Deadly Little Secrets Part 2

"I tell Matt everything," Kari a.s.sured her. "He's such a good guy, and he's led such a clean life, I wouldn't keep anything from him."

It was about that time that Kari told her mother that Matt's best man was going to be one of the Baker family's friends. "Why didn't he pick his best friend?" Linda asked.

"Matt doesn't have one," Kari said. "Matt doesn't have many friends."

The night before the wedding, Kari's cousins and friends took her to a grocery store, where they chuckled and teased as they watched her hold a sign that read, "Tomorrow, I'll be on my honeymoon." Kari laughed, too. She was excited, looking toward the future with a young man she loved.

The next day, in her parents' living room, Kari Lynn Dulin held Matthew Dee Baker's hands and looked into his eyes, promising to love and be true to him as long as they both should live. Matt was twenty-three and Kari twenty. With her wedding gown, she wore a single-strand pearl necklace and earrings. Looking very young, Matt wore a double-breasted suit that hung loose on him, his shirt collar gaping around his neck.

That day, as their wedding pictures were taken, Matt and Kari were at the beginning of their lives together, and she grinned eagerly for the camera. She thought she'd found her knight in shining armor, the man who'd father her children and be her partner for life.

At First Baptist, Roberts didn't know that his two employees had married until Matt and Kari told him the following week. It was about that time that more trouble developed, and Roberts once again pulled Matt into his office for another talk. This time, a middle-aged woman, a custodian who worked in the camp, claimed Matt asked her to have s.e.x with him. According to the woman, Matt said, "I know what it's like to be with a young woman. I'd like to know what it's like to be with a mature woman."

Aghast, the woman reported him. It was the last day of the summer camp when Roberts confronted his young a.s.sistant with this second allegation. Matt called the woman a liar. Frustrated, Roberts told his young employee, "I don't know what's going on here, but if you're doing this kind of thing, you'll ruin your life. You need to get professional help."

Matt again denied that he'd done anything improper, but Roberts felt less than sure he could believe him. Yet he had no proof, and he'd say later that he was unwilling to ruin a young man's career based on unproven accusations. Matt would work at the church for one more year, until August 1995, and Roberts would hear of no further incidents. Yet the older man didn't forget what had happened.

Chapter 6.

In the fall of 1994, Kari was livid about what she described as groundless allegations being leveled against her new husband by women at First Baptist. Perhaps Matt told her, or she'd simply heard. Rumors were, after all, rampant at the church about Matt and two women, both of whom claimed he'd approached them for s.e.x.

Throughout that summer, Lindsey had also worked at First Baptist's camp. "Everyone was talking about Matt," she'd say later. "We all knew that some women were saying he'd come on to them."

When Lindsey reported the rumors to her mom, Nancy wasn't sure what to do. She didn't want to start trouble by bringing them up with Linda, but she and Kay talked about the allegations, wondering if they were true. Despite his sometimes-bizarre behavior, Lindsey wasn't convinced Matt was guilty. How could it be true when he and Kari looked so much in love? "I was on Matt and Kari's side," says Lindsey. "I never thought, at least not at that point, that it could be true."

Meanwhile, Kari was the one who told Linda and Jim, and when she did, she was indignant. "How could they say that?" she asked, furious. "Matt wouldn't do anything like that." Were the two women jealous, angry because Matt and Kari had married? Was there some other reason for them to make such unprovoked charges? Matt insisted that they were retaliating. The women, he said, had flirted with him, and their claims were nothing more than revenge because he rebuffed them. In a huff, Matt argued that he was being unfairly accused.

For their part, Linda and Jim didn't know what to think. So they listened sympathetically to Kari and watched. What they didn't see was anything happen to Matt. He continued to work at First Baptist, without, it appeared, any repercussions. "We thought, if he'd truly done these things, he'd certainly be fired," Linda would say later. "When that didn't happen, we believed him."

