The After Show: Dirty Little Secret

Speaker 1 Hi, 911. What is the address to your emergency?

Speaker 2 This 911 call began an investigation that would turn the town of Ashland, Ohio, into a crime scene.

Speaker 3 We've got something big going on here.

Speaker 2 The first thing you hit my mind is a monster. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020: The Hand in the Window.

Speaker 2 Out now, wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 4 hi there, 2020 podcast listeners.

Speaker 5 Welcome to the 2020 After Show. I'm Deborah Roberts, and on Friday night, we brought you a show called Dirty Little Secret.

Speaker 5 Matt Baker was a charismatic minister in Hewitt, Texas, and he was leading a life at the center of his community along with his wife, Carrie Baker, who was a Sunday school teacher at the church.

Speaker 5 They had two little girls. So when Carrie died of what appeared to be suicide, suicide, the community rallied around the grief-stricken pastor.
But Carrie's family didn't.

Speaker 5 They suspected that something was amiss.

Speaker 5 Calling themselves the Charlie's Angels of Waco, they launched their own investigation revealing something that was pretty shocking in this church community: lies and adultery.

Speaker 5 And ultimately, of course, they helped law enforcement uncover Matt's plot to kill his wife. Here's a clip from the show.

Speaker 5 I remember Nancy saying, Linda, have you ever considered that perhaps Carrie didn't take her life? I remember stammering and saying, oh, what are you talking about?

Speaker 5 Murder? We don't think Carrie killed herself. We know she didn't.

Speaker 5 We all hung on those words, too, on last week's 2020.

Speaker 5 On today's 2020 After Show, I get the pleasure to talk to 2020 producer Denise Martinez-Ramundo, who I normally talk to in the field, but today we get to talk a a little more formally, and associate producer Samantha Wonderer.

Speaker 5 They both were a big part of telling this story, sifting through hours of archival interviews 2020 conducted over the years, really, with Matt Baker, and speaking to new voices to help John Cañonis take a fresh look at this case.

Speaker 5 So welcome to both of you.

Speaker 4 Thank you, Deborah.

Speaker 1 Thanks for having us. This is kind of wild.

Speaker 5 We're actually getting to talk in this formal way. So Denise, let me start with you because you and I have worked on countless stories together.

Speaker 5 And you have this knack for digging, digging, digging into the old files and finding things that maybe either we thought was sort of interesting at the time or maybe not as much.

Speaker 5 And then you find something new. So, what is it about this story? And of course, we've covered a lot of stories that involve hypocrisy and, you know, ministers in the church and all of that.

Speaker 5 But what was it about this one?

Speaker 4 I think this story is really fascinated on so many levels. I mean, here you have a preacher, and he's not only a preacher, he's also a dad, you know, of two young girls.

Speaker 4 Going through the footage, I mean, you can see how complex of a character he is.

Speaker 4 I mean, you have somebody who by day, he is leading his congregation, and then he comes home, he's a dad, but at the same time, he's having this salicious affair on the side. You know,

Speaker 4 one of the attorneys called him a dark angel, that he has this complex persona.

Speaker 4 And so it's very interesting to kind of dig deeper and see how many layers the story has, and that we can kind of bring it to our audience in a fresh new way.

Speaker 5 And in small town, Texas too. So you're talking a southern town, a fairly youngish preacher with his family.
And, you know, that just sort of shocked everybody.

Speaker 4 It shocked everybody in the community. I think nobody expected that, even when he was arrested, I think nobody believed that he could be responsible for the murder.

Speaker 5 Now, Samantha. You were deeply involved in this story from the beginning and you dug through all of the footage and we're going to talk about that and how that made such a difference.

Speaker 5 But tell me about what drew you to this one.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so I grew up Baptist and I had a lot of pastors and ministers that I was really close to in my church community.

Speaker 1 And just thinking about how someone in that position could not only murder his wife, but also have an affair and do that with two small children in the home that he knows that he should be taking care of.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 And when you approach this, you know, again, as I said to Denise, you know, you're talking small town America and you've got to kind of dig into that psyche too, of just how shocking this is to people when something like this is revealed.

Speaker 1 Right, right. And it was shocking to see even his demeanor change over the years, the different interviews we did with him.

Speaker 1 At first, he's so soft-spoken, and then over time, you see him start to shift the way that he acts.

