Jury starts deliberating in former Texas minister’s murder trial

Jury deliberating in ex-minister’s murder trial

WACO, Texas — Jurors started deliberating Wednesday in the murder trial of a former Texas minister accused of killing his wife, whose death initially was ruled a suicide.

Matt Baker, 38, who faces up to life in prison if convicted, did not testify. To find him guilty, jurors must agree on the specific circumstances: that he drugged his wife and then smothered her to death with a pillow.

During closing arguments, prosecutor Susan Shafer said Baker had told a “web of lies” since his wife Kari’s 2006 death.

His account of how he found his wife did not match the evidence, Shafer said, citing Kari’s upbeat e-mails about a new job just before her death in contrast to Baker’s claim that she had killed herself and was deeply depressed.

“She was in the way of the life that he had envisioned for himself, and he was a Baptist preacher and he couldn’t divorce; he’d lose his job, and he’d have trouble getting another one,” Shafer told jurors.

She reminded jurors of testimony about how he searched pharmaceutical Web sites and almost bought the prescription sleep aid Ambien online. The autopsy found that Ambien was one of three drugs found in Kari Baker’s system.

The state’s key witness, Baker’s ex-mistress Vanessa Bulls, testified Tuesday that Baker told her he had killed his wife on an April 2006 night when she thought they were spicing up their marriage.

Baker told Bulls that he put Ambien in the empty casing of a sex stimulant and gave those pills to Kari, the woman testified. Baker told Bulls that he handcuffed his wife to the bed, and after she fell asleep he smothered her to death with a pillow, the woman testified. Baker also typed a suicide note and rubbed his wife’s lifeless hand over the paper in case authorities tested for fingerprints, Bulls testified.

Defense attorney Guy James Gray said Baker was on trial for murder only because he had lied about having an affair.

He reminded jurors that the autopsy report listed the cause of death as undetermined. Gray said the partial palm print on the typed suicide note “could very well have been hers” because an expert found that it did not match those of Baker or the investigators who may have touched it.

Kari Baker’s fingerprints and palm prints could not be obtained, because her body was exhumed for the autopsy three months after her death when the case was reopened.

Defense attorney Harold Danford reminded jurors that a doctor had diagnosed Kari Baker as depressed a few days before her death.

Gray said Bulls had repeatedly lied to police and investigators for the prosecution and defense.

“We had a preacher having an affair with the choir director’s daughter,” Gray said. “It generates a ton of publicity and it generates an awful lot of interest and extra work by law enforcement. But in all of the extra work that they did … it really comes down to what is the scientific proof.”

Prosecutor Crawford Long, who repeatedly pointed to Baker during his closing arguments, said Bulls only lied about having an affair and knowing about Kari’s death — and that she ultimately told prosecutors what she knew.