Not long after their marriage, Matt and Kari moved into a two-bedroom unit in the Majestic town homes in Royalton Village, a complex of two-story units that backed up to each other with covered parking at the rear. Nancy had begun acquiring rental property, and the unit the newlyweds lived in was one of hers. Before long, Lindsey moved into the second bedroom.

Despite the turmoil in her nascent marriage, Kari had never looked happier. She adored Matt, talking about him constantly, excited about the life they were building. By then, Matt was back at Baylor and Kari had signed up for cla.s.ses at the community college. They joked with each other, watched television sports together, studied and worked hard. Lindsey didn't think much at first about the way Matt went everywhere with Kari, even to the beauty parlor when she had her hair cut short and dyed a bright blond, but at times, it was irritating. Lindsey and Kari had been so close, and now they lived together, but Matt was always there. The cousins rarely did anything without him.

Proud of Matt, Kari told her mother she was urging him to continue with his education, to enter Baylor's Truett Seminary, to get a master's degree in divinity. "He'll need it to have a real career," Kari said, making plans for their futures.

Not long after, Matt called Barbara, and said, "Mom, what would you think if I went into the seminary?"

"I wasn't surprised," says Barbara. "I always knew that Matt was destined to do G.o.d's work. That was the way he'd been raised."

Although supporting Kari and Matt, Linda and Jim had misgivings. "It just seemed strange," Linda would say. "It just didn't feel quite right. Things like, Matt wasn't the one who suggested we say grace before meals."

Despite their reservations, Jim and Linda understood that Kari believed in Matt and wanted him to succeed. And what was the downside? As far as they could see, there wasn't any. "We kept saying, 'Hey, Matt's going to become a Baptist minister. What could the problem be?' " Jim remembers.

Between attending cla.s.ses at Baylor, Matt continued to work part-time at First Baptist. After a while, no one talked about the charges against him. When nothing more happened, it quickly became old news.

Then the following spring, Linda was alarmed when she reviewed the roster for the cla.s.ses she taught and noticed the name of the girl who'd made allegations against Matt. The first months in cla.s.s, Linda eyed the girl suspiciously, watching her carefully. Based on what Kari and Matt had told her, Linda a.s.sumed her new student was a troublemaker. Yet to Linda's surprise, the girl seemed respectful, a good student. Despite that, Linda never made the leap to question whether her son-in-law had told them all the truth. "From the day they married, we accepted Matt as part of the family. We grew to love him like one of our own children," says Linda. "That the girl wasn't what I expected did kind of make me wonder, but I shrugged and forgot about it. After all, Kari believed in Matt, she loved him, and he was my son-in-law. I was Kari's mom. My daughter said the girl was lying. Kari believed Matt, and we believed Kari."

Chapter 7.

Later, some would wonder why Kari didn't piece it together, why she failed to understand to whom she was truly married. The rips in Matt Baker's disguise frequently became visible over the years. Yet they were brief if painful interludes, and for the most part, Matt seemed like a good guy. His boss at First Baptist would describe him as a hard worker, someone who said the right things, and to others Matt talked about his future in altruistic terms, his calling to carry the message of G.o.d and help others find salvation.

On the surface, Matt was an impressive young man, a future Baptist minister in a city known as Jerusalem on the Brazos, and Kari was not only in love with but dedicated to him. Their lives, after all, didn't revolve around the brief upsets but centered on the day-to-day business of living, hurried breakfasts as they rushed out the door, cla.s.ses and studying, family dinners, holidays, dreaming of their future together, building a family, and climbing into bed together at the end of the day and turning out the light.

With family, Matt didn't seem like the type of person who would ever cross the line. "Around us, he was always timid. He let Kari be the alpha," says Linda, who'd later maintain that from the beginning Matt and Kari acted less like lovers than buddies.

