May 22, 2024 • 45 mins
On January 19, 2001, Tara Baker was murdered in her apartment.
The perpetrator sexually assaulted her and then lit the apartment on fire. The case went cold in the town of Athens, Georgia, for over 20 years.
On this episode of "Body Bags," Joseph Scott Morgan will break down the science of solving a cold case and Dave Mack will fill in the blanks of the story that shocked Northern Georgia for over 20 years.
Recently the murder of Laken Riley brought the Tara Baker homicide back into the conversation and with great detective work and with biological evidence and DNA science, the cold case became hot again, as hot as the fire the suspect set to destroy evidence of the horror he created.
Transcript Highlights
00:00:09 Introduction of influence
00:01:24 Tragic Cold Case Solved, Tara Baker
00:04:11 Discussion of Tara Baker case and Laken Riley
00:08:32 Discussion of fire in apartment
00:09:24 Talk about find body
00:14:32 Discussion of accelerants
00:19:21 Discussion of death investigation in fire
00:24:41 Discussion of time involved in the attack
00:27:58 Talk about predators selecting their victim
00:31:33 Discussion of how to determine sex assault when body is burned
00:37:20 Discussion of how a burned body is examined
00:38:47 Talk about unsolved cold case
00:41:50 Case solved; Edrick LaMont Faust arrested
00:44:46 Conclusion, Faust is 48, Tara Baker died at 21
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Bodybags with Joseph Scott Morgan. You know, looking back in Tom,
there's some characters out there if you are into literature
that kind of influence I think the way you think,
(00:28):
particularly when you're a kid and you're learning about these
literary giants, they influence you, I think the way you
look at the world. And I got to tell you
there's one character in particular that has always fascinated me.
And there's been various iterations of this character throughout Tom,
(00:48):
but probably this is the first. And his name was Faust.
And Faust actually is known for having made a deal
with the devil. Now this comes through they say at
least that he had a dissatisfaction with his life and
(01:09):
he was unfulfilled. But as a result of this deal
with the devil, he was able to become legendary in
his knowledge of all things, and he could experience anything
that he wanted to experience, almost on tap, if you will.
(01:34):
Today we've got an actual case of tragedy involving a
young woman who was only twenty one years old at
the time of her death, and also a man named Faust.
(01:56):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Bags Brother Dave.
You know, I got to tell you, man, I think
that most people that hearing you talk about forensics on
the show, and they think that I am just by
default a science guy and you know, kind of a
(02:20):
nerdy dude, And I guess I am. Actually I embraced
the term nerd because I always tell my son, who's
twenty two now and he's in a very technical career
that he's being educated in at university right now. I've
always told him, I said, son, nerds rule of the
world and so, and that's the truth. But I got
(02:42):
to tell you, science was I've always been a science guys.
Science was never necessarily my passion. And when I was
in high school, my favorite subject in the world was
actually English and literature and I did That's the one
ap class I actually did in high school back back
(03:02):
during those times. And my professor or teacher was a
guy named doctor James Cook. And doctor Cook has passed
on now, but to have a guy that had a
doctorate in literature that was teaching high school was like
really really remarkable for that period of time. First off,
(03:23):
you know, nowadays you can swing a dead cat hit
somebody with a doctorate there everywhere back then, doctorates were
rare and to have access to that brain. And I
mentioned Faust just a second ago, and Faust is one
of those characters that we explored in high school. And
you know, there's translation between I think what we see
(03:46):
and do in forensics and the classics, because as they say,
there's nothing new under the sun. If you you know,
evil has always been around. And I got to tell you, brother,
the case of Tara Baker that we're talking about today,
this is pure unabashed evil and this family has been suffering,
(04:10):
now loathed these many years from a case that occurred
back in two thousand and one. They have been suffering
all this time. But I think the sweet Lord above,
they finally it looks like they finally have some answers.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
When we were talking about Lake and Riley and that
whole rigormarole, I'm saying that happened with that, not her,
not that the story was rigamarole, just when that was
going on, and yeah, eyes of.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
It, and there was so much around it.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Yeah, this story came up Tara Baker because at the
time it was.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
It did come up. It did come up, and it.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Was mentioned as hey, this isn't the first time we've
been there. Here's an unsolved crime from two thousand and one.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Holy smokes, you just hit me with that. I I'm
just thinking right now the proximity time wise to the
Lincoln Riley homicide and then on on literally on the
heels of this right out of Athens, Georgia. Yeah, this,
this reason has has been solved.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
The reason it hit me was because you mentioned it
and one other person mentioned the Tara Baker story. And
I'm gonna be honest with you, I got it confused
with Tara Grinstead, another unsought case that has been solved
in the last two years, and a Georgia case, George
George case, right, yeah, And so I looked up I
remember Tara Baker, who are we talking about? And I
(05:38):
went and looked it up and I was like, oh
my word. You know, it was one of those things.
And then when I saw it bubbling up last week
that we had a solution, I'm the rumors, you know,
the rumors hit first, and then it's yeah, yeah, yeah.
So Tara was in Athens going to college. She was
accepted the University of Georgia Law School. After she graduate
(06:00):
from Georgia College with two bachelor's degrees. Twachel Yes, many
of us barely.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Anyway, her commitment to social justice was a big deal,
a very inclusive individual, pulling everybody along, you know, the
whole rising tide thing that was her. In a nutshell,
Tara was the person that people looked up to, not
because she was the loudest in the room, but because
she was the person you could count on.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Tara's entered into this world at this point, she's young,
just gorgeous, and but she's had to find a place
to live. And that's that's part of surviving college, because
I think that there are a lot a lot of
brilliant people that have wound up housed in really bad
areas or bad places, and they don't they don't survive
(06:50):
in those environments because it's not it's not healthy, it's
not a productive study area and that sort of thing.
But she had apparently lighted on this this apartment that
she had, and it's kind of a single story structure,
standalone thing, and she sets up housekeeping there, and Lord
have mercy, the horror that kind of unfolded Dave in
(07:12):
this particular case is something that we we don't really
see all the time. On body bags. But certainly it
has been revealed. Now now with these changes in the case,
it's been revealed what she probably went through. Dave's can
you kind of back up a little bit? I'm sorry
I prattled on, but what actually went down relative to
(07:35):
the discovery of Tara.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Tara was living by herself and I'm trying. I want
to make sure I get this right. She heads over
to the law library. She'd by the way, and this
goes back to the college lifestyle she had just after
returning to classes for the Springs amount. She heads to
(08:02):
the law library for a study session with a friend.
By seven thirty, the friend is ready to go, but
Baker not ready to stop. She keeps on studying. That
was her nature. At a quarter to ten, okay, her friend,
her study partner bails a seven thirty terras still there
quarter to ten, studying, She calls her friend from the
(08:24):
library to make sure she got home safe and mentions
that she has plans going to leave in a couple
of minutes and be back at her place. He's living
in an off campus apartment. It's about a fifteen minute
drive from the campus library to her apartment. You know,
I said, Baker was living alone. She had two roommates.
It kind of hit me in the head. Women she's
got roommates. They had both left earlier that evening for
(08:46):
a weekend trip out of town. Friday morning, all right,
so we go. Thursday night, she's at the law library
with a friend. Calls a friend to make sure the
friend got home. Tells the friend, I'll be leaving around ten.
Her roommates are gone for the weekend. We believe she
made it home because of what happened. The next morning,
(09:08):
nine point thirty, she misses a class. This is not
something she does. Mid morning hours January nineteenth, the Athens,
Clark County firefighters are called to an apartment fire Firefighters
break down a locked door to access the unit. They
find a fire has broken out in the bedroom. It
(09:30):
has burned through the roof. Amongst the rubble, firefighters discover
the body of a young woman who is later identified
as Tara Baker, so the thumbnail. Thursday night, she meets
a friend at the law library to study. The friend
bales at seven thirty Terrace, stays there till ten. She
(09:51):
talks to her friend at a quarter to ten, says
I'll be leaving here at about ten o'clock. That's the
last time we know she had contact with anybody. We
know she go to her apartment because she was found
the next day, so a twelve hour window basically of
the time we know she was planning to be home
ten PM till basically ten o'clock the next morning, so
(10:13):
a twelve hour window. And in that time period, Joe
something happened that caused her to miss her nine thirty
AM class for firemen to be called because there's a fire.
