the others when they suggested asking
for an investigation. She said, drop it. And we all just said, okay, okay. And then we all walked
out together to the cars and we said, that's not happening. But her sister, Nancy, insisted,
saying that the story Matt told about Carrie's last day simply didn't match anyone else's.
He had said that day Carrie was sick.
You don't believe that?
No. People that saw her said she wasn't.
Matt wasn't home when Carrie allegedly took her life.
He said that she asked him to go out and pick up a movie and gas up the car.
That make sense?
No, at 11 o'clock.
Nancy was also convinced that Carrie, a proper minister's wife,
would never have been found in the nude.
And what's more, if Carrie truly wanted to take her life,
an over-the-counter sleeping aid didn't seem like a reliable choice.
She actually took a generic brand.
She called it a sleepy time.
She said her sleepy time pill.
They don't dispute that Carrie had been struggling in the weeks before her death,
but they say that Carrie's unhappiness wasn't about her baby Cassidy.
She was worried about Matt.
She was afraid that her husband was having an affair
and afraid that he was trying to kill her.
I first sat down with Matt Baker for an interview in 2008.
It was two years after his wife died.
He was then living in Kerrville, Texas, raising his two daughters.
He knew his mother-in-law and her sisters suspected that he
was behind Carrie's death, but he denied any involvement. It's so improbable. It's not who I
am. I love my wife. I never hurt her a day in my life. Matt was anxious, he said, to tell me his
side of the story, which began years earlier when he first met Carrie.
I would have been 23 and she was 20.
I met her and I thought, this is the person for me.
They met at Baylor University.
Carrie was a beautiful blonde with an infectious laugh.
They got married and within a year, she was pregnant with their first daughter, Kenzie.
Then came another daughter, Cassidy.
But when Cassidy turned one, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor.
There'd be days that it looked really good, prognosis was good,
and then turned around and went right back downhill.
Just after midnight on March 22, 1999,
Cassidy was rushed to the hospital for the last time.
To sit there and struggle that far, Cassidy was rushed to the hospital for the last time.
To sit there and struggle that far, to come what I thought was so far, to watch her die,
you know, that was devastating.
The couple had a third daughter, Grace, and her mother says Carrie found solace in her newborn.
But Matt Baker claims that his wife stopped caring for the girls. So I typically
gave them their bath, wash their hair, get them dressed, put them to bed, sing them their songs,
and read them their books. The seemingly perfect dad who told me that he had to cover for his wife,
who was by then, he said, dependent on medications for sleep. What kind of sleeping pills? What would she take?
Unisom. Matt also claimed that she would borrow stronger medication from family and friends.
I'm not even sure what the names would be. Other sleeping pills, just to help her sleep,
get a good night's sleep. Carrie's toughest days, he said, were around the anniversary
of Cassidy's death. There was always two or three weeks leading up to it.
It's coming. It's coming. I can't do this. I can't make it another year. I can't do this again.
And the spring of 2006 was no exception.
Seven years after Cassidy died, Mack claimed Carrie was falling apart.
On Friday, April 7th, Carrie had a crucial interview for a new teaching job at the junior
high. What was her mood like? Her mood that day was nervous. And after the interview, Matt says,
Carrie said that she didn't feel well. I was just tired. Oh, I'm tired. That, I mean, just kind of
exhausted. She went to bed and off and on, dozing off and on, watching TV.
I'm in bed with her, taking care of the kids.
At 10.30, with the kids in bed, Matt says that Carrie asked him to gas up the car and rent a movie.
And I thought, it's late, all right, but I'll do it.
You know, if your wife asks, you do what your wife asks.
And so I got dressed and left the house a little after 11 o'clock. Oh, it's probably about two miles to the first gas station that I could fill up at.
And got out, pumped the gas and went up to the movie place, rented the movie and drove back home.
When he returned around midnight, Matt says he found the bedroom door locked.
And so I go in and get the little screwdriver that can fit in there, and I
pop the button, open the door. She was naked in bed, and I call her name, and she doesn't respond.