Speaker 5 This happened back in 2006. And, you know, when we go way back, it's sort of hard sometimes when we're trying to look into this, but archival footage played a big part of this.

Speaker 5 We're talking about this man who was convicted, his time in prison. Tell me all about that and going back in time.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I think this is unlike any other story that I've worked on because here we had three different interviews with Matt Baker.

Speaker 4 One of them actually took place after he had been arrested and out on bail. So he led us in bed on his home.
So we are seeing him playing around with his daughters, helping with homework.

Speaker 4 And here's the man who had killed his wife.

Speaker 5 But at that time, of course, he's saying he had nothing to do with it and I have nothing to hide, right?

Speaker 4 Yes. And when you look at the footage, me as a mom, I'm looking at him as a very caring dad.
He's helping his daughters. He talks about helping them, you know, pick their outfits for the day.

Speaker 4 So I myself, I'm doubting, could this man have done that? So you can tell how he was comfortable on what he believed and thought that he could convince everybody.

Speaker 2 It's in Kerrville, about 200 miles from Hewitt, that our cameras catch up with Matt and his daughters.

Speaker 6 This is a little bit of everything. They have a cafe where they take flowers and they crush them up and pretend it's chicken noodle soup.

Speaker 7 2020 gets a glimpse of life with their father after losing their mother.

Speaker 6 Each have their own

Speaker 6 mine,

Speaker 6 you know, and they separate pants from shirts.

Speaker 4 I pick mine and then he picks hers.

Speaker 6 But I have to okay hers. Yes.
Why? Because she likes spaghetti straps.

Speaker 4 So he let our cameras in and it was quite remarkable to be able to see that firsthand with our cameras.

Speaker 5 Tell us a little bit about him because we talked about in the piece how he was polite and soft-spoken. The community was sort of rallying behind him.
To you, did he just seem like a harmless guy?

Speaker 4 He definitely seemed like a, you know, like a good dad. He seemed somebody who care.

Speaker 4 We actually get to go along with them when they go out to a restaurant. He happens to encounter some of his students.
He was a substitute teacher and they say hello.

Speaker 4 They talk about what a nice guy he was. He really care about us.

Speaker 4 So you could really see how he probably had everybody convinced because he actually seemed to be like a nice guy to everybody who know him.

Speaker 5 But when you're looking through, Samantha, all these tapes and you're seeing things sort of evolve over time, tell me a little bit about that. You've got to digitize this video.

Speaker 5 You're working with attorneys. People don't really know how much work goes in.
They see what we put on the air. They don't know what's going on behind the scenes for us to be able to bring it.

Speaker 5 And this story was very largely dependent on all this video.

Speaker 1 Right. It's really interesting.
It just shows the importance of archiving material properly, which thank goodness the production team who was on this story before me really archived this story well.

Speaker 1 So all of those old tapes, we were able to pull back out, just different kinds of media, things I hadn't seen before as a gen zero i hadn't seen some of this media yeah yeah exactly beta tapes um takes you back dbc boxes and and that was in the court right i was able to i was allowed access to go into the court and go through the material myself which was something that was also new for me so i was going through piles of boxes piles of papers trying to find things we hadn't found before and in doing that we found some emails that we hadn't shown in our past coverage so we found emails that carrie had sent back and forth with matt and which you were able to see in the show and that's what's interesting about this program because we get a chance now on this podcast to give people a taste of some things that we didn't put in our show, in our program.

Speaker 5 So here's some material from the archive, from a 2007 interview with Matt Baker before his trial and before he was convicted, which didn't make it into our program. Take a listen.

Speaker 8 Everybody knows everybody. Some people don't like that, but I do like that.
You walk in a store and most people know you by your first name or know your family and they trust me, they believe me, that

Speaker 8 I'm from here. This is my hometown.
They've known me for well over 30 years. They watched me grow up in Sunday school.
They watched me through school.

Speaker 8 They watched me in all the activities around town. They know I'm not capable of this.

Speaker 5 And his voice, I mean, you know, of course, you guys got to see more of him, but to just even hear his voice, it just sounds so

Speaker 5 small town, southern guy, innocent. Denise, when you're combing through the archives,

Speaker 5 give people a sense of of how we decide

Speaker 5 what to present and how we're going to reveal his personality.

Speaker 5 As Samantha was just saying,

Speaker 5 there was all kinds of stuff that even she didn't even know we had and we uncovered like emails and things. Give us a sense of what that's all about.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it's interesting because in our past coverage, we had only segments. You know, now we put together these two-hour documentaries.

