Lying in Wait

by Ann Rule

  She was not sure of the date the pictures were taken.

  Next, Plumberg reminded her that she had once mentioned something to him that she thought was important.

  “Oh,” she recalled. “It was something Al said after he was first contacted by the police,” Trudi said. “He went into the precinct to see Detective Price. I didn’t go in with him, but went browsing in an antiques shop. He came back about forty-five minutes later and told me the police wanted to talk to me, too.

  “Alan mentioned Raytheon’s involvement in searching for Kathie, and he said, ‘I don’t know why they didn’t call me first.’ ”

  “Did you and Mr. Baker have any kind of sexual relationship while you were in Antarctica?” Plumberg asked.

  “Nope,” Trudi said emphatically. “We did not. We watched movies and ate breakfast together.”

  “That [sex] never happened?”

  “Never . . .”

  Mark Plumberg asked about the numerous cards she had received from Baker once they returned home from the South Pole. “Did you ever send cards and letters to him?”

  “I asked him for his address, so I could send him cards and letters, but he never gave it to me.”

  “When did you last talk to Kathie?”

  “It was years ago—had to be at least five years, and that was through email. I hadn’t spoken with her directly since she was down on the ice.”

  In response to Plumberg’s questions, Trudi said that Baker had flown to Alaska to see her twice, and she’d come down to Greenbank only once. She couldn’t recall when he mentioned during a phone call that he and Kathie were having marital trouble. Only that he said things were “heavy.”

  ”Where did you sleep when you came to his home?”

  “I slept in the guest room upstairs.”

  “And Mr. Baker?”

  “I presume he was sleeping in his bedroom [the master bedroom]. He gave me a tour of his house,” she said. “I was in his bedroom only once. That was his space and I didn’t go in there for anything. It was really neat and tidy for a guy—most guys aren’t that tidy.”

  “When did you notice the stain on the living room carpet?”

  “When I first went in. I didn’t say anything about it, but I tried to clean it one morning when Alan was at work. It was really ugly; it looked like what happens when a dog scoots its butt across the floor.”

  “Did it smell?”

  “Hey, I’m a deckhand. My nose is shut down to odors I have to clean.”

  “What did he tell you about the stain?”

  “I didn’t ask him, and he didn’t tell me anything about it, except he blamed it on Kathie’s dogs. I finally asked him if he had tried to clean it up. He told me that he’d tried but couldn’t get anywhere with it. I said I’d try some of my old boat tricks. In my job as a deckhand, I’ve cleaned a lot of stains on board. I just used hot water on the carpet stain, and it looked great when it was wet—but it came back when it dried.”

  Unwittingly, Trudi had only made the stains more permanent. Any housewife knows that bloodstains should be washed with cold water.

  Trudi said she was puzzled to find Kathie’s dogs there. She could kind of understand that exes would help each other out, but Al didn’t really like dogs, and it was strange that he would look after the two corgis. On the way from the airport, he’d told her that Kathie was living in Aurora, Colorado.

  Trudi said she wanted to refinance her Alaska home, and Al helped her out with that. “I needed verification of employment during the winter months—with more salary than I got down on the ice. He filled out an application that said I worked for him as his ‘consultant’ who got paid monthly. He was trying to help me with a job, because I needed one and didn’t have one.”

  Trudi told him that she and Baker “left the ice” on February 14, 2012, and parted ways in Los Angeles. Al Baker had long been surrounded by people—his employees at the pizza shop and all his coworkers at Raytheon—and yet no one knew who he really was.

  “He touched so many lives,” Trudi said. “We’ll never know how many. I don’t even feel good in my house anymore. I really don’t want to go in the guest room here. It makes my skin crawl.”

  What were Al Baker’s plans for Trudi? She shuddered to think that she could have ended up the way Kathie had once he had no more use for her.

  Baker wouldn’t talk to the investigators any longer, but he had had no choice in submitting to the court-ordered DNA tests. Kathie’s blood was all over their house, with minimal traces of blood from Al. Testing for bodily fluids and hair in the place where the subjects lived is problematic; residents would normally have left some trace evidence. They found no semen on the scene. A stranger’s semen, of course, would have raised the possibility that Kathie had been attacked by someone other than Al.

