Days after the death of his 31-year-old wife, Kari, Matt Baker was gelling his hair and dressing nicer, shopping for engagement rings with his mistress, and telling people that his daughters were “happier” because their mother was dead and the “black cloud” in their Hewitt home was gone, court testimony Friday revealed.

And, the same month his wife died, Matt Baker placed 182 calls in 10 days to Vanessa Bulls, with whom he has admitted to having an affair in the months before and after Kari’s April 8, 2006, death.

Baker, a former Baptist pastor, is on trial in Judge Ralph Strother’s 19th State District Court in connection with his wife’s death. The 38-year-old is accused of killing his wife with a mixture of alcohol and sleeping pills, smothering her face with a pillow, and then making it look like she had killed herself. Her death was initially ruled a suicide, and her body was not autopsied until it was exhumed three months later, after her parents initiated an investigation into her death.

Testimony resumes Tuesday at 8:30 a.m.

On the third day of testimony Friday, the seven-woman, five-man jury heard from Kari’s mother, Linda Dulin, who said that she would rather her daughter have committed suicide than to be accusing her son-in-law of causing her death.

“I wanted to grieve,” said Dulin, when asked by prosecutors about her thoughts when she was told Kari had committed suicide. “I wanted to love my granddaughters and my son-in-law, so I accepted it. . . . I could have lived with suicide.”

Matt Baker, she said, pushed to have his wife buried the Monday after her early Saturday death, then slowly began distancing himself and their two daughters from the Dulins. His behavior, she said, prompted a custody dispute, which went on at the same time as a wrongful-death civil lawsuit they had filed.

Dulin said she didn’t think that her son-in-law had anything to do with her daughter’s death until about a month after Kari died, when she found that Baker had given Kari’s cell phone to Vanessa Bulls and was calling it several times each day.

“I didn’t want to believe there was anything suspicious,” Dulin said. “While I couldn’t believe that it had happened as Matt had said, I just . . . I found that starting about 10 days after Kari’s death, her cell phone was being used again.”

Dulin testified that, the weekend before Kari’s death, her daughter told her that she and Baker were having problems. She said he had accused her in the death of their middle daughter, Kassidy, and that Kari was “anxious” because she “may need to leave” her home.

Kassidy Baker died in March of 1999 after having surgery on a brain tumor.

While the defense has said that Kari killed herself because she was suffering from depression, upset that her husband was having an affair and still devastated by the loss of Kassidy, Dulin testified that her daughter had moved on.

“Kari grieved in such a healthy way,” Dulin said. “She didn’t keep it inside. She talked. She shared. She learned to live with it. She had her two girls to live for.”

Hewitt teacher Michelle Kupiszewski testified Friday that she ran into Matt Baker at Wal-Mart seven days after Kari’s death. In the course of their 20-minute conversation, Kupiszewski said Baker told her that “at the time of (his wife’s) death, he and Kari were more like friends than husband and wife, and that nothing he did was good enough for her.”

Two months after Kari’s death, Christina Salazar, who worked with Matt Baker when he served as head chaplain at the Waco Center for Youth, said that he showed her a picture of Bulls and asked, “Doesn’t she look like she could be the kids’ mother?”

He also told Salazar, she said, that he was moving to Kerrville and that Bulls was possibly going to go with him.

During the three days of testimony so far, the prosecution has called 25 witnesses, none of whom has tied Baker to the cause of his wife’s death.

In opening arguments Wednesday, however, Assistant District Attorney Susan Shafer told jurors that Bulls will testify as to how Baker killed his wife.

After the jury was dismissed Friday afternoon for the holiday weekend, Strother denied a request from the defense to bring a self-described forensic medical expert from Pennsylvania to testify as a witness.

Defense lawyer Harold Danford told Strother that the man contacted them and offered his expertise. Strother recognized the man’s name from a TV news report, in which he gave his opinions on the case.

Leading up the trial, the defense said they would not call an expert.

equinn@wacotrib.com

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