by Ann Rule
“We tried to call Kathie on the phone numbers he gave us that first day,” Haugen testified, “but the calls either went immediately to her voice mail or rang and rang.”
Deputy Haugen said that both Lieutenant Tingstad and himself sensed something was very wrong. Out of sight of the Baker house, they pulled over to compare notes and their initial impressions. They agreed that there was far more to this call than a standard welfare check.
Haugen described the intense investigation that he, Lieutenant Evan Tingstad, and Detective Laura Price had carried out for the next two days, and the many versions of how and when Kathie had left, according to Al Baker.
Mary Wilson from the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab took the witness stand. She told the jury about the grim discovery in the ravine behind the house on Silver Cloud Lane.
Prosecutor Ohme asked what her team had found in their further investigation, and she described every room in the house in detail and the evidence in each one. Of course they had inspected the dried mahogany-colored stains on the carpet.
“We took different kinds of samples,” she said. “Saturation, dilute, swipes—many of the stains were ‘dilute’ because an attempt was made to clean them.”
Two carpet runners on the side of the bed in the master bedroom, the mattress pad, mattress, decorative pillow, and even the nightstand next to Kathie Baker’s side of the bed had dilute bloodstains. Wilson testified that she followed a trail of stains out of the bedroom, across the living room and kitchen floor, and down a short flight of stairs into the garage.
“We found the bloody comforter soaking in the sink in the laundry room,” Mary continued. “And a carpet cleaner filled with water and human blood.”
As she testified, Mary Wilson identified sixty-five photo exhibits her crime scene team had taken as they scoured the house for anything that might be of evidentiary value. All were admitted.
Detective Laura Price testified about her contacts with Trudi Gerhart and the defendant and her initial work on the first-degree murder case. In addition to going over Baker’s financial records in his computer with him, Price had interviewed Trudi after the detectives realized the woman believed that Kathie had moved out months before.
Price said that Al Baker had showed the sheriff’s investigators, including herself, around his house willingly. Laura Price testified that she, too, saw the large splotches of some kind of “brownish-red” stains on the carpet in several rooms, and down the stairs.
“I asked Mr. Baker what caused them, and he told me that Kathie’s dogs poop on the carpet.”
Laura Price met with Trudi in the motel where she was staying. Trudi couldn’t go back to the house on Silver Cloud Lane—nor did she want to. Trudi left the crime scene hours before Baker did; the detectives were still searching and had questions for Al.
Price told the jurors that she gathered up Trudi’s belongings and brought them to her.
The next day, June 9, Laura Price visited Trudi Gerhart again at the Harbor Inn—to deliver more of her things, including some unsent greeting cards that were in Al’s truck. There were two romantic cards addressed to Trudi.
Price also had appalling news to tell Trudi; Kathie’s body had just been found in the ravine behind the Silver Cloud house.
“And how did Ms. Gerhart respond to this?” Eric Ohme asked.
“She cried and appeared to be shocked. She seemed to be overwhelmed with grief.”
Tom Pacher’s questions on cross-examination made little sense. He was apparently trying to paint Laura Price as an incompetent and a sloppy investigator. He did not succeed. Perhaps he was trying to lay the groundwork for a defense stance that a stranger snuck into the Bakers’ house and killed Kathie.
“Did you contact any of the neighbors?”
“No,” Detective Price answered.
“Did you know if the Bakers locked their doors?”
“No.”
“Do you know Kathie’s occupation?”
“No.”
“Was Trudi’s testimony recorded?”
“Yes.”
“Did the Baker pickup have locks on the cover of the bed?”
“I don’t know.”
“How many doors are there on the back of the Bakers’ house?”
“Two.”
Price said there were some dog doors, but doubted they were large enough for a killer or killers to crawl through.
Despite Pacher’s obvious intent to show Laura Price hadn’t done all the things television detectives do, she came across as a thoroughly competent and well-trained investigator.
