12.Deadly.Little.Secrets.2012 (6 page)

Chapter 9

A
s 1997 drew to a close, Matt was doing well with his studies, and Kari was on track to finish her classes. In another year she was scheduled to begin student teaching. That winter, she and Matt took the girls in sweet dresses—Kensi in red and Kassidy in a blue plaid with a white collar trimmed in lace—for family photos. Each of the girls wore a wide white headband with a large bow at the front. They looked healthy and happy, and no one could have predicted the agony that lay ahead.

The following March, Matt took the pastor’s job at Williams Creek Baptist, a congregation of about twenty families in Axtell, a short drive outside Waco. “There’s a post office, fire department, general store, and school,” says a resident. “It’s a small place, mainly farmers, ranchers, and folks who drive into Waco to work.”

An unassuming facility, Williams Creek was housed in a beige brick building with a steeply pitched roof. A brick cross in relief decorated the front facing the street. Consecrated in 1979, the church was off the highway, on a quiet country road surrounded by cattle fields. On land adjacent to the church stood the parsonage, a quaint house on a good-sized lot, with a garage and a swing set in the backyard.

Quickly, Matt became popular. He expanded the children’s Sunday school program and the Wednesday evening youth group. Before long, many in the small town grew used to seeing the young Baptist pastor and his wife at local events. To bring in families, they attended football and baseball games and showed up at festivals. With Kari pushing the girls in a stroller, they approached townsfolk, inviting them to try the church and give Matt a chance to win them over. Some did, others listened politely and went on, but many were impressed with the young couple’s dedication and energy.

For those who did come, Matt had a message. He wasn’t a fire-and-brimstone preacher, the type who warned of eternal damnation. Rarely did he talk about the consequences of sin. Rather, he talked of God as a forgiving father who watched over his flock, pardoned them for their sins no matter how serious. In one sermon he said: “God is looking for people who say, ‘No longer am I going to be like the rest of the world.’ ”

At the church, Kari led the youth group, putting on skits. Her offerings were more often than not comical, and she never seemed to mind poking fun at herself. She taught the women’s Bible study, introducing authors like Houston’s Beth Moore with her book
Whispers of Hope
, that came with daily inspirational messages. And whether it was to a teenager in the youth group or a woman in Bible study, Kari made it a point to say she was available whenever they needed her. “If you want to just spend a little time together and talk, I’d love to do that,” she’d say.

One man took her up on it, confiding that he struggled with his homosexuality. Kari listened, then hugged him, and said, “God will always love you. Always.”

In the parsonage, Kari decorated, putting Kassidy’s crib in one bedroom and painting another in bright colors for Kensi. The house was small and homey, a place where they could sit outside in the evenings and enjoy the rural quiet. Matt only had to walk across the field to church on Sundays and Wednesdays for services, usually attended by about sixty or so church members. When not at Baylor, Kari walked the girls in a stroller along the road. “She was playful with the girls, loving,” says a friend. “But that was just Kari. She was brimming with life.”

At Baylor, Kari made a good friend. Janelle Murphy was recently married and studying to be a teacher, when they met in a sign language class. The women became close, and Janelle and her husband began attending Williams Creek. Before long, Matt hired Janelle as the church’s music minister.

It was also at Williams Creek that Matt and Kari connected with Todd and Jenny Monsey, a teenage brother and sister. Like Janelle, the Monseys felt drawn to Matt and Kari. As a pastor, Matt was hip, his sermons not the typical ones they’d grown up on. Instead, Matt researched on the Internet, finding sermons that talked about current culture, bringing the examples back around to religion and God. And Todd and Jenny saw Kari as a welcome relief from the straightlaced pastors’ wives they’d known. “Kari was really cool,” says Jenny, a solidly built young woman with dark blond hair.

Many who knew her would mention that Kari wasn’t a typical pastor’s wife. She dressed modestly but stylishly. She wore bracelets that jangled when she walked and flip-flops in the summer. And like her mom, Kari spoke her mind. Sometimes she stirred up the church members by disagreeing, but it usually ended with a smile and all forgiven.