So whatever happened happened before nine thirty when she missed
the class.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Yeah, and you know, just so you understand, one of
the big determinants here when we talk about fire cases
is you want to know you want to understand causality, Okay,
because there's any number of ways that fires can start,
and to be able to examine that, you can have
(10:55):
natural events which some people will refer to as act
of God, you know, lightning strates like for instance, or
maybe uh maybe for instance, uh, you know, like like
our friends out in California experience in other locations out
west with wildfires, which are you know, essentially acts of God.
And you can't have an idiot that thumps a cigarette
out of the window going down the road, and that
(11:18):
has been known to start those types of things starting
to think yeah, and so some sometimes. But but that's
the key, isn't it, Dave. When you walk in to
a scene and there before you are the burned remains
of a home and the charred body of a young,
(11:42):
beautiful woman who is working harder than most people can
even begin to appreciate. You want answers, and unfortunately it
took over two decades to arrive at some answers. Let's
(12:14):
track back in time here a little bit, back to
two thousand and one, just for particularly folks that might
be a bit younger, Dave, this is all occurring before
nine to eleven happened. You know, we're still months months
before this that event ever occurred. It was I have
(12:36):
to say, it was a different world prior to nine
to eleven. I probably can get you to agree to that.
More than likely it changed. It changed everything. So you know,
we had obviously we had the internet, we had news
on the internet. But when you were mentioning the earlier
case from young Lady Lake and do you do you
(13:00):
remember and I know you do, because we were right
in a swirl of it. The media saturation relative to
that case, how we had data coming in all the time.
There were articles and things and people making comments. We
did a podcast about it, I appeared on Nancy Show.
I appeared on national television shows about it. Terra's case
(13:24):
for the time received some recognition. I don't know how
far and wide this spread, but I do know that
at the moment in time, and I was still working
in Georgia at the Medical Examiner's office, this case was
all over the news in Atlanta because it was such
you never heard of anything happening like this, and they
(13:48):
knew that they had a problem early on. They identified
this case as a homicide. But you know, first off,
when one of the things you have to consider when
you're examining a fire scene, you think about the time
of year it is, that's the first thing that comes
to mind for me. I have worked more fire deaths
in the winter time than I certainly ever have in
(14:08):
the summertime. And it's because of heating issues, where you
have individuals that have turned on a heater for the
first time when the temperature drops and they don't know
if it's still functioning. Dave actually had one guy that
lived in a little shack years and years ago, and
he had electricity but didn't have a space eater, and
(14:28):
he had bed bugs and he would kill he would
kill the bed bugs with kerosene and it's an old
fashioned remedy. Spray it on the bed. And it got
so cold that he had two army blankets. He laid
down with an army blanket over him, and he had
another army blanket that he wrapped an iron in and
he plugged it in and slept with the iron and
(14:48):
it shorted and it killed him. And so you have
events that occur like this. I've had people in temporary
shelters before. I had six homeless guys one time that
were sleep in a shelter right adjacent to the Carter
Center in Atlanta, in a plywood temporary housing thing that
they had built for these folks, and they one of
(15:09):
the guys came in drunk and knocked over the kerosene
heater and the whole thing went up, like Kenley, So
weather plays a role in this. So you don't want
to be predisposed as an investigator to think, Okay, what
what am I looking at here? Is this actually a
case involving a short circuit. Is it a case involving
I don't know. Was there a fireplace or was there
(15:31):
some other alternative source of heat that maybe? You know
my family, my granny in her old house, she would
turn on her gas up and leave the door open
in order to heat the house, you know, because she
didn't have a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
You put boiling water on this stove, yeah, get high
and go yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Yeah, And it's kind of it kind of forms of cloud,
you know, a warm cloud. And so when you go
onto these scenes, that's one of the things you're contemplating
as an investigator, what's the origin, what's the source of
a fire like this? And then you know, the specter
of a potential homicide raises his head, not completely spinds
your view around.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
That's what I was just going to. This is the
day before George W. Bush is inauguration. Okay, just when
you think about the things that were going on the
day this happened, Bill Clinton was still president of the
United States, he was in his last twenty four hours
of president. And because when we were talking about this,
and you think about she was in town beginning the
(16:30):
spring semester, right that had me thinking that it was
springtime already. It wasn't for the South that time of
January into the first two weeks of February. That's where
we usually have a colder time we did the rest
of the year.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
We do.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
And when you have a fire, and in the South,
when you have cold, people do immediately think space heater
or something along those lines. But it is an apartment.
Things are a little different in apartment complex or an
apartment in general. So when they get to this fire
in the morning, and I'm wondering, Joe, as they put
out the fire, I mean, they're going to be you know,
(17:06):
when firemen come into a place like that, they're scoping
at damage of where the fire started and whare to
put it out? I mean, isn't that the goal here?
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Well? Yeah, actually they're looking they're going to attack those areas.
And I love the way firefighters address fire. You know,
they talk alike, they talk like they're in the army.
It's really how they you know. And they move out
in teams like this, and they're going to attack a
central area to knock it down.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
But don't they treat it like a living thing? Yeah?
That is consuming oxygen, That it actually has to be killed.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
It does. It does, and I think even de Niro
said famously, and that's a line that they lifted from
the Fire Service. Mind you, in the movie back Draft,
there's a soliloquy by Niro. He plays an arson investigator
in that movie, and he talks about the fire is
a living, breathing thing. I'd heard that for years prior
(17:56):
to that, and it was a license that was taken
by the for that thing. But it's true. It requires
there there's several things that have to happen. It's called
an uninhibited chemical reaction. And so you have to have heat,
a source of heat. Then you have to have an initiator,
which you know might be gasoline or some other fuel source,
(18:17):
and then or accelerant force. And then you have to
have a see what's it called. You have to have
a fuel source like it could be dry wall, it
could be carpeting, it could be wood of any kind
that's placed over an area. And then you have to
have an uninhibited supply of oxygen. And it's almost like
(18:39):
a big cycle that goes around. That's how fire works.
And suddenly you know, at some point in time, fire
is going to play itself out, you know it. Sometimes
it takes longer than other times. And when people dump
gas in areas, that's merely an accelerant. How many folks
have ever taken gas? I would not, please do not
(18:59):
do this, all right, but have taken gas, for instance,
and thrown it into an already burning fire. What does
it do? It explodes? It's scary, it is, and it
flashes over. But guess what after that initial flash over,
it dies out really quickly. Now you might be trying
to initiate that wood or the fuel source that you
(19:20):
have there to burn more effectively, but after that gas
is essentially that major component of gas is gone, that
has been burned away. The fire is now totally dependent
upon the supply of oxygen and the source of fuel
to continue to burn. Okay. The trick though, in any
(19:42):
kind of death investigation involving fire is going to be
surrounding areas because you're going to want to know where
the most damage is and anything that was being worn
by a victim. And because many times with arsenists that
are trying to get rid of a body or evidence,
(20:04):
they will just splash gas all over a body. And
I think I've spoken of this before, but just kind
of as a little primer, we retrieve those those items
of clothing and also things that are attached to the
body because sometimes elements get stuck to bodies, to say
(20:24):
the very to put it politely, We'll collect those at
autopsy and then we keep them and we submit those
for examination at crime lab for accelerants. And if we
can find a specific accelerant, say if it's a gasoline,
you can you can get it down to the brand
Dave because yeah, you know, because gas is gas, contrary
(20:48):
to what they tell you. You know, what makes it
different is you ever see these there you go put
up bump, But what you ever see these commercials for
gas where they say, well, it's got techron in it,
whatever the heck guy it is, yeah, and it's got
these additives that come into it that they claim are
(21:09):
going to keep your fuel lines clean. That's the designator
that separates all gases from other gases, because those are
unique to that corporation or that entity, and they they're trademarked.
