The Preacher's Wife

Kari Dolan and Matt Baker were a match made in Heaven from the very beginning. He was a pastor of a church and she was a pastor's wife which wasn't always easy but Kari was very good at it. More than anything Kari loved her two Daughters especially her youngest Daughter Kassidy. So when Kassidy passed away, Kari naturally became very depressed. She could not sleep so she started taking sleeping pills. So when she was found dead from an overdose of sleeping pills, her death would ultimately become one of Texas' greatest mysteries. This is a story about a mystery that is hotly debated to this day.

When Matt came home that night around midnight he knows there is something wrong. He goes into the bedroom where Kari appears to be sleeping but when he touches her and calls out her name she doesn't respond. He immediately calls 911. He tells the dispatch that he just found his wife in bed and her lips are blue, she is not breathing, and is cold to the touch. Matt says he was only gone 40 minutes and during that time he doesn't know what happened to her. The police enter the house and find a typed suicide note but Matt is too distraught to read it right now. His first thought is to call her parents and tell them that their Daughter just committed suicide.

The last time Kari's mother talked to her she seemed to be in a good mood. She finds the suicide theory unbelievable but she accepts it as there was really no alternative. Ultimately Matt is accused of murdering his wife. Accused and charged but the charges are later dropped. Ever since he found his wife dead he has lived under a cloud of suspicion. So is he an innocent man wrongly accused as his friends and supporters say or is he hiding a terrible dark secret? Kari was a popular third grade teacher. She and Matt had been together since meeting a counselors camp in Waco Texas in 1994. He was 23 and she was 20. Matt says he realized immediately that Kari was the person for him. Linda and Jim Dolan remember that their Daughter Kari was instantly smitten with the Baylor University Senior.

She told them what a really good Christian Matt was. Three months after their first meeting Matt and Kari suddenly announced they were getting married. Linda says her Daughter loved Matt and she saw him through her eyes. Around there first anniversary Kari was pregnant with their daughter Kinsey. By all accounts Kari was a terrific Mom who loved her Daughter dearly. A second Daughter, Kassidy, was born a year and a half later. But right after Kassidy's first birthday Doctors discovered a brain tumor and had to be hospitalized. There were days when Kassidy's prognosis was good and then it would just turn around and go right back downhill. Kari stayed with Kassidy in the hospital around the clock. In late February 1999 after a 90 day stay at the hospital, Kassidy was well enough to go home.

But just after midnight on March 22nd, Kassidy was rushed to the emergency room. This time Doctors couldn't save her. Although Matt took the death of his daughter hard, Kari took it especially hard. Linda says Kari grieved incredibly hard. A grief counselor had helped Kari through the first year and in 2000 a third daughter, Grace, was born. But Matt says his wife was never the same. He also says she seemed to have two personalities, one who seemed fairly happy when she went to work and the other when she was alone or with him that was constantly sad and melancholy. According to Matt he became Mr. Mom at home taking care of the two remaining girls almost exclusively. From the time Kassidy died Matt says Kari relied on sleeping pills to sleep. Although she mainly took over the counter sleep aids, Matt says she often borrowed stronger medication from family and friends.

The absolutely worst time for Kari was the March Anniversary of Kassidy's death. In April 2006, seven years after Kassidy died Matt says Kari was still struggling with the loss. So he took her to the Doctor who diagnosed her with depression and prescribed an antidepressant for her. Kari didn't agree with the Doctors diagnosis and would not admit to being depressed. As they are leaving the hospital that day Matt says Kari is hyperventilating and says Kari opens the car door while the car is moving at a speed of 45 mph and tries to jump out. He says she said she just wanted to get some air but he thinks she was really trying to commit suicide. He says he grabbed her waistband and held onto it until he could pull off to the side of the road.

