Deadly Little Secrets Part 21

a.s.sessing that the judge's mind wasn't to be changed, the young detective took it in stride. He didn't push but instead dropped another bombsh.e.l.l, opening a window into what kind of man the young pastor truly was by recounting the information from the YMCA. While Matt worked there, the focus of their inquiry had "basically solicited s.e.x" from teenage girls. Perhaps Martin was finally getting a view of Matt Baker as something other than a devoted man of G.o.d.

Still, there was one woman who described Matt in more flattering terms: Vanessa Bulls. Recounting the previous July's interview with the music minister's daughter, Toombs said Bulls denied any romantic relationship with Matt until after Kari's death. "She felt like Matt had grieved at the loss of Kari," Toombs related from his notes. "She just didn't notice anything abnormal about it."

After going through his failed attempts to find the computer and printer the suicide note was written on, Toombs explained that he had done nothing on the case since early October of the previous year. Then Toombs voiced the opinion that the most important evidence was the conflict between the time line Matt gave and the condition of the body.

"That's the one thing that's the most suspicious to you?" Martin asked.

"Yes," Toombs confirmed.

It was Texas Ranger Matt Cawthon who next presented himself, more than eager to answer Martin's questions. While the other had been more reserved, the Ranger didn't mince words. "Matt Baker was a womanizer," Cawthon told the judge. "One who couldn't control his urges, his needs."

As Toombs had done, Cawthon painted a picture of the young pastor as a man who s.e.xually hara.s.sed women. "There had even been one allegation to police about a s.e.xual a.s.sault," Cawthon said, referencing the attack on Lora Wilson. And then, despite Vanessa's denials, Cawthon called it as he saw it, describing Matt's "ongoing illicit s.e.xual affair" with the music minister's daughter.

Before long, Cawthon turned to the heart of the matter, how Kari might have really died., While not conclusive, the autopsy had revealed that she had the drug Ambien in her muscle tissue. "Ambien was not a prescription drug Kari Baker possessed," he pointed out. And what had a review of Matt's computer turned up? That he'd visited a long list of prescription Web sites where Ambien was sold. "These are circ.u.mstantial situations that at this point are just too much to ignore," Cawthon said. Kari was "cold to the touch, lividity was fixed . . . It is our opinion in law enforcement that this couldn't have happened the way Matt Baker said it happened."

There was no doubt in Cawthon's mind about Matt's having a motive. He'd interviewed a woman who clerked in a local jewelry store, one who told him that within weeks of Kari's death, Matt was shopping with Vanessa for an engagement ring. "It's the totality of these things that we believe forms a pretty substantial case against Matt Baker for the death of his wife," Cawthon concluded.

When the judge asked if Cawthon had anything to add, the Ranger, it appeared, wanted to get what he'd told Linda Dulin earlier that morning on the record. "I'll even be candid enough to tell you that this was handled poorly . . . by the police," he said. "Had we been able to gather forensic evidence in a more timely fashion . . . this may have been different."

What had Matt to gain by murdering Kari? Cawthon again answered without hesitation: $50,000 from her teacher retirement and his freedom to be with Vanessa.

In the hallway, Linda had been both anxiously awaiting and dreading this moment, but now she took her place before the judge. Along with others from her group of experts, she held a letter from Bristol in her hands, one in which the therapist recounted her last visit with Kari.

To begin, Linda told Martin about her last phone call with Kari on that final Friday afternoon. As she had so many times before, Linda stressed how excited her daughter was about her performance at the job interview.

Mere hours later, the house phone rang sending Linda and Jim rushing through the night, only to arrive at the house after Kari was p.r.o.nounced dead. Once the investigators left, Matt fell into an untroubled sleep on the couch. When Martin asked about Kari's grief over Ka.s.sidy's death, Linda said, "Kari grieved for her daughter. I grieve for my daughter." But it hadn't paralyzed Kari. The reverse was true. At the end, Kari had talked about using her experiences to reach out to other grieving parents.

