A Preacher's Secret, Part 1

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All episodes now streaming exclusively on Paramount+. Carrie loved Matt from the very beginning, and he seemed to adore her.

There were times when it was very difficult being the wife of a pastor, but Carrie was very good at it. I'm Carrie's mother.
I'm Linda Doolin. More than anything, Carrie loved her girls, loved them.
I think she was a very loving, caring person. Family was first for her.

But I also know now Cassidy consumed her.

The loss of Cassidy consumed her thoughts.

After Cassidy passed away, she couldn't go to sleep.

She could not go to sleep.

And so she started taking sleeping pills.

But I never saw it as suicidal.

I saw it more as she's hurting, she's missing her daughter. It was right at 12 o'clock by the time I made it home.
I had that eerie feeling when I walked in the room that something's not right here. I don't think my wife is okay.
And I go to her side and I touch her, and she doesn't move. She doesn't respond.
And I call out her name and there's no response. And I immediately pick up the phone and call 911.
It was 911. Do you have an emergency? My wife is laying in the bed and her lips are blue.
There was no pulse. There was nothing.
I'm on the phone. Is she cautious? No, she's not.
She's breathing. No, no, no.
She's not breathing at all. I was gone maybe 40 minutes, and during that time, I don't know what happened to her.
The police officer brings me the note. I read the first line, and I handed it back, because I said, I can't read it right now.
My first thought at that time was, her parents need to be here. Matt tells us that Carrie committed suicide.
I'm thinking, how can that be? I talked to her, and she was just in a really good mood.

I never thought in a million years that my wife would do this.

I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.

She was my best friend.

I found it unbelievable, but I accepted it.

I mean, what was the alternative?

My name is Matt Baker, and I have been accused

of murdering my wife.

I'm Erin Moriart here, she would look at you and say, he didn't do anything.

Leave him alone.

But she can't.

Ever since Matt Baker's wife died suddenly at the age of 31,

the Baptist preacher has lived under a cloud of suspicion.

Is he an innocent man, unfairly accused, as his followers and friends believe?

Daddy, what are we having for supper? Or is he hiding a terrible dark secret? In your name we pray. Amen.
It's so improbable. It's not who I am.
I loved my wife. I never hurt her a day in my life.
Carrie was a popular third grade teacher. She and Matt had been together since meeting as counselors at a Baptist day camp in Waco in 1994.
I would have been 23 and she was 20. I met her and I thought, this is the person for me.
That was her senior picture in high school. I mean, she's beautiful.
Yeah. Yeah, she is.
Linda and Jim Doolin remember their daughter was instantly smitten with the Baylor University senior. The thing she kept talking about was, Mom, this guy's a really good Christian.
Just three months after meeting, Matt and Carrie suddenly announced they were getting married. Did you like him? My daughter loved him and I saw him through her eyes.
By their first anniversary, Carrie was pregnant with daughter Kenzie. She was so excited.
She really was a terrific mom. A second daughter, Cassidy, followed a year and a half later.
She loved her girls. You know, you know how you feel.
There are no words. But right after Cassidy's first birthday, doctors discovered a brain tumor, and she was hospitalized.
There would be days that it looked really good, prognosis was good, and then turned around and went right back downhill. How did Carrie deal with that? Oh, my gosh.
She was just there with her baby, just did not leave her.

In late February 1999, after a 90-day bedside vigil, Cassidy was well enough to go home.

I always assumed that she would pull through this and fight through this.

But just after midnight on March 22nd, Cassidy was rushed to the emergency room.

This time, doctors couldn't save her to sit there and struggle that far to come what i thought was so far to watch her die you know that was that was devastating it really was a very hard hard thing to cope with Especially for Carrie. How hard did she take that death?