Later that week on Friday April 7th, Kari had a crucial interview for a new job at a Junior High school. After the interview Kari complained of being extremely tired and didn't feel well. That evening, despite a queasy stomach, Kari drank a wine cooler. After the kids are in bed Matt says Kari asked him to go rent a movie. So Matt gets dressed and leaves the house a little after 11:00 PM. He stops by a gas station to get some gas and then rents a movie and returns back home. When he returns home he finds the bedroom door locked and he gets a little screwdriver and manages to get the door open only to find his wife naked in bed and doesn't respond to his calling her name. At 12:01 AM he calls 911 for help. Matt says that while he was on the phone he was also moving Kari to the floor where he began CPR.

Paramedics arrive within minutes but it was too late, Kari was dead. Police found an empty bottle of Unisom next to a note. The typed written note said "I'm so sorry, I love you Matt, I want to give Kassidy a hug, I need to feel her again. It was all the evidence the small town police needed. The county doesn't have a medical examiner so the police described what had happened to a Justice of the peace. The Police determined that Kari died as a result of an overdose of Unisom with no autopsy needed. A few days later she was buried. That might have been the end of the story had it not been for a group of tenacious women. As out of character as suicide seemed for Kari, her parents say they had no choice but to believe it. The idea that Matt could have taken her life was even more horrible to them.

But that's exactly what Linda's family thinks. Linda's sisters, Nancy, Kaye, Jennifer, and niece, Lindsay, all say that Kari loved her life and say she would never have left those girls. From the start they tried to convince Linda that Kari's death needed to be investigated. Linda said just to drop it but the girls refused to let it go. Nancy said Matt's story about Kari's last day simply didn't match anyone else's. Like the part about Kari being sick. Other people have told her that Kari wasn't sick that day. And why would a sick and exhausted Kari ask Matt to put gas in the car and rent a movie? And they certainly don't believe that if Kari were to commit suicide that she would ever be found in the nude. Nothing about Matt's story seemed to make sense, not even the choice of the medicine, Unisom.

They also say that Kari's unhappiness in the last days and weeks of her life were not due to her Daughter's death but rather due to her fear that Matt was having an affair and afraid that he was trying to kill her, this according to her grief counselor. That took place just three days before Kari died. And there was more. Linda's sisters began sharing secrets they had kept from her all these years. They told Linda about Matt's odd behavior. Once he had come up behind Nancy's Daughter and made a really inappropriate sexual comment to her or so she claims. In fact there were several unsettling incidents like in 1996 when Kari was living with Matt in a housing complex, Dianne Angelo said Matt tried to pick up her 16 year old Daughter. He asked her if she had ever been kissed by a boy and when she responded that she had he just suddenly grabbed her and kissed her right on the lips.

At one Church Youth Center Matt was warned about his behavior towards young women. He also seemed to stay long at any one job. And then there was Laura Wilson who had met Matt 17 years ago when they were both student athletic trainers at Baylor University. She claims that one day they were cleaning an empty locker room when he suddenly grabbed her and sits her on his lap and begins running his hand up her thigh and between her legs. Matt, of course, denies ever touching Laura and says he inadvertently scared her that day by turning out the lights without knowing she was in the room. Laura reported the incident but says school authorities did nothing. The incident haunted her and she wound up dropping out of school. By the time she went to the Waco police six years later the statute of limitations had expired.

Matt says he never assaulted or harassed any of these women. He says the women are lying but for what reason he doesn't know. Linda finally began seeing Matt through her sisters eyes. But persuading the local police to reopen the case to do a full investigation was going to be far more difficult. After the police had concluded that Kari had committed suicide only a few photographs were taken at the scene. The only evidence that was taken was the Unisom bottle and the suicide note. So the girls, calling themselves Charlie Angels, began their own investigation. They began by making phone calls, following every lead and retracing Matt's movements the night Kari died. Their biggest discovery came unexpectedly when Linda took a look at Matt and Kari's cell phone records.

