By Tommy Witherspoon
Tribune-Herald
May 20, 2009
http://www.wacotrib.com/news/content/news/stories/2009/05/20/05202009wacmattbakerupdate.html?imw=Y
McLennan County prosecutors are seeking Matt Baker's college and high school records pertaining to any criminal investigations, disciplinary actions and counseling sessions.
Prosecutors are preparing for Baker's trial on charges that the former Central Texas minister killed his wife and tried to mask her death as a suicide.
In an application for subpoenas filed Tuesday, prosecutor Crawford Long requested Chris Holmes of Baylor University's office of general counsel to supply his office with Baker's student records from undergraduate and graduate schools, including transcripts and any "documentation pertaining to any student misconduct."
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| Former Central Texas minister Matt Baker is accused of killing his wife and trying to mask her death as a suicide. Photo by Rod Aydelotte |
Baker, 37, a former Central Texas minister, is a graduate of Baylor and Truett Seminary.
He is charged in the April 2007 drugging and suffocation death of his wife, Kari, a teacher and mother of his two daughters.
Baker, who has denied that he killed his wife, changed attorneys last week.
However, 19th State District Court officials say that should not delay the start of his trial, tentatively scheduled for late September.
Judge Ralph Strother has put parties on both sides under a gag order, preventing them from commenting on the case.
The subpoena for Baylor records also seeks "any investigation of criminal activity, and any disciplinary action taken as a result, and also to include any internal notes or memos and any Baylor Public Safety Department reports and witness statements regarding any such investigation."
The application also includes a request to the custodian of student records for the Kerrville school system to supply Baker's entire cumulative school records, including any disciplinary records and counseling records.
Baker, who moved backed to Kerrville with his daughters after his wife's death, graduated from Kerrville Tivy High School, where his mother still teaches.
He was a substitute teacher there before his arrest in his wife's death.
Baker was accused of sexual misconduct with a freshman woman at Baylor when he was a sophomore in 1991.
He denied the incident, saying it was a misunderstanding that occurred when he and other students who worked as trainers at Floyd Casey Stadium were cleaning up the visitors' locker room after a football game.
"A group of us were down there cleaning," Baker told the Tribune-Herald in December 2007. "We're on our way out. I've got the key to lock the door, so I'm turning the lights out. There's like master lights for the whole facility. So I'm turning the lights out, and I did not know she was back in one of the rooms. She comes running out from the dark screaming. I open the door and she runs past me, runs past the rest of the group, runs and keeps going. Never thought anything of it. The lights are off. I lock the door."
Baker said he did not give the incident another thought until he tried to register the next semester and was summoned to a vice president's office.
The vice president told him that he had been accused of improper sexual contact with the student, who had told investigators that she had to bite Baker to get him away from her.
Baker denies that he was bitten and says he was falsely accused and cleared of wrongdoing.
"The vice president told me they had done some investigating, and it was his opinion that when they investigated they went back to her high school and talked to people in her high school administration and that she had falsely accused at least one or two football players in their school with sexual harassment," Baker has said.
Contact: twitherspoon@wacotrib.com
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