Oh! It really was a very hard, hard thing to cope with. Especially for Carrie.
How hard did she take that death? Oh, incredibly hard. She lost her child and she grieved hard.
A grief counselor helped Carrie get through the first year, and in 2000, a third daughter, Grace, was was born but Matt says his wife was never the same I don't think it was a split second all of a sudden she was completely different it was a gradual changing of the person she had almost two personalities in a way not not negative but when she went to work she she had the ability to put issues behind her and focus on work. And the other personality? The other personality was a little bit more withdrawn at home.
The way Matt tells it, he became Mr. Mom to Kenzie and Grace.
So I typically gave them their bath, washed their hair, get them dressed, put them to bed, sing them their songs, and read them their books. And from the time Cassidy died, Matt says, Carrie relied on pills to sleep.
What kind of sleeping pills? What would she take? Unisom. An over-the-counter sleep medication.
But Matt says sometimes she borrowed something stronger from family and friends. I'm not even sure what the names would be, other sleeping pills, just to help her sleep, help her get a good night's sleep.
And the toughest time for Carrie was always the March anniversary of Cassidy's death. It was always two or three weeks leading up to it.
It's coming, it's coming, I can't do this, I can't make it another year, I can't do this again. In April 2006, seven years after Cassidy died, Matt says Carrie was still struggling with the loss.
So he took her to the doctor, who diagnosed her as depressed and prescribed an antidepressant. And about that time, my wife started almost hyperventilating again in the office.
Didn't like him saying anything about depression. She would never agree that that could be a problem.
As they left the clinic and headed onto the highway, Matt says Carrie had a meltdown. And I'm at about 45, 50 miles an hour, and she is hyperventilating, and she attempts to open the car door as we're driving down the road.
Why? She said she needed to get out and get some air, to get some air, to get some air.

He says he grabbed hold of her waistband until he could pull off the highway.

Did you feel that those actions indicated that she was trying to kill herself?

I didn't think suicide.

I thought she just wanted fresh air and wasn't thinking.

She lost it for a second.

Later that week, on Friday, April 7th, Carrie had a crucial interview for a new job.

Thank you. She just wanted fresh air and wasn't thinking.
She lost it for a second. Later that week, on Friday, April 7th, Carrie had a crucial interview for a new job at the junior high.
What was her mood like? Her mood that day was nervous. And after the interview, Matt says, Carrie didn't feel well.
She wasn't laying over like this. It was just tired.
Oh, I'm tired. I mean, just kind of exhausted.
That evening, despite a queasy stomach, Matt says Carrie drank a wine cooler. She went to bed, off and on, dozing off and on, watching TV.
I'm in bed with her, taking care of the kids. At 10.30 with the kids in bed, Matt says Carrie asked him to gas up the car and rent a movie.
And I thought, it's late, alright, but I'll do it. You know, if your wife asks, you do what your wife asks.
And so I got dressed and left the house a little after 11 o'clock. Oh, it's probably about two miles to the first gas station that I could fill up at.
And got out, pumped the gas, went up to the movie place, rented the movie, and drove back home. When he returned around midnight, Matt says he found the bedroom door was locked.

And so I go in and get the little screwdriver that could fit in there,

and I pop the button, open the door.

She was naked in bed.

And I call her name and she doesn't respond.

At 12.01 a.m., he called for help.

And as I'm calling 911, I'm deciding I don't want them to see her naked, so I put her clothes on her. Matt says at the same time he was on the phone, he was also moving Carrie to the floor, where he began CPR.
She's not breathing. What are you thinking has happened to her? I wasn't processing at any point in time what had happened to her.
Paramedics arrived within minutes, but it was too late. Carrie was dead.
Police found an empty bottle of Unisom next to a note. I'm so sorry, it read.
I love you, Matt. I want to give Cassidy a hug.
I need to feel her again. It was all the evidence the small town police needed.
The detective that night pulled me into the kitchen. He goes, well, she took her own life.
There's a note, there's pills, there's no signs of struggle. It's pretty obvious what happened.
And at that point, my heart sunk. I couldn't believe it.
That was the first time, for sure, that's what they claimed it to be. We were truly in shock.
It was almost like we were in a trance. And all I kept thinking about, all Jim kept thinking about was that we didn't have a daughter.
Our daughter was gone. The county doesn't have a medical examiner, so police just described the case over the phone to a justice of the peace who determined that Carrie Baker died from an overdose of Unisom.
No autopsy needed. Two days later, she was buried.
And that might have been the end of this story, if not for a group of tenacious women.