Speaker 4 So we really have the time to present the viewers, like a real-time,

Speaker 4 how the story evolved over time. So, you know, we are showing him the way he did.
He wanted to present himself as somebody innocent, as somebody who didn't do anything.

Speaker 4 And then the viewers can actually see that. They can also see, you know, once allegations come forward, you know, he becomes a little more defensive.

Speaker 4 So I think it's by going through those tapes that we are able to kind of pick and choose so that the viewer can kind of get to experience the same way that the story unfolded back in the day.

Speaker 5 Yeah, and we were talking about how, you know, obviously with our 47-year history, I mean, we have all kinds of tapes that sometimes we're able to find every now and again there's a problem.

Speaker 5 But we want to make it clear that, you know, you're capturing developments along the way and also both sides, right?

Speaker 4 Yeah. I mean, you know, we obviously interviewed him.
He actually, unlike other people, he had, he went on this kind of press tour. He was happy to open the door to anybody who wanted to talk to him.

Speaker 4 And actually, that worked against him because he changed his story every time he gave a new interview. Actually, he told us a different story in our show and that got to be played in court.

Speaker 5 Talk about Carrie's family, too, because they played played a big part in this, and they call themselves Charlie's Angels. What was that all about?

Speaker 4 Well, you know,

Speaker 4 Carrie's death was ruled a suicide, but the family, her family did not believe it. So they took it upon themselves to do their own investigation.

Speaker 4 You know, they wanted to dig deeper and kind of find the evidence and find, you know, an ally and an attorney, somebody that can take the case and really push it to the authorities so they can really look into the case.

Speaker 4 So they themselves became the investigators in some way. And it was because because of their persistence and determination that this case actually was able to get solved and get justice for Carrie.

Speaker 5 Which we see a lot. You and I have covered stories before where people have just stayed on it and stayed on it.
And that's what actually brought cases to court.

Speaker 5 What did you make of the family and how have they managed to sort of hold up? And what was their demeanor like as they went through this whole process?

Speaker 4 I mean, I think it was Carrie's aunts initially that believed she hadn't killed herself. The mom had a hard time believing that her son-in-law, this pastor, could have done that.

Speaker 4 So I think it was, it took convincing the mom first.

Speaker 4 But I think once they saw the evidence of like phone calls to another woman and him, you know, moving on with his life like weeks after his wife's murder, I think they quickly realized that there was something more there and that they needed to take action.

Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah, well, it's always so fascinating when there's that turning point for people in these cases. All right, well, we're going to take a break.

Speaker 5 And when we come back, what our 2020 team put together to challenge Matt's

Speaker 5 and just how improbable they really were.

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Speaker 5 We are back. All right.
So much of this program featured archival tape, but you guys also got new interviews to round out the picture of this case.

Speaker 5 And one moment that just stood out to me was a test we did with Texas Ranger Matt Cawthon, another Matt. And this was pretty creative, Denise.

Speaker 5 I mean, we do a lot of creative things here in the field, but tell us about this idea about the dummy.

Speaker 4 I mean, I wish I could take all the credit, but to be honest, it was the prosecutors. The prosecutors had wanted to put Matt to the test.

Speaker 4 They had actually built a replica of the bedroom with a dummy roughly the size that Carrie was at the time of her death in the courtroom.

Speaker 4 If he were to testify, they were going to put him to the test so the jury could see could he have done everything he said he did.

Speaker 5 And tell us what that was that they were trying to unfold.

Speaker 4 So basically, you know, we have a 911 call where you hear him allegedly, you know,

Speaker 4 he later tells that he dressed his wife that he was naked. He dressed her, he moved her to the floor, turned her around, and then began CPR.

Speaker 5 Trying to save her life.

Speaker 4 Trying to save her life. And all of this in about two minutes.
The prosecutors felt that this could not have been done in that timeframe. Plus, he did not sound deadwinded at all in the 911 call.

Speaker 4 So they wanted him to show that. Unfortunately,

Speaker 4 I think the lawyer had learned about that. They decided not to testify.
So he couldn't, he didn't do it. So we decided, like, how about we kind of tried it ourselves?

Speaker 4 So we decided to kind of do the same thing that we're trying to do. And then we wanted to get a dummy and figure out if a Texas Ranger could have done what he, what Matt Baker said he did.

