Bill Johnston:
This guy was a cold-blooded killer, cold-blooded killer who represented himself to the rest of the world as a saintly man.
Robert Riggs:
Former U.S. prosecutor Bill Johnston, the co-host of the True Crime Reporter podcast, unraveled a trail of sex abuse complaints about Matt Baker, the charismatic Baptist minister who murdered his wife. Baker tried to make his wife look like suicide, and for a while, he got away with murder. The dirty little secrets of sexual abuse uncovered in the Matt Baker case have been exposed on a wide scale across America's largest Protestant denomination. Baker even sent his lover, a member of his congregation, a song titled "Dirty Little Secrets, saying he identified with its lyrics. I'm investigative reporter Robert Riggs here with a follow-up to our most popular episode titled "The Minister Who Almost Got Away with Murder, published on October 18th of 2021. The leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention stonewalled and attacked girls, boys, and women that were sexually abused by ministers for nearly 20 years. A seven-month investigation conducted by Guidepost Solutions found that sex-abusing pastors were often passed along to other churches with no notice or warnings, it was an unwritten policy by top church officials to avoid legal liability, according to the 288-page report. The investigation confirmed what a blog title "Stop Baptist Predators and Sex Abuse Survivors" had been saying for decades. Bill Johnston's investigation of Matt Baker's murder of his wife in Waco discovered a long history of sexual abuse allegations, which had been swept under the rug for years. Matt Baker had literally gotten away with murdering his wife until Bill and former U.S. Deputy Marshal Mike McNamara began investigating suspicions by the victim's sisters. Police had bungled evidence at the crime scene. Officers were swayed by the pastor's popularity and didn't follow proper investigative procedures. And it turns out that two top officials of the Southern Baptist Convention kept their own private list of abusive pastors for 10 years, and the list of 703 abusers may soon become public. We expect it to list Mack Baker. Several young women that Baker had molested over the years testified at his murder trial. One incident involved a young lady that had gone to the hospital to visit Baker's daughter, who was suffering from a brain tumor, Bill. In a moment, I'm going to ask you to recap your investigation into the murder that was committed by Matt Baker. But first, let me ask you this: We know he had a history of molesting women as a church member, as a you know, as a church authority, clergy, and before, if the if the Baptist church had simply called him to task, then
Bill Johnston:
do you think it might have prevented the murder? Well, it's a a great question because who knows at what point if you pull you know a block out from under something if it doesn't move forward or stops it, and so there were many chances regarding Matt Baker or someone to do the right thing, but mostly they didn't because they didn't want a bad look. First instance of that with Matt Baker was when he was first at Baylor University, he was an athletic trainer, student trainer, and there was a woman, young lady, who was also a student trainer. And Baker got her in a locker room, turned off the lights, and tried to sexually assault her. She was able to escape. She he was like 18. She brought it to the attention of the head of athletic training, and he assured her, "Oh my goodness, we'll take care of this. This is horrible. I'm so sorry this happened to you. We'll we'll get it to the police. We'll do all the things we need to do. She left Baylor over it. She was afraid of him. The experience horrified her and traumatized her. She left, and she was convinced that you know she'd never hear from him again. But he was in prison somewhere for doing this to her, and. She called the police department there in Waco, Texas, years later, few years later. Talked to the Crimes Against Persons detective, and they said they'd look at it and see where what where he ended up or what happened. And they did a looking into it and found that, of course, nothing whatsoever was done to Baker. Nothing even at Baylor was done to Baker. The athletic training staff did nothing to him. She got out, and he continued at Baylor. A few months later, at Baylor, he is gets a job through Baylor with First Baptist Church in Waco, Texas, and he had told them he had a calling. He was going to go to seminary, and he was wanted to work for First Baptist, and they were just thrilled to get him. And he worked in the youth department, of course. And there was a 14-year-old girl at the skating rink who he took a liking to, and tried to hem her up and get her in a compromising position. Didn't complete any act, but tried to get her in a sexually vulnerable position with him. She complained, of course, poor thing. I mean, she's 14 years old. Here's this guy supposed to be a a youth pastor or intern, and nothing happened to him. Didn't even leave the program. Mike McNamara, who's our friend, is now gone, but was
Robert Riggs:
former deputy U.S. marshal, former deputy
Bill Johnston:
U.S. Marshal, who worked on the Kenneth McDuff cereal case and some some others, and end up helping us on the private investigation we did of Matt Baker. Mike had gone to First Baptist in Waco and knew a few of the people. So when we were looking at Matt Baker and his history and who is he and what is he, Mike went down and talked to one of the pastors there at First Baptist in Waco and said, "You know, we understand this happened. We happened like this, and the man said, "Yes, Mike. Yes, but we didn't do anything to him. No, we didn't want to interfere with his calling, his calling to be a preacher. So they did nothing to him. So he went to seminary there, I guess in Waco, and became a preacher. And was at a church in the Dallas area. Something happened. We don't know what. They shoveled him on his way, scooched him to the next church, and that church was in Central Texas area, small community, and something happened there. And one of the members talked to Mike McNamara during our investigation and said, "I can't tell you what happened. I can't discuss it. Perhaps they were under a confidentiality agreement or something. But they moved him on quickly. Then he went to Crossroads Church in Larina, Texas, where he, as we know now, developed an affair with the music minister's daughter, decided his wife was in the way was no fun, and so he murdered her, faked it as a suicide, preached the next day. So that's Matt Baker, and yes, there were warning signs aplenty, not just ignored, not just disregarded, But actively routed around by institutions that didn't want to look bad, and I know you've read Robert the report that just came out this week about the Southern Baptist churches and their history with their dealing with sexual abuse and other misconduct, but this just fits to a picture. The whole thing, well, you know, as you know from our military experience, there was an old phrase about how the military would get rid of substandard leaders. That it was called kicking the can down the road and promoting them, and that's what's happening here. Did you find it was a case
Robert Riggs:
of they just want to avoid liability, embarrassment, or reputation. Why? The
Bill Johnston:
occasions that we were able to find some detail, they didn't want to look bad. They didn't. If they had brought these matters to the police, and it was determined, for instance, that Baylor had a a rapist as an intern. How would that look for Baylor? How terrible that would look! And we learned, you know, you may know that I handled, represented five young women in Title Nine cases against Baylor a few years ago, and in that, in those instances, the same thing happened. They would not pay attention to it. They didn't want the bad publicity. They didn't want the athletic program to suffer, the football team to suffer. Those were the priorities, and so that anything else was not a priority. And similar to to Matt Baker, it was not a priority to deal with Matt Baker and stop him from killing. Someone in the future, it was the high priority was how are we going to look bad, and this is the problem in the Catholic Church that they've had the Baptist Church in this recent report this week. I think again they prioritize in utter hypocrisy that the most important thing is how they look, and the least important thing is dealing with something and preventing something bad happening, and that's what you get. Matt Baker is just a poster boy of this in many respects.
Robert Riggs:
Well, the shocking thing about the report is how widespread it is, or was, probably still is, and how they just move many ministers from church to church, and they're leaving a trail of victims.
Bill Johnston:
They are, and if you can, you know, within many denominations, heck! I mean, I was raised in Methodist Church, thought it was good church. We prosecuted a Methodist preacher years ago in federal court for you know child pornography and other stuff, where he used the church computer to store his stuff. I mean, it's everywhere, and the hypocrisy and the misconduct is everywhere. But the common thread, like you're saying, is seems like the way they deal with it is to move the person to another location that's far enough away so the reputation doesn't follow, or the scandal. The little if they can suffocate the scandal in the crib, then the scandal doesn't make it very far to the next church. So they get a fresh start. The person gets a fresh start, and of course, you're exposing all these victims now, all these potential victims, because there is no trail of misconduct following. I think President Biden yesterday or day before signed a. a a law or executive order about police misconduct, and it had to do with creating a national database. So, if a police officer has guilty misconduct, there's a way now to follow that, and that that's good too because there are police officers. Frankly, it happens in police work. Police work sometimes you have a little bitty town, yeah, and an officer will do something wrong, and rather than really dealing with it, they move on. But my point is having some way to follow misconduct instead of misconduct being suffocated quickly. That may be the key.
Robert Riggs:
And you know, there was-I mean, there's even a blog site that's been up for years called "Stop Baptist predators, and that's one of the things they've been urging for years. We need a database. The thing that strikes me from reading the report, and strikes me about what happened in the Catholic Church, from my coverage of child molesters, child predators who sexually assaulted children, and you know, I spent a lot of time with them in the Texas prison system, heard their stories, looked at their cases, and they always seek a position of authority where they they're unquestioned, unquestioned by parents, unquestioned by the community, and and they groom, they groom the victim to trust them and all, and I find this same thing with these ministers. And hey, what what better position of authority to be trusted and have people believe you over the victim than as a minister or a youth minister?