To the church, Kari brought her love of modern Christian music, replacing the standard hymns with selections that included Christian Rock. And at youth meetings, she made up games, once concocting a skit out of a Ray Boltz’s song, “Jesus Real Loud.” As she sang, Kari jumped up and down, and shouted, “What if I say Jesus real loud.”

“Kari was fun,” says Jenny. “And we loved Matt, too. It was cool to have people closer to our age. Matt and Kari got the younger people in the church involved.”

“We’d grown up Baptist, and Matt wasn’t the kind of pastor we were used to,” says Todd. “He had a clear, deliberate style to his worship services, bringing in the younger people. He was charismatic up at the pulpit. He let us be young, and he brought more excitement to the church. When he said it, you believed him. It always sounded like it came from a higher place. And part of Matt’s ministry was Kari. They were partners.”

There seemed to be little that Kari couldn’t handle. Janelle would later describe her as a calm presence. When Kensi toppled off the top stair of the stage at Vacation Bible School, Kari heard her daughter’s cry and ran from the next room, scooping her oldest up in her arms. Once she was sure Kensi wasn’t hurt, Kari made a joke and started laughing, until Kensi forgot about her tumble and laughed along. “She had a relaxed mothering style,” Janelle remembers. “Nothing frazzled her.”

As taken as she was with Kari and Matt, when Janelle brought her father to meet the Bakers, he said something strange afterward: “Be careful, Janelle. Matt Baker isn’t what he seems. He’s one of those pastors who is full of the devil.”

Janelle brushed it off, but at times she did have a strange feeling about Matt. She’d hear him complain about church members, bitterly mocking them, in a way that didn’t seem consistent with a man of God.

Yet there was that other side to Matt. “Matt was a preacher not a pastor. He wasn’t warm and welcoming, but he was great up on the stage, giving sermons. He and my husband became friends. He laughed and joked with us,” says Janelle. “And he really was a good dad. I kept thinking that my dad had to be wrong. That Matt couldn’t be a bad person.”

That summer, a strange thing happened: Pornography popped up on Matt and Kari’s home computer. “Why would that happen?” Kari asked Linda, who had no answer.

Kari had the hard drive cleaned, but the computer was slow, and she worried that Kensi would see the images. Rather than take the risk, Kari bought a new computer and gave the infected laptop to her brother, Adam, who was in graduate school. But after a few months, Adam complained that the laptop was so slow, it was nearly worthless. On his next trip home, he gave the computer to their father. Deployed at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio that summer, Jim took the laptop with him. Once on base, he asked a computer guru friend if he could increase its speed.

“This thing is packed with porn,” the friend told him, after inspecting it. “It’s so bad, it’s embedded in the hard drive. Porn like you wouldn’t believe.”

When Matt heard, he shrugged, and said, “Well, Adam’s a college kid.”

Yet, when Linda asked her son, Adam pointed out that he hadn’t used it on the Net, only to do word processing. “I’m smarter than that,” he said. “I didn’t do it.”

Not knowing what to think but never considering that their Baptist minister son-in-law could be viewing pornography, Jim simply discarded the laptop.

Chapter 10

A
round, soft, bundle with soft wisps of blond hair and big blue eyes, Kassidy continued to be an easy baby, one who wore a perpetual smile and who didn’t balk when Kari passed her around to the other women in church. Kensi was so taken with her baby sister, she called her “My Kassidy.”

Based on outward appearances, the second of the Baker girls was thriving. So much so that she’d never even required an aspirin during that first year of life. In mid-November 1998, Barbara and Oscar drove in from Kerrville, and Kari’s family gathered to celebrate Kassidy’s first birthday. It was after presents and birthday candles that Kassidy threw up. That didn’t seem too startling. “We wrote it off as too much cake,” Barbara would say.

The next morning at the parsonage, Barbara took a photo of Kassidy before she and Oscar drove home. “Afterward, I looked at it and thought that she didn’t look right, just kind of sick. In her eyes, it was like things weren’t all right.”