Over the years, there would be characteristics Linda noticed in Matt that she wondered about. For instance, he enjoyed taunting others yet he took himself seriously, growing angry if teased. There was the day Matt, who always enjoyed buying himself things, especially new shoes, wore a recently purchased pair of fuzzy black slippers. "Those are women's slippers," Linda pointed out.

"I know," Kari agreed, at which point both the women laughed.

"Matt was unhappy," says Linda, remembering how he sulked. "You couldn't do that."

Another thing Matt didn't like was being questioned. When others made accusations, Matt adamantly defended himself, insisting that if Kari didn't believe him, she was disloyal. He was her husband, a future Baptist minister, one day he would be the father of her children, and he acted as if he expected to be taken at his word.

A year had gone by since the allegations against him, when, in September 1995, Matt turned in his resignation at First Baptist and took a job at the Family Y, a large facility not far off the freeway in west Waco.

That December, Matt graduated from Baylor in a ceremony steeped in tradition, wearing a green gown and a mortarboard, with his parents, Kari, and her family proudly in attendance. He'd earned an education degree, specializing in church recreation.

For a while, all went well at the Y, with Matt running the children's after-school program. Then, six months after he signed on, in January 1996, he approached a young student worker named Jackie. The Y had been quiet that day, with few children in the compet.i.tion swimming pool where she worked. Matt suggested they go to the youth recreation room to work on the receipts. It was Jackie's last day before leaving to return to college, and she replied that she knew how to fill the forms out. Matt, however, persisted, claiming that she'd made errors and that he needed to walk her though the process.

Moments later, in the recreation room, Matt came up from behind the teenager, slipping his hand onto her breast. "No!" she ordered, pushing him away.

Rather than backing off, Matt lunged at the girl, trying to kiss her. Jackie again pushed away. "I know you want it," he said, groping between her legs. When she fought, he grabbed her hand and forced it onto his pants, on top of his p.e.n.i.s.

"No!" she screamed, as Matt pushed her against a wall.

"I just want to f.u.c.k you right here, right now!" he seethed.

At that moment, the phone rang. Appearing startled, Matt let go of the girl. "They must be looking for us," he said. "We'd better head back."

The following week, Jackie left for college without reporting what had happened.

Kari was pregnant with their first child the winter her husband attacked Jackie at the Family Y, and on April 22, 1996, Kensi Baker was born, a blond-haired, blue-eyed, little bundle. Barbara would later describe Kari as an uncomfortable mother, one who wouldn't easily take on the responsibilities of a baby. "Everyone doesn't have a natural parenting instinct," she would say.

It was true that Kensi wasn't an easy infant, suffering from colic in her first months. But the Kari others describe was far from uneasy with her child. In fact, they say Kari was a doting mother, dedicated to her firstborn, dressing Kensi in pretty clothes and pinning her hair back in bows.

Still, Matt did take on a share of the parenting role. "Matt wanted to," Linda would say later. "He was the one who jumped up to bathe Kensi, to wash her hair. It became his thing. It wasn't that Kari didn't want to do it but that Matt insisted he would."

The spring became summer. Kari seemed unaware of the gathering storm clouds, when that June, complaints were filed at the Y by three teenage girls who said Matt had made unwanted advances. The reports were similar, describing clumsy s.e.xual confrontations in which Matt pressured them to have s.e.x. As with Lora Wilson and Dina Ahrens, Matt didn't back off even after the girls turned him down. One said that he approached her and asked about her s.e.x life, then wanted to know if she'd have s.e.x with a married man. The girl said, "No."

"I'm happily married and I plan to spend the rest of my life with my wife, and I wouldn't do anything like that either," he said. Despite those a.s.surances, minutes later he confronted her in the fitness area, asking "How about it?" "It" was a s.e.xual liaison.

"Are you trying to get me fired?" the girl asked.

"No. If we get found out, I'll get fired, too." Matt suggested they steal away to the attic together. He then checked his watch, and said, "I have fifteen minutes before the kids get out of the pool."