The records showed that 10 days after Kari died someone was using Kari's cell phone. That person was Vanessa Bowles, a young woman who attended Matt's church. It would appear that Matt had given her the cell phone to use. Although claims there was never a romantic element to the relationship, phone records indicate almost 1700 minutes of phone calls between the two starting just 10 days after Kari died. Matt doesn't deny the phone calls but says he just needed someone to tell him they were sorry for the loss of his young wife. But the records also show that Matt began calling Vanessa before Kari died. Matt claims there was never anything but friendship between him and Vanessa until after carries death and Vanessa confirms this to police. Linda and her sisters now believe they have just found the motive for murder.

Since there now seems to be a motive, Linda hires former Federal prosecutor Bill Johnston and his team of investigators. Charlie's Angels are now in full battle mode. Three months after Kari was laid to rest her parents had her body removed from the grave and autopsied. Linda then filed a wrongful death suit against Matt while Bill Johnston and his investigators looked for evidence. The first thing they noticed was that the suicide note was typed and not signed by Kari even though there were pens right by the bed where Kari died. He found more evidence in the computer at the youth center where Matt worked. A month before the death of Kari Matt was doing research on sleeping pill overdoses and on Ambien, which is a prescription drug, although Kari was not known to use this medication.

Matt's explanation is that he was concerned that Kari was taking too much sleeping medication and wanted to see if there was something he could suggest to get this problem under control. He says he didn't mention it to her Doctor because he thought that Carrie was getting it under control but wanted a but wanted a backup plan in case it turned out she wasn't. When investigators asked to examine Matt's personal at work they discovered it wasn't his. Sometime in mid June when the search for evidence got underway, someone had replaced Matt's computer with his secretary's computer and his had vanished. Matt says he has no clue as to why anyone would do that and that there was nothing on that computer that he didn't want anyone to see. Investigators also wanted to see if there was anything on his home computer. But the hard drive had crashed and was no longer working.

The more Bill Johnston heard the more he felt that Linda's suspicions might be right. It seemed that there was more to Matt than first met the eye. He believes that Matt is a very dangerous man. He believes that because that Kari confided to her grief counselor that when she thought Matt was trying to kill her she found a bottle of crushed pills in his briefcase. Matt says that the pills were Kari's and they had never been in his briefcase. And the pills are now gone. In September 2007, the autopsy report came back but without many answers. There were remnants of pills in her stomach contents but the was evidence of Ambien in her muscle tissues, the same sleeping pills Matt researched on the Internet. Bill Johnston points to the photos taken on the night she died which shows discoloration around her mouth and lips which can be interpreted as a sign of suffocation.

There was also a slight abrasion on her nose which could be interpreted as having been caused by a rough surface being applied to her face. Five months after Carrie died the Justice's of the Peace reclassified her death from suicide to undetermined. The police now had a possible homicide on their hands and there was only one viable suspect. On December 27th 2007, Matt Baker was arrested and charged with Kari's murder. Linda Dolan dropped her wrongful death suit believing Matt would now be taken care of in the criminal justice system. Matt posted bond and returned home to his Daughter. Matt says he is the subject of insidious innuendo and wild speculation. But Matt has found a powerful allie in Defense Attorney James Gray, who like Bill Johnston, was once a powerful prosecutor. Gray says Kari's heartbreaking frame of mind is spelled out in her bible after her daughter died.

In her bible Kari spells out how good heaven is and beside that it says how she wants to be with Kassidy. He further thinks that if Kari were suffocated there would be some evidence in Kari's nasal passages if not her lungs and there was none. As far as the abrasion on her nose, Gray says the first thing the paramedics did when they got there was to put an artificial respirator on her which is most like the cause of that event. But Bill Johnston says the abrasion was there before the paramedics arrived and further thinks that the most damaging evidence comes from Matt himself. Facing murder charges in Waco, Matt baker retreated to his hometown of Kerrville Texas. His old friends there are outraged at his arrest. His friend say that murder is just not in Matt's character and as one friend, Jill, put it "He taught my son how to tie his shoes".