Bill Johnston:
That's right. Yeah, there is a some people, thankfully not everyone, but some people hold the pastor, the preacher, or the minister in such high regard, and in their minds are convinced that that person may have some role in the person going to heaven. In other words, not their beliefs, their faith, but this person. And if they can be close to the preacher, if they can be, you know, a friend of the preacher, or if they can even be subjugated by the preacher, they're closer to heaven. It just sounds crazy, but a lot of people believe that, and because of that, the preacher is the last person that people want to say something negative about. They feel like it almost, they're almost saying something negative about God. Well, that's ridiculous, but that's the way many people see it, and it is a force field, an unfortunate force field that no one's entitled to, particularly a preacher. Not entitled to that, not entitled to protection, the presumption of innocence of their character. Their character should be subject to scrutiny as any other character.
Robert Riggs:
We saw this in Mad Breaker's murder trial. The defense put on reference witnesses, personal
Bill Johnston:
character witnesses, character
Robert Riggs:
witnesses, and there were women who testified that, in despite the testimony from girls who've been molested about him and all the evidence about his murder, they still said he was a godly man. Right, a godly man. It just warps my mind.
Bill Johnston:
That's the the vulnerability of people to to religion, and I don't mean that criticism of religion generally, but I'm just that's the vulnerability that people put themselves in, and. Yeah, I mean Matt Baker was praised early on by his church, the poor preacher. Part of the reason that we were told by great criminologists named Tom Bevel. Tom Bevel is one of the great crime scene blood spatter crime scene guys in the world. It literally teaches Scotland Yard and elsewhere, and when we took the Baker case to him, took the photos of the crime scene, which were not very good, not very helpful, but we took what we had, and he made a statement, and we chuckled at first, thinking he was somewhat in jest over it, but he said, "So this was a preacher. We said, "Yes, this is his wife. Yes, he said. Was he having an affair? We said, well, we were working on that. We said, well, we suspect it, but he said, when a preacher is having an affair, his wife is in grave and immediate danger, and we thought, well, that's. And he said, I'm serious. They're in immediate danger because if he's found out his career is over, if he wants to perpetuate it, he won't be able to and keep his career. But if the wife dies and it looks like someone else did the murder or it's a suicide, he becomes the victim. The poor preacher lost his wife, so he gets to continue the affair and then be a victim, and that's what Baker did. Baker wrote that for many, many weeks, if not months, early on. Poor guy, his wife killed herself. Now he has to take care of his children. Poor guy, and they took up a love offering. Give him some money, and he continued his affair with the minster's daughter. So he got everything he wanted, and Tom Bevel was exactly right. His wife had been in grave and immediate danger, and he murdered her.
Robert Riggs:
And he was charismatic, and everybody loved him, including the police, who didn't conduct a proper investigation. It was
Bill Johnston:
horrible. They did the small town, and that's another another warning sign in these cases. When you're in a town small enough to where there may only be a handful of churches, and in a small town, particularly, often the church pastors are civic leaders.
Robert Riggs:
Yes,
Bill Johnston:
and they're seen as sort of the faith leaders, as they call it, in the community, and so they get the they get the build up, you know, of having this role, and that's what happened. Matt Baker, the police came in, they saw a typed of all things suicide note. They saw mostly empty body of sleeping a bottle of sleeping pills, which you know these things should have been suspicious instead of confirming to them. They didn't even order an autopsy, which was required under the law. And they took his story and patted him on the head and told him they're so sorry. All the while, he was a murderer that should have been questioned. His story didn't make sense. His alibi didn't make sense. The crime scene didn't fit, did not fit his story. I later was able to take his deposition. He he was so arrogant, and his lawyer was so foolish that he let me take his deposition twice. Took it briefly once. I took it at great length another time at his lawyer's office, and ask him to give me all the details of what happened. Just you know, and I was not accusatory. I just asking, and he he painted himself in the most glorious corner, crime scene corner you can imagine, because his story was impossible. His story of when Carrie, his wife, was last seen by him, her condition, her condition when he found her 16 minutes later, and and her physical condition in the crime scene, it was impossible. She had lividity; she had been dead for hours, and his alibi that he thought was so clever, even had the gas receipt he pulled out of his pocket. Oh, I happen to have the receipt where I got because she told me to. We have a busy day Saturday, she told him. He said, "We have a busy day. Go get gas at midnight, Matt. Would you? So he left long enough so that she would have had time to have killed herself under his story. But it was preposterous, and the police bought it hook, line, and sinker, and then would not help us for the longest time as we got looking at it privately, would not help us. Resented us. Resented the rangers that came to help. We had a Texas Ranger that got involved. I'll help look into it. They didn't want to help him. Would you be working for law enforcement or for Bill Johnston? They asked the ranger. They didn't want to look bad, and they didn't want someone else doing their work and figuring out they were morons, which they were.
