Lying in Wait Ann Rule's Crime Files Vol.17

by Ann Rule

  “Call Robert Baker!”

  There had been rumors that Baker would take the stand, and the courtroom viewers certainly hoped he would. Still, the shocked spectators gasped as Pacher called what would be his one and only witness: Robert Alan Baker. It is rarely a good idea to put a murder defendant on the stand, although many of them insist, confident that they can convince a jury of their innocence. But once they testify on their own behalf, they leave themselves vulnerable to the State’s cross-examination.

  Pacher asked Al Baker about Antarctica and his work there.

  “I work as a physicist—planning and support for experiments. I specialize in cryogenics.”

  “And Trudi’s?”

  “She was a communications officer.”

  Baker described a typical testing process used for sampling. He came across as very confident and quite brilliant, tossing around technical terms about cryogenics that went over most of the courtroom spectators’ heads.

  Baker explained that it was a twenty-five-hour trip to get to the South Pole. He would fly to Denver, change planes to one headed for Los Angeles, and then fly on to New Zealand.

  “When did you meet your late wife?” Pacher asked.

  “In Denver. We had worked three seasons down on the ice until we got married in Colorado in 2007.”

  “What were your salaries at that point?”

  “I made around $90,000 a year, and Kathie made $120,000. We would each make two or three trips to Colorado a year—that’s where Raytheon’s headquarters are. And Kathie has—had family there.”

  Baker said that he took an interest in Trudi Gerhart when Kathie stopped going to the South Pole.

  “You sent a large number of cards to Trudi?”

  “I probably sent her well over a hundred.”

  “When did you leave Antarctica last year—2012?”

  “February.”

  Pacher asked about his client’s time with Trudi down on the ice, and he said he would visit her in the communications center, and they watched movies together.

  “Did you intend to strike up a relationship with her?”

  “That’s hard to say, but I was excited about it.”

  “Where was Kathie?”

  “I thought she was in Denver.”

  “After your initial contact with the Island County Sheriff’s Office, were you concerned?”

  “I didn’t attempt to contact Kathie, because Trudi was with me.”

  Al Baker testified that when he and Trudi Gerhart drove up to his house on Sunday night, June 3, he saw that Kathie’s car was in the garage. That was odd because it had been gone earlier in the day and he had assumed she’d flown to Denver.

  “I thought we were going to have a problem, but she wasn’t in the house.”

  The defendant admitted he had lied to detectives when they came looking for Kathie days later after Raytheon sounded the alarm. He felt caught between two women.

  “I didn’t want the police to tell Kathie that Trudi was there,” he told the jury. “And I didn’t want the police to tell Trudi that Kathie still lived there.”

  If Baker’s testimony was meant to show jurors that he was just a “good old boy,” it had failed miserably.

  The defendant insisted that he knew nothing about Kathie’s murder.

  “Did you kill your wife?” Pacher asked suddenly.

  Al Baker’s overt reaction was almost indignant.

  “NO!” he said. “I swear on everything I hold sacred—my mother’s grave. I did not kill Kathie. I did not kill my wife!”

  Prosecutor Eric Ohme said he would wait to cross-examine Baker until after the lunch break.

  It is often said that he who represents himself has a fool for a lawyer. Al Baker had a lawyer, but he chose to take the witness stand over defense attorney Tom Pacher’s objections, and in doing so, he indeed made a fool of himself. Now he faced Eric Ohme for cross-examination.

  Ohme systematically reviewed the lies Baker had told along with the reasons they had tripped him up:

  “When you picked up Trudi at the airport, Kathie’s car was missing from the garage, and upon your return the car was there—but not Kathie,” Ohme began.

  “When you talked to Lieutenant Tingstad at your home, with Trudi present, you told him Kathie was taken to the airport; why wouldn’t you tell him how she got there?

  “You repeatedly told officers that Kathie went to the airport by herself. On June 3, you placed a call at eleven A.M. to your pizza place advising them you were taking Kathie to the airport.”