At 12.01 a.m., he called for help. And as I'm calling 911, I'm deciding I don't want them to
see her naked, so I put her clothes on her. Matt says that while he was calling 911,
her. Matt says that while he was calling 911, he dressed Carrie and moved her to the floor where he began CPR. She's not breathing. What are you thinking has happened to her? I wasn't
processing at any point in time what had happened to her. Paramedics arrived within minutes, but
Carrie was dead. Next to an empty bottle of Unisom was a note. I'm so sorry, it read.
I love you, Matt.
I want to give Cassidy a hug.
I need to feel her again.
It was all the evidence the small-town police needed to call it a suicide.
But maybe they should have asked a few more questions
and done a little digging like Carrie's family did.
As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch.
It was called Candyman.
The scary cult classic was set in the Chicago housing project.
It was about this supernatural killer who would attack his victims if they said his
name five times into a bathroom mirror.
Candyman.
Candyman?
Now we all know chanting a name won't make a killer magically appear, but did you know
that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder?
I was struck by both how spooky it was, but also how outrageous it was.
We're going to talk to the people who were there, and we're also going to uncover the larger story.
My architect was shocked when he saw how this was created. Literally shocked.
And we'll look at what the story tells us about injustice in America.
If you really believed in tough on crime, then you wouldn't make it easy to crawl into medicine cabinets and kill our women.
Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, early and ad-free, with a 48-hour plus subscription on Apple Podcasts.
Have you ever wondered who created that bottle of sriracha that's living in your fridge?
Or why nearly every house in America has at least one game of Monopoly?
has at least one game of Monopoly.
Introducing the best idea yet,
a brand new podcast from Wondery and T-Boy about the surprising origin stories
of the products you're obsessed with
and the bolder risk takers who brought them to life.
Like, did you know that Super Mario,
the best-selling video game character of all time,
only exists because Nintendo couldn't get the rights to Popeye?
Or Jack, that the idea for the McDonald's Happy Meal
first came from a mom in Guatemala?
From Pez dispensers to Levi's 501s to Air Jordans,
discover the surprising stories of the most viral products.
Plus, we guarantee that after listening,
you're going to dominate your next dinner party.
So follow The Best Idea Yet on the Wondery app
or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can listen to The Best Idea Yet early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.
It's just The Best Idea Yet.
Shortly after Carrie's death, her mom and her aunts began their own investigation
to do what they thought the Hewitt, Texas cops failed to do. Shortly after Carrie's death, her mom and her aunts began their own investigation to
do what they thought the Hewitt, Texas cops failed to do.
They didn't do their job and they didn't take us serious.
And I don't think we were asking them to believe that Carrie was murdered.
We just wanted an investigation.
But investigating the case at this point wouldn't be easy.
Because the police concluded that Carrie committed suicide,
they took very few photos at the scene.
The only evidence collected was that nearly empty bottle of Unisom sleeping tablets
and the suicide note.
Why do you think the police were so willing to accept this as a suicide immediately?
He's a pastor.
He's a preacher.
So what did you all do?
We began an investigation.
All of you?
Yes.
They began calling themselves Charlie's Angels,
with Carrie's mom leading the charge.
Linda was Charlie, and we were the Angels.
One thing that bothered them was the so-called suicide note.
It was typed and then signed.
Would a desperate mom contemplating suicide take the time to type a note and then sign it?
Carrie's mom decided to track down and examine her daughter's cell phone records.
And before I opened it up, I just said a little prayer,
and I just said, okay, God, help me out here.
I said, give me a sign, and I opened up the phone bell,
and oh, my gosh.
Ten days after Carrie died, someone began using her cell phone.
And who was using it?
Vanessa Bowles.
Matt had given it to Vanessa.
Vanessa Bowles was a young woman who attended Matt Baker's church.
I wondered why a grieving husband would give his wife's cell phone to another woman.
So I asked him.
Weren't you talking a lot to this young woman, Vanessa?