"Two weeks before Kari died, it became very apparent that she and Matt were having problems," Linda recounted. "I suggested she see Jo Ann Bristol."

At that, Linda attempted to give Martin the letter from Bristol along with the others, including those from Bevel and Stafford. As he had when Toombs tried to share Bevel's opinion about the condition of the body, Martin refused to take the letters, saying they were opinions, not evidence. But where Toombs had backed down, Linda firmly disagreed. "Jo Ann Bristol did see Kari, and this letter doc.u.ments what she saw."

There were more exchanges, back and forth between a grieving mother and a justice of the peace who held the key to righting what she saw as a great wrong, but in the end, just minutes after she entered the room, Linda was dismissed by Martin, who said that all he wanted to hear from her was about Kari's mood on that final day. "That's all you want?" Linda said, incredulous. He'd refused to look at the opinion of a trained therapist yet had solicited the opinion of the victim's mother. To Linda, it was nonsensical, and she wondered about Martin's logic.

"That's it," Martin confirmed.

Reluctantly, Linda walked out the door wishing she could say so much more. She motioned Jim in and sat back on a chair. As she waited for her husband, Linda considered her brief time before the judge. She still held the experts' letters in her hands, the ones Billy Martin had no desire to read. So much work and expense. Was it all for naught?

Jim Dulin was that afternoon's final witness. Kari's dad verified what his wife had said, that although Kari mourned Ka.s.sidy, their daughter was an upbeat, gregarious woman, one who never appeared even vaguely suicidal. And he cleared up something Sergeant Cooper had floundered about earlier. "There was no handwritten signature on the note at all."

After Jim left the room, Martin said: "This will conclude the death inquest investigation into Kari Lynn Baker."

Still, the business of the day wasn't done. Before adjourning, Martin entered three doc.u.ments into evidence: the EMTs' run records, the autopsy, and Kari's death certificate. At that, the afternoon's session formally ended.

As she and Jim walked from the courthouse to their car, Linda thought back to her less-than-satisfying experience in the courtroom and decided she knew what Martin would do. "This case was a monkey on Judge Martin's back, and he wanted it gone," she'd say later. "I felt certain he wasn't looking for justice, just to get rid of us. So it wasn't hard to figure out what he was thinking and what he'd decide."

The next day, the fact-finding continued, this time when Judge Martin issued an order for the Waco Center for Youth to turn over to Hewitt Police any and all computer equipment used by Matt Baker during his employment there. Not long after, Toombs and Cawthon showed up at WCY. When Greenfield met them, however, he recounted what they'd already heard from McNamara and Bennett; Matt's computer was missing.

Nerves on edge, the Dulins and their extended family waited. Finally, on September 18, Martin called a press conference to announce his decision. Although she wanted to be there, Linda had to teach, and she felt certain she'd learn quickly what the justice of the peace had to say. Media descended on the courthouse, and Nancy and Lindsey went as well.

After the press conference, Nancy and Lindsey rushed to the college and found Linda in her cla.s.sroom. They bounced outside her window, waving at her. When she joined them, they gushed with excitement, announcing that Martin had changed the manner of Kari's death from suicide to undetermined. It was what Linda had suspected, and she was less than pleased.

"My sister and niece saw it as a door opening, and it was," Linda would later say. But as she envisioned it, that door had only inched opened a crack. A ruling of undetermined allowed the district attorney to investigate but only if he wanted to. It was far from a demand for action. "I'd hoped Martin would have had the courage to do the right thing and rule Kari's death a homicide."

Chapter 45.

Despite their disappointment in Martin's decision, Linda and Jim held onto hope, believing that although they hadn't gotten all they wanted, the inquest had worked in their favor and that they'd moved a step closer to the day their son-in-law would be forced to answer for their daughter's death. For their part, Bennett and McNamara were focused on making sure that happened. "We thought about this case every day. Talked about it every day," says McNamara. "We knew that Matt Baker was guilty, and we couldn't abide that he'd get away with murder."