We wanted to clear Carrie's name.

Matt was going around talking about what a depressed, suicidal person she was.

We knew she wasn't. She was just a very alive person all the time.

And those girls, she had them going.

You really miss her, don't you, Jim? As out of character a suicide seemed, Carrie Baker's parents, Jim and Linda Doolin, say they had no choice but to believe it. We kept trying to convince ourselves what other alternative was there.
The idea that Matt could have taken her life was more horrible. But that's exactly what Linda's family thinks.
He killed her. Linda's sisters, Nancy, Kay, and Jennifer, and niece Lindsay.
I immediately thought Matt did it. You believe that? Oh, yeah, with all my heart.
Carrie loved her life. She loved her family.
She would never have left those girls. From the start, they tried to convince Linda that Carrie's death needed to be investigated.
She said, drop it, and we all just said, okay, okay. And then we all walked out together to the cars, and we said, that's not happening.
He could always say she called, but no. Linda's younger sister, Nancy, says Matt's story about Carrie's last day simply didn't match anyone else's.
He had said that day Carrie was sick. You don't believe that? No.
People that saw her said she wasn't. And would a sick, tired Carrie ask Matt to put gas in the car and rent a movie? That makes sense? No, at 11 o'clock.
And they certainly don't believe that if Carrie did commit suicide, that she would ever be found in the nude. Nothing seemed to make sense, not even the choice of the sleeping aid Unisom.
She actually took a generic brand. She called it a sleepy time.
She said her sleepy time pill. They also say that Carrie's unhappiness in the last weeks of her life wasn't about Cassidy.

According to her former grief counselor, Carrie was worried about herself.

And she said, I saw Carrie in therapy.

She was afraid that her husband was having an affair and afraid that he was trying to kill her.

That was just three days before Carrie died. And there's more.
Linda's sisters began sharing secrets they had kept from her all these years. I didn't realize that no one in the family had liked him.
They began to tell Linda about Matt's odd and even boorish behavior.

He had come up behind my daughter and made some just really inappropriate sexual comment to her.

There were several unsettling incidents.

Like in 1996, when Carrie lived with Matt in this complex,

Deanne Avello says the preacher tried to pick up her 16-year-old daughter. He asked her, have you ever been kissed by a boy? She said yes, and he just suddenly grabbed her and kissed her right on the lips.
At one church youth center, Matt was warned about his behavior with young women. He never seemed to stay long at any job.
Every time he'd move from a job, I would think he did something to someone. And there was this woman.
Laura Wilson met Matt in 1991. Top of the first one.
When they were both student athletic trainers at Baylor University. One day, she says, they were cleaning an empty locker room when he suddenly grabbed her.
He lifts me up off the floor and he sits on one of the benches with me on his lap. And that's when he begins running his hand up my thigh and between my legs.
Matt denies ever touching Laura. Instead he says he inadvertently scared her that day by turning out the lights.
Did you ever assault or harass any of these women? I did not. None? None.
So if these women say you did, they are lying? Correct. I wanted Matt to be okay.
I wanted him to be a good man. But it didn't add up.
Nothing adds up. Linda finally began to see Matt through her sister's eyes.
But persuading the local police to reopen the investigation into Carrie's death was going to be far more difficult. They didn't do their job, and they didn't take us serious.
And I don't think we were asking them to believe that Carrie was murdered. We just wanted an investigation.
The police had concluded that Carrie committed suicide. Only a few photographs were taken at the scene.
The only evidence collected was the Unison bottle, the remaining pills, and the typed suicide note. Why do you think the police were so willing to accept this as a suicide immediately? He's a pastor.
He's a preacher. So what did you all do? We began an investigation.
All of you? Yes. Calling themselves Charlie's Angels.
Linda was Charlie and we were the angels. They began making phone calls.
Did you talk to Kay or Jennifer? Following every lead and retracing Matt's movements the night Carrie died. We weren't going to give up.
Somebody was going to listen to us. Their biggest discovery came unexpectedly when Linda took a look at Matt and Carrie's cell phone records.
And before I opened it up, I just said a little prayer. And I just said, OK, God, help me out here.
I said, give me a sign. And I opened up the phone bell, and oh my gosh.
The record showed 10 days after Carrie died, someone began using her cell phone. And who was using it? Vanessa Bulls.
Matt had given it to Vanessa. Vanessa Bulls, a young woman who attended Matt's church.
Weren't you talking a lot to this young woman, Vanessa? We often did. We did.
We did often talk. And weren't you interested in her? I never thought of a relationship with her at all.
That never was anything in the back of my mind. But phone records show almost 1,700 minutes of calls between Matt and Vanessa in just 10 days.
Jim had highlighted on there and it looked like he got on the phone as soon as he took the girls to school and stayed on the phone with her most of the day. It was crazy.
I needed a friend. I needed somebody to look me in the face and say, I'm sorry, you lost your wife.
But the records show Matt began calling Vanessa before Carrie died. Did you have an affair with Vanessa? Oh, no, I did not.
There was never any relationship at all other than a friendship. Vanessa told the police they did begin dating, but only after Carrie's death.
This is a man who has a very, very dark evil side. He was preying on other women, and then finally he found one who it looked like something might go somewhere with.
And I believe Carrie was in the way. Armed with a possible motive, Linda hired Bill Johnston, a dogged former federal prosecutor, and his team of investigators.
All of a sudden, all the shock I'd been feeling,