Robert Riggs:
We're going to take a quick break for a short message, and we'll be back in just a moment.
Bill Johnston:
Bill, we were talking about how the charismatic preacher Mad Baker staged a crime scene to try to make it look like his wife had committed suicide. What caused all of that to come undone, and then later you discover he has a a mistress girlfriend, and he's actually told her he was gonna murder her and how he was gonna do it. What happened the Matt Baker case was that Matt Baker fooled the police, fool the family. Carrie Baker, who is very nice person, sweet daughter, great mother. She was buried quickly. No autopsy. Baker goes on with his life. Pulls her pictures off the refrigerator immediately. Puts the mistress's pictures up. Tells his daughters, "Here's your new mama. This is going to be your new mama, an eraser type of killer. Just erased his wife from the face of the earth, as if she never existed. She was in the way. She was trouble. But nothing happened to him. I mean, week after week after week, finally Carrie's mother, very bright, heartbroken woman came to see me. She had heard about some work we'd done on some cases and said, "I heard you might be able to help me. I, I guess my daughter killed herself, but I hate to think that, and I, I believe that there are some strange things about this this husband of hers, Matt Baker, it's probably nothing we can do about it. But and so a couple of investigators that I knew who had since retired, one was with the Texas Department of Public Safety, John Bennett, and Mike McNamara, a deputy U.S. Marshal, who was a good friend. We said, "We'll we'll take it on, you know. Let's see. I told her. I told the mother. You know, give us a month or so to just see what we can figure out. See whether or not there's something to work with. And so we started looking at the crime scene photos. And and again, I mean, we we understood what he told the local police. So it didn't really, in our minds, and we're not crime scene experts, but in our minds that they didn't match. There was a typed, so-called suicide note. Typed. We saw the picture. We read it. It was very self-serving. Oh, Matt, you're such a wonderful father. I'm so sorry to do this and leave you with the girls. Well, come on, not signed, typed, not signed. Never heard of such a thing. The bottle of pills on the on the bedside table. It was a Marilyn Monroe setup. I mean, basically, by that I mean it was so staged that looked like Marilyn Monroe's, which I guess was authentic. I don't know, but it looked just like that, the bottle is empty, but for like one, so they have a sample. See, so they can see what it is, and the bottle's empty. He's staged perfectly, and those things gave us pause. We're like, yeah, that just that does not look right. We never heard of this type suicide note concept. Early on, I took his deposition very early on, before we had anything put together. And I ask about the, you know, where's your the printer that that you know Carrie would have typed that on. Oh, I had to throw it out. Oh, you threw had to throw it out. Why'd you have to throw it out, Matt Preacher? Why'd you have to throw that out? Well, I bought a new computer and it wasn't compat. He said, "Wasn't compat. I was like, "Oh, not wasn't compat. This printer wouldn't go with that. No, I just threw them away. Just happened to throw them away, and so the very thing which you know would have actually helped him if it had been typed there. Problem was, it was probably typed at this office or something. But anyway, so all these, all these clues, none of these things added up. But it wasn't enough. We went then to see Tom Bevel in Norman, Oklahoma, again, crime scene reconstruction guy. And Matt Baker's story to the police had been, I found her and she was nude and cold, and that was important-really important for a couple reasons. One, yes, she probably was cold because it had been so long since she had been killed.
