Deadly Little Secrets Part 10

"No, but she talked about it," Matt said. "She's been upset ever since our second daughter died seven years ago. She's been depressed, and she's talked about suicide, especially in the past couple of weeks."

The phone rang at Jim and Linda's home at 12:08 that night. Linda felt an involuntary shudder. She didn't like late-night phone calls, especially not around midnight. The last time Linda had answered the phone at midnight was seven years earlier, the night Ka.s.sidy died.

"There's been an accident at your daughter's house on Crested b.u.t.te," a dispatcher said, following through on Matt's request to have someone call his in-laws. "You need to go there."

"Oh, my gosh, something's happened to one of my granddaughters?" Linda said.

"No, it's your daughter," the man said.

"My daughter? I'll be right there." Minutes later, Linda and Jim had thrown on clothes and were in the car, barreling down deserted suburban streets shrouded in darkness. From the car, Linda called Matt. When he answered, Linda asked, "What's going on? What's wrong with Kari?"

"They're working on her," he said. "She's not breathing."

"We're on our way," Linda said.

Once Matt hung up, Linda called Nancy. "We're on our way to Kari's. There's been an accident," she said.

On Crested b.u.t.te, other Hewitt PD officers arrived including Sgt. Chad Kasting, who heard the call as he patrolled. The emergency was described as "an unresponsive female, not breathing." When Kasting called for more information, the dispatcher told him the husband said his wife had committed suicide. Once in the house, Kasting heard the man he'd later identify as Matt tell one of the EMTs that his wife had left a note.

On the bedroom floor, the two EMTs continued to administer CPR, but at least one wondered how long ago the woman on the floor had stopped breathing. When Gates felt Kari's body, it was cool, and he noticed something else, a pale purplish coloring to the woman's hands and back, lividity. Occurring after the heart stops beating, lividity is caused by gravity pooling blood in the lowest parts of the body.

"Looks like she's been unresponsive for some time," Gates mentioned to Kasting.

The sergeant looked at Kari as the CPR continued and noticed that her fingertips, lips, and feet were all blue. About then, a second ambulance arrived, this one manned by two paramedics. They quickly went to work, and Kasting asked one of the other officers on the scene to stand at the hallway to the children's bedrooms. The sergeant didn't want Kari's daughters to wander into the master bedroom. "Keep them from seeing what's going on," he instructed.

On the ambulance that night was Shelton Chapman, a paramedic employed by East Texas Medical Center. He and his partner a.s.sessed the situation, and one of the first things he noticed was the same thing that caught Gates's attention, that lividity had already discolored Kari's arms, back, and the back of her neck. That was a bad sign. Quickly, Chapman put a cardiac monitor on Kari's chest, attaching the sensors with tape. The printout verified that there was no electrical activity. Chapman examined the woman's body, touched her skin, and found it cool. Her pupils were dilated and fixed.

As the others a.s.sessed Kari, Irving and Kasting stood not far away in the living room, talking to Matt. Listening in to their conversation, Chapman thought that Baker seemed to be continually changing his answers to the officers' questions, as if rethinking what he wanted to say. It was frustrating because the paramedic couldn't get a read on what the man was contending about how long his wife had been unresponsive. But based on the condition of the body, what Chapman knew for sure was that any further attempts to restart Kari's heart were futile.

As the others talked, Chapman picked up his radio and called the doctor overseeing the ambulance service that shift, reporting to him on the condition of the body. The doctor p.r.o.nounced Kari dead at 12:17.

Minutes later, Matt's phone rang. "What's going on?" Linda asked.

"Kari's dead," Matt replied. "She committed suicide."

"But how could that be?" Linda asked. "I talked to her this afternoon. She was in such a good mood."

Chapter 24.

"Kari's dead," Linda told her sister Kay while she and Jim were still driving to the house. "My daughter's gone. Matt said she committed suicide."

Kay insisted that she'd jump in the car and be at Matt and Kari's house quickly, but Linda wouldn't hear of it. "I don't want you to come. Kensi and Grace are there. They're sleeping, and we want to keep things quiet," she said. "I'll talk to you tomorrow."

News always spread quickly in the family. As soon as she hung up, Kay called Nancy, crying. "Kari killed herself."

"Oh, my G.o.d, there's no way," Nancy said.

Shaking hard, Nancy dropped the phone and fell back into the arms of her husband. She lay there for moments, wondering what to do, then decided that she had to talk to Linda. She called, and Linda answered, and like Kay, Nancy insisted on coming to help, but Linda again said no.

