Matt Baker is curious to find out what his alleged former girlfriend told a McLennan County grand jury last month that led to his murder indictment in the April 2006 death of his wife, Kari.

Baker’s lawyer, Richard Ellison, filed a motion Monday asking 19th State District Judge Ralph Strother to give the former Central Texas Baptist minister access to grand jury transcripts generated by his high-profile case.

Claiming that a “particularized need” exists that justifies the unusual request in a criminal case, Ellison tells Strother that “it is fundamentally unfair” for the state to deny Baker access to “this storehouse of relevant fact.”

Matt Baker is led into court for his bail reduction hearing last week by McLennan County Sheriff's Deputy Kenneth Hutyra. (Duane A. Laverty photo, file)

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Authorities have charged that Baker, 37, a former chaplain at the Waco Center for Youth, slipped his 31-year-old wife sleeping pills and then suffocated her with a pillow before trying to make her death appear as a suicide from sleeping pill overdose.

They also claim that he was pursuing an extramarital relationship with Vanessa Bulls, a member of Crossroads Baptist Church while Baker served as pastor there. While Ellison’s motion does not mention Bulls by name, it seeks transcripts of testimony from any witness who testified before the grand jury in Baker’s case.

Sources close to the case said Monday that Bulls was the only witness presented to the grand jury before Baker was indicted. She testified March 25 after 54th State District Judge Matt Johnson granted her immunity from any legal snares that might result from her testimony, the sources said.

Grand jury proceedings are confidential and records of its inner workings can only be released by court order.

Under the Texas Rules of Evidence, criminal defendants are entitled to witness statements or grand jury testimony after that witness has testified at trial. Then the defense is normally provided a copy of witness statements before cross-examination so the defendant and his lawyer can compare the witness’s court testimony with any prior inconsistent statements.

Ellison claims that if he has to wait until cross-examination to get a copy of Bulls’ grand jury testimony, it will require him to delay the trial by asking for a recess to review the materials and that could prove prejudicial to Baker.

Ellison has asked Strother for a pretrial hearing to consider the motion in the next two months. No hearing date had been set as of Monday evening.

Hiring experts

In another motion pending before the court, Ellison has asked Strother to approve county funds so Baker, whom he now claims is indigent, can hire expert witnesses in the fields of psychology, crime scene reconstruction and pharmacology.

Witnesses have told authorities that Kari Baker suspected that Baker was having an affair and was afraid that he would try to kill her after she found a powdery substance in a bottle in his briefcase. Other witnesses have said they spotted Baker and Bulls looking at engagement rings at a mall in Waco just days after his wife’s death.

Baker has acknowledged that he gave his wife’s cell phone to Bulls after she died and that they racked up hundreds of hours of calls on the phone.

“It was stupid,” Baker told the Tribune-Herald in December 2007. “It really was stupid for me to do that. But she was a friend, and she was one of the few people at that point in time who didn’t accuse and who didn’t look at me strange, if that makes sense.”

Baker has denied that he and Bulls were having an affair and said that they were just friends from church. He said they were looking at earrings for his daughters at the store when someone saw them and mistakenly thought they were looking at engagement rings.

twitherspoon@wacotrib.com

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