Deadly Little Secrets Part 7

Yet during Christmas week, something happened that set the stage for the tragedy that was to come. It was at Crossroads's potluck supper. The church members were in the recreation area eating, while Vanessa Bulls talked on the phone with a friend, saying, "Oh, a new guy is calling me. You know, I'm getting a divorce. I don't know if I can really like, I can date again. . . ."

Later, Vanessa would say that was when Matt Baker motioned for her to follow him into a hallway. She did, and when they got away from the others, he said, "Will you really?"

"Will I really what?" she responded.

"Will you really date your pastor?"

Vanessa just looked at him until he spoke again: "Well, I've had a vasectomy, so I can't get you pregnant. And I don't have any s.e.xually transmitted diseases."

"Have you done that before?" she asked.

Matt nodded. "Kari is clueless."

Chapter 17.

In January of 2006, Terri Corbin suspected that Matt was using one of the other employees to set her up. She'd noticed him talking to a young woman named Nellie, who worked with the residents on the campus. Nellie and Matt appeared to be together a lot, especially after Sunday chapel services, and Terri wondered if there was something going on between them although she never saw any real evidence.

One day, Matt called Terri to his office and handed her a report Nellie had filed with a unit manager, saying that several boys on the campus claimed Terri had pa.s.sed love notes between them and the girls, something that was strictly forbidden.

"This is ridiculous," Terri replied. "It's not true."

Instead of backing up his employee, Matt appeared not to believe her, even when she said, "I'd never break the rules like this. If you don't believe me, ask the boys."

As far as Terri knew, Matt, however, did nothing involving investigating the allegations. Instead, they were kept on Terri's record. Making inquiries on her own, Terri spoke to the boys who had allegedly made the claim. "They didn't know anything about it," she'd say later. "They said they'd never said anything to Nellie about my pa.s.sing notes, and that they'd never asked me and knew I wouldn't have done it."

Terri knew the allegations were serious. "I believed Matt Baker wanted me to leave Waco Center for Youth, and he was using Nellie to set me up," she'd later say. Two months after the incident, on February 27, Terri Corbin resigned. As much as she loved her job, she'd grown weary of fighting Matt Baker.

In January 2006, Larry Bulls stood before the members at Crossroads and announced that he and Cheryl were leaving the church. The reason, he said, was that he'd told G.o.d that when Vanessa's divorce became final, he'd go wherever G.o.d led him, which they had decided was back to their church in Troy. Yet even after her parents left Crossroads, Vanessa stayed, showing up on Sundays and sitting in the front row, two rows ahead of Kari and her girls in the sanctuary, listening to Matt preach with a beaming smile.

Early in 2006, Kari took her ExCET, the examination for certification in Texas, to teach English and language arts. She pa.s.sed, and began talking about changing schools the following year. Grace and Kensi had acclimated well into Spring Valley, and from Baylor on, Kari had talked of wanting to teach middle school. Adolescence is a difficult time, and many teachers find it a tricky age group to teach, but Kari felt drawn to the students who were caught between childhood and their teenage years. "I think that's the population I'm supposed to serve," she told a friend. "It's where I can do the most good."

For the most part, everyday events continued to take center stage in Kari's and Matt's lives, caring for the girls, cooking meals, doing homework, going to work, taking the girls to school, Kensi to swimming practice and meets. At times, the details were mundane, as on January 11, when Matt wrote a report at work saying that he had stopped serving snacks during chapel, to "better a.s.sist dietary needs of clients," which translated to not filling them up only hours before WCY served supper.

It was also in January that Kari joined a group of Spring Valley teachers who'd decided to diet. She went to a doctor she'd been to in the past and began taking phentermine, an appet.i.te suppressant. "Matt and I are sharing the pills," she told Linda. Concerned, Linda looked the pills up on the Internet and formed the opinion that if used correctly, they were safe.

Despite what was developing behind the scenes, at least on the surface, and as far as Kari apparently knew, in the burgeoning New Year, 2006, their lives remained unchanged. At Crossroads, too, all seemed to be churning along. During a Wednesday evening church service, Matt discussed an upcoming mission trip to Brazil and stressed that they'd need to raise funds to help pay for school supplies for the children in the village. "Nothing seemed unusual," Kimberly Berry would say.