  Prosecutor Ohme went over the plethora of lies Al Baker had told the sheriff’s officers, Trudi Gerhart, his pizzeria employees, townspeople on Whidbey Island, even Kathie’s brother.

  Baker testified that he could not explain how blood got on the carpet runners, decorative pillows, and nightstand in the master bedroom. Nor did he have any knowledge about the dilute bloodstains on the comforter found in the laundry room. It was the same way with the stains in the living room and garage.

  “Did you love Kathie—or not?”

  “I loved her. There was no thought about splitting up, and I was against divorce.”

  For a man allegedly divorced numerous times, this last statement was ridiculous.

  Ohme went over the absurd discussions Al had with Trudi and businessmen on the island. He had said he wanted to buy another restaurant and soon own several refurbished businesses. He also was thinking of buying a forty-six-foot boat.

  “You knew full well you weren’t in a position to purchase any of them,” Ohme asked, “didn’t you?”

  Baker’s decision to take the witness stand and show the jurors he was an innocent man turned out to be a bad one. He had failed miserably. Most of Baker’s answers were vague: “I didn’t think about it,” and “I don’t recall.” It still seemed that he didn’t realize how many inconsistencies he’d been caught in.

  It was time for final arguments, but the shadows outside were growing longer, and the final arguments would have to wait until the next session in Judge Alan Hancock’s courtroom.

  The Hill family asked Hancock if there was some way they could have Kathie’s name changed postmortem—back to Hill. They had representatives in court every day, and they could no longer bear to hear her referred to as Kathie Baker. Judge Hancock agreed, saying he felt the same way himself. Henceforth, she would be called Kathie Hill.

  * * *

  Prosecutor Eric Ohme reminded jurors that the defendant did one thing right: he had managed to keep two women from knowing about each other.

  But Al Baker had made so many mistakes.

  “In order to keep his web of deceit from crashing down, he made a choice on how he could fulfill his fantasy,” Ohme began.

  The prosecutor described in excruciating detail how Kathie Hill had died and how Al Baker had concealed her body. He reviewed the elements of the case, and all those that were questionable. Then he answered them with irrefutable proof that had been supportive of the State’s case during the prior two weeks.

  Ohme summarized Al Baker’s myriad lies, and asked the jury to remember how the defendant had told constantly changing stories.

  “Based on the evidence, you must find the defendant guilty of murder in the first degree.”

  Tom Pacher never did make any opening statement. And he had said, “No questions,” to most of the State’s witnesses. One can understand why: he was representing a despicable client who clearly rankled the jury. Now, finally, Tom Pacher rose to make his final arguments.

  He began with a statement Matthew Montoya had used in another murder trial on Whidbey Island.

  “Don’t confuse me with the facts—I’ve already made up my mind.” The jurors’ brows wrinkled as they attempted to understand Pacher’s obscure remark.

  Then Pacher presented what seemed to be anything but facts—loopholes the defense attorney had winnowed out of Al Baker’s testimony and circumstantial evidence.

  He asked the jurors to consider the lo
gistics. Baker was a small man, and Kathie, Pacher said, weighed 240 pounds (in reality, she weighed about 75 pounds less than that). How could Baker manage what was ironically a dead weight?

  The hammer was a “shop tool.” And, of course Al’s DNA would be found on it, Pacher submitted. He had probably used it to fix or build something around his house.

  The item used as a ligature had never been located. The real killer had probably taken it with him when he left.

  Tom Pacher insisted that the Bakers’ dog door was very large, and strangers in the night could have easily crawled through it and murdered Kathie as her husband slept.

  And why hadn’t the investigators talked to neighbors close to the house on Silver Cloud Lane?

  Then Pacher brought up the fact that both Detective Laura Price and Lieutenant Tingstad were over six feet tall. His poor little client—only five feet six—must have been intimidated and frightened as they loomed over him.

  Pacher insisted that Al Baker had tried to help the detectives.

  Ohme didn’t say anything, of course, but one could tell how he felt by the expression on his face. And his face said, “Really?”

  “This case is crawling with reasonable doubt,” Pacher said. “There is simply not enough evidence in this case to convict him of anything.”