Although the girl turned Matt down, he kept propositioning her while she was handing out Pop-Tarts to the children in the recreation room. "I want your cherry," he said.

When he didn't stop, she filed a complaint. Afterward, he came up to her, and said, "You knew that I was just joking, didn't you?"

By then, Jackie had returned from college and was again working at the Y. When she heard what had happened, she decided to talk to the facility's administrator. After she described her experiences, Jackie was asked to doc.u.ment her January encounter with Matt. In her report, she wrote: "I remember this the most. When he had me against the wall, he put his body up against me, and said, 'I just want to f.u.c.k you right here, right now.'

"I didn't say anything before because it was just one day, and since I left right after, I didn't know that he was doing this to other girls . . . I have tried to block it from my mind."

On June 14, the Y's administrator called Matt in to discuss the allegations. He never denied the women's claims, and that same day, he was fired. In his termination letter, effective immediately, it pinpointed the cause as "a lack of performance of job duties in a professional and effective manner, for display of poor att.i.tude toward responsibilities of your position, lack of positive influence and direction of supervised staff, and for inappropriate behavior toward female staff members."

What did Matt tell Kari? Most likely what she told Linda about the incident: that Matt was trying to counsel the girls against becoming s.e.xually active, and they misinterpreted his intentions. In this version, Matt's only mistake was attempting, as a future minister, to help the young women. "None of us believed him, but Kari did," says Kay. "Every time Matt got fired, we wondered if it had something to do with hara.s.sing some woman."

After his termination, Matt applied for unemployment insurance, but the administrators at the Family Y successfully fought his request, filing a letter with the Texas Employment Commission that said: "We are protesting this claim based on the fact that Mr. Baker was discharged on June 14, 1996, for misconduct . . . inappropriate behavior towards a camp counselor he supervised . . . he did not deny."

The letter also cited a lack of performance on Matt's part, and concluded, "s.e.xual hara.s.sment towards employees or other individuals will not be tolerated." As usual, Kari stood by Matt, accepting his explanation that the girls were confused teenagers who'd misinterpreted his interest.

Three months after he was let go from the Y, Matt gave Kari a gift, a green leather-bound Bible, The Quest Study Bible. It was to become a record of her life, a haven where Kari read about the foundation of her faith and one where she wrote her innermost thoughts. On the first page, it bore a quote from Proverbs 2:6, "For the Lord gives wisdom and from his mouth come knowledge and understanding."

Inside, Matt inscribed: With all my heart and soul, I love you. Kari, I want you to use this to grow closer to the Lord, and also learn more about Him. I love you very much, and hope that we will forever be rooted together through the words of this G.o.d-breathed masterpiece. I love you, Matt.

On the page designated to record marriages, Kari wrote the date of hers to Matt, and on the form recording births, she noted that on that past April 22, Kensi had been born.

It seemed that by then there was much that could have been easily discovered about Matt Baker if anyone at Baylor had taken the time to run even a cursory background check. Without even leaving the campus, they had only to talk to his instructors in the athletic training department to learn of his a.s.sault on Lora Wilson. An employment check at either First Baptist or the Family Y could have uncovered the allegations of s.e.xual misconduct at both. One might have a.s.sumed that such an investigation would have been done before admitting Matt to the seminary, where he'd study to be a minister.

Apparently, none of those things were done. In the fall of 1996, Matt would become a student at Baylor's George W. Truett Theological Seminary, named after a popular minister of the late 1800s. The seminary had only recently opened and had yet to erect its own building, instead meeting in cla.s.srooms on First Baptist's second floor. That year, fifty-one students enrolled, putting them on the road to earning either a master of divinity or a doctorate of ministry degree. The school's charter said it was "centered on the gospel of Jesus Christ and consistent with his Baptist commitments to prepare persons to carry his gospel to the churches of the world."