all this numbness, it was just like it just washed right off of me.

And I thought, okay, Linda,

we're going to find out what's going on here.

And after that, we went into battle mode. Three months after Carrie Baker was laid to rest, her parents had her body removed from the grave and autopsied.
What made you decide to exhume your daughter's body? That had to be a tough decision, wasn't it? Oh, yes, because we needed that information. Linda Doolin was determined to find out how her daughter died.
Although the authorities ruled it a suicide, she suspected that Matt Baker was responsible. He's indicated he'll talk to anyone, and it'd be nice if he talked to us too.
Sure. Attorney Bill Johnston and his investigators found much of the evidence troubling.
We'd never heard of a type suicide note, at least it needed a signature. And on the table next to the note were pins rather convenient you know if someone wanted to sign it they found more disturbing evidence in the computer network that serves the entire youth center where matt worked as a chaplain one month before carrie died he began conducting online searches for overdose on sleeping pills and on the prescription drug Ambien,

even though Carrie didn't have a prescription for that drug.

Matt's explanation?

It scared me that she was taking that much sleeping medicine to get to sleep at night.

It took a lot to wake her up in the morning sometimes.

But if you were concerned, wouldn't you mention it to her doctor?

At that point, I didn't think it was necessary to tell the doctor because I thought she was getting it under control. When investigators asked to examine Matt's actual computer that was on his desk, they discovered it wasn't his.
Sometime in mid-June, when the search for evidence got underway, someone had replaced Matt's desktop computer with his secretaries, and Matt's had vanished. And why would anyone want to take that computer? I have no clue.
I don't know why. Was there something on that computer you didn't want anyone to see? Oh, no.
There's, I mean, absolutely not. Investigators also have no idea whether there was anything incriminating on Matt's home computer.
Matt says the hard drive crashed and is no longer working. It's just a coincidence that the hard drive on your home computer is fried and the computer from work disappeared.
Just a coincidence. Computers crash all the time.
The more Bill Johnston heard, the more he was convinced that Linda Doolan's doubts about her son-in-law might be right. There's more to this guy than just some guy that's preaching on Sunday.
There's a dark side here. Do you believe Matt Baker is a dangerous man? Oh, sure.
You bet he's dangerous. Johnston believes that because when Carrie told her grief counselor that she thought Matt was trying to kill her, Carrie confided that she found a mysterious bottle of crushed pills in Matt's briefcase.
He gave her a story. Oh, that's from the kids at the center.
The kids don't take their meds and they spit them out. That must be what that is.
Matt told 48 Hours a very different story. He said there were pills, but they were carries and had never been in his briefcase.
She comes out with a bottle of pills and she looks at me and she says, I found these in there. Was that bottle of crushed pills in your briefcase? I don't know where she found it.
I never had it, I never saw it before.