Now that the door to an arrest had been nudged slightly ajar by Martin's ruling, the two seasoned investigators were determined to put on pressure and swing it wide open. In their quest to make that happen, two days after Martin changed the manner of Kari's death to undetermined, Bennett and McNamara again met with Texas Ranger Matt Cawthon, and the topic of conversation was the Matt Baker case.

Over lunch, the three men once again reviewed the evidence they'd collected against Baker, discussing the scenario they agreed was most likely based on the experts Johnston had brought in and the physical evidence. The more Bennett and McNamara considered the abrasion on Kari's nose in the autopsy and crime-scene photos, the more they agreed with Bevel's a.s.sessment that Kari had been first drugged, then suffocated. As they talked, Cawthon agreed that theory made the most sense and that Matt Baker's version of his wife's death was inconsistent with the evidence. The Ranger also agreed that the investigators had acc.u.mulated enough to justify a warrant. Yet Bennett and McNamara found Cawthon's response frustrating. "We still need to work through Hewitt and the DA's Office."

"But they're not doing anything," McNamara pointed out, to no avail. Cawthon was determined to honor the Texas Rangers' code of not stepping on the toes of local law enforcement by moving in uninvited and taking over cases. Yet that didn't mean that the Ranger wouldn't pursue the case. When lunch ended, Cawthon made his first stop the McLennan County Courthouse, where he again met with the ADA they'd all been keeping informed about the Baker case, Melanie Walker. His goal remained to convince her to put Vanessa Bulls in front of a grand jury. At the end of the meeting, Cawthon walked down the courthouse steps frustrated. "My impression was that the case wouldn't go anywhere in the DA's Office."

It was at that juncture that Cawthon decided the best course of action, whether the prosecutors were interested or not, was to push the matter at Hewitt PD. "I didn't need the DA to arrest Baker," he says. "I could go to a justice of the peace and get an arrest warrant signed."

Yet still mindful of the Rangers' long-held traditions, he wanted to work through those primarily responsible for the case. In Hewitt's headquarters, Cawthon confronted Chief Barton, warning that if Hewitt didn't write a warrant for Baker, the Rangers would. "The chief was upset. He kept asking, 'Why are you pushing this case? Who are you working for?' " says Cawthon. As he had in the past, the Ranger said, "I'm working for that dead girl, and you should be, too."

After Cawthon again made it clear that he intended to move the case forward with or without Hewitt's cooperation, the chief instructed Ben Toombs to write a warrant. The finished product began: "I, Ben Toombs, a licensed peace officer in the State of Texas and employed by the Hewitt Police Department and hereafter referred to as the affiant, do solemnly swear that I have reason to believe and do believe that Matthew Dee Baker . . . intentionally or knowingly committed the offense of murder by causing the death of Kari Lynn Baker by using prescription and/or over-the-counter sleeping medication and alcohol to render her defenseless and then using a pillow or similar item to suffocate her."

From that point on, the warrant laid out the evidence, everything from the expert opinions on lividity to Kari's prophetic words to Bristol, and the computer evidence that Matt shopped for Ambien on the Internet. The last line of the warrant spelled out Cawthon's and Toombs's intentions: "Affiant asks for issuance of a warrant that will authorize the arrest of the suspected party."

The warrant completed, they drove to Billy Martin's office and presented it to the judge. "He was part of all this," says Cawthon, "so Martin was the best one to sign it."

The justice of the peace agreed. Cawthon then called the Texas Ranger stationed in Kerrville, and instructed, "Go pick him up."

Finally, it appeared that Matt Baker would be taken into custody. Yet by the time the Ranger arrived at Tivy High School, where Matt was working as a subst.i.tute teacher, Baker, alerted by a phone call, had disappeared. "I was told that it appeared that he had fled," says Cawthon. "He'd left the campus."