That Sunday afternoon, Kassidy vomited again, and it continued throughout the day. The following morning, Kari and Matt bundled up their daughters and went to the pediatrician, who diagnosed the infant with a “stomach bug.” Telling them to give her lots of fluids, the pediatrician sent Matt and Kari home. But Kassidy didn’t improve.

On that Wednesday, Matt called his mother. “There’s something not right with Kassidy,” he said. “We’ve been up all night trying to get fluids in her with a dropper and she’s still throwing up. She can’t sit up.”

Later that day, Matt and Kari again brought Kassidy to the doctor, who again diagnosed her malady as a stomach bug. As the week wore on, however, the toddler didn’t appear any better. On Friday, Matt called Barbara. “There’s something wrong,” he said. “We’re trying another doctor. We can’t go through another night like last night.”

That time, Matt and Kari took Kassidy to Hillcrest Baptist Medical Center’s emergency room. There she was examined, but the ER physician found no reason for her illness. Explaining that he worried that the baby was dehydrated, he told Matt and Kari that he wanted Kassidy in the hospital on an IV.

With Kassidy in the hospital and Matt and others watching over her that night, Kari met Janelle at a store, to buy groceries for a needy family in the church. As they walked up to the house to deliver them, Janelle asked, “How can you do this with Kassidy sick?”

“This family needs the groceries,” Kari answered. After they finished, Kari returned to the hospital and spent the night at Kassidy’s bedside.

The following morning, Barbara drove up from Kerrville and sat in Kassidy’s room, holding the child. Kari had convinced Linda to keep a commitment and fly to New York a day earlier to attend a conference, and Matt and Kari had gone to church. It was the weekend before Thanksgiving, and he was speaking at a potluck supper that evening. In the hospital room, Jim talked with Barbara, when Kassidy suddenly threw her head back, her body stiffened and shook. The child was in the throes of a violent seizure.

“Get the nurse,” Barbara told Jim, rubbing her granddaughter’s stomach and leg. He ran from the room, while she held the child and tried to comfort her. “I know it was only a few minutes, but it seemed to go on twenty minutes or more,” Barbara would recount years later. “I kept telling her she’d be all right.”

That night, Matt took Kensi home, and Kari and Barbara stayed with Kassidy while they waited for the doctors to figure out what was wrong. During the night, Kassidy awoke, calling for her mother in a hoarse voice. Kari went to her and held her, the child falling back to sleep in her arms.

After a spinal tap ruled out meningitis, Kassidy was sent for an MRI. Back from New York, Linda arrived at the hospital just in time to hear the doctor deliver very bad news. Kassidy had a tumor at the base of her brain. It was growing, and left unchecked, it would be life-threatening. To save her, they’d have to operate quickly. The problem was Kassidy’s age. Children so young had delicate lungs. The operation would be lengthy, and the anesthetic was dangerous, possibly even deadly.

The news was crushing. Hillcrest didn’t have the facilities to handle the surgery, and that same day Kassidy was transferred via ambulance to Cook Children’s Hospital, ninety minutes away in Fort Worth. On medication to suppress the seizures, Kassidy needed to be operated on as soon as possible, and just two days after arriving in Fort Worth, tests were completed and surgery was scheduled. The date was Wednesday, November 25, the day before Thanksgiving.

The surgeon had been blunt, telling the family that there was the chance that Kassidy wouldn’t make it through the operation. That afternoon, Matt and Kari kissed their infant daughter and saw her rolled down a hallway and into a surgical suite. They then joined the rest of the family in a waiting room. Five generations of Linda’s family were in the waiting room, along with Matt, Kari, Barbara and Oscar, and Matt’s sister, Stacie, and her husband. The hours passed, and those gathered prayed. The surgery went on into the evening, before the doctor arrived to say that Kassidy was in the pediatric ICU. The tumor had been completely removed. Encapsulated, it popped out easily. But there were other concerns, including, as they’d warned earlier, the effects of the anesthesia. “I don’t know if we’re going to be able to pull her through,” the surgeon said.