They're trademarked, and so crime labs actually have a list
of these things. So if they recovered that molecular structure,
then you can say, okay, well I know that this
(21:31):
person went to a particular gas station. How many of
those types of gas stations selling that gas are located
in proximity to this event? And you see that's a
big indicator here, So you have to be really careful.
It seems when you're working these cases.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Well, unbelievable, unbelievable. It never occurred to me that that
would happen.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
But you know, in.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Solving a crime, every piece of evidence comes into play.
Where that accelerant came from, who bought that, and now
with everything in surveillance cameras down right too, when that
was bought. But back to Tara for just a minute here.
When the fireman approached the apartment, they find that the
fire is burning through the roof in a bedroom and
(22:20):
I'm thinking in my mind, I'm envisioning that there's a
fire on the bed that's been piled you know, we
have terror on the bed right right, and the fire
is going straight up. That has the fire spread throughout
the entire apartment or is it isolated to that room?
And that event of her body is there to destroy
the body and as the first cause.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Yeah, her body either being on the bed or adjacent
to the bed and right you are about that day.
Because you look for the area that has the most destruction.
Isn't rocket science, Okay, Wherever you have the most destruction
is where the heaviest concentration of heat is going to be,
which is the byproduct of fire, and the hotter the area,
(23:04):
the more destruction. And the reason it's going through the roof,
what's the fire doing. It's seeking the oxygen, Okay, and
it will do anything I say it like it's an entity.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
But again, it has to have oxygen.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Yeah, and the fire is seeking, it's seeking a fuel supply,
you know, that uninhibited flow of oxygen. And so that's
why if you if you see a case and I've
you know, I've worked many that are like this where
you have evidence of searing or smoke damage on the roof,
(23:39):
you know that this seeing is probably burned for a while,
that it took a bit of time for the fire
service to get there and knock this thing down. And
so you're looking at this and you're thinking, well, if
I'm seeing this externally, oh my lord, it is going
to be really really damaged inside the residents. Dave mac
(24:19):
I gotta tell you one of the most intriguing things
that you mentioned about Terra's case was the length of
time between when she was last seen and when the
fire was discovered. Keep in mind, schools back in session.
(24:40):
There's people on campus, there's people in habit and you
go to place like Athens, those apartments are filled and
more than likely they're filled with kids that are there
for school, they're living off campus. Somebody's going to take notice.
They're going to take notice, particularly that time of day
when people are up and running. I mean, you remember
what it was like. You know in college, that time
of is kind of like you've got to take classes
(25:02):
at that time of day. You know you're going to
be heading out and people are going to notice this.
So you've got a fire burning this intensely, but yet
it's suddenly noticed. That time gap, to me is kind
of intriguing as an investigator.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
That's why I was trying to get into that, because
there are certain things that we know about Tara's last
twenty four hour of life. I mean, and it is
because she was in school, and because she was a
creature of habit, and because here we are just starting
back in the semester, and where is she in the
law library studying they just took back in session, and
(25:41):
she's already putting in the work. She meets a friend
there who the friend bails at seven thirty and Tara's
there for another two and a half hours. That's who
she was. And so knowing that, realizing she wasn't one
to go out gambling about, you know, she went home.
And we have this time period just ten o'clock at
night because that's when we know she left the library
(26:04):
or was planning on leaving the library and heading home.
So ten pm we have no contact with her other
than what I'm aware of. Now. If I'm wrong, please
please please correct me. But ten pm we know she's
heading to her apartment. Now, was because this was an
unsolved crime for many many years, was the suspect laying
(26:25):
in wait? Had he been watching the apartment? There were
two other roommates, but they were gone for the weekend?
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Important point right there, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Because I'm wondering was this somebody that knew them? Was
this friend of one of them that knew Tara was
going to be alone for the weekend that her roommates
were gone.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
I think, boyd, that's you know, and that's That's a
big reveal there when you think about that. Who would
have four knowledge of the fact that these two would
be out of pocket for that period of time to
show a woman to be isolated in this And you know,
first off, I was thinking, well, for those that have
never seen it, I have just allowed me indulge me
(27:07):
and let me describe it to you. This this Law
library at Uga is how can I describe it? Cavernous?
It's it's vast, there's all kinds of points of observation.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Are you suggesting somebody was watching her? It could have been.
And that big? It is that big.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
And also the thing about it the Uga campus is,
you know, I guess some people use the term bucolic.
It kind of rolls. There's a lot of old oak trees,
dark spaces hedges, all those sorts of things, and it's
really well manicured. But if somebody's laying in wait out
there in the dark, waiting for this young woman to leave,
maybe they had targeted her before this time. They had
(27:50):
an awareness of her and she probably fit a type.
Because most predators do in fact have a type. Some
of them are opportunity. They'll take the first victim they
can but sometimes they have a type of person that
kind of slips onto their radar where they they look
for the opportunity. But the fact that the roommates would
(28:12):
have been gone is something that is going to give
give me an idea here that you have to be
going through the backgrounds of the roommates very thoroughly. And
they might even have an awareness of it. It might
be a peripheral. Maybe they said something while they're sitting
around drinking coffee. We know me and you know, and
(28:33):
she and I are both going out of town this weekend,
and all you got, you know, Ef Hutton. They're kind
of leaning in and they kind of hear this, and
what a horrible thing, you know, to think about. But here,
here's here's the problem, Dave. We've got this huge gap
of time. This fire did not initiate overnight. This fire
(28:54):
is burning in the morning. People are just taking notice
of it. That leaves this time from when she was
lasting at the law library until she's finally found by
fire service in there the next morning. What what happened
during that time? What had she gone through? Look, what
did she even do her?
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Here's my question, Joe. We know that firemen are there
they're called to put this fire out. And in an apartment,
I'm going to guess here that normally the fireman would
be called by the person that lives in the apartment saying, hey,
I started a fire, I can't get it out. Help,
you know, in this case, they were called because somebody
saw the fire coming through the roof of the apartment, right,
(29:37):
And I don't know that they expected to see a victim, because,
to be honest with you, she was supposed to be
in class at nine thirty that morning and this is
after that.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Yeah, and so how you know this is a bold
thing if you're going to be a fire setter. Most
most fire setters do the sort of thing at night.
And I was looking at the layout of of where,
you know, where this event actually occurred, and the old
address was one sixty Fawn Drive in Athens, and it's
(30:09):
it's it's a collection of kind of the road is
kind of I don't know, it's curvy that goes through here,
but there's two outlets. There's not a cul de sac
on this road, so it's almost it's not truly a
through road, but it is a connecting road that you
can get out to other major arteries. So if an
(30:30):
individual is walking away from it, just walking down sidewalk casually,
hoping that no one notices the fire, he might appear
to be innocuous at that point in time. I don't
know that anybody saw anybody sprinting away because I don't
know about you, men, But when I'm around fire, if
it's out of control, I want to get away from
it as quickly as I possibly can. No, with all
(30:52):
of my hair and skin intactooed and all of my clothing.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
All right, Well, how do you know, Joe, when you've
got a fire that requires firemen to show up, they
put the fire out and find the body of a woman. Yeah,
and I know that according to the UH, I guess
the police are the ones that actually revealed that Baker
was beaten, that she was stabbed, strangled, and potentially sexually assaulted.
(31:21):
How in the world it's hard we're going to find
out all this?
Speaker 1 (31:24):
Yeah, Oh my gosh, it's so difficult, Dave, so very difficult.
So many changes occur to the body. And let me
tell you, just from the scene, what would have happened.
What do we know about the fire, what draw it
to the attention of a of a passer by. What
did you say, just a moment ago they saw the
fire going through the roof. Yeah, and guess what happens.
People don't think about this, but if you have a
(31:46):
fire that is involving the roof, guess what happens to
the ceilings in those rooms that collapse. So you've got
you've got the studs in the ceiling, You've got.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
I got to stock you. My thought, Joe, I'm not kidding.