The first indication that all wasn't well in the tidy redbrick house on Crested b.u.t.te appeared in an e-mail Matt sent Kari on Wednesday January 18. That morning, Matt arrived at WCY early to work on a sermon on the benefits of "living a meek life." Afterward, he e-mailed Kari, attempting to smooth over an argument they'd apparently had the day before. "I was in no way trying to tell you that I couldn't talk or that I did not want to talk to you," he said. "I was in someone's office. I love you, and I love talking to you."

Two weeks later, by early February, Matt was calling the Bulls's household often when Vanessa was home alone with Lilly, and the pressure began to build between Kari and Matt. On February 6, she e-mailed him, talking of not feeling well, yearning for spring break. She'd wanted to go on a family vacation, but he refused, saying that someone in Crossroads was expecting a death and that he'd have to conduct the funeral.

Certainly, she was overtaxed that winter, stretched thin between teaching college and third grade and chauffeuring the girls. On top of everything else, Kari worried about her students' performance on an upcoming standardized test. This was the first year she'd taught a grade level that had to take the TAKS test (Texas a.s.sessment of Knowledge and Skills). She was nervous and was tutoring ten of her students to help them pa.s.s.

A day later in a series of e-mails, Matt asked Kari why she was feeling so stressed. He was the one who brought up the upcoming anniversary of Ka.s.sidy's death, writing: "Are you feeling depressed? Are you feeling lost? Do you want to stop something? If so, what could you stop? I don't know how to help you any more than I already do. The last time you sounded like this was close to an anniversary of Ka.s.sidy's death. I am just asking so I can help. What can I do? Love you, Matt."

In past years, friends and family had judged that Kari was improving, better able to handle the painful anniversary as each year pa.s.sed. But for some reason this particular year, with so much on her mind, would prove a step backward. In response, she wrote: "Well, this might sound crazy, but I think for the first time I have realized that [Ka.s.sidy] is not coming back. So I guess I am feeling like I have lost her all over again. I just have a lot on my plate, and I feel like I am just sinking. So am I depressed or lost? Yes, all of the above. I feel like I am getting sick, and I hate myself because I should be happy because I have you and the girls, but I just can't get going."

In his responses, Matt again professed his love and offered to help, but Kari told him there was nothing he could do. "I will get through this on my own . . . You are wonderful. I couldn't ask for a better husband, but right now I am just sinking, and I have to find out how to pull myself up. So I don't even know how I am going to do it."

Days later, Matt e-mailed apologizing for leaving dirty dishes in the sink the night before, while Kari was teaching her cla.s.s at Tarleton. "I need to work harder," he said, but she disagreed, saying that it was a combined effort and that they were both too busy. Matt agreed. "I am so ready for summer," she said. "This summer, I am really going to work on things to make it better teaching next year."

The afternoon before Valentine's Day, Kari put together packages for her daughters and students, ones with cards and the traditional small mints in the shape of hearts that read BE MINE and LOVE. She e-mailed and asked Matt, who was doing the grocery shopping, to pick up c.o.kes, Dr Peppers, and strawberry sauce for the sundaes she planned for her cla.s.s. But by then the strain between them was building.

While not knowing about Matt's relationship with Vanessa Bulls, Kari had apparently picked up on the fact that something had changed in her marriage, and she'd begun feeling estranged from Matt. Later that day, she sent him an e-mail expressing her inner confusion: " . . . I just want my soul mate back with me forever, and h.e.l.l YES, I will do whatever it takes to make sure that happens. I just need you to know that I LOVE YOU MORE THAN ANYTHING IN THE WORLD, AND MY HANG UPS [sic] ARE SOMETHING I NEED TO WORK ON.

"Let's just make it a real habit to try and spend a little time together everyday [sic] to just talk about us and life and just holding each other. I love you, Matt, and I can't even think what my life would be like if you weren't in it."

A minute later, he responded: "Thank you-I needed to hear this . . . I LOVE YOU!"

"I guess we are meant to be since we are always thinking alike," Kari answered.

"Hopefully so, ," he responded. " . . . I love you 2."

While Kari didn't know about her husband's new interest, on Crested b.u.t.te some neighbors noticed a strange car pulling up to the Baker house on Fridays, when Matt had the day off and Kari and the girls were all at school. The garage door opened, the car with the pretty blonde inside drove directly in. The garage door closed behind her.

Meanwhile, the nervous tension in Kari and Matt's marriage mushroomed, evidenced by e-mails in which she complained that he was increasingly distant and not interested in her physically. They bantered about s.e.x, Kari saying that Matt wasn't reaching out to her, and Matt responding that she was pushing him away. "You know me-I will never ever, ever, ever have enough!!!!!!!!" he wrote.