  During Kathie’s autopsy, a single long white hair was found on her buttocks. It wasn’t hers, but neither Al Baker nor Trudi Gerhart could be excluded. Hairs aren’t easy to test; the shaft reveals little of value, but if the root tag is attached, DNA can be determined.

  Most likely, the long white strand of hair had been Al Baker’s.

  Plumberg had more questions for Trudi, and he asked her if Al had given her the impression he was wealthy.

  “We’d been talking about his business once,” she replied. “and I asked if it was doing well. He opened his wallet and showed me that $10,000 check, saying, ‘This is how well it’s doing.’ I didn’t ask him anything about it—I just figured it was a withdrawal from his pizza business.”

  Al Baker seemed to have plenty of money, and to Trudi, it had looked like he had adjusted quite well to the breakup of his marriage. She had accepted it all at face value, and told Plumberg that when Al had visited her in Alaska, they had looked at a boat that Al had considered buying.

  “Because of his age, Alan wanted to be spontaneous and do fun things—I got the impression that Kathie was much more conservative, but he wanted to go ‘this other way.’ When he came up to Alaska the second time, we looked at the boat and he said he was ready to sell his pizza business, buy the boat, and set off into the sunset.”

  Seeing his house and acres of property only added validation to Al Baker’s air of wealth. Trudi wasn’t doing nearly as well financially as she had believed Al was.

  He took her on a tour of his land the second day she was there, and urged her to walk around the acreage. One has to wonder why. Did he want her to discover Kathie’s body? Would it be some kind of macabre thrill for him? Fortunately for Trudi, she didn’t go.

  “What did you do while he was working at the pizza shop?” Plumberg asked.

  “I crocheted hats for a little business I have here in Seward,” Trudi said. “On Tuesday—June 5—we went to a lavender farm and bought some plants for in front of his deck. I spent the next morning planting them.”

  A man had come by to unload some materials for remodeling Baker’s deck, but it had been raining all week, and the carpenters hadn’t been working on that project.

  Asked if Al had tried to hide her during her visit, Trudi shook her head. They walked around the small island towns, and Baker introduced her to friends and to his employees at the pizzeria. He told them her name and said she was visiting from Alaska.

  “He asked me what I’d told the fellow who dropped off the deck materials. I told him, ‘I said I was your gardener.’

  “Al asked why I hadn’t told the carpenter that I was his girlfriend.

  “ ‘Because I’m not,’ I said. ‘I’m your gardener right now.’ ”

  Some of the people who had property Al was interested in had assumed that Trudi was Al’s wife, and she hadn’t corrected them. And Al never said she was his girlfriend, his wife, or a visitor.

  Mark Plumberg would make one more trip to Seward, Alaska—on March 4, 2013. Al Baker’s trial loomed, and Detective Plumberg and prosecutor Eric Ohme wanted to be sure there were no loose ends to their intense probe into Kathie Baker’s murder and Al’s bac
kground.

  Plumberg showed Trudi a few more photographs that she hadn’t yet seen, including the pizzeria anniversary pictures from the night of June 2. Al and Kathie were clearly visible sitting at a table toward the back of the restaurant. They were also in some group photographs.

  “Were there any other vehicles at Al’s house?” Plumberg asked her.

  Trudi nodded. “There was a car in the garage—Al implied that that was his, too. We went to the drive-in once in it. I found out later that it was Kathie’s.”

  The Island County detective took out some emails between Baker and herself that he had recovered. He read them aloud to Trudi. One was a map of how she would get to Whidbey Island from Sea-Tac Airport on a shuttle bus in case she wanted to “drop by.” Dated on January 5, 2012, (when she and Al were still in Antarctica), it ended, “We’ll be there to pick you up.”

  That sounded like a smoke screen. If a possible affair between them ever came up, he had this email showing that she would be coming to see both him and Kathie. But there were other emails saying he wanted to know much more about her.