When Nancy hung up the phone, she decided to go to Kay's house, but first she needed to talk to Lindsey. The two girls were closer than cousins, more like sisters, and although it was the middle of the night, Lindsey needed to know.

Once she got her daughter on the telephone, Nancy delivered the terrible news.

"Kari didn't kill herself. Matt killed her," Lindsey said. Nancy had been pondering the same possibility. Yet how could they know? They couldn't say anything to Linda. It would be horrible if they were wrong.

"You could be right," Nancy told Lindsey. "But we'll have to wait and see. We need to leave this up to the police. There'll be an autopsy. That will give us answers."

"I'm going over there," Lindsey said.

"Linda doesn't want us to," Nancy replied.

"Mom, I'm going," Lindsey said. "Linda may not want us, but she needs us."

At the house on Crested b.u.t.te, as soon as Kari was p.r.o.nounced dead, Officer Irving called Hewitt PD headquarters and talked with Sgt. Stuart Cooper, the investigator on duty that night, and Captain Tuck Saunders, just under the chief of police in the department's hierarchy. Irving informed them of the unfolding situation.

Meanwhile, Sergeant Kasting called a local justice of the peace, William "Billy" Martin. A gruff-faced man with thick dark hair and a bushy mustache, Martin was a former DEA, Drug Enforcement Agency, investigator, who'd spent time overseas, including working in Peru and La Paz, Bolivia. He talked about his experiences often, and one of his fellow agents would remark how Martin's eyes lit up recounting the days when he lived in foreign lands investigating drug cartels. After retiring, Martin moved to Waco and ran for and won a seat as one of eight justices of the peace in McLennan County.

On the phone, Kasting described the scene, telling Martin about the suicide note and the Unisom and wine-cooler bottles, and what the woman's husband, a Baptist minister, said: that his wife had been depressed and talked of suicide.

The reason Kasting called Martin was that McLennan County, in which Waco and Hewitt were located, had no medical examiner. Not populated enough to support an M.E., decisions involving deaths fell under the purview of the local justices of the peace, elected officials who handled small-claims court and performed marriages. Although not a pathologist or medical expert, it was up to Martin to rule on Kari's cause and manner of death. It was also at his discretion whether or not her body would be autopsied.

After listening to Kasting, Martin asked a few questions, including if there were any stab or gunshot wounds in Kari's body. Kasting answered that there weren't. During their conversation, Kasting read the suicide note to Martin, explaining that the child mentioned in the note, Ka.s.sidy, was the couple's dead daughter.

Based on Kasting's answers, Martin apparently decided that he didn't need to leave the comfort of his bed and travel out in the wee hours of a Sat.u.r.day morning to personally investigate. While just a modic.u.m of care might have convinced Martin that seeing the scene firsthand was a good idea, the law didn't require it, simply stating that a death determination could be made "any place determined to be reasonable by the JP."

Without even looking at her body, still on the telephone, Martin ruled Kari's death a suicide. When asked if he wanted the body autopsied, he answered, "No."

Minutes after she'd heard those awful words, that Kari was dead, Linda and Jim arrived on Crested b.u.t.te. The street was lined with ambulances and squad cars. Jim parked, and he and Linda ran toward the house. Before they could enter, an EMT, Chapman's partner, a woman, stopped Linda.

"What happened to our daughter?" Linda asked.

"She overdosed on Unisom," the woman said.

Inside the house, Linda walked toward the master bedroom, but Matt came up to her and hugged her. "I'm so sorry," he said.

"How is this possible?" Linda asked, repeating what she'd said on the phone. "I talked to Kari this afternoon. She was happy. Excited about her interview, about the new job."

Linda began to walk toward the bedroom, but Matt took her arm. "No, don't go in there," he said. "You don't want to see her like this."

Linda thought for a moment, then agreed. When the EMTs emerged from the bedroom, Linda overheard Matt talking to a police officer. "My wife didn't want to be buried. She wanted to donate her body to science."

"No," Linda said. "Kari wouldn't have wanted that."

As soon as she objected, Matt backed down.

In the living room, Linda and Jim, in a state of shock, asked questions. What Officer Irving told them was that Kari's death was a cut-and-dried case of suicide. In fact, the justice of the peace felt so certain of it, he saw no need for an autopsy.

While Irving talked to the Dulins in the living room, Kasting was in the kitchen with Matt. "Is there anyone else in the house?"

"My two daughters," he said.

"Are they okay?"

"You don't think she would hurt them?" Matt said.