We often did. We did. We did often
talk. And weren't you interested in her? I never thought of a relationship with her at all. That
never was anything in the back of my mind. Something was in his mind. Phone records show
almost 1,700 minutes of calls between Matt and Vanessa in less than two weeks. They spoke for nearly 20 hours over that period of time.
I needed a friend.
I needed somebody to look me in the face and say, I'm sorry, you lost your wife.
Okay, that could make sense.
But the problem is, Matt's phone records show that he had been calling Vanessa
before Carrie died. Did you have an affair with Vanessa? Oh, no, I did not. There was never any
relationship at all other than a friendship. Vanessa would later tell police that she did
begin dating Matt, but only after Carrie's death. Still, Carrie's mom was now convinced her son-in-law
had a motive for murder. So she hired Bill Johnston, a former federal prosecutor, to look
into the case and to help convince authorities to reopen the investigation into her daughter's death.
Do you believe Matt Baker is a dangerous man? Oh, sure. You bet he's dangerous.
Carrie's family had to know why she died.
So they had Carrie's body removed from her grave and paid for a private autopsy.
What made you decide to exhume your daughter's body?
That had to be a tough decision, wasn't it?
Oh, yes.
Because we needed that information.
And while they waited for the results of the autopsy,
they found more information on a computer at a youth center
where Matt Baker worked as a chaplain.
One month before Carrie died,
her husband began conducting online searches
for overdose on sleeping pills,
and specifically looking at Ambien,
even though Carrie didn't have a prescription for that drug.
When I asked him about it, this was his response.
It scared me that she was taking that much sleeping medicine to get to sleep at night.
It took a lot to wake her up in the morning sometimes.
But if you were concerned when you mentioned it to her doctor?
At that point, I didn't think it was necessary to tell the doctor
because I thought she was getting it under control.
And another suspicious discovery?
Matt's personal computer at work was nowhere to under control. And another suspicious discovery, Matt's personal computer
at work was nowhere to be found. And why would anyone want to take that computer? I have no clue.
I don't know why. Was there something on that computer you didn't want anyone to see? Oh no,
there's, I mean, absolutely not. Was there something incriminating on that computer?
We'll never know, nor do we know if there was anything on his computer at home.
Baker told us that the hard drive on that computer had crashed and stopped working.
It's just a coincidence that the hard drive on your home computer is fried
and the computer from work disappeared. Just a coincidence. Computers crash all the time.
And then there's a bottle of crushed pills that Carrie allegedly found in Matt's briefcase.
The bottle led Carrie to tell a grief counselor that she feared Matt might kill her.
But again, Matt had an explanation.
He admitted there was a bottle of pills.
But he says it was never in his briefcase.
He claims that Carrie had suddenly confronted him with something he had never seen before.
She comes out with a bottle of pills and she looks at me and she says, I found these in there.
Was that bottle of crush pills in your briefcase?
I don't know where she found it. I never had it. I never saw it before she had it in her hands.
That bottle, whatever it contained, was long gone. And when the results of Carrie's autopsy
finally came in, it was a disappointment for her family. It contained no definitive cause of death,
only hints. No remnants of pills were found in Carrie's stomach, but there was evidence of
Ambien in her muscle tissue, the same sleeping medication that Matt had researched on the
internet. Bill Johnson, the former prosecutor hired by Carrie's family, began to believe that maybe Matt had first drugged his wife with Ambien and then suffocated her.
His evidence?
The few photos that were taken the night that Carrie died showed discoloration around her nose and lips.
There was also a question about the signs of lividity on Carrie's body.
That's the pooling of blood that happens after death.
According to Johnston,
Carrie had been dead far longer than the 40 or so minutes
that Matt Baker claimed he was away.
She had to ingest something that made her sleepy,
then unconscious, then killed her.
And she had to quit breathing.
The heart had to stop.
And then the levity had to begin.
The new information was enough to convince the Justice of Peace
to change his original determination of suicide to undetermined.