When they first saw her, Kassidy looked small and helpless, tied up to a maze of tubes and machines, but she held up her hand to her parents. Thankful that she had survived, at the suggestion of the doctor, the family went to dinner. When they returned, however, it was to bad news: Kassidy’s chest was filling with fluid. “Kassidy had pulmonary edema,” says Linda. “Her lungs were hardening. They fully expected her to die.”

Thanksgiving Day, church members from Williams Creek, ninety minutes away, brought dinner to the family as they held a vigil inside and outside Kassidy’s hospital room. In what was described as a “last-ditch effort,” the surgeon cut a tracheotomy in Kassidy’s throat to insert a tube for a respirator. They also put the child into a medically induced coma. “The idea was to see if her body would heal itself if it had nothing else it had to do,” says Linda.

For one week, Kassidy lay nearly motionless, then she was allowed to awaken, but her condition remained fragile. The coming months were agony. Matt came often, and Kari was almost always at her daughter’s side. The anesthetic had also weakened the muscles attached to one eye, allowing it to drift, and affected her gag reflexes, so that she had to be fed through a tube. When they weren’t there, Barbara, Linda, or Jim sat in the hospital room, talking to Kassidy, rubbing her soft arms, telling her to hold on and stay with them. There were nights where it seemed her tiny little body was ready to give up, but always the doctors were able to bring her back. “Death was in the room with us those nights,” says Barbara. “You could feel it.”

As difficult as the times were, Kari and Matt both seemed to hold up well under the pressure. “We can handle this,” Kari told one of her friends. “We just have to do whatever we have to do, and then Kassidy will get better, and she’ll come home.”

In more private times, Kari wrote in her journal, as on December 3, eight days after Kassidy’s surgery: “My little Kassidy is fighting so hard. There are times where I think how much longer will she fight. It is so hard to understand why this has happened, but all I do is pray . . . Matt is being so strong. He is so solid. I have never wanted this to be over more than I do now. I want my family back. I miss my little Kassidy’s smile. I want to hear her giggle. I wish I could put myself in her spot. I hope I have the strength to keep going because Kassidy and Kensi need me.”

In January, Kassidy was still gravely ill in the pediatric ICU when Lindsey asked a friend who worked with her at the Cracker Barrel in Waco, Erin Vendetti, to drive to Cook Children’s with her. Erin had never met either Matt or Kari, and in the car, Lindsey talked about Matt, including his bizarre history with women, describing what happened that summer at First Baptist. “You have to be careful around him. He’s a little flirtatious,” Lindsey warned. “Sometimes, he says and does strange things.”

“He’s a preacher?” Erin marveled.

“Yes,” Lindsey says. “He is.”

An attractive twenty-year-old, Erin brushed it off. “He’s not going to hit on me in the hospital with his daughter maybe dying. No one would do that.”

Lindsey didn’t appear convinced.

Once they arrived, they found Matt and Kari outside Kassidy’s room. To protect Kassidy, whose immune system had been wiped out by chemo, only two visitors wearing sterile gowns and masks were allowed in at one time.

When Kari and Lindsey left to see Kassidy, Erin claimed a chair in front of a television in the game room and began playing a Mario video game with a young boy, a cancer patient who’d lost all of his hair. Before long, Matt sat beside her.

“I’m so sorry about your daughter being so ill,” Erin said. “I hope she gets better.”

“You know,” Matt said, leaning in toward her, “you’re a beautiful girl.”

Erin concentrated on the computer game, but said, “Thank you.”

Matt moved closer, placing his hand on her leg. “They gave us a room to stay in while Kassidy’s here. It’s close. Would you like to see it?”

“No,” she said, lifting his hand and removing it. “Of course not.”

Matt, however, wasn’t ready to give up. “Lindsey and Kari will be gone at least fifteen minutes. The room is right down the hall.” He placed his hand on her upper thigh.

Again, Erin moved his hand away. “No!” she said, even more forcefully.

With that, Matt stood up, and Erin thought maybe it was over, but then, she felt his hands on her shoulders, rubbing.

Revolted, Erin bolted up and walked away, toward the windows. There she stood, looking out at the hallway in the direction of Kassidy’s room. She felt relief flood through her when Kari and Lindsey emerged, peeling off their protective clothing.