To ensure that Baker knew they'd be looking for him, the Kerrville Ranger tracked down Barbara, who worked on the campus as an aide, and confronted her. "She said she didn't know where Matt was," says Cawthon. "The Ranger told her, 'Well, you better find him pretty darn quick.' "

In Waco, Cawthon grew impatient, word not coming of the arrest. Only hours later did he hear that the former pastor had turned himself in at the Kerr County sheriff's office and been taken into custody.

When Linda and Jim heard that their son-in-law was under arrest, there was grat.i.tude but no sense of jubilation. "We were deeply sad. We not only had a murdered daughter but now the father of our granddaughters had been taken from them and put in jail. Matt belonged there. He needed to be held accountable," says Linda. "But there was no joy."

When a reporter from the Waco Tribune-Herald called, Linda said she and Jim had been waiting for Matt to be arrested and held accountable for nearly eighteen months, and she thanked Cawthon, calling him a man of courage and determination. "Texas Ranger Matt Cawthon . . . makes Chuck Norris look like a wimp," Linda said. "Cawthon truly moved a couple of mountains to make this happen."

Yet Johnston cautioned both of Kari's parents that an arrest warrant didn't necessarily predict a trial. Cawthon, too, was well aware of the potential pitfalls ahead. "I'd done my job. I believed Baker was guilty and we had sufficient evidence to prove it," says the Ranger. "But Segrest wasn't the type of district attorney who'd work with law enforcement. My opinion of him was that he was too concerned about his win-loss record. The reality was that if the DA's Office chose not to pursue the case, I couldn't force it to. The ball was in the prosecutor's court."

Chapter 46.

Once Matt was arrested, the Dulins filed a motion for a nonsuit, putting the wrongful death case on hold pending the outcome of the criminal charges. Since the case was now in the hands of the District Attorney's Office, Johnston, Bennett, and McNamara all stood down, determined to stay out of the way of law enforcement. Meanwhile, the former pastor was pictured wearing a charcoal-and-white-striped jailhouse uniform, his wrists and ankles in chains, in a front-page article on his arrest that ran in the Waco Tribune-Herald.

At the District Attorney's Office, Matt's fate landed in the hands of Crawford Long, the office's top prosecutor. A lean, finely built man with a gregarious manner, a wide smile, and a stiff gait, Long had been a fixture on the staff for nearly a quarter of a century. The son of a Baylor English professor, he had a halting manner of speech and a sardonic sense of humor. In a courtroom, he heightened the drama by pointing a long, thin, accusatory finger at defendants as he eyed them intently and called them murderers. At other times, he recited Shakespearean and biblical quotes, occasionally throwing in remarks from other luminaries to make his point. Unlike Segrest, Long had a good working relationship with Bill Johnston. Years earlier, they'd served together as special prosecutors on two hundred sting cases for Waco PD. As a memento, Long kept a photo of their swearing in on his office wall. The Baker case, however, wouldn't be one where Johnston and Long initially agreed. While Johnston saw the evidence against Baker as substantial, Long wasn't so sure.

When Linda and Jim met with Long, he explained that he wasn't in a rush to pursue Baker. "It was obvious that the Dulins thought their daughter had been murdered, but they never put any pressure on me," Long says. "And I wasn't going to get pushed into prosecuting anyone unless I had a good case. Since there's no statute of limitations on murder, there wasn't any hurry."

In the weeks that followed, Long would later say that he took a hard look at the case and didn't particularly like what he saw. First, he sent the Unisom bottle and suicide note out for DNA testing and fingerprinting. What didn't come back was evidence proving Baker had ever held either one in his hands. While Johnston relied on his experts and their definition of lividity, Long called others and heard less certain opinions. "What I was told was that the doctors thought it was highly unlikely that lividity would show up in such a brief period of time, but they wouldn't absolutely rule out the possibility." The autopsy's toxicology was also a problem. In front of a jury, Long worried that a defense attorney could make it add up to reasonable doubt.