"Please know that I am thinking of you today. Try not to stress out too much. Your kids will do fine. You're a great teacher, and you've taught them well. I love you!" Matt wrote to Kari on the morning of the TAKS test.

Days later, the tests were over but the results weren't in on the afternoon that Jill and Stephen Hotz and their children drove through Waco and dropped in at the Family Y, where Kensi had swim team, to see Matt, Kari, and the girls. They weren't there long when Jill said, "I could feel the tension between Matt and Kari."

From the Y, they drove to a Chili's restaurant and ordered lunch. Kari talked about her cla.s.ses' TAKS scores. "I have some kids I'm pretty worried about," she said.

While the visit started out stiff, the old friends quickly fell into a familiar rhythm, laughing and joking, more at ease. When they split up that afternoon, Jill hugged them and said good-bye. Jill had no way of knowing that she'd never again see Kari alive.

Chapter 18.

On February 24, 2006, days after Kari's students took the TAKS test, Matt called the Bulls's house at 9:07 A.M. and talked for fifteen minutes and eighteen seconds. The call was initiated from his telephone at Crossroads Baptist.

As she had earlier in the month, Kari confessed to feeling sad as the anniversary of Ka.s.sidy's death loomed. She e-mailed Kimberly Berry one day admitting that there was a time soon after Ka.s.sidy's death when she had briefly considered suicide. "The thought left me when I thought of the girls. I have to live for my girls," Kari wrote. As upsetting as the approaching anniversary was, Kari said she'd accepted her daughter's death. "I felt at peace with it, with Ka.s.sidy being gone."

As the days wore on, the phone calls from Matt to the Bulls's residence continued, sometimes from Crossroads and other times from WCY or his cell phone. At the same time, he e-mailed Kari, closing each with "I love you." Always, he acted concerned about his wife's mood and pegged her building anxiety on something other than him. On March 21, the day before the seventh anniversary of Ka.s.sidy's death, Matt e-mailed Kari at school, inquiring if on her diet her sugar intake could be low. Kari responded that she didn't know what was wrong, except that her hands shook, and she couldn't stop it: "I haven't felt this bad in a long time."

In an e-mail that followed, Matt offered to do what he could to help, then said something that would seem infinitely more important years later: "Do you want anything special tonight? How about a chocolate shake with even MORE chocolate syrup? Just joking. :-) Love you!"

"No, I will be okay," Kari responded. "I just want to sleep tonight."

At school, Shae noticed that Kari looked sad and asked if she was all right. Kari gave her a big hug, saying, "I'm okay. I do this every year. It's just hard."

The next day, the actual anniversary, Jenny called Kari at the house, knowing that she would take the day off work. "If there's anything I can do, I'm here," Jenny said.

"You know what day it is?" Kari asked, sounding pleased.

"Yes," Jenny said.

The girls were in school, but Kari said that she and Matt were going to Ka.s.sidy's grave. Kari sounded melancholy but not overly so, and Jenny judged that her friend was taking the anniversary in stride.

It was around that time that Kari called Linda to discuss her plans for the future. The two talked every day, but this day Kari had something special on her mind. "I think I'm in a place where I need to reach out and help others who've lost a child," Kari said. "I'll always miss Ka.s.sidy, but now that I've found peace with her death, I'd like to find a way to help other parents."

"That's a wonderful idea," Linda said. "You're so good with people."

Nancy didn't sense anything wrong either when Kari called in late March and asked about plans for the upcoming Easter celebration at Nancy's father-in-law's ranch. "What can I bring?" Kari asked. Nancy said they didn't need anything. They were planning a Texas barbecue, and the others had already signed up to bring everything needed.

"No, no, no!" Kari insisted. "If not food, let me bring Easter eggs. We always color so many with the girls."

Nancy agreed and hung up the phone. It would be the last time she talked to her niece.

So many judged that Kari was handling the anniversary well, yet what was wrong? If sad memories weren't causing Kari such upset, making her hands shake, perhaps it was the chasm that had developed in her marriage.

What had been building for months escalated a week after the seventh anniversary of Ka.s.sidy's death. Since February, Kari had accused Matt of being distant, and he'd responded by saying she was the one pulling away. But as March drew to a close, Kari began confiding in friends that Matt's overactive s.e.x drive wasn't kicking in as it had in the past. It marked a turnaround in their marriage, one Kari might have understood had she known about Matt's interest in Vanessa Bulls.

