(September 25, 2007)—Former Central Texas minister Matt Baker, who’s charged with murder in his wife’s death, told a 911 dispatcher in April 2006 the 31-year-old schoolteacher had killed herself.

“I think my wife just committed suicide,” he said in the call.

Baker surrendered to authorities Friday in Kerrville after Texas Rangers went there to arrest him on a warrant charging murder in the death of his wife, 31-year-old Kari Lynn Baker.

He remains jailed in Kerrville in lieu of $200,000 bond.

Unless he posts bond, he’ll be transferred sometime this week to the McLennan County Jail in Waco.

Baker called 911 around midnight on April 7, 2006 to report his wife was lying lifeless on a bed.

“Her lips are blue, her hands are cold and there’s a note that says I’m sorry basically,” he told the dispatcher.

When the dispatcher asked Kari Baker's age, he mistakenly said his wife was 32, rather than 31.

Click Here For 911 Call Audio

Paramedics arrived at the house at 12:15 a.m. on April 8, 2006, by which time she was already dead.

Police found a typed, unsigned suicide note at the scene.

McLennan County Justice of the Peace Billy Martin issued a preliminary suicide ruling early on April 8, 2006 after consulting with police, and concluding that Kari Baker died from an overdose of sleeping pills.

But later, at the request of the woman’s parents, Martin ordered the body exhumed for an autopsy after questions surfaced about whether Baker took her own life.

Pathologists found traces of Ambien and Unisom in her system, but could not accurately determine the concentration of the drugs.

But an expert cited in the affidavit issued in support of the arrest warrant for Matt Baker says if Kari Baker ingested enough of either drug to cause her death, then she could not have died in the time frame provided by her husband, who told investigators that he left around 11:15 p.m. on April 7 2006 to buy gas and rent movies, and returned home about 45 minutes later to find his wife nude on the bed and cold to the touch.

Martin held a closed-door inquest on the death last month.

He issued the arrest warrant just three days after he ruled that the manner of Kari Lynn Baker’s death was “undetermined” rather than suicide.

Baker Affidavit Page 1
Baker Affidavit Page 2
Baker Affidavit Page 3

The affidavit supplied for the warrant by Hewitt investigator Ben Toombs indicates that authorities think Kari Baker may have been suffocated with a pillow or similar object after she was “rendered defenseless” by a combination of alcohol and Unisom.

It says investigators found an abrasion on her nose and bruising to her lips, which would be consistent with suffocation.

Kari Baker, the affidavit says, confided in a counselor several days before she died that “she believed (her husband) was going to kill her.”

She told the counselor, the affidavit says, that she had found a bottle of crushed up pills in her husband’s briefcase and suspected he “was having an illicit affair with another woman.”

The affidavit says within days of Kari Baker’s death, Matt Baker was seen with a woman in a jewelry store in Waco’s Richland Mall “shopping for engagement rings.”

The woman matched the description of the daughter of the music director at the church where Matt Baker was then preaching, --a woman whom Baker had called “on dozens of occasions” in the four months leading up to his wife’s death, according to the affidavit.

Baker’s parents, James and Linda Dulin, have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Matt Baker, alleging the former pastor was having an affair, killed his wife, and made her death appear to be a suicide.

Baker had recently moved from the Waco area to Kerrville with his 6- and 10-year-old daughters.

He works there as a part-time youth minister.

Baker was a former pastor at several area Baptist churches and once served as chaplain at the Waco Center for Youth.

Other family members are caring for the two children.

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