Bill Johnston:
That was inconsistent with his alibi, but he said she didn't have her clothes on, and so he didn't want the police to find her like that. So he put her underwear and her shirt on, and of course that's that's self-serving. He wants to look good. He wants to look like he did something. He tried to help her, and he tried. I tried to give her CPR. He said. So again, he can't help but be self-serving. He's always looking out for how he looks, how he tried to do the. I think how he's the hero, how he's the victim, and so you wouldn't think it was a big deal that he said, you know, I had to dress her, I had to put her clothes on. Yeah, and Tom Bevel, when we went up there, the Hewitt police, this small town, took like half dozen photos, terrible photos. I mean, it's like, yeah, do a crime scene? No, that's all they did. We heard the sergeant was afraid of bodies, didn't want to be you know in their room in their room too long taking pictures because he was afraid. This is your police department down there. But what we did have is a few pictures, and we showed Tom Bevel, and he said, "Where are the crime scene pictures? We said, "These are the crime. You know, where are the real crime? This is it. Sorry, Tom. This is all we have. Well, okay, we'll work with this. And he looked, and after a little study, he said she dressed herself. Wait a minute, he said she. He said she dressed herself. Look at the underwear. Look at the texture. It's I think was nylon. I'm not sure. Look at the look at her shirt. He said she dressed herself. She weighed. I don't remember what she weighed at the time, Carrie. But she would have. Tom Bevel said he could not dress a dead body and not have pull and tug on these. So what's a big deal about that? Big deal about that was he was partly trying to say she was cold because she wasn't dressed, but that he would lie about that alone, just that, told us volumes. He he would lie about dressing her. Why? Why? What's the point? He wanted to look good, and he wanted to explain why she was cold and blue. She would have been colder because she was unclothed. You know what I mean. So his, these are the sorts of things that begin to unravel, as you say.
Robert Riggs:
And he was not gone long enough to get gas for her to be cold and blue.
Bill Johnston:
Yes, he he left at like 1144. I may be off a little bit. 1140 4p.m. He arrived back. He called 911 like 1201. He said he rented a movie that she asked for, and he got gas. He had the gas receipt. It's possible that he did all that in that time, but it was impossible for her to. And and I asked him, by the way, again he let me take his deposition. What a fool! And so I, knowing this, the time was important. I I went on a little line of questioning. I said, "Now tell me, preacher, when she let when you left her, she was fine. Well, I think so. And I said, "Because you're a good dad, you're a great dad, Matt, and you would have never left your daughters sleeping in their rooms if you'd have thought Carrie was so ill, or so out of it, or so sleepy, or something's wrong. Oh, yes. And I said, so there was nothing wrong with her when you left. No, no, there was nothing wrong with her because you wouldn't have done that. You know, left your daughters in the care of someone that was out of it, so now we have her wide awake, and we have to. If if his story's true, she has to ingest a large number of these sleeping pills, which probably could not have even killed her. By the way, she had to ingest them; they had to be digested to the point where it affected her, she had to get sleepy, very sleepy, and her heart stop, stop breathing, her heart stop, and then she had to start the process of dying and the effect on the body, lividity, and her blood had
Robert Riggs:
pooled,
Bill Johnston:
her blood had pooled in the extremities. It had actually had double avidity, where she it had pulled and he moved her and it pulled again, and so that told the experts she was she had been dead for two or three hours, not 15 minutes, not six minutes, and so his story was simply impossible, and he was so sure of it. Why did he tell such a story? You know why? Because again, he wanted to look good. He wanted to look not only innocent, but he wanted to look like the good guy. He couldn't just leave it that he didn't do it. He wanted to be the good guy.
Robert Riggs:
But what we learned in the murder trial and everything from his girlfriend, who he told all the details to, that he had smothered her with a pillow.
Bill Johnston:
You know, Robert. We had a so it's always nice in a case like this. And again, I'm not a. I prosecuted a lot of murders and so forth, and I think I know quite a bit about this. But I'm not an expert at crime scenes and these sorts of things. But our we had a theory. It's nice to have a theory, and then try to prove the theory, or just try to disprove your own theory, but have a theory at least. There were a couple of pillows on the floor, not on the bed, that were near her, and it. Our theory, once we found that he had been searching for Ambien online, the drug, the sleeping pill. Once we found that, with we had a theory, he probably slipped Ambien in her drink, got her sleepy enough to where it would be hard for her to resist him, and then he suffocated her with one of these pillows we see.
Robert Riggs:
Yes,
Bill Johnston:
and that's what happened. Yes, because afterwards he told him, actually told his mistress that he's how he how he killed her. He sure did.
Robert Riggs:
And what is it in these cases that they tell the mistress, the girlfriend, about the murder?
Bill Johnston:
Can you imagine? How would that make you attractive to someone?