The premise that some unknown stalker had crawled through a doggy door, made his way up to the master bedroom, where Kathie slept with Al, struck her with a hammer, strangled her, and then dragged her through the house, wrapped her in a tarp, and hidden her body in the ravine would have been almost laughable—if her death weren’t so tragic.
Al’s lies, of course, had suggested many scenarios, so many that it must have been difficult for the jurors to keep track of them.
The next two to testify were Ray Dunham, Kathie’s immediate supervisor, and Bill Sloan, the Raytheon employee who first contacted the sheriff’s office. Each of them had tried to get in touch with Kathie during the first few days in June 2012. Dunham remarked that if the defendant said that his wife was at Raytheon headquarters, Al Baker was either lying or mistaken.
“She would provide two weeks’ notice for any travel she planned to Colorado,” Dunham said firmly. “We usually had daily contact by email or phone.”
“When was your last contact with her?” Ohme asked.
“Friday, June 1—by instant message from her,” Dunham said. “I tried to get in touch with her the Monday through Thursday that followed. I called the pizza place and they said she was in Colorado—which I knew wasn’t true.”
Bill Sloan testified that he called the Island County Sheriff’s Office the next day, asking for a welfare check on Kathie.
Curiously, Tom Pacher had no questions for either Dunham or Sloan.
The seventh witness was David Hill, Kathie’s brother, who was currently living on Whidbey Island. He had previously lived in Colorado for thirty-two years.
Hill said he and Kathie had a very close relationship. He testified that he and his bride, Melody, had visited with the Bakers in April 2012, just a little over a month before Kathie was murdered.
“How was their marriage at that time?” Ohme asked.
“Fine. We all had a wonderful time.”
“How did Kathie feel about her two dogs?”
“They were like her children. Al wasn’t fond of dogs; they were obviously a source of aggravation for him.”
Many of Kathie’s family and friends had remarked earlier to the detectives that that was true. She would never give up her dogs because of Al’s dislike for them—but she tried to get them safely in their kennels before he got home.
Later, when Eric Ohme asked Detective Mark Plum-berg about the dogs, he testified that it was obvious Baker didn’t care what happened to them. Plumberg, a dog lover, and Leif Haugen had reluctantly placed the two corgis with Animal Control.
Not only would Kathie never have left her pets behind, she took exquisite care of them. The week before she disappeared, she had made an appointment with her vet for a checkup for the older corgi. She, of course, did not show up for the appointment.
The eighth witness was Island County Deputy Darren Crown. He testified that he and Leif Haugen had handled the crime scene log, listing who went in and who left and the exact times they did. Crown said that he and Haugen had searched the garage and Kathie’s blue SUV. It was they who had located a camera with the undeveloped film. When it was processed, there were the photos of the Harbor Pizzeria anniversary party on June 2, and also of Al Baker and Trudi Gerhart on the ferry in Alaska.
Detective Mark Plumberg was the ninth witness. Before the jurors filed in, Plumberg reviewed and identified thirty-six exhibits. Ohme asked the lead de
tective about the discovery of Kathie’s body and its removal from the ravine.
Plumberg was excused for the moment, but Eric Ohme had the right to call him to the witness stand again.
Prosecutor Ohme had designed a masterful plan for the State’s case. Each witness built on the one before. More than twenty-five witnesses for the prosecution created an airtight case against the defendant:
• Number ten, Sausha Branson, who worked at Harbor Pizzeria, described the anniversary party the night before Kathie was killed. She saw both Bakers at the party, but she never saw Kathie again. Sausha did see Al at 9:00 the next morning. “He seemed messier in appearance and really tired. He left at 10 A.M., leaving a note saying that Kathie was going on a trip, and he was picking up a ‘Poley’ friend.”
• Number eleven, Ashley Christie, manager of the pizza shop. Al Baker called her the morning of June 3. He said he was dropping Kathie off at the airport and picking up a family friend.
• Number twelve, Jeff Christensen, one of the carpenters working on the house on Silver Cloud Lane. Ohme asked if he owned a ball-peen hammer, and he said, “No.”