  When Tom Pacher sat down, court watchers looked bemused. The defense attorney hadn’t truly addressed the murder of Kathie Hill. Instead, he had plucked theories out of thin air to convince jurors that his client must be innocent.

  Once more, it was Eric Ohme’s turn to speak on rebuttal. And Ohme’s response was scathing.

  The mysterious burglar/dog door theory? The victim had no defensive wounds on her body.

  Why was Kathie’s expensive diamond ring found in Al’s nightstand?

  Al Baker had had plenty of time to dispose of his wife’s body and clean up. He did what he could, Ohme suggested, but he had still left plenty of physical evidence behind.

  Baker’s testimony was full of lies. Tom Pacher’s theory that the defendant had helped the police was preposterous.

  Finally, closing statements were over.

  After listening to Judge Hancock’s instructions, the jurors were excused at 11 A.M. At 3:20, they signaled that they had reached a verdict—after only four hours and twenty minutes.

  Guilty of murder in the first degree, with aggravating circumstances. A number of factors—including a particularly heinous act—can result in a murder verdict that includes “aggravating circumstances.” This can result in a severe sentence, such as life in prison without the possibility of parole, or the death penalty.

  Al Baker was stolid as he absorbed the verdict, and Judge Alan Hancock polled the jury. Then he thanked them for their service and dismissed them.

  On Tuesday, October 15, 2013, Al Baker appeared before Judge Hancock for his sentencing.

  During the trial itself, there had been no mention of Al Baker’s criminal background, but at the sentencing hearing Eric Ohme asked the court if he could reveal some of the facts that detectives had unearthed about the newly convicted pizza man–cum–scientific “genius.”

  Hancock nodded.

  Now Ohme told one of Baker’s biggest secrets: his conviction on three counts of unlawful intercourse with a minor. The victim had been his own stepdaughter. He had spent five years in a California prison. Furthermore, Al Baker’s claim to be a physicist with advanced college degrees was suspect. Ohme told the jury that neither he nor the Island County sheriff’s investigators had been able to find any evidence that Baker had a bachelor’s degree—much less any advanced degrees.

  Neither Baker nor his lawyers attempted to verify Al’s academic résumé. The truth was that Al did hold a bachelor’s degree in astrophysics, but he wasn’t being charged in a court of law with bragging, and it is not against the law to be a science whiz show-off. Most likely, Al’s attorneys advised him that he could be opening a can of worms with details about his university attendance, because it would lead to other clues about his unsavory background that would only serve to enhance the prosecution’s case. The last thing Pacher needed were ghosts from Al’s Sonoma County past with tales to tell of his misdeeds.

  Baker and his attorney wisely stayed silent as the prosecution challenged the validity of his degrees.

  “Kathie Hill didn’t know the real Al Baker,” Ohme said. “When Kathie went to sleep that last and final time, she had no idea she was living with a monster.”

  The State recommended a maximum sentence of six hundred months, with an additional twenty-four months for use of a deadly weapon as he committed his wife’s murder—fifty-two years in prison.

  There had always been a line of Kathie Hill’s relatives and friends, seeking justice for her throughout the trial; on this sentencing day, many of them wanted to testify to ask Judge Hancock to mete out the stiffest sentence possible.

  Kathie’s brother—who now lived on Whidbey Island in Clinton—described his late sister as the shining light of the Hill family. “She was the most kind and caring person, and she didn’t deserve to die in such a heinous crime. She was deeply in love with Al Baker. I believe he planned this for a long time.”

  David’s wife, Melody, said Baker had done other “disgusting” things in the past.

  Char Johnson, Kathie’s stepsister, who had flown to Whidbey Island to rescue her two dogs, was next: “She was like a true sister to me.”

  Amy Gralinger, Kathie’s best friend, drew tears from the jury and court watchers as she described what “an incredible, beautiful person” Kathie was. “I knew there was an issue between them over Kathie’s dogs. I offered to take them, but she loved them so . . . There is no punishment severe enough for taking Kathie’s life.”