Speaker 5 And that was really fascinating. So Samantha, talk about that because you were in charge of this very heavy

Speaker 5 replica, this dummy, which was just under 200 pounds, right?

Speaker 1 Right. It was just under 200 pounds.
It was roughly the weight of Carrie at the time of her death. death.

Speaker 1 So trying to find a dummy that was around that same weight that we could then transport to the scene, which we ended up doing it in a hotel room, was a little challenging. So I went to the bottom.

Speaker 5 I'm pulling that, right? Well, right to the base.

Speaker 1 And thank God I had a firefighter help me get it into my car from the local fire department. Otherwise, I don't think I could have lifted it.

Speaker 1 And I can lift 200 pounds if it's on a barbell, but I can't lift. When you see it in dead weight form, it's a lot heavier.

Speaker 5 So he helped you lift this like it was nothing. And the whole goal was for John, Kinonis, our reporter, to sit there and observe and tell me what that was all about.

Speaker 5 So they're going to try to hurriedly see if they can beat the clock in terms of like dressing this dummy and showing

Speaker 5 us how prosecutors were able to reveal in the trial that it didn't seem plausible.

Speaker 1 Right. So John was supervising and timed Matt Cawthon as he went through and attempted to dress the dummy.

Speaker 1 And I saw him as he was trying to do this in his full suit get winded as he was trying to put it on. And he's in pretty good shape for his age.

Speaker 1 And being able to do it in two minutes and pull the dummy onto the floor would have been nearly impossible, it seemed.

Speaker 5 Yeah, and that was critical, Denise, too.

Speaker 5 I mean, and for us, talk to us a little bit about why we choose to do these things, because I think one of the things our listeners find intriguing is how we got to that point and why we thought that was important.

Speaker 5 So why did we think that would make such a difference in our story?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 4 I think it's one thing to kind of say it, say like, oh, two minutes, you know, what can you do in two minutes?

Speaker 4 But I think to put it to the test in the sense that, you know, prosecutors argue that it couldn't have been done. And so we wanted to see like, could it be done?

Speaker 4 So we want, I think visually, it's important for the viewer to kind of see what it takes.

Speaker 4 And I think like even experts say like, it's not the same thing like moving a dead body, like that, like that moving an actual, you know, living person.

Speaker 4 It's just, it doesn't take the amount of effort.

Speaker 4 And I think like once you see it, you kind of can understand what the prosecutors were trying to show to expose, you know, the lies that that Matt Baker said on his 911 call.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I actually had a story like that when I was in the courtroom with the prosecutor who had a stopwatch and was showing me about

Speaker 5 how this person had fired a gun. And it is really compelling to see that and have them bring that to us again.
Let's talk about one of the key witnesses in this case, Vanessa Bowles. She was critical.

Speaker 4 I mean, she was the other woman.

Speaker 4 Matt Baker had an affair. She had been approached by law enforcement, by investigators, and she was not for coming, you know, multiple times.
But in the end, you know, she did the right thing.

Speaker 4 She was given immunity for her testimony. And it was her testimony about the plot, about how he was plotting to kill Carrie that in the end really is what got him convicted.

Speaker 5 And how does she come across to the jury? Because you think about she's the other woman, right? You would think that she would have little credibility with them because of what had happened.

Speaker 4 I mean, I think we spoke to the jury for person. I think they struggle because she had said different stories.
She wasn't forthcoming.

Speaker 4 But I think in the end, they realized that she was basically exposing herself, that she had nothing to gain at that point. And I think that was really kind of like a turning point for them.

Speaker 4 And I think they also realized that what she said in court, that here he was a preacher, you know, who will believe her? You know, who will believe her? So I think that really kind of got to the jury.

Speaker 5 But they were conflicted at first about how to sort of interpret her testimony.

Speaker 4 Yeah, and

Speaker 4 the defense, he had, you know, they were asking, you know, why should we believe you when, you know, you had said so many inconsistent stories in the past.

Speaker 5 But at the end of the day, they did believe her and her testimony was credible.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, that's the testimony was key to get him convicted.

Speaker 5 Right. All right, we're going to take one more break.
And after that, the team that pursued justice for Carrie Baker against all odds.

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Speaker 5 We are back with Samantha and Denise, who just really dug into the story and brought it to air for us at 2020, along with John Kiñonis.