  Mark Plumberg asked her again about what might have gone on between herself and Al Baker. She shook her head. “He was at my workstation a lot, and we would watch movies in each other’s rooms, so we could watch what we wanted instead of what was on in the lodge—and we danced on New Year’s Eve.”

  “Was Antarctica kind of like ‘What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas’?” Plumberg pressed on.

  “Usually,” Trudi answered. “But you never know. No! I don’t . . . No. We weren’t doing anything!”

  Trudi and Al were in their sixties, but she was so adamant in her denial of any sexual activity between them that she might well have been a teenage virgin.

  “Is there anything I’ve missed asking you that you want to tell me?” Plumberg asked.

  “I can’t think of anything.”

  The interview was over.

  * * *

  On October 2, 2013, Robert Alan Baker went on trial for first-degree murder. Coupeville, Washington, is a wonderful place to be in autumn. The trees are red and golden as they shelter unique, restored houses, many of them a hundred years old or more. Tourists have gone home, and full-time residents settle into the harvest season, high school football games, and the holidays. All too soon, mighty storms off Puget Sound will lash against their windows with heavy winds and pounding rain.

  On this day, the temperature was in the mid-50s, and there was only a trace of rain.

  There are no windows in Judge Alan Hancock’s courtroom, so there is a cocoon-like feeling once the doors are closed. There were ninety people in the jury pool. Detective Mark Plumberg sat at the prosecution table beside senior assistant prosecuting attorney Eric Ohme. Ohme’s assistant, Jenna Knutsen, sat there, too. Knutsen’s job was to keep the trial running smoothly—but this trial would be challenging for her. It was full of starts and stops, interruptions, sickness, and unexpected events, all of which meant that Jenna had to arrange for witnesses to switch their normal sequential order.

  One of the potential jurors fell ill. Luckily for her, there were two doctors, a physician’s assistant, and an EMT in the courtroom. She wanted to stay, but the professionals insisted she should be hospitalized. Paramedics whisked her away to the hospital.

  After that crisis, it was too late to go on with jury selection and/or the start of the trial that day, so Jenna Knutsen rearranged the schedules of out-of-town witnesses, somehow managing to get things organized for the next day.

  “Jenna did a fantastic job,” Mark Plumberg remarked. “Most of the people there had no idea of what was happening behind the scenes of the trial.”

  Initially, Craig Platt had been Al Baker’s attorney, but he had been replaced by Tom Pacher, one of two public defenders in the Island County court system.

  Eric Ohme and Pacher had winnowed out thirty prospective jurors by noon of the first day. After lunch, Pacher and Ohme asked questions of the jury pool. How many individuals looked forward to serving on a jury? How many dreaded it? Who had been on a jury before? Did they believe the district attorney has no duty to provide evidence?

  “If the defendant doesn’t testify,” Tom Pacher asked, “would that influence your decision-making process?”

  Four responded that it wouldn’t be a problem—three had a problem with that prospect.

  Ohme asked, “If you should find out there were no eyewitnesses—only circumstantial evidence—could you arrive at a consensus regarding guilt or innocence?”

  Everyone agreed that an eyewitness wasn’t necessary.

  As expected, the answers were as varied as the potential jurors.

  The would-be jury was excused to allow Judge Hancock, prosecutor Eric Ohme, and defense attorney Tom Pacher to identify those who would be excused for cause, and to take up preemptory challenges.

  When they filed back in, the judge pointed out five women and seven men who’d been selected, with two alternates, both men.

  Judge Hancock read instructions to the jury, and court recessed at 4:30.

  Robert Alan Baker’s trial for first-degree murder was expected to last ten days. Kathie’s family had gathered from three states to observe what they sincerely hoped was justice for their much-loved sibling, cousin, niece, and aunt.

  The defendant was brought into Judge Hancock’s courtroom in handcuffs. He scarcely resembled the Al Baker the investigators first encountered—the man with long hair and a longer beard. Now they were both neatly trimmed, and he wore a white shirt, a tie, and a well-pressed sport jacket and slacks. He took his seat beside Tom Pacher at the defense table and seemed quite calm and contained. He would only rarely speak to his attorney.