My thought was that you have the bedroom, you have
the bed, you have Tara on the bed, And to
be honest with you, in my mind, I was picturing
stuff thrown on top of her that would act as
some type of fuel for the fire. That the fire
is lit and it goes straight up from the bed
and Tara and burns a hole in the ceiling and
burns a hole in the roof. That's what I was thinking.
(32:19):
And that's not the case.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
No, it causes, it compromises the strength structurally and so
and it goes pretty quickly and it will collapse, particularly
when they start hitting it with water. This is the
other thing that folks don't realize. Did you know that?
Like the when you take sheet rock, for instance, that's
(32:44):
made out of gypsum. When you hit that with water,
guess what it turns into inside of a fire scene
when you can when you when you combine it with
all of the other chart and it turns to mud.
And so you're slogging through all of this and there's
like pieces of wood other debris that have collapsed in
and in one sense it protects the body, but in
(33:07):
the other sense it erases evidence and the fact that
with Terra they were able to identify sharp force injuries,
blunt force injuries, which means she was struck probably multiple times.
And I think the most glaring is that she was
(33:29):
asphyxiated somehow, perhaps with ligature or hands. And you will
see you will see this externally. Even I've had cases
where people have been stabbed and cut and have been burned,
you can still see the insized injuries. Here's the problem, though,
As the body heats up, it hardens and it cracks.
(33:52):
People don't realize that that the remains actually cracked. The
skin cracks because you've got skin overlining a layer of fat,
and as that cooks, it begins to split. And so
being able to delineate between a sharp force injury and
a fire related artifact, which is what these are called.
It's a fire related artifact that presents on the body.
(34:15):
It takes these autopsies, Dave take hours, hours to do
because you're having to it's almost like putting together a
jigsaw puzzle in mud because your vision is so compromised.
That's why X rays are really important. Many times you'll
(34:36):
X ray fire bodies. You'll find nails, you'll find screws,
anything else that's around this area that may have fallen
into the bag with the body when you're collecting them.
Because most of the time you don't x ray the
body outside of the back. You put the plates under
the bag and you x ray the bodies while they're
in there. So you have to account for all of
(34:57):
this as you're going along. And also with fire, yes,
you're thinking, well where they shot and if they were shot,
are there going to be a little lead storm in
there or maybe an intact projectile. So my gosh, man,
it takes hours to make your way through it. Then
on top of it, if that wasn't enough, fire fractures bone.
(35:19):
The hotter the fire gets, particularly with the skull, the
skull will begin to first off, the brain boils and
it splits the skin outside the fire does the brain
will boil almost not totally, but the liquid portion. Because
the brain is not as firm as you might think
(35:39):
it is in life. The brain will begin to expand
inside the cranial vault, and the heat externally, combined with
the internal events going on, will actually cause these kind
of heat fractures in the skull. So you have to
make your way through that. Is this related to say,
blunt force trauma or is this related to an artifact?
Speaker 2 (36:01):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (36:01):
After after the fire has passed. Uh, So you've got
the calculus in this thing. Fire fire deaths are a
lot harder to work, for instance, than even decompos decomposed bodies,
because you the body is continuing to be traumatized after death.
The human remains. So it's a it's a tough thing.
But but here's here's I think my point. Whatever they
(36:27):
assessed at the time of her autopsy, Dave, they were
able to recognize these three types of trauma which would
be manifested internally. So if you've got a choking event
or strangulation event, you'll see hemorrhage in the soft tissues
of the neck, stab wounds you will have a track
(36:49):
that is making its way through certain organ systems. You
can pick up on that. The bludgeoning might be a
bit more difficult. If it's a beating type type of event,
you might can find areas of hemorrhage, but you really
have to walk a find line there where you're trying
to assess what happened anti mortem and post mortem. But
(37:12):
here's the real thing here, this is where the truth
comes out. They've they've used the term sodomy here. They're
saying that she was sodomized. Now that means many different
things to different people, but she was sexually assaulted. So
(37:35):
if she was sexually assaulted, knowing what we know now,
they were able to glean some type of biological sample
from her, I think probably through a rate kit possibly,
And they've been holding onto this all these years trying
to explore and it would not surprise me in the
(37:58):
least bit if potentially familial forensic genetic DNA genealogy was
not involved in this, because it's taken all of this time,
they have some kind of biological sample. Because Dave, it
appears that DNA has unlocked the answers in this case.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
The part about this that again we talked about it earlier,
the death of Lake and Riley that opened up the
exercise of unsolved crimes in this area of the state,
and this was one that was mentioned Joe. It had
been an unsolved crime for so long, and we have
(38:40):
had in the last ten years DNA becoming front and
center on unsolved cold cases. At what point do the
investigators decide it's time to run this through the database
or is there another way? I mean, I know you
(39:00):
have CODIS and we're developing a DNA thing like cotis,
But at what point do they send this off and say,
here's what we've got to see if you can find
a match. Are we going to how are we going
to what are we going to do? Genetic genealogy? Are
we going to twenty three and meters? How do they
go about doing that?
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Well, they're going to exhaust every every potential possibility to have.
CODIS is going to be the first stop along the
continuum here to see if you can get a viable
sample at that particular time. Does it go back to
any individual that is already pre existing in the CODIS database,
(39:39):
and there's two sections to CODIS, you have those individuals
that are known that are part of the databank, that
have committed some kind of crime that would compel the
state to take a sample from them and enter them
into that database. Then you have the unknown or it
(39:59):
has in the past, it's been referred to as the
forensic database, and that is DNA samples from locations where
you you do not have a perpetrator. They're unknown cases,
and they can get a hit off those. So if
you've got a if you've got like say, two cases
in Mississippi and Alabama, and maybe you've got another one
(40:22):
in Tennessee, and all of a sudden you have a
fourth one that occurs in Georgia, that's going to give
you an indication that the the donor of that of
that sample is migrating about. You just don't know who
they are at this point, tom My, you know this
this case is so over the top, Dave. It's really
hard to believe that that this individual would not have
(40:46):
acted out sexually before, because this is a very violent
event where I think, actually, for you know, my two cents,
I think that he probably held her in that residence
for some time. Remember they're all alone, and what were
we looking at is like twelve twelve hours, twelve hours
for the fire has ever seen. So yeah, was this
(41:07):
an all night event that went on where this individual
perhaps tortured her throughout the night, where he beat her repeatedly,
choked her repeatedly without killing her, or stabbed her, or
you know, inflicted in sized wounds which are slices over
a period of time.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
What we know is that during that twelve hours, Joe,
a wonderful, beautiful, smart, loving person, was taken from planet Earth.
And we now have, after twenty three years, we've had
somebody in custody. The police have arrested Edric Lamont Faust.
(41:50):
You mentioned this early on how that name would come
into play. He was twenty five at the time of
this murder. He's now forty eight. He has been charged
with felony murder, two counts malice murder, aggravated assault, possession
of a knife during the commission of a crime, aggravated soatomy,
concealing the death of another person, tampering with evidence, and
(42:12):
first degree arson Joe. Based on these charges, police learned
a lot. Because they've got possession of a knife during
the commission of a crime. Doesn't that mean that he
brought it to the department.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
Yeah, yeah, I think that it probably does. And what
we don't know because the investigation from the perspective of
and hear me right, from the perspective of the fact
that they have effected, finally affected and arrest, this investigation
is kind of beginning anew you know now, because you
have a target. Now, what we don't know is was
(42:51):
the knife a leave behind or did they find it
on his person when he was arrested. Which while that
many years after the fact, I would list more towards
having left behind and those injuries would have been assessed,
the sharpforce injuries would have been assessed based upon the
physical evidence that that particular type of knife or knife
(43:14):
style would have left behind. And they have a lot
to work with here. And you know, keep in mind,
Faust has only been charged. He has not been convicted.
He'll have his day in court. But something interesting came
up as a result of Terra's homicide. The Georgia State Assembly,
(43:37):
the General Assembly, actually passed a law called the Coleman
Baker Act.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
And it.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
The other victim that's named in this case or in
this law is a lady named Ronda Sue Coleman and
she was murdered in Hazel. Her steort are back in
nineteen ninety. And what this act actually does, Dave, is
it it provides families with access to the files in
(44:07):
these cold cases so that they can work alongside the police,
that they can go back and see where the police are.