Speaker 5 And let's talk about some of the interviews that you got for the show, because a lot of them centered around law enforcement.

Speaker 5 And I have covered a lot of stories too, where, you know, we know that they're cops and we think of them as sort of tough cops.

Speaker 5 But oftentimes, you know, these are people who are parents who are affected by what they're doing. So let's talk about Texas Ranger Matt Cawthon and investigator Abden Rodriguez.

Speaker 5 I was struck by how much emotion Matt seemed to show at the end of our program. And maybe Samantha, you can jump in on this.

Speaker 5 Talk about what that perspective was like, you know, working on this case with him and seeing how it really affected him.

Speaker 1 Right. Well, I like to say he's like the softest, tough guy.
He's a Texas Ranger. He walked in snake skin boots, showed us his

Speaker 5 hat, everything, right?

Speaker 1 And he walked in with purpose. He really knows what he's doing.

Speaker 1 He's been working for a long time in law enforcement, but he is really down to earth and cared deeply about the people that he was trying to help. He cared deeply about Carrie.
And he

Speaker 1 really was moved by the love of her mother, Linda, that she had to push for justice throughout this entire case.

Speaker 4 We also spoke to Abdon Rodriguez. He was the investigator from the district attorney's office.
He's known as the human lie detector.

Speaker 4 Apparently, he knew right away that Vanessa Bowles was not being truthful. And he felt that she was the key to solving this case.

Speaker 4 He was able to get her to testify in front of a grand jury, and that was the turn for this case.

Speaker 5 That changed changed everything. Yes.
Denise, what about Matt and Carrie's daughters?

Speaker 5 Because at the core of this case, they're children who have lost their mother and now lost their father, essentially, because he's away in prison. Talk to us a little bit about Carrie's daughters.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, at the time of the trial, they obviously believed their dad, they believed that their mom had died of an accidental overdose. So it really was a long journey for them.

Speaker 4 They eventually, Carrie's parents, gained custody of the daughters. And we've known that it was a long journey for them to understand what really happened to their mother.

Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah, something really, really heartbreaking. When you are covering these stories, Denise, and I think sometimes our viewers, and in this case, our listeners are wondering how it affects you.

Speaker 5 I mean, your mom, we talked about this earlier. And these girls, I mean, what was that like for you as a mom and a producer to hear their story?

Speaker 4 I mean, it was really hard. I mean, because their daughters were roughly the same age as my two older daughters are now.
So thinking about how, you know, they've lost their mom.

Speaker 4 And obviously, you know, if the mom is gone, they will turn to their dad. You know, their dad is the other figure that is there to protect them, to care for them.
And I saw that on the video.

Speaker 4 And then to know that then he's the one that, you know, killed their mom and now he's gone.

Speaker 4 It must have been so difficult for them to kind of go through that process and then kind of lose both of those people that are supposed to care the most about them. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah. And we take that with us too.
So we're thinking about these stories long after they're done. Samantha, this was an interesting one for you.

Speaker 5 A lot of work, a lot of digging, carrying around this dummy.

Speaker 5 You've worked on a lot of stories here at 2020.

Speaker 5 Is this one that kind of will stick with you for a while?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think what always does it for me, I mean, obviously going through the archive, there's little nuggets you can find that are new and interesting.

Speaker 1 But I think what will always stick with me is the home videos and seeing Carrie interact with her daughters while she was alive and then

Speaker 5 thinking about how they're having to go through life without her now i mean that was that was hard to see yeah yeah well at the end of the day there are victims out there when we cover these stories and we can't forget about them

Speaker 5 samantha denise this was a lot of fun we'll have to do more of this yes thank you deborah of course thanks for doing this

Speaker 5 Denise Martinez-Ramundo is a producer for 2020 and Samantha Wanderer is an associate producer. Okay, that does it for us for 2020 the After Show this time.

Speaker 5 We hope you're going to tune in on Friday nights nights at 9 for all new episodes of 2020, of course, on ABC.

Speaker 5 This episode was produced by Cameron Chertavian, Sasha Aslanian, and Joseph Diaz, Brian Mazurski, and Alex Berenfeld of 2020. We also had help this week from Amira Williams and Meg Fiero.

Speaker 5 Janice Johnston is the executive producer of 2020. And we should add that Josh Cohen is the director of podcasting at ABC Audio, and Laura Mayer, executive producer.

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