To Erin’s disgust, Matt walked over to Kari and Lindsey as if nothing had happened. Kari was calm and stoic, while Lindsey sobbed. Matt talked to the other two women as Erin fought an overwhelming urge to flee. “Lindsey, we need to go,” she said.

“Just a minute,” Lindsey said, wiping away tears.

“No, now,” Erin insisted. “We need to go now.”

Eyeing Erin, Lindsey told Matt and Kari good-bye, and they walked to the elevator. Once the door closed, and they were alone, Erin began to cry. “He hit on you, didn’t he?” Lindsey asked.

Erin nodded.

“I knew he would,” she said. “I knew it.”

“What do we do?” Erin asked. “Do we tell Kari?”

Lindsey thought for a moment, then said, “I’ll tell my mom. She’ll know what to do.”

After she arrived home that afternoon, Lindsey called Nancy and told her what had transpired in the waiting room at Cook Children’s. Lindsey was upset, embarrassed, and angry, and Nancy told her that she’d figure out what to do. After she hung up with her daughter, Nancy dialed her mother. “Mom, I need to tell you about something,” she said, then filled her in on Matt’s behavior. “What should we do? Should I tell Kari? Or should I tell Linda?”

After considering the situation, the family matriarch, Kari’s grandmother, asked Nancy to do nothing. “Kari has a sick baby in the hospital, enough on her mind to worry about,” she said. “We can’t tell her this now. We need to keep this to ourselves.”

Considering all that Kari was going through, Nancy agreed.

T
he days dragged on, and Kari and Matt tried to live as normal a life as possible. On Sundays, Linda or Barbara sat with Kassidy while Kari took Kensi to Williams Creek to hear Matt preach. No one ever mentioned Erin to Kari or to Linda. Neither had an inkling of what Matt had done. Instead, what Kari saw throughout Kassidy’s illness was her husband steadfast by her side, praying with her, supporting her while their daughter fought for her life.

One complication after another threatened Kassidy, but the infant seemed determined to live. Those were hard days. Just to hold their child, Matt or Kari had to sit in a chair and wait until a nurse lowered Kassidy onto their laps, positioning the tubes and alarms that kept her alive.

Some of those who visited said they most often found Matt in the waiting area or outside in the hallway, while Kari stayed at Kassidy’s bedside. To some it appeared that he was enjoying the attention he was getting from others as they tried to reassure and comfort him. When asked, he’d go into detail about Kassidy’s condition in a clinical way, then talk about all he was doing to help. “He loved the spotlight,” says Lindsey. “In his eyes, he was the strong one.”

Paul Stripling visited Kari and Matt at the hospital. “To me, they both seemed overwhelmed,” said the Baylor professor. “I went and prayed with them.”

Members of Williams Creek, including Todd and Jenny and Janelle Murphy drove to Fort Worth to support the young family. In all, Kassidy spent forty-three days in the pediatric ICU. At one point, the infant had hives all over her body, a reaction to chemotherapy. “It was a roller coaster,” says Barbara.

As her time in the ICU ended, Kassidy was not only still alive but appeared to have turned the corner. Her condition was stable, and she was transferred into the tracheotomy unit, a step-down unit with less critical patients. It was then that Kari again wrote in her journal: “Kassidy is such a fighter . . . I know God is healing her. I’m ready for her to come home and have our family back. I love my little girl so much. Also my sweet Kensi doesn’t understand why her mommy isn’t home.”

Before long, Kassidy’s doctors talked about releasing her. There were, however, concerns. Kassidy still wasn’t swallowing well and was still being fed through a gastric, or a G-tube. And her breathing wasn’t to the point where the trach tube could be removed. As preparations began, Matt and Kari were given lessons on how to manage Kassidy’s feeding tube, clean her trach, and hook up her monitors. Through it all, Kari appeared not afraid but eager to get her baby home. “Kassidy needed a lot of care, but Kari was prepared to do anything she had to do,” remembers Jenny. “She said God had given Kassidy back to them, and she was going to do her best to take care of her.”