Weeks pa.s.sed, and Long considered the case. "I wanted to keep an absolutely open mind. You had the two sides, and I told everyone involved that the case was not going to be rushed through the system."

Meanwhile, the former pastor remained in the McLennan County jail on $400,000 bail. Baker had frequent visitors, his two daughters and his mother. Behind the scenes, Barbara was raising money. In October, a month after his arrest, Baker's attorney went before the judge, and Matt's bond was dropped to $200,000. He made bail and returned to Kerrville, moving in with his daughters and his parents in their modest gray-sided home on the outskirts of the city. Charged with a serious crime, he couldn't subst.i.tute teach, but instead did handyman work as his father had over the years.

In his hometown, many came to Matt's defense. "The community stood behind us," says Barbara. "People know us here, and we had a lot of support." In November, friends held a barbecue fund-raiser in a pavilion at Louise Hays Park, sixty-three acres of rolling green gra.s.s and trees. That afternoon, Matt wore a green bracelet that read: DEFENSE, as friends and his parents' fellow church members from Trinity Baptist gathered. One woman told the local newspaper that she felt "called to attend," and that she remembered Matt as "likeable" and "genuine." A former high-school cla.s.smate said about the murder charges: "No one wanted to believe it."

"I am still very puzzled by what is happening to this family," said another friend.

"It's unbelievable to know the support I have. Some of the people, I don't know who they are. It's amazing," Matt was quoted as saying.

When the festivities ended, $7,500 had been collected to help pay for Matt's defense. In all over the coming year, Baker would receive donations of more than $20,000.

From the time of his arrest, a Kerrville attorney named Keith Williams, a Baker family friend, had been handling Matt's case. That ended, however, when Williams made arrangements to leave private practice to become a district court judge.

At the time, many in Kerrville were talking about a relatively new lawyer in town, Guy James Gray, an aging former prosecutor who'd gone into private practice. Gray and Williams were acquainted, and what Gray heard from Williams was that Matt was a young father, a preacher who'd been charged with the murder of his wife. The Matt Baker Williams described was a good man from a churchgoing family who was being falsely accused. Based on what he heard, Gray formed an opinion: "It appeared that there wasn't sufficient evidence, that it was a witch hunt."

Looking back on his long career, Gray would say that he came to the practice of law reluctantly. His grandfather was a lawyer, and Gray's father bribed him with a Corvette to get him to enter law school. Decades later, Gray still voiced regret about his decision. "I've never really been crazy about law," he says. "I did it for a living."

Yet, he did it well, not losing a case in twenty years as a deep East Texas piney woods district attorney. "The thing I liked about prosecuting was that I had control," he'd say. "If I didn't think a case should be pursued, I was free to drop it. At all times, I felt like I was on the right side."

Over the years, he'd handled high-profile cases, the most famous the 1998 murder of James Byrd, Jr., who was dragged to death by three white men in the small town of Jasper. The men chained Byrd, a black man, to the back of a pickup and drove, severing his head and arm when he hit a culvert. The murder made national headlines and inspired Texas's hate crime law. Looking back, Gray would say the Byrd case helped ease him out of prosecuting. "The dragging case just wore me out."

There were other reasons to want a change, however, when Gray's stepson died. "There wasn't an autopsy," the attorney says, shaking his head at the memory. "It was probably prescription medications that caused it, but we don't know exactly."

Considering the Baker case in relation to his own experience, Gray thought he understood how Kari could have committed suicide. "Like Mrs. Baker, I knew what it was like to lose a child," he'd say. "From what I'd heard, Kari Baker was depressed, a good candidate to take her own life."

Dealing with the loss of their son, Gray and his wife looked for a place to start over. They chose Kerrville in the beautiful hills of central Texas, where Gray settled into a comfortable brown brick and gla.s.s office building. Once there, he did some civil work and some criminal, about half the time donating his services to those he judged were getting a raw deal and couldn't afford an attorney. Based on what he'd heard from Williams about the former preacher, Gray believed Matt Baker was just such a man. What Gray heard about Linda Dulin was that she was an overly aggressive woman unwilling to accept her daughter's suicide. One thing in particular made him believe that had to be true, that the Dulins had initially tried to investigate Matt regarding Ka.s.sidy's death.

