Basy Barrera cut Kari Baker’s hair for 13 years before Baker was murdered in 2006.

Now Barrera is one of many who are donating goods and services in a unique fundraising effort to help Baker’s parents pay legal expenses in their battle for custody of their granddaughters, Grace and Kensi.

“I just feel very close to that family,” said Barrera, who also styles the hair of Baker’s mother, two of her aunts and one of her nephews. “I would do anything to help them, especially help them get those girls. I miss Kari and I hope her parents get the girls because that is what Kari would have wanted. That is why they are doing all the things they have done.”

James and Linda Dulin never believed that their 31-year-old daughter, a teacher, committed suicide, as her April 2006 death initially was ruled.
Duane A. Laverty / Waco Tribune-Herald

Baker’s parents, James and Linda Dulin, who live in Woodway, never believed that their 31-year-old daughter, a teacher, committed suicide, as her April 2006 death initially was ruled.

They convinced Hewitt officials to reopen the investigation and filed a civil lawsuit alleging that Kari Baker’s husband, Central Texas Baptist minister Matt Baker, killed her so he could be with his mistress.

Renewed focus

The renewed focus on the case led to Matt Baker’s murder conviction and 65-year prison sentence.

But the couple’s children went to live with Matt Baker’s parents, Oscar and Barbara Baker, in Kerrville.

A July 5 trial date to determine custody has been set in 198th State District Court in Kerr County.

Since Kari Baker’s death, family and friends have united behind the Dulins and are doing so again with an online auction to raise funds for legal expenses and, they hope, to fund the girls’ therapy if the Dulins prevail in the custody trial.

Barrera, a stylist at The Beauty Shop at Ridgewood Village Shopping Center, is donating a haircut and highlights, a $100 value, to the online auction.

Linda Reichenbach and Shannon Gamble, friends of the Dulins, are organizing the online auction and are soliciting donations through Twitter, Facebook, emails, going door-to-door and on Gamble’s Internet blog, “Don’t Even Get Me Started,” a tribute to Kari Baker’s memory that she has kept for several years.

Reichenbach, a computer instructor at McLennan Community College, and her students will create a website on which the auction will be conducted and the auction items displayed.

The auction is scheduled for May 21 and May 22 and the organizers hope to have all donations recorded by May 15.

Those who wish to donate goods and services to be auctioned off can contact Reichenbach at dulinfans@gmail.com or Gamble through her blog site.

Other items donated so far include $400 worth of landscaping services, dinners from various restaurants, dog grooming and training services, clothing items, massages, furniture and others.

‘Just not done yet’

Gamble met Kari Baker when her son, Brody, was in Baker’s third-grade class.

“We are putting this together because it is just not done yet,” Gamble said. “We have part one done, which is justice with Matt being convicted and bringing back Kari’s memory in a better way. Part two is saving her girls. I don’t feel like they are in a safe place. She would have kept fighting until her girls were safe and if I can help do that, I am going to do that, too.”

Friends of Matt Baker and his parents threw a fundraiser for him in Kerrville before his murder trial in the form of a barbecue dinner.

Judge Rex Emerson, who is hearing the custody case in Kerrville, has ordered both sides not to talk to the media because of the high-profile nature of the case. Linda Dulin declined comment based on the judge’s orders.

twitherspoon@wacotrib.com

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