She had it in her hands.

And the pills are now gone.

You know what Matt says?

Matt says she threw out the crushed pills.

That Matt offered to have them tested

and she put them down the sink.

There you go.

The only person that could refute it is not here. I take it you don't believe it? Not for a second, no.
As Johnston's suspicions mounted, he convinced his friend, Texas Ranger Matt Cawthon, to look at the case. Cawthon, too, suspected foul play and became frustrated by the faulty police investigation.

What kind of evidence should have been taken in that night?

There was a computer printer there.

There were bottles of alcohol there.

And of course an autopsy would have been a tremendous assistance to the investigation,

but it wasn't ordered.

How much pressure did you have to put on the Hewitt Police Department to take a new look at this case? It was considerable pressure. In September 2006, the results of Carrie's autopsy, done three months after her body was embalmed and buried, finally came in.
And still, no proof of how Carrie died. No remnants of pills were found in Carrie's stomach, but there was evidence of Ambien in her muscle tissue, the same sleeping drug Matt researched on the internet.
Bill Johnston points to the photos, taken the night Carrie died, which showed discoloration around Carrie's nose and lips. An indication, he says, she may have been suffocated.
There was a slight abrasion to her nose, consistent with a rough pillow or some object that maybe has fibers that scrape across. The court is of the opinion.
There are enough questions that 18 months after Carrie Baker died,

the Justice of the Peace declared her death was no longer classified as suicide.

Carrie Lynn Baker's manner and cause of death shall be recorded as undetermined.

The police now had a possible homicide on their hands.

On September 21st, 2007, the former pastor was arrested and charged with murder. I guess the foolishness in my part was, if you never do anything wrong, you won't get arrested.
Matt posted bond and returned home to his daughters. And I'm just waiting for the day that I can grieve with my children the loss of my wife and their mother.
He says he is the victim of insidious innuendo and wild speculation. No.
No. No.
No. Have you been able to get work? Not after the arrest.
Not after the arrest. And Matt has found a powerful ally.
I think Matt Baker is being railroaded. Like Bill Johnston, Guy James Gray was once a high-profile prosecutor.
The more that I know about Matt, the less I believe that he is the type to take somebody's life. Gray says Carrie's despair is spelled out in her own heartbreaking entries she wrote in her Bible after her daughter died.
This paragraph is about how good heaven is, and then she writes out beside it, I want to go with Cassidy. Gray also says he can explain some of the seemingly incriminating circumstances.
What about the abrasion on the nose and possibly on her lip? Well, the first thing the emergency people did when they got there was put one of these artificial CPR deals over her mouth. But Bill Johnson says that the abrasion had to have been left there before Carrie died and that Matt is the one who caused it.
According to Johnston,

the most damaging evidence comes from Matt Baker himself.

People did say she was very upset with you. Why was she so upset with you?