Precisely how Gray became Matt's attorney would later be controversial. Barbara would say that the slightly built, gray-haired man with a goatee inserted himself into the case, lobbying for the job to garner headlines. In stark contrast, Gray maintained that Williams referred Matt to him. One way or another, after Matt was released from jail, he and his mother stood in Gray's office. "Preachers are generally a little bit sissy. Baker didn't strike me as an outdoorsman or a hunter but someone who was raised in the environment of the church," says Gray, a taut frown on his well-lined face.

His career as a prosecutor had left its mark on Gray, however, and he had a hard time envisioning himself on what he considered "the wrong side" of a murder case. Before he took Baker on, he "needed to know that Matt was innocent." To appease his conscience, the lawyer interviewed Matt, who swore he hadn't murdered his wife. In fact, Matt denied all the allegations, including the affair with Bulls.

Yet, Baker's denial wasn't enough. To make sure he had the full story, Gray personally called Vanessa. If Matt was lying, Gray wanted to know. "She told me there'd been no physical contact and that she knew nothing about the way Kari died," says Gray. "I went a step further and had an investigator call her, and it was the same. Matt told me the affair wasn't true, and Vanessa said the same, that nothing ever happened." Without a romance with Bulls, Gray figured that Matt didn't have a motive, leading the attorney to believe that Baker was innocent.

His conscience appeased, Gray agreed to take Matt on as a client, offering to do the case pro bono, without charging a fee. "I believed in Matt Baker," Gray would say later. "I truly thought these charges were unjust."

a.s.sessing the circ.u.mstances, Gray had his dander up about the way the Baker case was being handled. He didn't like the affidavit Ben Toombs had written, one that talked of experts who'd looked at the case and voiced opinions that Kari couldn't have taken her life. "That affidavit made it look like Matt was lying," says Gray. "If you just read that, you'd come away believing that Matt was guilty.

Early into their lawyer-client relationship, Gray and Baker conferred about how to respond. With a Baptist preacher accused of murder, the case had caught the attention of not only local and state news outlets, but also national media programs. Texas Monthly was working on a cover story, and the reporter was asking for an interview, as were the news magazines 48 Hours and 20/20. The Dulins and others were talking to the reporters. Should Matt respond? When potential jurors might see the programs, could he afford to remain silent?

"Our discussion was whether to fight or just sit back and take it," says Gray. During his years as a prosecutor, especially working the Byrd case, Gray had experience with the media, and his advice to Matt Baker was to fight back. Yet Gray warned that if Baker did so, he had to give honest answers. "We had some eye-to-eye, hard conversations about how if you're going to talk to the media, you have got to be truthful, because the eye of the camera catches every little lie, and you can't remember everything you tell them. They catch inconsistencies."

Over the weeks that followed, Gray, Barbara, and Matt met with reporters in Gray's wood-paneled office, decorated with a worn leather saddle with a la.s.so looped around the horn, Western art, and cowhide chairs. On those days, Matt did a series of interviews, first with Tommy Witherspoon, the veteran Waco Tribune-Herald reporter who'd been a mainstay at the McLennan County Courthouse for decades, Skip Hollandsworth with Texas Monthly, Erin Moriarty with 48 Hours, and Jim Avila with 20/20.

The months clicked off the calendar, and in the spring, the articles began appearing and the TV programs aired. Texas Monthly ent.i.tled their piece on the case "The Valley of the Shadow of Death," and in the lead photo, Matt Baker had his eyes closed and his hands folded in prayer. With Hollandsworth, the former pastor compared himself to Joseph in the Old Testament, a man falsely imprisoned and betrayed by his family and friends. "He came back and helped the family that had tried to destroy him," Matt said with tears in his eyes. "I have said a prayer asking G.o.d to forgive the Dulins. And I have prayed for G.o.d to let me forgive them. But I don't blame them. I understand they are hurting so deep inside that the only way for them to deal with this is to lash out at me."