And on September 21, 2007, Matt Baker was arrested and charged with his
wife's murder. But Matt continued to insist he was innocent. I guess the foolishness in my part was,
if you never do anything wrong, you won't get arrested.
He posted bond and went home to his daughters.
And I'm just waiting for the day that I can grieve with my children the loss of my wife and their mother.
Matt says his mother-in-law just couldn't accept Carrie's death and wanted someone to blame.
It had to be somebody's fault, and I have to be the fall guy for it.
Have you been able to get work?
Not after the arrest.
Not after the arrest.
Matt hired a lawyer, Guy James Gray,
who, like Bill Johnston,
was also a former tough prosecutor
and just as tenacious.
I only take the cases that I believe in with all my heart,
and this is one of them.
I think Matt Baker is being railroaded.
The more that I know about Matt,
the less I believe that he is the type to take somebody's life.
Gray showed us entries that Carrie had made in her Bible
after her daughter Cassidy had died.
This paragraph is about how good heaven is, and then she writes out beside it,
I want to go with Cassidy.
What about the abrasion on the nose and possibly on her lip?
Well, the first thing the emergency people did when they got there was put one of these
artificial CPR deals over her mouth.
But over time, more and more circumstantial evidence
surfaced, raising yet more questions
about Carrie Baker's death.
And I know she didn't take her own life.
Someone with that kind of a zest for life,
that kind of fight for life, she's
not going to take her own life.
And she didn't do that. Jill Hotz was one of Carrie's closest friends. She agrees that Carrie was upset in
the days before her death, but she was upset with her husband. She was very, very upset.
And when you say upset, crying? She's crying extremely hard on the phone.
And I said, Carrie, what's wrong?
And she said, I think Matt is seeing someone else.
And you know how you have those moments in your life
that you wish that you could just redo the whole thing?
And I tried to reassure her that Matt loved her,
and he wouldn't do that.
The day after Carrie confided in Jill
was when she told her grief counselor
that she thought Matt was trying to kill her.
Why would he want his wife dead?
Well, despite his claim that he had no interest
in Vanessa Bowles except as a friend,
there was this.
You asked her parents whether you could date her.
Yes, later in the summer.
So you were interested in Vanessa Bowles.
Yes.
You did want to date Vanessa Bowles.
Yes, during the summer, absolutely I did.
And while Mack claimed his wife was suffering severe anxiety in the days leading up to her death,
Carrie's friends remember that time differently.
Todd Monzies says Carrie was excited about the job interview
and looked forward to the prospect of a new challenge.
She told me she had a great interview, was so excited about it,
and yeah, we had a good high five right there in the hallway.
There were also weird inconsistencies in Matt's story that alone might not mean much,
but when added to the building evidence, seemed incriminating. An example, Matt told me that he
had no idea his wife took her life until a police officer arriving at the house handed him the
suicide note. The police officer brings me the note,
and that was the first thought at that point in time.
She took her own life.
Bunnell listened to what he told the 911 operator
before the cops got there.
I think my wife just committed suicide.
Her lips are blue, her hands are cold,
and there's a note that says, I'm sorry, basically.
You read the note. You had said to the operator, she says, I'm sorry.
But I did not read the full note. I saw the note, but as I picked up the phone, I saw it there,
but I did not take the time to read the note.
By now, Carrie's family was convinced that she had been murdered,
but there was no direct evidence that Matt Baker murdered his wife.
Yes, his story was inconsistent. Yes, he was flirting with a woman whom he started dating
after his wife died. And there was ambient in Kerry's muscles, but who could say how it got
there? The bottom line, there was not enough proof that Matt Baker killed his wife.
We felt we didn't have the evidence to go forward with a criminal indictment at that time.
That's Crawford Long, the assistant DA, handling the case.
On March 25, 2008, Long made a tough decision
and dropped all criminal charges against Matt Baker, his attorney, Guy James Gray.
You can't go forward with a murder case unless you can establish that it is a homicide.
So you have to establish cause of death.
And that, forensically, is just not possible in this case.