"I actually want Matt s.e.xually, but he told me that he doesn't need me like that anymore," Kari told Jill Hotz, her Dallas friend to whom she talked nearly every afternoon.

"Kari seemed really upset, really troubled about it," says Jill. "I told her they'd been married a long time, and it was probably just a phase. It would go away."

After Kari could no longer speak for herself, what would be left was a trail of e-mails, hinting at what went on that final spring behind closed doors, as she struggled to repair her marriage. In those e-mails, Kari seemed willing to sacrifice nearly everything to save her family. Meanwhile, Matt continually shifted the blame for the dire turn in their relationship.

On Monday the twenty-seventh, Kari e-mailed Matt. Hoping to reconnect with her husband, she'd asked Linda to take the girls that upcoming Friday night. "So what are we going to do?" Kari asked.

"NOTHING!!! Sleep," Matt replied.

"I am sure that is what you would want to do," Kari responded. "I am not sure what has changed in you but something has. :)"

"I was just joking, Kari," he responded. "I am not different. I promise. We can go to the movies, out to eat, or rent a movie and order in, whichever you want."

"I tried the other night to make things special, and now the ball is in your court," she responded. "I hope you don't miss the basket."

"Very funny," he responded. "You make me laugh. Hahaha. You did make things special-I never miss the basket."

Yet Friday night, when they'd have a leisurely evening together, was still five days away. The week ahead would prove a tumultuous one.

The next day, Tuesday, March 28, Kari sent Matt another e-mail, apparently after what had been a disappointing s.e.xual encounter: "I know you are not at work yet, but there is something on my mind . . . Matt, I love you very much, and I wasn't joking about what I said last night. I do not doubt your love for me. I just think that something has changed in you, and I can't figure out what it is. Until you open up and tell me what is going on, we cannot go any further . . . Never in our marriage have you ever told me no, and I guess I feel like this is just one way you are pulling away.

"I know you think I am seeing things, but what I feel is real. I have decided that until you open up to me and tell me what is going on and really spend the time needed to make things better, I will not do 'anything' with you. Then again, maybe that is what you want. This morning I thought you would have liked what I did, but I felt like you seemed put out, and I am tired of giving and giving and you not giving back.

"So I guess what I am saying: if you want our marriage to be better than it has ever been, then some things have got to change. Please know I am not in any way saying I do not love you or do not want to be with you, but the way I feel has got to stop, and that means that you have got to tell me what is going on in your mind.

"I love you very much and I am sorry if I have made you mad, but like I said last night I AM SICK OF THIS!!! You are breaking my heart :(."

When Matt got to WCY, he e-mailed back: "Kari, I just want you to know that I love you. Just wanted to say that."

From the outside, it would appear that their relationship was at a crossroads, and the only one who had all the facts, who could have come up with the answers, wasn't talking. Matt could have confessed to his interest in another woman or even simply announced that he didn't love Kari and wanted a divorce. Instead, in his e-mails he blamed Kari for the problems in their marriage. From her response, it would seem logical that he insinuated that their disagreement somehow had something to do with their dead daughter. "Wow," she wrote. "I guess Ka.s.sidy has never crossed my mind in what is going on now."

It was all Kari's fault, Matt said. She'd been cold, not fulfilling him s.e.xually. Her response was at first measured. In her e-mail, she accepted that s.e.x had been less important to her than it was to him, referring to it as "the way I was."

Then she wrote: "I understand that I will not expect anything from you like that until you are ready. I want to be real honest with you. I am so sick of talking about this. I just want to focus on us. I will try to not second-guess your feelings for me. BUT you have got to really spend time loving on me as well. It has to go both ways . . . I love you."

Minutes later, perhaps after they'd talked on the phone, it would seem that she'd reconsidered. This time, she sent Matt an e-mail that read: "You know what? I am sick of this. And so that is it. I am finished."