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It had to be somebody's fault, and I have to be the fall guy for it. Facing murder charges in Waco, Matt Baker retreated to his childhood home in Kerrville, Texas, where his old friends were outraged at the accusations.
I thought that he was the least likely to be charged with murder. Matt is a sweet, loving, caring, tender-hearted person.
It just is inconsistent with his character. That's also how Jill Hotz, Carrie Baker's close friend, once felt about Matt.
He was a good friend. I mean, he taught my son to tie his shoes.
But today, she no longer believes in Matt, nor the story he tells about Carrie. And I know she didn't take her own life.
Someone with that kind of a zest for life, that kind of fight for life, she's not going to take her own life, and she didn't do that. Why does Jill suspect Matt? Because of a conversation she had with Carrie just days before her death.
She was very, very upset. And when you say upset, crying? Crying extremely hard on the phone.
And I said, Carrie, what's wrong? And she said, I think Matt has seen someone else. And you know how you have those moments in your life that you wish that you could just redo the whole thing.
And I tried to reassure that Matt loved her, and he wouldn't do that. And Carrie told Jill that her preacher husband did something far worse.
He blamed her for their child's death. She said that Matt accused her of praying for Cassidy not to have to suffer anymore.
And he said that God answered Carrie's prayer instead of his prayer, which was for Cassidy to live to be an old lady and to have a full life. Carrie said that Matt blamed her for Cassidy's death? Yes.
And how did she take that? Extremely hard. No, I never blamed her for the death.
She misunderstood what I had said. I said that it hurt me that she felt her prayer was answered and mine wasn't.
Judge for yourself. Matt sent Carrie this email just days before she spoke with Jill.
I know deep down I hold a grudge against God and you for him answering your prayer and not mine, he wrote. In some ways, I do hold you to blame for her death.
She said that that was the worst thing that she's ever heard, and she didn't think that they could ever recover from that. The day after Carrie confided in Jill was when Carrie told her counselor she thought Matt was trying to kill her.
The counselor confronted Matt at Carrie's funeral. What was your reaction? And I said what? Well wait wait and I'm like what's going on here? That was just kind of just completely rattled everything that was going on at that time.
Matt denies he had any reason to kill Carrie. He denies cheating on her.
And remember earlier, he had insisted that the woman he spent so much time with, Vanessa Bulls, was only a friend. I never thought of a relationship with her at all.
That never was anything in the back of my mind. You asked her parents whether you could date her.
Yes, later in the summer. So you were interested in Vanessa Bult.
Yes, after. You did want to date Vanessa Bult.
Yes, during the summer, absolutely I did. According to Matt, Carrie's severe anxiety was apparent to everyone who saw her in those days leading up to her death.
But we couldn't find anyone to confirm that. On the contrary, even her close friend Jill says that when she last spoke to Carrie, Carrie seemed happier and said things had improved with Matt.
The day before she died, she was completely elated. And she said that, you know, we're trying to get everything patched back together.
She was very hopeful, very future-oriented. Those who saw Carrie on her last day say her spirits were much higher than earlier in the week.
Her friend Todd Munzey says she looked forward to the prospect of a new job. She told me she had a great interview, was so excited about it, and yeah, we had a good high five right there in the hallway.
But that very night, Carrie died. And her parents' attorney, Bill Johnston, says there are serious inconsistencies in Matt's story.
Unfortunately for Matt Baker, he didn't buy enough time for himself. He should have painted a couple hours of alibi.
Matt is very specific about what time he left Carrie to put gas in the car and get movies. I remember when I was getting dressed and ready to leave, the clock said 11-11.
Yet, he seems unclear about Carrie's state when he left. We talked about everything that I was supposed to get, and I left.
She was awake. She was awake.
She was awake when you left. Oh, yeah.
We had a conversation. I leaned down and kissed her on the forehead before I left.
But listen to what he said to us two months later. And she was talking and she said goodbye to you? She had rolled back over and gone back to sleep.
So when I left, she was asleep. And remember how Matt says he first found out that Carrie killed herself? The police officer brings me the note, and that was the first thought at that point in time.

She took her own life. Yet he had clearly read the note when he called the 911 operator.

I think my wife just committed suicide. Her lips are blue again, are cold and there's a note that

says I'm sorry basically. You read the note.
You had said to the operator, she says I'm sorry. But I