• Number thirteen, Randall Hughes, the finish carpenter who, with Christensen, remodeled the Bakers’ kitchen and was working on a new deck when Kathie went missing. Both carpenters testified that the Bakers were “very nice people—good, friendly, and articulate.”
• Number fourteen, Dr. Robert Bishop, coroner for Island County for eighteen years, responded to Mark Plumberg’s call of a found body. (Eric Ohme introduced fifteen photos of the ravine and Kathie’s tarp-wrapped body.) Dr. Bishop testified to the arduous procedure of bringing the victim’s body up out of the ravine. Bishop explained the autopsy and said it was impossible to tell if she had been struck with the hammer first—or strangled.
• Number fifteen, Lieutenant Evan Tingstad testified about his long days in gathering evidence on Al Baker, from the first welfare check to the interview where the defendant wrote out his own statement, and Al Baker’s angry reaction to the sketch of the body location that Tingstad drew.
• Number sixteen, Dr. Sigmund Menchel, forensic pathologist for thirty years, testified about unwrapping the victim’s body from its silver and blue tarp, layer by layer, and the postmortem examination. Prosecutor Ohme introduced twelve photo exhibits of Kathie’s nude body—over Tom Pacher’s objections. Answering defense attorney Pacher’s questions, Dr. Menchel testified it was impossible to say whether the hammer or the garrote came first, or how long the victim had been dead. Tests for recent sexual activity were negative.
• Number seventeen, Dr. Jean Dieden, the veterinarian who treated Kathie’s dogs, said, “She made an appointment for June 5 but she didn’t show up. That was very unlike her. She always kept her appointments—or called to cancel.”
• Number eighteen, Joel Norris, owner of an ice cream parlor in Coupeville, testified that Al and Kathie Baker came into his shop once in a while. He and Al were both from Colorado and talked about that state’s sports teams. “The first week of June, Al came by with another woman . . . They were holding hands. Later that week, they came back and Al told me that he and ‘Trudi’ were going to meet with owners of a restaurant that was up for sale.”
• Number nineteen, Detective Phil Farr, Island County Sheriff’s Office evidence technician. He was at the crime scene to collect and take control of physical evidence found by the sheriff’s officers and the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab. Farr explained each item of evidence to the jury.
• Number twenty, Detective Ed Wallace, Island County Sheriff’s Office, a specialist in investigating electronic devices: computers, cell phones et al. At Mark Plumberg’s request, he retrieved vital information from two cell phones located at the house on Silver Cloud Lane.
• Number twenty-one, Mary Wilson, lead forensic scientist from the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab, told jurors about locating Kathie’s body in the ravine behind her house. She also testified about finding the blood trail in the house, identified a number of photos that she had taken, and explained that the stains on the carpet were “dilute,” meaning someone had tried to clean them up. The comforter stains were much diluted, as was the bloody water in the carpet-cleaning machine. A member of her team, Wilson said, had also located a ball-peen hammer stained with dried blood that had blond hairs stuck in it.
• Number twenty-two, Katherine Taylor, whose specialty is forensic anthropology relating to bones and bone structure, testified at Plumberg’s request for her assistance in testing a section of cranium (skull): “There are several ways trauma appears in a corpse. In this case, it was blunt force.”
• Number twenty-three, Kathy Geil, Washington State Patrol Crime Lab tool mark specialist, testified about a ball-peen hammer and two pieces of skull that the sheriff’s office sent her. She had analyzed the hammer for blood type and checked the skull pieces for the damage done by that hammer.
• Number twenty-four, Helmut Steele, Washington State Department of Transportation security officer (previously spent thirty years with the State Patrol), had responded to Detective Plumberg’s questions about identifying Al Baker’s truck—and driver—as it boarded an eastbound ferry on June 3, 2012, and a possible return trip with the driver and a passenger. Steele provided two DVDs containing the images that Plumberg sought. Al Baker was clearly visible as he left Whidbey Island; several hours later, he could be seen in his truck, this time with a female passenger. (Detective Plumberg returned to the witness stand for the third time—to review and identify thirty-six exhibits. They were admitted, and he was dismissed subject to recall.)
