Kari Lynn Dulin Baker
"Always In Our Hearts."
Faith was always important to her. She was born August 13th, 1974 in Salt Lake City to James and Linda (Dodson) Dulin. She graduated from Waco Christian High School in 1993. Then graduated from Baylor University and received her Masters Degree from Dallas Baptist University.
She met Matt Baker in 1994 in Waco, Texas at a baptist day camp where they were both councilors. They soon married and had three children together, Kensi, Kassidy and Grace. Kari was a terrific mom and loved her girls. She was also a popular 3rd grade teacher at Spring Valley Elementary and also was an adjunct instructor for Tarleton State University.
Tragedy struck the family right after Kassidy's 1st birthday when doctors discovered that the sweet little baby had a brain tumor. Kari never left Kassidy's side. In February of 1999, after being in the hospital for 90 days straight, Kassidy was well enough to go home. Unfortunately, just after midnight on March 22nd, she was rushed to the emergency room and Kassidy passed away. Kari took this extremely hard. She saw a grief councilor to help her through this difficult time in her life. About a year later, Grace was born.
Fast forward to April 7th, 2006. Matt said that Kari had had an interview for a job at the local junior high school. He claimed that after the interview Kari didn't feel well. Later that evening, Matt claimed that Kari drank a wine cooler and then went to bed. He said that she was dozing off an on. When he got the kids to sleep, he said that Kari asked him to go rent a movie. Matt allegedly left the house a little after 11 p.m. He then drove two miles away to a gas station to fill up the car before going to the video store to rent the movie.
When Matt returned around midnight, he found his bedroom door locked. He had to go get a screwdriver to pop the lock. When Matt opened the door, Kari was naked in bed and unresponsive. He decided to call 9-1-1 and as he did Matt put Kari's shirt and underwear back on her. He claimed he didn't want the kids to see their mom naked. Mat also put her on the floor and attempted to do CPR. He claims to have done all of this while holding the phone and talking to 9-1-1. Paramedics arrived within minutes, but Kari was already dead.
Police found a typed, unsigned suicide note professing Kari's love for her family and apologized for killing herself. Also in the note, it read, "I want to give Kassidy a hug, i need to feel her again." Next to the note was a empty bottle of over the counter sleeping pills. The county didn't have a medical examiner, so the police described the case over the phone to a justice of the peace, who ruled Kari's death as a suicide. No autopsy was performed and Kari was laid to rest two days later.
Kari's family was in shock. Her cousin, Lindsey Pick, said that Kari would never have left her children. She was sure that Kari did not take her own life. Convinced that she was not suicidal, Kari's mom, cousin, and aunts launched their own investigation. People called them "Charle's Angels." When talking to Kari's grief councilor, it was found out that just three days before she died, Kari wasn't depressed at all, but frightened. She was afraid of Matt and that he was trying to kill her. She even found crushed pills in his suitcase.
Matt allegedly had instances of sexual misconduct and assault in his past. This church pastor even was warned about his behavior with young women while at a church youth seminar. And days before Kari's death, Kari had called her friend, Jill, and told her that she thought Matt was having an affair. Kari also told Jill that Matt blamed her for Kassidy's death. An email was uncovered that Matt had sent Kari a few days before she talked to Jill. In it he wrote, "I know deep down i hold a grudge against god and you for Him answering your prayer and not mine."
When Linda, received Kari's cell phone bill she noticed calls were still being made, even after Kari's death. It turned out that Matt had given Kari's cellphone to Vanessa Bulls, just ten days after she died. Vanessa was recently divorced single mom and church member, who was having an affair with Matt Baker while Kari was still alive. Matt had claimed that it was pure friendship, but just weeks after Kari's death, a jewelry store clerk watched as the couple were looking at wedding rings.
Even though Matt had claimed that Kari was upset after her interview for the new job at the middle school, co-workers said that Kari had told them it went great. They said that she was excited about the prospects of the new job.
Since the police didn't want to investigated Kari's, Linda then hired a team of investigators to look at Kari's case further. When looking at the computer network that served the youth center were Matt worked, investigators discovered that one month before Kari died, Matt was doing online searches for overdosing on sleeping pills. He visited online pharmacies searching for Ambien.
Investigators also tried to look at Matt's work computer itself, but his computer had disappeared. The computer on Matt's work desk turned out to be his secretary's. They couldn't look at his home computer either. Matt said that the hard drive crashed and was no longer working.
Matt accounts of things that happened on the night that Kari died changed. He first claimed that she was wide awake and had told him everything to get while he was out. Then he said that she was sound asleep and he had kissed her on the forehead. Matt also claimed that he first learned of the suicide note when police brought it to him. However, in the call he had placed to 9-1-1, Matt tells the operator that he thought Kari committed suicide and that she had left a note stating that she was sorry.
