Five days before her death, Kari Baker wrote in her Bible, asking the Lord to protect her from harm.

She wrote that she was filled with so much worry that she can’t “get a hold” of it and lamented, “I can’t figure out what’s going on with Matt.”

Her husband, Matt Baker, 38, is on trial for murder in Waco’s 19th State District Court in the April 2006 death of his 31-year-old wife — a teacher and the mother of his two girls.

Prosecutors called 11 witnesses Wednesday and pledged to show the jury that the former Baptist minister was having an affair with the daughter of the music director at his church, drugged his wife with sleeping pills and then suffocated her after she passed out while making her death appear a suicide. Entries from her diary were included in testimony.

Baker’s attorney, Guy James Gray, acknowledged Baker’s affair but said that it is no proof that Baker killed his wife. He said authorities felt pressured by Kari Baker’s family to reopen the investigation and said that “it only became a murder case when the family realized there had been this affair.”

Matt Baker had previously denied having an affair.

Late Wednesday, JoAnn Bristol, a social worker that Kari Baker turned to for grief counseling after the Bakers lost their 16-month-old daughter, Kassidy, to cancer in March 1999, testified that Kari was not suicidal and was looking toward the future when she died.

Bristol said that a day after Kari Baker’s death, she and Matt Baker embraced at a visitation for the family and he said, “Bristol, I didn’t see it coming,” Bristol said. Baker also asked if Kari Baker told her that she was afraid that Baker was going to kill her and that she thought he was having an affair.

Bristol said she answered yes to both questions.

However, in a tape recording of one of the many interviews Baker has given since Kari’s family challenged the suicide ruling and convinced Hewitt police to reopen the investigation, Baker said Bristol came up to him at the visitation and said that she “didn’t see it coming,” to which he said he replied, “Neither did I.”

“Do you think he was just trying to rewrite history by attributing things to you that he really said?” prosecutor Crawford Long asked Bristol.

Bristol told jurors that she saw Kari Baker once a week for about a year after Kassidy’s death before Kari started feeling better and decided she didn’t need to come anymore. The next time Bristol saw Kari Baker professionally was three days before Kari died, Bristol said.

Questions about depression

She said Kari Baker was not suicidal, adding that she asked her twice if she was depressed and thinking about killing herself. Kari denied that she was depressed and said she was angered by a recent diagnosis by another doctor that she was depressed and anxiety-ridden. Kari Baker was “forward-looking” and told Bristol that she wanted to help mothers who had gone through the same thing she had with Kassidy, she said.

She also was looking forward to spending more time with her children and working on her relationship with Matt Baker, Bristol said.

During cross-examination from Matt Baker’s attorney, Gray, Bristol continued to assert that Kari Baker was not depressed and was not a suicide risk. She acknowledged that Kari told her that she feared Matt Baker would kill her but said she recanted that statement, saying she knew he would never do that.

Gray showed Bristol writings in Kari Baker’s diary and in her Bible from 1999 in which Kari expressed a desire to die and be with Kassidy. Bristol said those were normal feelings for a grieving mother and that she didn’t construe them as suicidal thoughts.

Opening statements

In opening statements, prosecutor Susan Shafer told the jury that Vanessa Bulls, with whom Baker repeatedly has denied having an affair, will tell the jury about her relationship with Baker, “how he brought her into his marital bed and how Matt Baker killed Kari.”

In other prosecution testimony, three emergency medical technicians who responded to the call around midnight April 7, 2006, about Kari Baker’s death at her home in Hewitt all said that Matt Baker was calm and unemotional about his wife’s death.

Two said they noticed signs of lividity, or the pooling of blood in her lower body, an indication that she possibly was dead longer than the scenario in Baker’s reported timeline for the evening.

They reported seeing a typed, unsigned note on a bedside table along with at least two pens, empty wine cooler bottles and sleeping pill bottles.

Justice of the Peace Billy Martin testified that he spoke to Hewitt police officers that night and said they convinced him that Kari’s death appeared to be nothing more than a routine suicide after hearing about the note and learning that Matt Baker had reported her depressed state.

“I said, ‘OK, that’s good enough for me,’ ” Martin said, adding that he did not visit the scene that night and ordered the body released to her husband without ordering an autopsy.

twitherspoon@wacotrib.com

757-5737

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