  One could see why Kathie’s family had called him a troll behind his back. He did resemble an evil gnome; he was very short and had thick eyebrows that half hid his eyes.

  One newspaper reporter described him as “an angry Santa Claus.”

  Senior deputy prosecutor Eric Ohme made his opening statement the next day. Ohme was in a wheelchair, but he handled it so deftly that no one in the courtroom noticed it after the first few minutes.

  “The defendant had a motive for getting rid of his wife,” Ohme said. “He had a secret obsession with a woman who was not his wife.”

  Ohme explained to jurors that Baker had met this woman in Antarctica and fixated on her. “This culminated on the night of June 2, 2012—or the following morning—when Robert Baker struck his wife in the head with a hammer and strangled her in their bed.”

  Eric Ohme didn’t have to exaggerate the facts of that murderous night. He merely listed them. He spoke of the sheer violence that had taken place, and of the defendant’s efforts to hide Kathie’s body.

  “Robert Baker dragged Kathie Baker out of the house, through the garage. He wrapped her body in a blue and silver tarp with ropes and bungee cords, and dumped her in a ravine behind the house.”

  Ohme explained that Al had met Kathie the same way he had met Trudi—while working for Raytheon. Baker’s courtship of his newest target—Trudi Gerhart—was a rerun of his seduction of the wife he’d killed.

  “Trudi Gerhart felt their relationship was platonic,” Eric Ohme said, “but he wanted more; he visited her twice, sent her romantic cards, and invited her to his home in Greenbank, falsely claiming he and Kathie had broken up.

  “Robert Alan Baker killed his wife and hid her body before Trudi Gerhart arrived.”

  Ohme then read off a list of witnesses who would be testifying, and described how each was involved in the Baker case.

  Defense attorney Tom Pacher reserved the right to postpone his opening remarks until the prosecution rested. It was an usual strategy, and one that baffled court watchers.

  The second week of Al Baker’s trial was to begin on Monday, October 7. It did not. Tom Pacher called in sick. Another public defender, Matthew Montoya, sat at the defense table. The jurors were dismissed and told to come back the next day.

  Th
e two public defenders resembled one another; both were large men with florid faces whose shirttails were forever coming untucked from their trousers. I sensed that neither was particularly happy with his job and each would be glad when his contract with the county was over.

  Eric Ohme had scheduled two witnesses from Colorado. They said they could stay over one more night—but after that, they had commitments to fulfill.

  If Pacher should be unavailable the next day, Judge Hancock asked Montoya if he could fill in. Montoya agreed that he would.

  But on Tuesday Tom Pacher was back in court. Judge Hancock reprimanded him severely because he had not followed protocol in notifying the court (Hancock) or opposing counsel (Ohme). The judge also lectured Pacher on how important it is to show up once a trial has begun, citing the inconvenience for the jury, witnesses, and others who depended on him to be there.

  Jenna Knutsen, Ohme’s assistant, had managed to reschedule the order of witnesses and the trial proceeded.

  Andrew Archer of Inglewood, California, was the first witness. He was a primary contractor at the Antarctica station for twenty-one years, and he’d known both Kathie and Al Baker for a long time—since 2001 for Al and even longer for Kathie. Archer said he and his wife had visited the couple in their Greenbank home from May 22 to May 28—leaving less than a week before Kathie’s disappearance.

  When Eric Ohme asked Archer about the visit and the condition of the house on Silver Cloud Road, the witness said he couldn’t see any problems between Kathie and Al.

  “The house? It was a very tidy house.”

  “Did you see stains on the carpet?”

  “No—none at all.”

  Deputy Leif Haugen took the witness stand next to testify about how he first became aware of Kathie Baker.

  “Lieutenant Tingstad and I were responding to a ‘check on the welfare of’ request from Kathie’s employers.”

  They had briefly glimpsed a woman walk by an upstairs window there. Al Baker explained that she was just a platonic friend who had come to visit both him and Kathie.