Moments later, Kasting had looked in on Kensi and Grace, who were sleeping soundly through all the noise and chaos unfolding in the rest of the house. That done, Kasting asked about Kari's state of mind. Matt repeated what he'd told the other officer, that in the past couple of weeks, Kari had been depressed and talked about suicide. This time he described the incident Kari had told her mother and Bristol about, the one when Kari and Matt were in the car on the way home from the doctor, when she opened the door. Only instead of the way Kari had described it, while the car was stopped, Matt portrayed it as akin to a suicide attempt, saying the car was moving on the freeway and that he'd had to hold Kari in so she wouldn't jump.

When she hung up the phone with Nancy, Kay called the a.s.sociate pastor from her church and asked her to come over, then she put in another call, this one to her friend Bristol. Kay didn't know that Kari had just been in to see the therapist days earlier, but as soon as she said Kari was dead, Bristol said, "I'm coming over."

"No, you don't have to do that," Kay objected.

"No. I have to. You don't understand," Bristol said. "I'll be right there."

The moment the grief therapist arrived, she pulled Kay into a bathroom, and said, "I saw Kari this week, and I want to know how she died."

When Kay told her friend that it was from an overdose, that Matt said Kari had taken pills, Bristol said, "Kari told me she was afraid Matt was trying to kill her. She said she'd found crushed pills in his briefcase."

"But Linda said that Kari left a note," Kay said.

"Well, that is odd," Bristol agreed.

"What Bristol said made sense, but I didn't want her to call the police right then," Kay would say later. "I thought the police would investigate. I thought there'd be an autopsy."

Not long after Bristol arrived, Nancy called Kay and said Lindsey was on her way to Kari's house. "Jo Ann is here," Kay said. "Kari talked to her this week, just a few days ago. Kari told Bristol that she was afraid Matt was trying to kill her."

As terrible as those words were, Nancy felt a sense of relief. "I'd known it all along," she'd say later. "I knew Lindsey was right. Kari loved her family. She adored her little girls. She wouldn't have left them."

At eleven minutes before one, Sergeant Cooper arrived on the scene to take over as the lead investigator. While the others waited in the living room, including Jim and Linda, Kasting brought Cooper into the master bedroom to see Kari's body. Kasting showed Cooper the suicide note and the Unisom bottle and told him what Matt had said about Kari's depression over Ka.s.sidy's death. The heart-monitor wires were still connected to Kari's chest, hanging out from under her T-shirt as she lay spread across the wood floor, beside the bed. Her short blond hair was disheveled, and there was something dark on her nose and around her mouth.

When Cooper looked at the suicide note, he saw that it was typed and not signed.

"Did you call a JP?" Cooper asked Kasting.

"Judge Martin. He said no autopsy."

A bulky man, Cooper, had been a licensed law-enforcement officer since 1994 and with Hewitt PD for nearly a decade. Although Kasting had told him what Martin had said, Cooper placed a second call to the judge, again presumably rousing him in the middle of the night. Cooper would later say that he described the scene to Martin and asked again about an autopsy. Martin again said no "since the person left the note."

At that, Cooper called Captain Saunders, who told him, "If the judge didn't order an autopsy, one won't be performed."

Later it would seem unfathomable that with a young mother dead, more care wouldn't be taken. With the matter of the autopsy settled, Cooper interviewed Matt in the kitchen. "Did she give you any indication she might do something like this?"

"No, but she's been in therapy ever since our child died," he said. "And she's been erratic. She tried to jump out of the car while it was moving."

When the talk turned to what Kari might have taken, Linda overheard the two men. "So she just took Unisom?" Cooper asked.

"And Xanax," Matt added.

Linda's head whipped around, and she stared at her son-in-law. "Matt, Kari didn't have any Xanax."

"Oh," Matt said. "I didn't mean that. Just Unisom."

Throughout that night, Matt added more detail to his account of what happened earlier that evening. Kari, he said, had thrown up in the bathroom at swim practice and again after they returned home. In the bedroom, she got into bed and drank another Fuzzy Navel. Along with the Unisom bottle and note, the police had the two Fuzzy Navel bottles on the nightstand. It all made a convincing package.

It was at one o'clock that Lindsey arrived on Crested b.u.t.te, screaming as she walked up to the house, "What happened to my cousin? What happened to Kari?"

Matt rushed out to quiet her. "Keep it down so you don't wake up the girls," he ordered, putting his arm around her. "Come inside."