Ever the model minister, Matt quoted a verse from Proverbs: "Trust in the Lord with all your heart. In all your ways, know him, and he will make your paths straight."

On some points, Baker remained steadfast, especially denying any s.e.xual or romantic relationship with Vanessa Bulls. When the Tribune-Herald's Witherspoon asked about the myriad of cell-phone calls Baker made to the beautiful young blonde, Matt insisted that she was merely a friend. And as for Bristol, Matt charged that the counselor had told him that she knew Kari was depressed.

What would stand out later were the inconsistencies. As Matt talked to reporter after reporter, his story strayed, and the poised pens of the reporters and the camera lenses caught glaring differences. At times, he said he never saw the suicide note until the police showed it to him, despite his having told the 911 dispatcher that Kari had left a note "basically saying I'm sorry." Even with the same reporter, Matt gave contradictory accounts of the night Kari died. With Moriarty, in front of the 48 Hours cameras, Baker initially said that Kari was awake and talking when he left for the video store. When Moriarty interviewed him a second time, he described that crucial moment differently: "She'd rolled over and gone back to sleep. So when I left, she was asleep."

When Bennett and McNamara saw the interviews, they shook their heads. "It was like he'd read the arrest warrant and was changing his story to account for Kari's body being cold and the lividity," says McNamara. "It was transparent that he was lying."

In all, the media reports only cast more doubt on Baker's innocence. For their broadcast, 48 Hours went so far as to ask a toxicologist, hired by the program, to look at the evidence. "What part of Matt Baker's story bothers you?" Moriarty asked.

"Being cold in an hour is nonexistent unless you're killed in the arctic or in an icebox," he answered.

As Baker's interviews aired, a deadline approached. The arrest warrant would be for naught unless Crawford Long took action. By law, the prosecutor had only 180 days before the warrant lapsed unless he took the case to a grand jury and secured an indictment. Yet from the perspective of those who'd worked the case, they saw nothing being done. "It surprised me that I didn't get a phone call from the DA's Office to talk about the case. It was like it had never been filed," says Ben Toombs.

Long didn't call Bennett or McNamara asking for any further information on the allegations in the arrest warrant either. "Anything that went on in that 180 days, I know nothing about," says McNamara.

"n.o.body contacted us to talk about the case," says Bennett. "No one."

Then, on March 25, 2008, 180 days after Matt's arrest, at Gray's request, Judge Martin signed an order dropping the charges based on the lack of an indictment. The order stated: "The criminal accusation . . . is dismissed."

Why? Years later, Long would say that the decision not to proceed with the case was his. "After looking at everything we had, I thought that Matt Baker had done the crime, but I still thought there was reasonable doubt for a jury to find him not guilty. I didn't feel it was ready for a grand jury at that time," he says. "I wouldn't have felt comfortable about taking it in front of a jury with what we had. I'm probably careful to a fault. I'll let a case sit around for a while rather than rush things through."

Days later, Mike McNamara sauntered into the courthouse wearing his cowboy hat. In his hands he held the necessary paperwork required to reopen the civil case, the wrongful death. "It appeared that the system had failed us, but we didn't give up," says Linda. "We weren't going to let Matt Baker get away with murder."

"There will be a day of reckoning," Johnston a.s.sured the Dulins.

Chapter 47.

Twice a month, Linda and Jim drove to Kerrville to pick up the girls for visitation. Matt met them in public places, appearing to be hiding where he lived, but Bennett and McNamara knew the address. At that point, Matt and the girls were living in an old parsonage donated by Trinity Baptist Church. One day, Kensi left her ball in the car, and Jim drove to the parsonage to deliver it. Matt, Barbara, and the girls were outside when Jim drove up.

Barbara walked up to him, and said, "Being nosy, aren't you?"