Meanwhile, Kari enrolled at Baylor the following January, 1997, and continued her own education, working toward becoming a teacher. That year, she took a cla.s.s taught by Dr. Jeter Brasden, director of the ministry guidance program. While he didn't have Matt as a student, Brasden knew him as well and was impressed by the young couple. "Matt seemed outgoing and pleasant, not wrapped up in his ego," Brasden would remember. "I'd heard nothing bad about him, and I had no reason to question things about him."

In Kari, Brasden saw a young woman intent on preparing herself for the life she'd chosen. "She was a fine student," he says. "They were just recently married, and she seemed concerned about being a good pastor's wife, about what it meant to be the spouse of someone in the ministry."

How did Kari see her role? Years later, she'd advise another young woman about to marry a man studying for the ministry: "People will attack your husband. They'll say false things because they'll have agendas. Sometimes, women will tell lies because they'll see a good man and want him for themselves."

Looking at the woman meaningfully, Kari appeared to be willing the other woman to understand the importance of what she was saying. "You have to love your husband and believe in him, even when no one else does. The ministry is a hard life, and you have to back up your husband and be there for him, so that he can do G.o.d's work."

Chapter 8.

Unlike with some other religions, Baptist churches are autonomous. In Texas, many belong to the Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT) at the state level and the Southern Baptist Convention at the national level. Yet joining is voluntary, and the conventions have no input regarding an individual church's activities or policies. For the most part, the conventions are used to pool resources for larger projects, including sending members on missions and building schools, hospitals, and churches in impoverished communities. When it comes to the nuts and bolts of daily life, the churches function as individual ent.i.ties.

"We strongly suggest churches do background checks," says a former member of the BGCT's board. "But we can't force them. And we can't tell them whom to hire. Basically, to be called a pastor of a Baptist church, all you have to do is have a church vote to hire you. We don't license or ordain pastors. That's done by individual churches."

When it comes to ministerial misconduct, including s.e.xual abuse, the Baptist General Convention of Texas keeps complaints on file, yet not all of the churches report. "Many just fire the offending pastor or ask him to find something else and move on," says a former BGCT employee. "They want to get rid of their problem. They don't worry about where that pastor goes next and what he might do once he's there."

s.e.xual misconduct and the abuse of power by religious leaders, of course, is a problem in many faiths. When it comes to the Baptists, a study was conducted in 1991 by the Fuller Inst.i.tute of Church Growth that came to a startling conclusion: 37 percent of ministers interviewed confessed to inappropriate s.e.xual behavior with someone in their church. A later Baylor study concluded one out of 33 women in Baptist congregations had been victims of clerical s.e.xual misconduct.

It would later be unclear whether anyone at First Baptist reported to the BGCT regarding the allegations against Matt Baker since BGCT would refuse requests for records. But Matt's supervisor at the church, Jake Roberts, did try to alert churches that inquired about the young seminary student. At one point, a church in Longview contacted Roberts asking for a recommendation for Matt. "I told them that he knew church recreation," Roberts explains. "But I told them they needed to look at other aspects of this young man's life."

"You've told me all I need to know. I'm not hiring him," the Longview pastor responded.

Concerned about Baker, Roberts took an additional step, writing a report on all that had transpired and putting it in First Baptist's safe, to have it on hand for others to refer to in case he wasn't available when a church inquired about his former student, a young man he once thought had potential who he now viewed with different eyes. The problem, it would seem, was that few of the churches would bother to make that phone call.

Later it would be difficult to pin down dates when Matt Baker worked at particular churches since few kept records. According to Matt's resume, his first church position after First Baptist Waco was as a part-time youth and music minister working under the pastor at the small, metal-sided, beige-painted church of First Baptist of Robinson in August 1995. This was during the same period he worked at the family Y. Like so many of his jobs, his position in Robinson was short-lived, less than a year. "We don't know why, but he was fired pretty quickly," Linda would remember later. "Kari was upset about it, and she asked me to write a letter to the pastor for Matt, which I did. But he didn't hire Matt back."