And this thing was just filed in twenty twenty three.
It was just written into law at that particular time,
because you know, families are so frustrated. I can't even
even though I've worked these cases over the years, these
(44:29):
cold cases, I can not even begin to put myself
in the position of families and the grief, the constant
grief that they're faced with. But this one little shining
light is beaming through, and unfortunately it's in the wake
of the snuffing out of another shining light. Terror Baker
(44:50):
died when she was only twenty one years old, just
off campus of the University of Georgia. I'm Joseph Scott
Morgan and this is Boddie Bags
Speaker 2 (45:04):
Mm hmm.
Bodybags with Joseph Scott Morgan. You know, looking back in Tom,
there's some characters out there if you are into literature
that kind of influence I think the way you think,
(00:28):
particularly when you're a kid and you're learning about these
literary giants, they influence you, I think the way you
look at the world. And I got to tell you
there's one character in particular that has always fascinated me.
And there's been various iterations of this character throughout Tom,
(00:48):
but probably this is the first. And his name was Faust.
And Faust actually is known for having made a deal
with the devil. Now this comes through they say at
least that he had a dissatisfaction with his life and
(01:09):
he was unfulfilled. But as a result of this deal
with the devil, he was able to become legendary in
his knowledge of all things, and he could experience anything
that he wanted to experience, almost on tap, if you will.
(01:34):
Today we've got an actual case of tragedy involving a
young woman who was only twenty one years old at
the time of her death, and also a man named Faust.
(01:56):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Bags Brother Dave.
You know, I got to tell you, man, I think
that most people that hearing you talk about forensics on
the show, and they think that I am just by
default a science guy and you know, kind of a
(02:20):
nerdy dude, And I guess I am. Actually I embraced
the term nerd because I always tell my son, who's
twenty two now and he's in a very technical career
that he's being educated in at university right now. I've
always told him, I said, son, nerds rule of the
world and so, and that's the truth. But I got
(02:42):
to tell you, science was I've always been a science guys.
Science was never necessarily my passion. And when I was
in high school, my favorite subject in the world was
actually English and literature and I did That's the one
ap class I actually did in high school back back
(03:02):
during those times. And my professor or teacher was a
guy named doctor James Cook. And doctor Cook has passed
on now, but to have a guy that had a
doctorate in literature that was teaching high school was like
really really remarkable for that period of time. First off,
(03:23):
you know, nowadays you can swing a dead cat hit
somebody with a doctorate there everywhere back then, doctorates were
rare and to have access to that brain. And I
mentioned Faust just a second ago, and Faust is one
of those characters that we explored in high school. And
you know, there's translation between I think what we see
(03:46):
and do in forensics and the classics, because as they say,
there's nothing new under the sun. If you you know,
evil has always been around. And I got to tell you, brother,
the case of Tara Baker that we're talking about today,
this is pure unabashed evil and this family has been suffering,
(04:10):
now loathed these many years from a case that occurred
back in two thousand and one. They have been suffering
all this time. But I think the sweet Lord above,
they finally it looks like they finally have some answers.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
When we were talking about Lake and Riley and that
whole rigormarole, I'm saying that happened with that, not her,
not that the story was rigamarole, just when that was
going on, and yeah, eyes of.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
It, and there was so much around it.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Yeah, this story came up Tara Baker because at the
time it was.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
It did come up. It did come up, and it.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Was mentioned as hey, this isn't the first time we've
been there. Here's an unsolved crime from two thousand and one.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Holy smokes, you just hit me with that. I I'm
just thinking right now the proximity time wise to the
Lincoln Riley homicide and then on on literally on the
heels of this right out of Athens, Georgia. Yeah, this,
this reason has has been solved.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
The reason it hit me was because you mentioned it
and one other person mentioned the Tara Baker story. And
I'm gonna be honest with you, I got it confused
with Tara Grinstead, another unsought case that has been solved
in the last two years, and a Georgia case, George
George case, right, yeah, And so I looked up I
remember Tara Baker, who are we talking about? And I
(05:38):
went and looked it up and I was like, oh
my word. You know, it was one of those things.
And then when I saw it bubbling up last week
that we had a solution, I'm the rumors, you know,
the rumors hit first, and then it's yeah, yeah, yeah.
So Tara was in Athens going to college. She was
accepted the University of Georgia Law School. After she graduate
(06:00):
from Georgia College with two bachelor's degrees. Twachel Yes, many
of us barely.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Anyway, her commitment to social justice was a big deal,
a very inclusive individual, pulling everybody along, you know, the
whole rising tide thing that was her. In a nutshell,
Tara was the person that people looked up to, not
because she was the loudest in the room, but because
she was the person you could count on.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Tara's entered into this world at this point, she's young,
just gorgeous, and but she's had to find a place
to live. And that's that's part of surviving college, because
I think that there are a lot a lot of
brilliant people that have wound up housed in really bad
areas or bad places, and they don't they don't survive
(06:50):
in those environments because it's not it's not healthy, it's
not a productive study area and that sort of thing.
But she had apparently lighted on this this apartment that
she had, and it's kind of a single story structure,
standalone thing, and she sets up housekeeping there, and Lord
have mercy, the horror that kind of unfolded Dave in
(07:12):
this particular case is something that we we don't really
see all the time. On body bags. But certainly it
has been revealed. Now now with these changes in the case,
it's been revealed what she probably went through. Dave's can
you kind of back up a little bit? I'm sorry
I prattled on, but what actually went down relative to
(07:35):
the discovery of Tara.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Tara was living by herself and I'm trying. I want
to make sure I get this right. She heads over
to the law library. She'd by the way, and this
goes back to the college lifestyle she had just after
returning to classes for the Springs amount. She heads to
(08:02):
the law library for a study session with a friend.
By seven thirty, the friend is ready to go, but
Baker not ready to stop. She keeps on studying. That
was her nature. At a quarter to ten, okay, her friend,
her study partner bails a seven thirty terras still there
quarter to ten, studying, She calls her friend from the
(08:24):
library to make sure she got home safe and mentions
that she has plans going to leave in a couple
of minutes and be back at her place. He's living
in an off campus apartment. It's about a fifteen minute
drive from the campus library to her apartment. You know,
I said, Baker was living alone. She had two roommates.
It kind of hit me in the head. Women she's
got roommates. They had both left earlier that evening for
(08:46):
a weekend trip out of town. Friday morning, all right,
so we go. Thursday night, she's at the law library
with a friend. Calls a friend to make sure the
friend got home. Tells the friend, I'll be leaving around ten.
Her roommates are gone for the weekend. We believe she
made it home because of what happened. The next morning,
(09:08):
nine point thirty, she misses a class. This is not
something she does. Mid morning hours January nineteenth, the Athens,
Clark County firefighters are called to an apartment fire Firefighters
break down a locked door to access the unit. They
find a fire has broken out in the bedroom. It
(09:30):
has burned through the roof. Amongst the rubble, firefighters discover
the body of a young woman who is later identified
as Tara Baker, so the thumbnail. Thursday night, she meets
a friend at the law library to study. The friend
bales at seven thirty Terrace, stays there till ten. She
(09:51):
talks to her friend at a quarter to ten, says
I'll be leaving here at about ten o'clock. That's the
last time we know she had contact with anybody. We
know she go to her apartment because she was found
the next day, so a twelve hour window basically of
the time we know she was planning to be home
ten PM till basically ten o'clock the next morning, so
(10:13):
a twelve hour window. And in that time period, Joe
something happened that caused her to miss her nine thirty
AM class for firemen to be called because there's a fire.
So whatever happened happened before nine thirty when she missed
the class.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Yeah, and you know, just so you understand, one of
the big determinants here when we talk about fire cases
is you want to know you want to understand causality, Okay,
because there's any number of ways that fires can start,
and to be able to examine that, you can have
(10:55):
natural events which some people will refer to as act
of God, you know, lightning strates like for instance, or
maybe uh maybe for instance, uh, you know, like like
our friends out in California experience in other locations out
west with wildfires, which are you know, essentially acts of God.