Robert Riggs:
Yes,
Bill Johnston:
I don't know. Is it
Robert Riggs:
maybe I want you to know how much I care about you? I've knocked them off for you.
Bill Johnston:
Yeah, and maybe that's a great that's a great theory. He cared so he wanted to be with his mistress so badly that he killed his wife for
Robert Riggs:
her.
Bill Johnston:
Maybe so. Maybe that was it.
Robert Riggs:
Although he had shared with the mistress a song, "Dirty Little Secrets, that in the lyrics there was a hint in there that you better not ever turn on me,
Bill Johnston:
right?
Robert Riggs:
Yeah.
Bill Johnston:
Oh, yeah. I mean, he, he, Matt. I believe, and again, this, this, there was no way to try to solve this other case I'm going to mention because forensically it would have been impossible because there wasn't anything to work with. But Matt Baker had a had two daughters and and had a little girl who was very sick with cancer years before, or some anyway a couple years before. And when she was sent home, she she was very ill and she was on oxygen. She died in her crib. The circumstances of that are bizarre. Matt Baker claimed to Carrie that he would need to go check on the. I have to go check on her, make sure she's okay in the middle, like a middle of the night. I mean, no reason, and he hadn't done it before. But he's the preacher, and he's our husband. Yeah, you know, of course he's a good guy, and he went in there, and then a little later he goes back to check on her again. She's dead. The when they got her to the hospital, a doctor, you know, and the doctor didn't do anything about it, and probably just didn't know enough to be concerned. But the doctor doctor caught him sort of fiddling with the breathing tube a little, almost like it had gotten out of place. I don't recall if it how it was positioned in her body, but it was odd. Like he was, you know, trying to make sure it didn't look like it had been removed or something. It was it was strange. The doctor noted it, but we believe Matt Baker's mentality was and is that he's an eraser? In other words, and he's and John Bennett, our investigator, called him a dark angel. That he he decides who lives and dies, and it needs to suit him. So his life was being, you know, the the milking of the sympathy for the little girl had already happened, and she was an expensive distraction to his life, and we believe he murdered her. We believe he murdered her in her crib. Again, there was no way because how much time passed. There was no autopsy, you know. But but that's Matt Baker.
Robert Riggs:
But then he uses that daughter's death in his story of why his wife committed suicide. She's depressed over. She
Bill Johnston:
wants to be with her.
Robert Riggs:
Yes, he tells the church congregation that.
Bill Johnston:
Right. Yeah. I mean, we've talked about killers. You and I have a lot of Kenneth McDuff and all these different killers, and whether they have any conscience at all. But Matt Baker had no conscience about any of this. had no had no, you know, human resistance against this sort of act. But worse, he was proactively hypocritical. He wasn't just a hypocrite. He was proactively he worked the hypocrisy. Kenneth McDuff, you know, he was a sorry rat killer. He never said he wasn't. I mean, said he wasn't a killer, but he never acted like he was a preacher. No, this guy was a cold-blooded killer. Cold-blooded killer, who represented himself to the rest of the world as a saintly man, who posed on the cover for the cover of Texas Monthly magazine, holding his cross and prayerfully looking at the camera. He was the ultimate hypocrite, but it wasn't some mild, you know, act he was doing in hypocrisy. He was a killer, a sorry, sorry human. He's rotting in prison right now in Texas. Thank God, literally, thank God.
Robert Riggs:
And when you mentioned about the the daughter having the brain tumor and in the hospital, one of the instances where a young girl goes to visit his daughter in the hospital, he corners her.
Bill Johnston:
He does, yeah. I mean, when when that little girl before he murdered, in my opinion, the little girl, they were at the children's hospital. The family had a room, and one of the. I believe it was a niece. I believe it was his wife's niece. Were there visiting, you know, to console and be with and support the family. Yeah, he tries to get her to go up to the family hotel room with him by herself for a little fun. I mean, that's Matt Baker. That's the preacher.
Robert Riggs:
So, the report that's come out also revealed that two executive members at the Southern Baptist Convention they kept their own private list of abusers, 703 names. There's talk they're going to publicize that they're going to release this list. I would expect Matt Baker to be at the top of that list.
Bill Johnston:
You know, I hope he is, but you know, I'm not sure, Robert. I'm not sure that any of this misconduct of Matt Baker, starting at Baylor First Baptist Church, Waco, the church in the Dallas area, the church in Central Texas. I don't. I doubt there's a record of any of it. I doubt he was on anybody's radar. They so thoroughly swept it under the little carpet and swept him out the door. I doubt he's on any list.