At 11:25 A.M., Matt replied, and this time he attacked Kari on every level, as a mother, wife, and lover: "I guess the whole idea about where Ka.s.sidy fits in is the way in which I see her death as a defining moment on [sic] both of our lives. We will never be the same again," he wrote. "I know that you have told me a number of times that you prayed the night that she died, that you wanted her to be pain free . . . I have never told you before what I did in her room at midnight when I went in to check on her. I guess this is part of the 'not sharing' everything with you. I went to her bed and placed my hand on her back to make sure she was breathing. She was. She looked up at me briefly and went back to snoring quickly. I kept my hand on her back, and I prayed for her that night. I prayed that she would be cancer free, and I prayed for her to start and finish school, graduate college, get married and bring her family home for the holidays. I remember praying the words, 'Please, G.o.d, make her well, so we can have her here with us. Please! I need her.'

"I don't know why I never told you this before. Maybe I didn't want to make you mad. You and I have discussed the fact that your prayer was the one that WAS answered that night. I don't know why mine wasn't. I know deep down I hold a grudge against G.o.d and you for Him answering your prayer and not mine . . .

"All I know is that I chased you for our entire marriage. You often did make me feel like you did not need nor [sic] desire me. I felt as though I was like the sperm donor for your children, and I was now the butler, cook, babysitter etc. (although I know I am not good at keeping the house clean). We have always been friends.

"I just got off the phone with you and I am just as sick with talking about this as you are. I want to work on us just like you do. I don't want to be looked at weird or blamed or look at you weird or blame you anymore. It has to stop!! We cannot do this much longer, before one of us snaps! I don't know what would happen, but we could snap at each other and say something we can't take back.

"I do love you very much. I love my family very much. My girls are my world! There is nothing I wouldn't do for my girls.

"I do love you-and I am planning for Friday something special for the 2 of us. I just needed you to know what has been on my mind and heart. Please forgive me if anything I say here upsets you. I don't want to make you mad."

His standard signature closed this direct a.s.sault, "Matt Baker ~ Chaplain"

That e-mail must have been devastating for Kari. Matt was blameless. He was the dedicated husband and father, the one who prayed over their dying daughter and fought to save her life. Kari? She took without giving back. She'd prayed for their daughter's death. She'd rebuffed her husband and made him feel small.

Twenty minutes later, she responded: "Wow so you finally said it. You blame me for Ka.s.sidy's death. I had to read it a few times to make sure I understood what you had said. I feel like you just took a knife and put it through my heart. I have never ever told you that it was your fault that she wasn't alive, ever!!! Yes I carry that guilt of my prayer, but I know in my heart that G.o.d knew what he was doing before I ever prayed that prayer. Yes we will never be the same after Ka.s.sidy's death, but one thing I have learned is you can either let it change you for the good or the bad and that is up to you.

"Sorry you have felt like you have chased me our whole marriage. Sorry you feel that all you do is cook, clean and take care of the girls. You have truly painted an ugly picture of me. At least now I know how you feel about us and about me. At first I wondered why you would stay with me, and then in your last sentence you said you would do anything for your girls, meaning Kensi and Grace and that is why you have stayed.

"Yes I agree I am very tired of talking about this, but at least one thing happened: I now know how you feel about me and about our relationship. I am not sure what we do from here. I have some things that I need to work out because you said some things that really hurt. I am not mad at you but I am hurt.

". . . I know that marriage isn't easy, even harder with the loss of a child. BUT I am not sure how a marriage can last when one person blames the other for the death of that child. I am in disbelief about what you said. Shocked.

"Thank you for being honest with me finally. I wish it didn't take so long, but I understand why you did because those words must have been very hard to say, to write. I am just not sure what to do now."

Afterward, Kari called her mother and confided in her. As they talked, Kari said that she and Matt were having problems, and that he blamed her for Ka.s.sidy's death. "Mom, I'm going to divorce him," she said. "I don't think we can get beyond this."

As a professor of communications, Linda taught her students that one should never give advice but rather ask others why they thought the way they did and what they believed they should do about it. At that moment, however, she wasn't in a cla.s.sroom but talking on the phone to her daughter, someone she dearly loved, about ending a marriage. She knew Kari loved Matt, and she knew that a divorce would hurt not only Kari but also Kensi and Grace.

Talking to Kari, Linda reacted not as a professional communicator but as a mother and a grandmother. Most of what Linda knew about Matt Baker was good. She knew he'd moved from job to job, but not about his dalliances or his bizarre s.e.xual advances toward young women. What Linda believed about Matt was that he was, overall, a fine husband and father. And, of course, that he was a minister, a man of G.o.d.

"Sweetheart, divorce isn't the answer," Linda said. "What you need is counseling. Clearly Matt hasn't dealt with this yet. You need to go to counseling together."