But in the same breath she doesn't think Kari committed suicide either and no longer believes Matt's story. Why does Jill think that? It is because of a conversation she had with Kari just days before her death. She says Kari was upset and crying on the phone and when Jill asked what was wrong she says that Kari responded that she thought Matt was seeing someone else. She also said that her preacher husband did something far worse. He blamed her for her child's death. She says that Matt accused Kari of praying that Kassidy would not to have to suffer anymore and that God answered her prayer instead of his prayer which was to make Kassidy well. Matt says that the comment was misunderstood that what he meant was that she felt her prayer was answered and his wasn't. Matt sent Kari an email just days before her death which states "I know down deep I hold a grudge against God and you for Him answering your prayer and not mine.

He further states in the email "In some ways I hold you to blame for her death". The day after Kari confided in Jill is when she confided to her counselor that she thought that Matt was trying to kill her. The counselor confronted Matt at Kari's funeral. Matt's response was "WHAT?" He further denies that he had any reason to kill Kari. He says he wasn't having a relationship with Vanessa until long after Kari's death. According to Matt Kari's anxiety was apparent to everyone who saw her in the days leading up to her death but that has not been confirmed. To the contrary her friends who spoke to her the day before her death she seemed happy and very future oriented. Her friend Todd Monsy said she was looking forward to her new job and had a great energy and was anxious to get started. Bill Johnston says there are serious inconsistencies in Matt's story.

Matt is very specific about what time he put gas in the car and left to rent the movie yet he seems unclear about Kari's state of mind when he left. At first he said she was awake when he left but a few months later he said she had rolled back over and gone back to sleep. Another inconsistency is that he says he had not read the entire suicide note (only the words "I'm sorry") but when he calls 911 he states that he thinks his wife just committed suicide. The police said that the cause of death was obvious. Bill Johnston says it is all too obvious. Johnston also points out that the lividity in Kari's body, the pooling of blood in her extremities indicates that she had been dead longer than the 40 or so minutes he was gone. And he is not the only one who has trouble with Matt's story.

Steven Karts a renowned toxicologist says that he too is bothered by the timing of Kari's death. He says that if Kari were alive when Matt said she was her body would not have been cold to the touch as both Matt and the Paramedics reported. But he also cautions that their simply isn't enough evidence to say for sure how and why Kari died. He says he does not believe Kari's death is a suicide but he cannot determine the cause, and more importantly, the manor of death so accidental overdose is a possibility. Matt adamantly denies killing his wife and while he says he did some things wrong that is the one thing he is sure he did not do. While Matt has been charged, the DA has not yet brought the case to a Grand Jury which is a requirement under Texas law for a murder charge to go trial.

Matt's attorney wants the charges dropped and he has plenty of support from Matt's friends back in Kerrville. As the second anniversary of Kari's death approaches, Matt Baker and his Daughters are still living with his parents in Kerrville. His life is in limbo. He has no idea if he will be indicted or not. But if the DA doesn't take him to criminal court Linda Dolan will take him to civil court hoping to prove he is responsible for Kari's death. Just after 9:00 AM on March 20th on of Johnston's investigators brings the paperwork for the suit to the courthouse. Less than an hour later another motion is filed, this time by Matt Baker's attorney, to dismiss the case because they didn't file an indictment within the required 180 days. The criminal case is then dismissed. Matt Baker is no longer charged with murder or any other crime.

In the meantime Matt faces a battle in Civil court. That will be a formidable task with Linda Dolan and her angels on the opposing team. Matt says Linda is just a grieving mother who can't let go. Matt Baker has not worked as a Pastor since 2006. Kari's parents see their grandchildren one weekend a month by court order. The DA is continuing to investigate the death of Kari and could refile charges against Matt at any time as there is no statute of limitations on murder. So who is right and who is wrong in this ongoing mystery? Depends on who you ask.