Also, three months after Kari was laid to rest, her parents had her body exhumed to finally have an autopsy preformed. No traces of pills were found in Kari's stomach. There was traces of Ambien in her muscle tissue, which was the same sleeping pills Matt had researched online. If Kari had overdosed by swallowing pills, he stated, some of those drugs would have had to have gotten into her digestive tract. What’s more, because the autopsy found that her lungs were clear, Kari did not aspirate on her own fluids.
Investigators looked at the few photos that police bothered to take at the scene of Kari's death. In one of the photos, Kari had discoloration around her nose and lips, which is usually an indication of suffocation.
Matt had claimed he had found Kari on the bed, on her back and with her arms outstretched, but the photos showed uneven pooling of blood in Kari's arms. This meant that her left arm had to have been lower than the rest of her body.
Also in the photos, the pooling of blood around her body suggested that Kari had died before Matt claimed to have left for the video store.
Besides the pooling of blood that suggested Kari had been dead longer than an hour, according to Matt and one of the paramedics that arrived on scene, her body was also cold to the touch. It takes 2-6 hours for a body to be cold to the touch, depending on conditions. So, if Kari had died while Matt was away, she still would have been warm when paramedics arrived.
A little over a year after Kari's death, finally the justice of the peace changed her death to "undetermined". Since her death was no longer a suicide, the police began to investigated Kari's death as a possible homicide. In September of 2007, Matt was arrested and charged with murder. They claimed that he had drugged Kari with medication and alcohol and then stuck a “pillow or similar item” over her face, holding it there until she slowly suffocated to death. However, it was not enough to prosecute the preacher. And on March 25th, 2008, all charges were dropped.
Kari's family and the team she hired, sued Matt for wrongful death.
Also, finally a grand jury was gathered to hear evidence in Kari's murder case, to decide if it was enough to go to trial. Vanessa Bulls had been interviewed several times before, but never admitted to the affair or that she knew anything about Kari's death. Shockingly, before the grand jury, when asked if Matt ever told her anything about Kari's death, Bulls confessed to an affair with the preacher and knowledge of his alleged plans to kill his wife. "'Yes, he told me he killed her because of me,'" Bulls said.
It was enough for prosecutors indict Matt Baker that same day. He was rearrested and charged with Kari's murder. And in January 2010 the case went to trial. Four days into the trial, Vanessa Bulls took the stand. She began with telling the jury how she met Matt in fall of 2005 at church. He convinced her to have counseling sessions because of her divorce. Bulls said that Matt often complained about Kari being a horrible mother and wife because of her depression over the loss of their middle child. He told Bulls they quit having sex.
Bulls testified that in March, 2006, Matt had invited her over for a counseling season at his house. After they held hands in prayer, Matt kissed Bulls and led her to the bedroom. Thus, the beginning of their affair.
As the affair continued, so did Matt's hatred for his wife. Bulls stated that Matt called Kari a “fat bitch" and that he wanted her out of his life. He said that divorce was not an option because it would mean he could never preach again. He was also concerned that Kari might fight for custody of their kids.
Bulls said that Matt talked of various ways to kill Kari. He also told her that once when Kari was late arriving home, he “started getting excited that maybe she did have a wreck and he wouldn’t have to do anything.”
According to Bulls, Matt even put drugs in his wife’s milkshake one night but she complained that it tasted funny and didn’t drink it. He also told Bulls that he ordered Chloroform online. He even told Bulls what day he was going to kill her.
After Kari died, Matt confided in Bulls that he had killed Kari and how he did it. He said he had given Kari wine coolers and what he had told Kari was sex stimulants. The stimulants were really the prescription sleep aid Ambien secretly obtained from his mother-in-law’s house. He then handcuffed his wife to the bed, kissed her until she fell asleep and then kissed her forehead, telling her to give their deceased daughter a hug or kiss for him. He then got the pillow and out it over her face. He thought that she was dead, but she gasped for breath. So Matt ended up putting his hand over the pillow directly over Kari's nose until she died.
Matt then typed and printed a suicide note and rubbed Kari’s hands on it in case authorities tested for fingerprints.
Bulls said that she didn't come forward earlier because she thought no one would believe her since he is a preacher.
When investigators started looking at Bulls a few months after Kari's death, she broke up with Matt. She claims she had urged him to turn himself in. In response she said that Matt became irate and said, "I killed my wife for you and now you’re leaving?".
After than point, Bulls said that she was afraid that Matt would put a bullet in her head.
After a 2 hour deliberation, jurors sentenced Matt to 65 years with the possibility of parole.
12 days after Matt was convicted of killing his wife, he was disciplined last month at the McLennan County Jail for “making obscene sexual hand gestures” toward two female jail inmates.
Kari's two girls lived with Matt's parents until a judge ruled in 2011 that they would go to live with Kari's parents.