did not read the full note. I saw the note but as I picked up the phone I saw it there.
But read the note. You had said to the operator, she says, I'm sorry.
But I did not read the full note. I saw the note, but as I picked up the phone, I saw it there, but I did not take the time to read the note.
The police told Matt the cause of death was obvious. There's a note, there's pills.
It was all too obvious, says attorney Bill Johnston. Here's some wine coolers to match the story.
They were drinking a wine cooler. And the note then is, I just have to say, self-serving.
Matt, I'm sorry. Oh, Matt, take care of the kids.
You know, not critical of him in any way. Johnston also points out signs of lividity on Carrie's body, the pooling of blood that happens after death.
An indication, he says, that Carrie had been dead far longer than the 40 or so minutes that Mack claims he was away. She had to ingest something that made her sleepy, then unconscious, then killed her.
And she had to quit breathing, the heart had to stop. And then the levity had to begin.
And he is not the only one who questions Matt's story. What parts of Matt Baker's story bother you? Just the time frame.
That's really what bothers me the most. Steven Karsh, a toxicologist 48 Hours Consultant, says that if Carrie were alive when Matt said he left the house, her body would not be cold to the touch, as both Matt and a paramedic reported.
Being cold in an hour is nonexistent unless you're killed in the Arctic or in an icebox. But Karsh cautions there simply isn't enough evidence to say how and why Carrie died.
Do you believe that this is a suicide? No. But I cannot determine the cause of death and wouldn't certify it as anything but undetermined.
Matt, did you kill your wife? Did you have anything to do with her death that night? No, I did not. Was I the perfect person? Did I do everything correct? No.
But I didn't hurt my wife. I loved my wife.
I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. Matt had been arrested and charged with murder.
But the DA had not yet brought the case to a grand jury. That's a requirement under Texas law for a murder case to go to trial.
How easy is it to actually take someone to trial for murder when even the coroner can't determine that a murder occurred? Extremely difficult. Matt's attorney, Guy James Gray, was determined to get the charges dropped, and he had plenty of support from Matt's friends.
I think it should be thrown out.

I just don't feel that having the Spirit of God in you,

that you can do something like this,

I just don't think I have my daughters. As the second anniversary of Carrie's death approached, Matt Baker and his daughters were still living with his parents in Kerrville.
His relationship with Vanessa Bulls was over. His life in limbo.
Wait, no, no open it all the way. Do you think you'll be indicted? I don't know.
Wait for dad to help you. I don't know where I go from here.
It's falling apart. That's why there's teeth marks in it.
There is such an unknown of what tomorrow holds. While murder charges against Matt are pending, in Texas, in order to go to trial, the DA also has to get a grand jury indictment within 180 days.
Are you worried that there just isn't enough evidence to actually take him to trial? No. No, we're not.
Time runs out. On March 25, 2008, all criminal charges are dropped against Matt Baker.
Was it a murder? Was it a suicide? That was the major question in the case. Assistant DA Crawford Long.
We felt we didn't have the evidence to go forward with a

criminal indictment at that time. They went through these facts just like I did, and they're simply not sufficient facts to establish a murder.
It is a tremendous relief. The criminal part is in the past and that's a tremendous blessing justice was not served Texas Ranger Matt

Co The criminal part is in the past, and that's a tremendous blessing.

Justice was not served.

Texas Ranger Matt Cawthon is disappointed, but not surprised.

It is frustrating, but the evidence was there.

Every turn, we were turned away.

This is a man you believed killed his wife, and he's walking free. Well, you know, Aaron, it happens every day.
And in this case, something went awry. This is Bill.
But Bill Johnston knows there's no statute of limitations on murder, so he's not giving up. Because sooner or later I think the criminal justice system will deal with Matt Baker.
I just believe it's going to happen. The battle is far from over.
Linda and her team are pursuing Matt in civil court, suing him for wrongful death. They allow different evidence and civil cases, and that one's more of a problem for him now.
I'm going to meet with Bill. Especially with Carrie's mother and her angels on the case.
We are going to continue to do what we have been doing, and that is we are going to seek justice. And I believe with every fiber in my being that we will have it.
But in the year that follows, tremendous changes take place. For Linda, there's a physical transformation and an emotional one, as Kerry's case takes a dramatic turn.
What changed things? The thing that changed things was Vanessa Bull's testimony. Do you solemnly swear the testimony you're giving this matter to be the truth? Matt Baker will never get away with murder.
He will pay. Grand jury indicted Baker.
They are inditing Matt Baker for murder. I remember just falling to my knees.
I was overwhelmed. How important is Vanessa Bowles? She's key.
He counted on her keeping her mouth shut. That was his life full of dirty little secrets.

You really need to turn yourself in or I'm going to tell what you did.

And he said, you better not do that.

Stay tuned for part two tomorrow. My mom is literally calling me right now.
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