And you can't have an idiot that thumps a cigarette
out of the window going down the road, and that
(11:18):
has been known to start those types of things starting
to think yeah, and so some sometimes. But but that's
the key, isn't it, Dave. When you walk in to
a scene and there before you are the burned remains
of a home and the charred body of a young,
(11:42):
beautiful woman who is working harder than most people can
even begin to appreciate. You want answers, and unfortunately it
took over two decades to arrive at some answers. Let's
(12:14):
track back in time here a little bit, back to
two thousand and one, just for particularly folks that might
be a bit younger, Dave, this is all occurring before
nine to eleven happened. You know, we're still months months
before this that event ever occurred. It was I have
(12:36):
to say, it was a different world prior to nine
to eleven. I probably can get you to agree to that.
More than likely it changed. It changed everything. So you know,
we had obviously we had the internet, we had news
on the internet. But when you were mentioning the earlier
case from young Lady Lake and do you do you
(13:00):
remember and I know you do, because we were right
in a swirl of it. The media saturation relative to
that case, how we had data coming in all the time.
There were articles and things and people making comments. We
did a podcast about it, I appeared on Nancy Show.
I appeared on national television shows about it. Terra's case
(13:24):
for the time received some recognition. I don't know how
far and wide this spread, but I do know that
at the moment in time, and I was still working
in Georgia at the Medical Examiner's office, this case was
all over the news in Atlanta because it was such
you never heard of anything happening like this, and they
(13:48):
knew that they had a problem early on. They identified
this case as a homicide. But you know, first off,
when one of the things you have to consider when
you're examining a fire scene, you think about the time
of year it is, that's the first thing that comes
to mind for me. I have worked more fire deaths
in the winter time than I certainly ever have in
(14:08):
the summertime. And it's because of heating issues, where you
have individuals that have turned on a heater for the
first time when the temperature drops and they don't know
if it's still functioning. Dave actually had one guy that
lived in a little shack years and years ago, and
he had electricity but didn't have a space eater, and
(14:28):
he had bed bugs and he would kill he would
kill the bed bugs with kerosene and it's an old
fashioned remedy. Spray it on the bed. And it got
so cold that he had two army blankets. He laid
down with an army blanket over him, and he had
another army blanket that he wrapped an iron in and
he plugged it in and slept with the iron and
(14:48):
it shorted and it killed him. And so you have
events that occur like this. I've had people in temporary
shelters before. I had six homeless guys one time that
were sleep in a shelter right adjacent to the Carter
Center in Atlanta, in a plywood temporary housing thing that
they had built for these folks, and they one of
(15:09):
the guys came in drunk and knocked over the kerosene
heater and the whole thing went up, like Kenley, So
weather plays a role in this. So you don't want
to be predisposed as an investigator to think, Okay, what
what am I looking at here? Is this actually a
case involving a short circuit. Is it a case involving
I don't know. Was there a fireplace or was there
(15:31):
some other alternative source of heat that maybe? You know
my family, my granny in her old house, she would
turn on her gas up and leave the door open
in order to heat the house, you know, because she
didn't have a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
You put boiling water on this stove, yeah, get high
and go yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Yeah, And it's kind of it kind of forms of cloud,
you know, a warm cloud. And so when you go
onto these scenes, that's one of the things you're contemplating
as an investigator, what's the origin, what's the source of
a fire like this? And then you know, the specter
of a potential homicide raises his head, not completely spinds
your view around.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
That's what I was just going to. This is the
day before George W. Bush is inauguration. Okay, just when
you think about the things that were going on the
day this happened, Bill Clinton was still president of the
United States, he was in his last twenty four hours
of president. And because when we were talking about this,
and you think about she was in town beginning the
(16:30):
spring semester, right that had me thinking that it was
springtime already. It wasn't for the South that time of
January into the first two weeks of February. That's where
we usually have a colder time we did the rest
of the year.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
We do.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
And when you have a fire, and in the South,
when you have cold, people do immediately think space heater
or something along those lines. But it is an apartment.
Things are a little different in apartment complex or an
apartment in general. So when they get to this fire
in the morning, and I'm wondering, Joe, as they put
out the fire, I mean, they're going to be you know,
(17:06):
when firemen come into a place like that, they're scoping
at damage of where the fire started and whare to
put it out? I mean, isn't that the goal here?
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Well? Yeah, actually they're looking they're going to attack those areas.
And I love the way firefighters address fire. You know,
they talk alike, they talk like they're in the army.
It's really how they you know. And they move out
in teams like this, and they're going to attack a
central area to knock it down.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
But don't they treat it like a living thing? Yeah?
That is consuming oxygen, That it actually has to be killed.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
It does. It does, and I think even de Niro
said famously, and that's a line that they lifted from
the Fire Service. Mind you, in the movie back Draft,
there's a soliloquy by Niro. He plays an arson investigator
in that movie, and he talks about the fire is
a living, breathing thing. I'd heard that for years prior
(17:56):
to that, and it was a license that was taken
by the for that thing. But it's true. It requires
there there's several things that have to happen. It's called
an uninhibited chemical reaction. And so you have to have heat,
a source of heat. Then you have to have an initiator,
which you know might be gasoline or some other fuel source,
(18:17):
and then or accelerant force. And then you have to
have a see what's it called. You have to have
a fuel source like it could be dry wall, it
could be carpeting, it could be wood of any kind
that's placed over an area. And then you have to
have an uninhibited supply of oxygen. And it's almost like
(18:39):
a big cycle that goes around. That's how fire works.
And suddenly you know, at some point in time, fire
is going to play itself out, you know it. Sometimes
it takes longer than other times. And when people dump
gas in areas, that's merely an accelerant. How many folks
have ever taken gas? I would not, please do not
(18:59):
do this, all right, but have taken gas, for instance,
and thrown it into an already burning fire. What does
it do? It explodes? It's scary, it is, and it
flashes over. But guess what after that initial flash over,
it dies out really quickly. Now you might be trying
to initiate that wood or the fuel source that you
(19:20):
have there to burn more effectively, but after that gas
is essentially that major component of gas is gone, that
has been burned away. The fire is now totally dependent
upon the supply of oxygen and the source of fuel
to continue to burn. Okay. The trick though, in any
(19:42):
kind of death investigation involving fire is going to be
surrounding areas because you're going to want to know where
the most damage is and anything that was being worn
by a victim. And because many times with arsenists that
are trying to get rid of a body or evidence,
(20:04):
they will just splash gas all over a body. And
I think I've spoken of this before, but just kind
of as a little primer, we retrieve those those items
of clothing and also things that are attached to the
body because sometimes elements get stuck to bodies, to say
(20:24):
the very to put it politely, We'll collect those at
autopsy and then we keep them and we submit those
for examination at crime lab for accelerants. And if we
can find a specific accelerant, say if it's a gasoline,
you can you can get it down to the brand
Dave because yeah, you know, because gas is gas, contrary
(20:48):
to what they tell you. You know, what makes it
different is you ever see these there you go put
up bump, But what you ever see these commercials for
gas where they say, well, it's got techron in it,
whatever the heck guy it is, yeah, and it's got
these additives that come into it that they claim are
(21:09):
going to keep your fuel lines clean. That's the designator
that separates all gases from other gases, because those are
unique to that corporation or that entity, and they they're trademarked.
They're trademarked, and so crime labs actually have a list
of these things. So if they recovered that molecular structure,
then you can say, okay, well I know that this
(21:31):
person went to a particular gas station. How many of
those types of gas stations selling that gas are located
in proximity to this event? And you see that's a
big indicator here, So you have to be really careful.
It seems when you're working these cases.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Well, unbelievable, unbelievable. It never occurred to me that that
would happen.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
But you know, in.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Solving a crime, every piece of evidence comes into play.
Where that accelerant came from, who bought that, and now
with everything in surveillance cameras down right too, when that
was bought. But back to Tara for just a minute here.