• Number twenty-five, Deputy Dan Burns testified that he had responded to the crime scene to guard its perimeters overnight.
• Number twenty-six was Trudi Gerhart, sixty-one, of Seward, Alaska.
“Call Trudi Gerhart!”
This was the “other woman” in Al Baker’s life. Those watching in the gallery and the jurors sat up straighter. She didn’t look like a femme fatale—save for the fact that she had a purple rinse on her graying hair. Eric Ohme asked her if she knew Kathie Baker, and she replied, “She was a friend, and I had a social relationship with her during our tours to Antarctica. I haven’t seen her for several years.”
But she had seen Al Baker many times, particularly after Kathie stopped working in Antarctica.
Asked to identify Al, she looked at the defense table and pointed him out. Thereafter, she avoided meeting his eyes. Trudi testified that she began her trips to Antarctica in 1995 during the “summer months.” At the South Pole, that would be from October/November to January/February. At that time of year, there were about 265 people there in the three stations.
When Eric Ohme asked Trudi if she had had a romantic relationship with the defendant, she said, “Not in my mind. Sometimes we held hands and we had occasional kisses on the cheek. Back in the U.S. after our last assignment, Mr. Baker would call me or email me. I got cards every day.”
The first emails he sent were casual—but they became more personal as time went by. He told her about the “heavy stuff” that was happening in his home, all caused by Kathie, but he didn’t want to go into detail.
“On March 1, 2012,” Trudi testified, “he told me that he and Kathie were divorced.”
That couldn’t have occurred unless Baker had filed for divorce in December; it takes three months to finalize a divorce in Washington State. And, in December, Al Baker had been in Antarctica.
Later that month, Al Baker had visited Trudi in Alaska, staying in her guest room. He visited her again weeks later.
“There was no physical relationship,” she testified. “But he told me he was in love with me.”
Trudi Gerhart accepted Al Baker’s invitation to come and visit him in his house in Greenbank, Washington, and he sent her plane tickets. On June 3, he met her at Sea-Tac Airport, and they drove to Mukilteo, where they had dinner in a restaurant before boarding the ferry to Whidbey Island.
“It was d
ark when we got to Greenbank,” Trudi testified. “He gave me a tour of the house and we had a glass of wine before I went to bed in the guest room on the second level. He left early the next morning to do prep work at his pizza place.”
Trudi had wakened later and gone downstairs. It was then that she noticed the large stain on the living room carpet.
“I tried to clean it up with boiling water and a rag—but when it dried, the stains were still there.”
Trudi Gerhart testified that she had begun to think something was wrong. Kathie’s car was still in the garage—they had even gone to a drive-in movie in it.
And it was odd that Kathie’s beloved dogs were there without her. When the police showed up, the horrible truth began to dawn on her.
Prosecutor Ohme gave her a large manila envelope that contained five or six dozen greeting cards that the defendant had sent her. Trudi read a number of them aloud, but she wouldn’t look at Al Baker.
“What did you think about them?” Ohme asked.
“At first I thought those cards were flattering, but then I began to think they were a little over-the-top. But I’m kind of old-fashioned and I thought if this all worked out, I would put them together and make a collage.”
Defense attorney Tom Pacher asked her if she had been restricted from any part of Al Baker’s property.
“No.”
Mariah Low, a forensic scientist with the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab, was the final State’s witness. She explained what DNA was, how she collected it and tested it. Ohme showed her several exhibits—including the ball-peen hammer with hair caught in it, fingernail clippings, and DNA swabs. She identified Al Baker’s DNA on some of the critical evidence.
When Mariah Low was excused, Judge Alan Hancock asked Tom Pacher if he was ready to give his long-delayed opening statement. The defense attorney waived it.
It was Friday, October 11, 2013, and both the jury and the gallery wondered if this meant the trial was over.
It did not.