Meanwhile, Kari was busy taking her cla.s.ses at Baylor and caring for Kensi. She adored the child, pouring so much of her energy into her. "Kari always had Kensi dressed up in the cutest little outfits, her hair fixed," says a friend. "She looked like a little doll. Half the time, Kari was on the floor playing with her, patty cake, laughing, like two little kids. Matt was a good dad. He doted on Kensi, too. He really seemed taken with her."

The young family still lived in the town house Nancy rented them. Even after he and Kari had married and had a child, Matt hovered at family events, never far from Kari, listening in on the women's conversations instead of watching sports with the men. "It was like he didn't have any boundaries," Nancy would say later. "He'd ask really intrusive questions, like how much money people made. It was just odd."

The younger women continued to feel uneasy around Matt. One day at a family gathering, when he was alone with one of them, he flirted and asked if she wanted to go somewhere with him. Another time, at a family holiday get-together, Kay's fourteen-year-old daughter, Hailey, had on a short skirt. "Have you got any panties on under that dress?" Matt asked.

Hailey didn't answer, she just walked away, and Kay stood nearby but unseen as Matt followed Hailey, asking again, "Hailey, do you have on panties?"

Repulsed, Kay wanted to jump in, but Hailey saw her mother staring at them. She gave Kay a look that said, "Forget it. Don't say anything."

Matt never saw Kari's aunt standing there, watching, furious, as Hailey pushed him aside and walked away. While Kay and Nancy talked about Matt, they didn't tell Linda.

The result was that Linda and Jim knew little of the rumors and suspicion floating around their son-in-law. Yet Linda did worry about the effect he was having on Kari. "I'm not criticizing," Linda said to her daughter one day, choosing her words carefully. "But I think it's strange that you don't even go to get your hair cut without Matt, that he's with you all the time."

"Matt says he just loves me and doesn't want to be without me," Kari answered. "And I feel sorry for Matt. He doesn't have any real friends."

At that, Linda dropped the matter. "I didn't want to influence her," she explained.

In the summer of 1996, after losing the job in Robinson, Matt worked as recreation director at the prestigious Columbus Avenue Baptist Church in downtown Waco. An impressive facility, the congregation of more than sixty-five hundred entered the redbrick sanctuary through doors framed by elegant white pillars. Matt's sojourn as a.s.sistant recreation director, however, lasted only four months. Had someone at Columbus Avenue talked to Roberts at Waco's other ma.s.sive church, First Baptist, and learned of Matt's past?

Yet, that fall, Matt was given another plum job, to pastor Pecan Grove Baptist, a small country church outside Waco. Pecan Grove was known as a good a.s.signment for Truett students, a place where the seminary's stars were groomed for the future. "It's one of those places where six families built a church, and they get a pastor to preach," says one former pastor. "It's a small church, but it's well-known."

The church was founded in 1882, and the Texas historical marker outside reads: "Pecan Grove, recognized by Baylor University for its support of ministerial students . . . As many as six generations of local families have been members of this congregation."

Dr. Paul Stripling, a Baylor professor of church history and then head of the Waco Baptist a.s.sociation, would later say that the reports of Baker's transgressions weren't reaching those in the Baptist hierarchy. "All in all, I couldn't have been more pleased with Matt and Kari," he says. "I never once heard any rumors about his being involved in immoral activities. Not one. As far as I was concerned, he was one of our good young pastors, doing very good things."

With Kensi in her arms, Kari began attending the small church, sitting in the front pew, listening with rapt attention to Matt's sermons. She was proud of him, and Linda and Jim could see that she truly loved him. She talked excitedly about the future, how she would teach while Matt moved on to more impressive jobs at larger churches after earning his master's. Yet while they both worked hard to finish their educations and make that future happen, Matt didn't make it easy for Kari.