Matt Baker’s rocky path to appealing last month’s murder conviction and the brewing custody battle over his children prove the saga stemming from Kari Baker’s death in April 2006 is hardly over, even after a riveting trial in Waco. Other important loose ends have yet to be addressed.

Many of us admire and respect the tenacity with which Jim and Linda Dulin worked to convince doubting law enforcement officials to reopen the case involving their 31-year-old daughter, even after the justice of the peace in the case ruled it a suicide without so much as viewing the body. Because of the Dulins’ diligence, law enforcement officials eventually did reopen the case and exhumed the body for a belated autopsy. Result: the conviction last month of Kari’s husband, Matt.

But what if the Dulins hadn’t been so driven in their efforts to reopen the case? What if the death of Kari Baker — drugged, then suffocated to death by her husband — had been allowed to fall through the cracks, with little in the way of an inquest or meaningful investigation? How many cases, we now wonder, are missed because they lack determined advocates such as the Dulins?

With the Baker case so fresh in mind, we urge our state leaders to consider laws that actually compel a partial or full autopsy when a person dies of what appears to be a suicide. The benefits of this should be obvious, especially when one considers the lengths to which Matt Baker went to make his wife’s death appear self-inflicted, complete with suicide note.

Investigators initially fell for it. So did a local justice of the peace who based his first decision entirely on their input in a late-night phone call.

Tom and Jan Purdy, of Waco, friends of the Dulins and privy to their uphill battle to reopen the investigation, are now pushing what they and others call “Kari’s Law,” which would require autopsies in such cases rather than leave the decision to authorities who are possibly overburdened with yet other duties (including issuing warrants, conducting marriages or setting bail) or are simply ill-equipped to make these critical decisions themselves.

The idea certainly rates thoughtful consideration by lawmakers, especially considering that justices of the peace are elected positions, occupied by individuals who range widely in terms of competence, wisdom and knowledge. Many are excellent, some are not. And many do have other taxing duties.

In the final analysis, state law should ensure that suspicious deaths are fully investigated, whatever the caliber of justice of the peace summoned in a death. As it now stands, Texas Code of Criminal Procedure 49.10 allows justices of the peace sole discretion in whether to order an autopsy.

“What bothered me was the possible hundreds of families that this has happened to over the years,” Tom Purdy told us this past week. When he began researching how other states handle such matters far more effectively, “I knew this was something that we needed to do something about here.”

The Purdys base their arguments for Kari’s Law on a Feb. 7 story by Trib staff writer Erin Quinn, who also revealed that McLennan County spent $161,000 on autopsies conducted out of town in just 2009. The Purdys note that it “seems that McLennan County should be able to hire a medical examiner based on the amount of funds that are already being expended to send these crucial cases to Dallas.”

That, too, is a discussion worth having. In the meantime, however, the verdict in the Baker case reminds us that malevolent forces are sometimes at work, that all deaths are not as they appear to be and that the state may be able to ensure that no one else labors through grief, doubt and skepticism the way that Jim and Linda Dulin did before justice was finally and belatedly served.