  So many people had loved Kathie Hill, and one by one they took the witness stand to praise her—her kindness, her willingness to help those who were sick or grieving, her brilliance, and her misplaced love for a man who was a monster. Al Baker himself sat silently as he heard the description “monster” over and over.

  Maybe he had begun to believe that his lies were true. More likely, he was deaf to what Kathie’s family and friends were saying. He didn’t care. Indeed, he hadn’t seen his own mother for more than two decades—and, then, only at Kathie’s urging. On the witness stand, he’d sworn on his mother’s grave that he was innocent. One has to wonder how much his mother’s grave really meant to him.

  Jami Hill testified that the entire Hill family was shocked to hear about her aunt’s husband’s criminal past. She had worked for sixteen months since Kathie died to uncover Al’s expenditures of Kathie’s money; her aunt had kept perfect records, but Baker’s records were a mess or missing entirely. Jami discovered that it was Al who had caused the IRS trouble; he’d simply failed to pay his employees’ withholding taxes.

  Kathie’s cousin, Lori Snider, spoke of the deep roots the Hill family had in Colorado, and of how difficult it was for Kathie to leave there and follow Al Baker so far away from “home.”

  “I would like to visit Whidbey Island—just to walk in her footsteps for a moment. I’m not sure if I can ever get full closure without experiencing a bit of her time there. Hopefully, Kathie will rest in peace now, and her family and friends can start to exhale. Feels like we’ve been holding our breath for a very long time.”

  The task of following Al Baker’s trail was almost overwhelming. But Jami was determined. “You cannot step over a mountain,” she told me, “but if you step over pebble by pebble, you’ll look back and the mountain will be behind you.”

  Even to this day Jami is stepping over “pebbles” as she tries to avenge her aunt Kathie.

  Jami says that no one really knew who Al Baker was. Jami and her attorney, Charles Arndt, are trying to find out why Raytheon had hired Al to work in Antarctica since his record revealed he had been convicted of serious offenses.

  Judge Alan Hancock took a twenty-minute break to gather his thoughts. When he returned, he appeared sh
aken and touched by the heinous aspects of Kathie Hill’s murder. He read Al Baker his rights of appeal. And then he spent several minutes deploring the crime. He had listened well to the witnesses and to the victim’s family. It sounded as if the judge was as appalled by the crime as they were.

  He sentenced the sixty-three-year-old killer to fifty-two years in prison, ensuring he will never walk free again. “All of us had a relationship with a person we thought existed,” Jami told Jessie Stensland, an editor for the South Whidbey Record, “but nobody knew the real him.”

  While researching this book, the suspicious death of Raytheon astrophysicist Rodney Marks was brought to my attention. In May 2000, he died in the South Pole of methanol poisoning. Though not yet officially ruled a homicide, Marks’s death is widely referred to as the South Pole’s first murder. Did Al Baker know Rodney Marks? Was Baker in Antarctica when Marks died? I do not know, but I hope investigators will look into this.

  Only Robert Alan Baker knows the depth of horror of his dark secrets. Maybe one day, he will reveal all. But it is more likely that he will take his secrets to the grave.

  Rest in peace, Kathie Ann Hill.

  A ROAD TRIP TO MURDER

  Some crime victims know when they are being stalked; others have no idea of danger. Why should they? As far as they know, their lifestyle is safe and far off the pathways traveled by thieves, burglars, rapists, and killers. If anyone told them they were dead-center in the gun sights of killers without conscience, they would shake their heads in denial.

  And they would be wrong.

  I don’t know which is worse, to meet deadly strangers or to find out too late that someone you have trusted cares nothing for you and is quite willing to dispose of you—forever. The victims in this third case met someone who fit into both categories; the murderers killed indiscriminately.

  They were full of hate, and heaven help anyone who got in the way of their “project.”

  “DeeDee” Pedersen was born Leslie Mae Sudds on September 13, 1942, in Everett, Washington, to Clara Belle and Melford Willard Sudds; she was their second daughter. She escaped the nickname “Bubbles” because her older sister, Mildred Elsie, already had it. Their younger brother, Willard, was called “Butch.”