Robert Riggs:
So, what is a victim to do? Should they should they have you know in this report they all go to church members, church hierarchy. They don't go to the police. And you've investigated these cases at Baylor. What what should a a woman or the parents of a child, do
Bill Johnston:
never trust the institution. Never trust at all the institution from which the person comes, the perpetrator comes, and all you're doing. I'm not saying you don't notify them if there's a proper way to do that, but in terms of entrusting them with the problem, it's the fox guarding the hen house, as the saying is. But it is also giving them an opportunity to derail it, to guilt the person, to distract the person, to perhaps settle some quiet settlement with the person, with the victim. And so, by entrusting the institution, the the the bad institution, the suspect institution, with the issue, you you may be doing the opposite of what you should do. You should go to law enforcement that has authority and knowledge in that area.
Robert Riggs:
I'm going to put a link to the Southern Baptist investigation into the show notes of the podcast, but I want our listeners to understand and go to the sections about the interviews with the victims and do so you get a sense of what this has done to their lives. There's one young woman that the the youth and education minister started groping her and kind of grooming her when she's a you know 14 or so, and by the time she is 16, he has sexually sexually assaulted her 30 times. After months of abuse, she reports it, and who's told not to talk about it. He goes on to serve in other churches for 15 years, she complained and nothing, and so she told the the investigators that came to talk to her for this report that the trauma, she said, it is not only physically, psychologically, and emotionally devastating, but it is spiritually annihilating. It is soul murder,
Bill Johnston:
boy. What a what a term! It because when you put some eternal stock in something and it turns out to be not just unworthy but you know damn assaulting. Yeah, yeah, it does. It can just it can kill everything that you ever believed and make you not just not believe, but make you hate hate the institution. I have a friend in law enforcement that has a saying, and it's not saying it's always true, but seeing all this sort of stuff through the years, he had a saying: "I love the good Lord. It's his fan club. I hate, and it's sometimes it's the hanger honors, the fan club of these preachers. That if the preacher walked in, they would snap to attention and get against the wall out of deference. They don't deserve that, not one of them, and they shouldn't want it. Those that portray themselves as not just holier than thou, but as above reproach, they shouldn't want to be looked at it that way. They should always be. Everyone should be judged of their character. They should be judged equally, and if they're a good person, wonderful. I'm so glad they're a good person and in that job, but they don't get the benefit of any doubt in my book. And I think that women like this you just described are why because they can not just kill someone's you know enthusiasm for life. They can destroy any faith. That they have, and the Catholic Church has suffered significantly because of this. The Baptist Church has, to some degree, and will probably more likely in the future because of this report and because it's just true. I mean, horrible.
Bill Johnston:
There's a reason that this Matt Baker story is one of our most popular podcasts, and I think it's not just because it's an unbelievable story of you know bad police work and recovering from that and getting him caught, but it's the the depth of the hypocrisy,
Robert Riggs:
yes,
Bill Johnston:
and the just the scandalous nature of it that people are-I don't mean fascinated, but people are just intrigued by, and rightly so.
Robert Riggs:
Well, I want to close with what Crawford Long, the prosecutor at the murder trial, had to say about it. You and I know Crawford. I remember Crawford giving the opening argument in the Capitol murder trial of Kenneth McDuff, the serial killer, and you know it was something along the line of he is the boogeyman who comes in the night for you, and boy, you, the jury, were spellbound.
But so here's what Crawford says: Matt Baker was a person who led a double life and used his position as a minister for evil purposes. In the end, he reminded us of the quote from Shakespeare's *The Merchant of Venice*: "The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
Bill Johnston:
Wow!
Robert Riggs:
And Crawford had a way with words.
Bill Johnston:
Did, and Matt was convicted, and he's in prison today.
Robert Riggs:
Yeah, and thank the Lord for Crawford Long and everybody who investigated this case. That's
Bill Johnston:
right.
Robert Riggs:
Well, that is another true crime reporter episode. As we say, we take you inside the crime scene tape, and our true crime stories are stranger than fiction. We'll be back next week. We want to be your favorite true crime podcast, so please recommend us to your friends and leave a review wherever you listen. If you want to receive updates and bonus interviews, join our true crime community at truecrimereporter.com. I