Inside the house, Lindsey approached one of the officers and asked to see the note. He refused, saying it was evidence. At that, Kari's cousin sat beside Linda, putting her arm around her. Jim sat quietly in a chair. They both looked as if they were in shock. Meanwhile, Lindsey watched Matt. Just like he had at Ka.s.sidy's funeral, he showed no emotion, but he did look nervous, pacing the living room in front of the fireplace, playing with his keys. Repeatedly, he dropped the key ring, having to stoop to pick it up.

By then, Hewitt Police Officer Brad Bond had arrived with a camera. Kasting asked Bond to photograph the scene. While it wasn't unusual in a crime scene to take dozens of photos or more, that night in the Bakers' bedroom, with the body of a young mother dead on the floor, Bond took only eight.

The first one was of the nightstand, a close-in shot showing the suicide note, the two empty Bartles & James Fuzzy Navel bottles, and the Unisom container off to the right edge of the photo. The container had been emptied and two remaining pills lay beside it.

Photographs numbers two and three were of the Unisom bottle, including the upper section of the suicide note. In one the photo extended down far enough to show "Kari" printed at the bottom. Number four was of the wall across from the bed, including the armoire that held the television, and beside it a desk with a computer and printer.

The fifth photo gave the first glimpse of death. The unmade bed dominated the photo, the pillows still in place, and beside it the nightstand, with another view of the wine-cooler bottles, the note, the clock, and the Unisom container. Yet as the officer snapped the photo, extending into the frame were Kari's legs, from the knees down, splayed out on the hardwood floor. Her body lay to the left of the bed, and a bed pillow was thrown against the wall, not far from her left foot.

If that fifth photo was eerie, the last three were truly heartbreaking. The young mother was now nothing more than a lifeless corpse sprawled out, arms above her head. The camera caught a dark spot on her T-shirt and her off-white nylon panties, tight and smooth against her skin. Leads from the heart monitor still trailed from below her shirt. Perhaps saddest were the small reminders of who she had been, the Santa Snoopy on her shirt and the silver bracelets on her right wrist, the ones students at Spring Valley heard tinkling as she walked down the hall, one in the Christian sign of a fish. Her eyes closed, her mouth gaped open, red and raw, as was a spot on her nose. In one taken head to feet, with her limbs extended, she looked like a child making a snow angel.

In the end, those photos did little to explain what had truly happened that night. Adding to the missed opportunities, Hewitt PD collected only two pieces of evidence from the Bakers' bedroom: the Unisom bottle and the suicide note. The sheets weren't taken, not even the Bartles & James bottles.

As the police began to close up shop at the house, Lindsey watched as Cooper talked to Matt, telling him that the JP had ruled Kari's death a suicide. She thought she could see Matt physically relax. "I'll give you a call and get together with you in the future," he said. "We may have more questions."

"That's fine," Matt agreed.

What Lindsey didn't hear was that there'd be no autopsy. If she had, she would have protested. But moments later, the police were outside getting ready to leave when Linda pulled herself together enough to realize there was something she had to do. Lindsey followed her aunt from the house to one of the squad cars, where Linda asked to see Kari's suicide note.

Sergeant Cooper refused. "It's evidence, and we're taking it with us."

"Would you please let me see my daughter's last words?" Linda asked. She wouldn't think until later about how none of the police had asked her or Jim a single question. Wouldn't they have wanted to know what Kari's parents had seen in their daughter in the days leading up to her death? It seemed such an obvious thing to do, yet the only one any of the officers talked to at the scene that night was Matt.

If they had, of course, there would have been many reasons to rethink the course they were taking, to call Judge Martin once again, this time perhaps saying that the girls' parents didn't believe she was depressed, that the young woman's cousin questioned that Kari had committed suicide. At that, the JP would have also had reason to reconsider, perhaps coming to the conclusion that the judicious thing was to spend some of the county's money on an autopsy, so they would know for sure how Kari Baker died.

But that wasn't done.

Cooper did, however, allow Linda to read the note inside its plastic evidence bag. Still reeling from the death of her daughter, Linda read it quickly, then handed it back to the officers and said little.

Meanwhile, peeking over her aunt's shoulder, Lindsey felt even more certain that her cousin hadn't committed suicide. "The note didn't even mention her brother, Adam," Lindsey would say later. "It was eight lines long, all about Matt and what a great guy he was, what a great father. If Kari wrote a suicide note, she would have mentioned her brother, and it would have been longer. If Kari had written that note, she'd have so many people to say good-bye to, it would have been the length of a book."