But Bill Johnston knows there's no statute of limitations on murder, so he's not giving up.
Because sooner or later, I think, the criminal justice system will deal with Matt Baker.
I just believe it's going to happen.
Linda Dooland and her sisterhood of angels aren't giving up either.
We are going to continue to do what we have been doing,
and that is we are going to seek justice. And I believe with every fiber in my being that we will
have it. Hotshot Australian attorney Nicola Gaba was born into legal royalty. Her specialty?
Representing some of the city's most infamous
gangland criminals. However, while Nicola held the underworld's darkest secrets,
the most dangerous secret was her own. She's going to all the major groups within Melbourne's
underworld, and she's informing on them all. I'm Marsha Clark, host of the new podcast,
Informants Lawyer X. In my long career in criminal justice as a prosecutor and defense attorney,
I've seen some crazy cases.
And this one belongs right at the top of the list.
She was addicted to the game she had created.
She just didn't know how to stop.
Now, through dramatic interviews and access,
I'll reveal the truth behind one of the world's most shocking legal scandals.
Listen to Informance Lawyer X exclusively on Wondery+.
Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
And listen to more Exhibit C true crime shows early and ad-free right now.
In the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Peru and New Zealand, lies a tiny volcanic island.
It's a little-known British territory called Pitcairn,
and it harboured a deep, dark scandal.
There wouldn't be a girl on Pitcairn once they reached the age of 10
that would still have heard it.
It just happens to all of them.
I'm journalist Luke Jones, and for almost two years,
I've been investigating a shocking story
that has left deep scars on generations of women and girls from Pitcairn.
When there's nobody watching, nobody going to report it,
people will get away with what they can get away with.
In the Pitcairn trials, I'll be uncovering a story of abuse
and the fight for justice that has brought a unique, lonely,
Pacific island to the brink of extinction. Listen to the Pitcairn Trials exclusively on
Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
I am Matt Baker, and I have been called a cheater, an adulterer, a murderer, a liar,
and that's the farthest thing from the truth.
In the spring of 2008, Matt Baker was a free man, but not for long.
What changed things? The thing that changed things was
Vanessa Bull's testimony. It turns out that the woman who Matt Baker insisted was just a friend
had quite a story to tell. Did he ever send you song lyrics? Yes, he sent me song lyrics to the
song Dirty Little Secrets. It went, I'll keep you in my dirty little secret.
Don't tell anyone or you'll be just another regret.
Vanessa Bowles had originally told police that she had only dated Matt Baker after his wife died.
But authorities had evidence that the couple had been shopping for wedding rings just weeks after Carrie's death.
Assistant DA Crawford Long believed that she was the key to the case.
So he offered her immunity if she would tell a grand jury what she knew.
Was that a little risky?
We didn't have anything to lose.
The gamble paid off.
I said, did Matt ever tell you anything about Carrie's death?
And she said, yes.
He said, I killed her for you.
My jaw probably dropped down on my chest.
According to Crawford Long, Matt even told Vanessa how he did it.
He told her that he had smothered her.
And just like that, nearly three years after Carrie's death
and about a year after all charges against Matt Baker had been dropped,
Crawford Long suddenly believed he had enough to take Matt Baker to trial.
Oh, my gosh.
Carrie's mom, Linda Doolin, was overcome.
I remember just falling to my knees and I was crying and I was overwhelmed.
In March of 2009, Matt Baker was re-arrested and charged with Carrie's murder.
How do you wish to plead?
I'm not guilty.
And nearly four years after Carrie Baker's death,
her husband Matt was finally tried for her murder.
The star witness at his trial?
The other woman, Vanessa Bowles.
One time I was sitting by myself in the church.
Vanessa, a single mom, told the jury that she met Matt Baker at church in the fall of 2005 when she was going through a divorce.
He came in and he just sat down, started talking to me.
He said, whoever finds you is going to be a lucky man.
He said that, you know, he'd counseled people with divorce before.
He said, he's lost a child and God could get you through anything.