When the fireman approached the apartment, they find that the
fire is burning through the roof in a bedroom and
(22:20):
I'm thinking in my mind, I'm envisioning that there's a
fire on the bed that's been piled you know, we
have terror on the bed right right, and the fire
is going straight up. That has the fire spread throughout
the entire apartment or is it isolated to that room?
And that event of her body is there to destroy
the body and as the first cause.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Yeah, her body either being on the bed or adjacent
to the bed and right you are about that day.
Because you look for the area that has the most destruction.
Isn't rocket science, Okay, Wherever you have the most destruction
is where the heaviest concentration of heat is going to be,
which is the byproduct of fire, and the hotter the area,
(23:04):
the more destruction. And the reason it's going through the roof,
what's the fire doing. It's seeking the oxygen, Okay, and
it will do anything I say it like it's an entity.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
But again, it has to have oxygen.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Yeah, and the fire is seeking, it's seeking a fuel supply,
you know, that uninhibited flow of oxygen. And so that's
why if you if you see a case and I've
you know, I've worked many that are like this where
you have evidence of searing or smoke damage on the roof,
(23:39):
you know that this seeing is probably burned for a while,
that it took a bit of time for the fire
service to get there and knock this thing down. And
so you're looking at this and you're thinking, well, if
I'm seeing this externally, oh my lord, it is going
to be really really damaged inside the residents. Dave mac
(24:19):
I gotta tell you one of the most intriguing things
that you mentioned about Terra's case was the length of
time between when she was last seen and when the
fire was discovered. Keep in mind, schools back in session.
(24:40):
There's people on campus, there's people in habit and you
go to place like Athens, those apartments are filled and
more than likely they're filled with kids that are there
for school, they're living off campus. Somebody's going to take notice.
They're going to take notice, particularly that time of day
when people are up and running. I mean, you remember
what it was like. You know in college, that time
of is kind of like you've got to take classes
(25:02):
at that time of day. You know you're going to
be heading out and people are going to notice this.
So you've got a fire burning this intensely, but yet
it's suddenly noticed. That time gap, to me is kind
of intriguing as an investigator.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
That's why I was trying to get into that, because
there are certain things that we know about Tara's last
twenty four hour of life. I mean, and it is
because she was in school, and because she was a
creature of habit, and because here we are just starting
back in the semester, and where is she in the
law library studying they just took back in session, and
(25:41):
she's already putting in the work. She meets a friend
there who the friend bails at seven thirty and Tara's
there for another two and a half hours. That's who
she was. And so knowing that, realizing she wasn't one
to go out gambling about, you know, she went home.
And we have this time period just ten o'clock at
night because that's when we know she left the library
(26:04):
or was planning on leaving the library and heading home.
So ten pm we have no contact with her other
than what I'm aware of. Now. If I'm wrong, please
please please correct me. But ten pm we know she's
heading to her apartment. Now, was because this was an
unsolved crime for many many years, was the suspect laying
(26:25):
in wait? Had he been watching the apartment? There were
two other roommates, but they were gone for the weekend?
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Important point right there, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Because I'm wondering was this somebody that knew them? Was
this friend of one of them that knew Tara was
going to be alone for the weekend that her roommates
were gone.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
I think, boyd, that's you know, and that's That's a
big reveal there when you think about that. Who would
have four knowledge of the fact that these two would
be out of pocket for that period of time to
show a woman to be isolated in this And you know,
first off, I was thinking, well, for those that have
never seen it, I have just allowed me indulge me
(27:07):
and let me describe it to you. This this Law
library at Uga is how can I describe it? Cavernous?
It's it's vast, there's all kinds of points of observation.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Are you suggesting somebody was watching her? It could have been.
And that big? It is that big.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
And also the thing about it the Uga campus is,
you know, I guess some people use the term bucolic.
It kind of rolls. There's a lot of old oak trees,
dark spaces hedges, all those sorts of things, and it's
really well manicured. But if somebody's laying in wait out
there in the dark, waiting for this young woman to leave,
maybe they had targeted her before this time. They had
(27:50):
an awareness of her and she probably fit a type.
Because most predators do in fact have a type. Some
of them are opportunity. They'll take the first victim they
can but sometimes they have a type of person that
kind of slips onto their radar where they they look
for the opportunity. But the fact that the roommates would
(28:12):
have been gone is something that is going to give
give me an idea here that you have to be
going through the backgrounds of the roommates very thoroughly. And
they might even have an awareness of it. It might
be a peripheral. Maybe they said something while they're sitting
around drinking coffee. We know me and you know, and
(28:33):
she and I are both going out of town this weekend,
and all you got, you know, Ef Hutton. They're kind
of leaning in and they kind of hear this, and
what a horrible thing, you know, to think about. But here,
here's here's the problem, Dave. We've got this huge gap
of time. This fire did not initiate overnight. This fire
(28:54):
is burning in the morning. People are just taking notice
of it. That leaves this time from when she was
lasting at the law library until she's finally found by
fire service in there the next morning. What what happened
during that time? What had she gone through? Look, what
did she even do her?
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Here's my question, Joe. We know that firemen are there
they're called to put this fire out. And in an apartment,
I'm going to guess here that normally the fireman would
be called by the person that lives in the apartment saying, hey,
I started a fire, I can't get it out. Help,
you know, in this case, they were called because somebody
saw the fire coming through the roof of the apartment, right,
(29:37):
And I don't know that they expected to see a victim, because,
to be honest with you, she was supposed to be
in class at nine thirty that morning and this is
after that.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Yeah, and so how you know this is a bold
thing if you're going to be a fire setter. Most
most fire setters do the sort of thing at night.
And I was looking at the layout of of where,
you know, where this event actually occurred, and the old
address was one sixty Fawn Drive in Athens, and it's
(30:09):
it's it's a collection of kind of the road is
kind of I don't know, it's curvy that goes through here,
but there's two outlets. There's not a cul de sac
on this road, so it's almost it's not truly a
through road, but it is a connecting road that you
can get out to other major arteries. So if an
(30:30):
individual is walking away from it, just walking down sidewalk casually,
hoping that no one notices the fire, he might appear
to be innocuous at that point in time. I don't
know that anybody saw anybody sprinting away because I don't
know about you, men, But when I'm around fire, if
it's out of control, I want to get away from
it as quickly as I possibly can. No, with all
(30:52):
of my hair and skin intactooed and all of my clothing.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
All right, Well, how do you know, Joe, when you've
got a fire that requires firemen to show up, they
put the fire out and find the body of a woman. Yeah,
and I know that according to the UH, I guess
the police are the ones that actually revealed that Baker
was beaten, that she was stabbed, strangled, and potentially sexually assaulted.
(31:21):
How in the world it's hard we're going to find
out all this?
Speaker 1 (31:24):
Yeah, Oh my gosh, it's so difficult, Dave, so very difficult.
So many changes occur to the body. And let me
tell you, just from the scene, what would have happened.
What do we know about the fire, what draw it
to the attention of a of a passer by. What
did you say, just a moment ago they saw the
fire going through the roof. Yeah, and guess what happens.
People don't think about this, but if you have a
(31:46):
fire that is involving the roof, guess what happens to
the ceilings in those rooms that collapse. So you've got
you've got the studs in the ceiling, You've got.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
I got to stock you. My thought, Joe, I'm not kidding.
My thought was that you have the bedroom, you have
the bed, you have Tara on the bed, And to
be honest with you, in my mind, I was picturing
stuff thrown on top of her that would act as
some type of fuel for the fire. That the fire
is lit and it goes straight up from the bed
and Tara and burns a hole in the ceiling and
burns a hole in the roof. That's what I was thinking.
(32:19):
And that's not the case.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
No, it causes, it compromises the strength structurally and so
and it goes pretty quickly and it will collapse, particularly
when they start hitting it with water. This is the
other thing that folks don't realize. Did you know that?
Like the when you take sheet rock, for instance, that's
(32:44):
made out of gypsum. When you hit that with water,
guess what it turns into inside of a fire scene
when you can when you when you combine it with
all of the other chart and it turns to mud.