Vanessa said Matt had nothing good to say about his wife.
His wife was so depressed.
He said she was a horrible mother, a horrible wife.
They didn't have sex anymore.
At one point, he invited Vanessa to their home while Carrie was at work.
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.
I was extremely remorseful.
I couldn't believe what just happened.
But she continued to sleep with Matt Baker when his wife was out of the house.
He referred to her as a fat bitch,
said that he wanted her out of the house. He referred to her as a fat bitch, said that he wanted her out of his
life. After Carrie died in April 2006, Vanessa says Matt told her exactly how he did it. He said,
I'm going to tell you what happened that night one time. Then he said, I never want to talk about it
again. Matt told her that he gave his wife sleeping medication to knock her out,
mixed in wine coolers.
He said 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 either said give Cassidy a hug for me or give Cassidy a kiss for me.
Then he said he got the pillow and put it over her face.
There was no sound in the courtroom.
As Vanessa described Carrie's death,
the worst moment came when she calmly demonstrated what Matt did
when he heard his wife suddenly gasp for air.
He said, oh, s***.
And then 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.
I know what my child was screaming inside of her head.
She was screaming out for her babies. I know that.
I know that.
Even more devastating for Linda Doolin,
her daughter didn't have to die.
Vanessa admitted in court that she knew Matt Baker was plotting to kill Carrie.
He talked about maybe putting something in a milkshake,
making it look like she'd hung herself, maybe doing a drive-by shooting,
make it look like she overdosed on sleeping pills,
tampering with the brakes of her car.
Vanessa could have saved your daughter.
Yes, I know it.
She knew what day your daughter was going to die.
I know.
And she never told anybody.
I know.
It was devastating testimony.
Combined with the numerous inconsistencies in Matt Baker's story,
that testimony sealed his fate.
All right, bring in the jury.
We, the jury, find the defendant, Matt D. Baker,
guilty of the offense of murder.
Guilty of first-degree murder. Baker's sentence, 65 years with the possibility of parole.
At sentencing, Linda Doolin got the last word.
I'm talking to you, Matt, today, okay?
You haven't looked at me in almost four years.
Can you look at me today?
You murdered the mother of your children.
look at me today? You murdered the mother of your children. But the most tragic victims, Matt,
are Kinsey and Grace, those sweet, sweet babies.
Later, I went back to Texas to see Baker, now inmate Baker, one more time. Are you finally ready to admit that you killed
your wife? No, because I didn't. I did not suffocate, did not shove pills down her throat,
did not do anything to hurt my wife. You're saying that Vanessa Bowles lied about it all?
Absolutely. Why would she lie about this? She thought she was going to be with me, and I walked away from the relationship, and she was upset and mad.
No surprise, Baker continued to cling to his claims of innocence.
That's all he's got left.
His daughters later went to live with their grandmother, Carrie's mom, Linda Doolin. What makes me the saddest is that her girls
have been deprived of this magnificent mother.
Linda Doolin now knows what happened to her daughter.
It doesn't bring Carrie back,
but she can tell Kenzie and Grace all about their mom.
And Linda has peace,
knowing that Carrie's killer, who came so close to getting away with murder, won't be able to hurt anyone else she loves. I'm Erin Moriarty,
48 Hours, and this is my life of crime. This podcast series is developed by 48 Hours
in partnership with CBS News Radio.
Judy Tigard is 48 Hours executive producer.
Jonathan Clark is CBS News Radio executive producer.
Production and editing for this season of My Life of Crime
by Alan Pang.
This episode was also produced by Lisa Freed,
Gail Zimmerman, and Elena DiFiori of 48 Hours.
Craig Swagler is vice president
and general manager of CBS News Radio.
And finally, a thank you to all of you, our listeners.
We owe it all to you, the millions of 48 Hours fans.
Don't forget to join me online.
I'm at EFMoriarty on Twitter, and we're at 48 Hours on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
See you soon. Listen ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a quick survey at wondery.com slash survey.