And so you're slogging through all of this and there's
like pieces of wood other debris that have collapsed in
and in one sense it protects the body, but in
(33:07):
the other sense it erases evidence and the fact that
with Terra they were able to identify sharp force injuries,
blunt force injuries, which means she was struck probably multiple times.
And I think the most glaring is that she was
(33:29):
asphyxiated somehow, perhaps with ligature or hands. And you will
see you will see this externally. Even I've had cases
where people have been stabbed and cut and have been burned,
you can still see the insized injuries. Here's the problem, though,
As the body heats up, it hardens and it cracks.
(33:52):
People don't realize that that the remains actually cracked. The
skin cracks because you've got skin overlining a layer of fat,
and as that cooks, it begins to split. And so
being able to delineate between a sharp force injury and
a fire related artifact, which is what these are called.
It's a fire related artifact that presents on the body.
(34:15):
It takes these autopsies, Dave take hours, hours to do
because you're having to it's almost like putting together a
jigsaw puzzle in mud because your vision is so compromised.
That's why X rays are really important. Many times you'll
(34:36):
X ray fire bodies. You'll find nails, you'll find screws,
anything else that's around this area that may have fallen
into the bag with the body when you're collecting them.
Because most of the time you don't x ray the
body outside of the back. You put the plates under
the bag and you x ray the bodies while they're
in there. So you have to account for all of
(34:57):
this as you're going along. And also with fire, yes,
you're thinking, well where they shot and if they were shot,
are there going to be a little lead storm in
there or maybe an intact projectile. So my gosh, man,
it takes hours to make your way through it. Then
on top of it, if that wasn't enough, fire fractures bone.
(35:19):
The hotter the fire gets, particularly with the skull, the
skull will begin to first off, the brain boils and
it splits the skin outside the fire does the brain
will boil almost not totally, but the liquid portion. Because
the brain is not as firm as you might think
(35:39):
it is in life. The brain will begin to expand
inside the cranial vault, and the heat externally, combined with
the internal events going on, will actually cause these kind
of heat fractures in the skull. So you have to
make your way through that. Is this related to say,
blunt force trauma or is this related to an artifact?
Speaker 2 (36:01):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (36:01):
After after the fire has passed. Uh, So you've got
the calculus in this thing. Fire fire deaths are a
lot harder to work, for instance, than even decompos decomposed bodies,
because you the body is continuing to be traumatized after death.
The human remains. So it's a it's a tough thing.
But but here's here's I think my point. Whatever they
(36:27):
assessed at the time of her autopsy, Dave, they were
able to recognize these three types of trauma which would
be manifested internally. So if you've got a choking event
or strangulation event, you'll see hemorrhage in the soft tissues
of the neck, stab wounds you will have a track
(36:49):
that is making its way through certain organ systems. You
can pick up on that. The bludgeoning might be a
bit more difficult. If it's a beating type type of event,
you might can find areas of hemorrhage, but you really
have to walk a find line there where you're trying
to assess what happened anti mortem and post mortem. But
(37:12):
here's the real thing here, this is where the truth
comes out. They've they've used the term sodomy here. They're
saying that she was sodomized. Now that means many different
things to different people, but she was sexually assaulted. So
(37:35):
if she was sexually assaulted, knowing what we know now,
they were able to glean some type of biological sample
from her, I think probably through a rate kit possibly,
And they've been holding onto this all these years trying
to explore and it would not surprise me in the
(37:58):
least bit if potentially familial forensic genetic DNA genealogy was
not involved in this, because it's taken all of this time,
they have some kind of biological sample. Because Dave, it
appears that DNA has unlocked the answers in this case.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
The part about this that again we talked about it earlier,
the death of Lake and Riley that opened up the
exercise of unsolved crimes in this area of the state,
and this was one that was mentioned Joe. It had
been an unsolved crime for so long, and we have
(38:40):
had in the last ten years DNA becoming front and
center on unsolved cold cases. At what point do the
investigators decide it's time to run this through the database
or is there another way? I mean, I know you
(39:00):
have CODIS and we're developing a DNA thing like cotis,
But at what point do they send this off and say,
here's what we've got to see if you can find
a match. Are we going to how are we going
to what are we going to do? Genetic genealogy? Are
we going to twenty three and meters? How do they
go about doing that?
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Well, they're going to exhaust every every potential possibility to have.
CODIS is going to be the first stop along the
continuum here to see if you can get a viable
sample at that particular time. Does it go back to
any individual that is already pre existing in the CODIS database,
(39:39):
and there's two sections to CODIS, you have those individuals
that are known that are part of the databank, that
have committed some kind of crime that would compel the
state to take a sample from them and enter them
into that database. Then you have the unknown or it
(39:59):
has in the past, it's been referred to as the
forensic database, and that is DNA samples from locations where
you you do not have a perpetrator. They're unknown cases,
and they can get a hit off those. So if
you've got a if you've got like say, two cases
in Mississippi and Alabama, and maybe you've got another one
(40:22):
in Tennessee, and all of a sudden you have a
fourth one that occurs in Georgia, that's going to give
you an indication that the the donor of that of
that sample is migrating about. You just don't know who
they are at this point, tom My, you know this
this case is so over the top, Dave. It's really
hard to believe that that this individual would not have
(40:46):
acted out sexually before, because this is a very violent
event where I think, actually, for you know, my two cents,
I think that he probably held her in that residence
for some time. Remember they're all alone, and what were
we looking at is like twelve twelve hours, twelve hours
for the fire has ever seen. So yeah, was this
(41:07):
an all night event that went on where this individual
perhaps tortured her throughout the night, where he beat her repeatedly,
choked her repeatedly without killing her, or stabbed her, or
you know, inflicted in sized wounds which are slices over
a period of time.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
What we know is that during that twelve hours, Joe,
a wonderful, beautiful, smart, loving person, was taken from planet Earth.
And we now have, after twenty three years, we've had
somebody in custody. The police have arrested Edric Lamont Faust.
(41:50):
You mentioned this early on how that name would come
into play. He was twenty five at the time of
this murder. He's now forty eight. He has been charged
with felony murder, two counts malice murder, aggravated assault, possession
of a knife during the commission of a crime, aggravated soatomy,
concealing the death of another person, tampering with evidence, and
(42:12):
first degree arson Joe. Based on these charges, police learned
a lot. Because they've got possession of a knife during
the commission of a crime. Doesn't that mean that he
brought it to the department.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
Yeah, yeah, I think that it probably does. And what
we don't know because the investigation from the perspective of
and hear me right, from the perspective of the fact
that they have effected, finally affected and arrest, this investigation
is kind of beginning anew you know now, because you
have a target. Now, what we don't know is was
(42:51):
the knife a leave behind or did they find it
on his person when he was arrested. Which while that
many years after the fact, I would list more towards
having left behind and those injuries would have been assessed,
the sharpforce injuries would have been assessed based upon the
physical evidence that that particular type of knife or knife
(43:14):
style would have left behind. And they have a lot
to work with here. And you know, keep in mind,
Faust has only been charged. He has not been convicted.
He'll have his day in court. But something interesting came
up as a result of Terra's homicide. The Georgia State Assembly,
(43:37):
the General Assembly, actually passed a law called the Coleman
Baker Act.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
And it.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
The other victim that's named in this case or in
this law is a lady named Ronda Sue Coleman and
she was murdered in Hazel. Her steort are back in
nineteen ninety. And what this act actually does, Dave, is
it it provides families with access to the files in
(44:07):
these cold cases so that they can work alongside the police,
that they can go back and see where the police are.
And this thing was just filed in twenty twenty three.
It was just written into law at that particular time,
because you know, families are so frustrated. I can't even
even though I've worked these cases over the years, these
(44:29):
cold cases, I can not even begin to put myself
in the position of families and the grief, the constant
grief that they're faced with. But this one little shining
light is beaming through, and unfortunately it's in the wake
of the snuffing out of another shining light. Terror Baker
(44:50):
died when she was only twenty one years old, just
off campus of the University of Georgia. I'm Joseph Scott
Morgan and this is Boddie Bags
Speaker 2 (45:04):
Mm hmm.
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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