Speculation is raging in legal and law enforcement communities. Will there be justice for Zahra Baker? Genuine doubts exist, though no one will admit it on the record.
By this time in most murder cases — if that’s what this is — a cause of death has long since been determined. Yet that remains a mystery, along with the date of her disappearance. Oct. 26, the day investigators found the first of Zahra’s remains and her prosthetic leg, is listed as the date of her death on her death certificate. Only parts of Zahra’s body have been recovered. They were exposed to the elements for weeks, a complication that could make determining the cause of death impossible.
Elisa Baker, Zahra’s now-jailed stepmother, and other family members claim Zahra died of an unnamed illness. Zahra’s death was concealed because no one got her treatment, they say. Given that Zahra had survived cancer that had recurred in the past, that argument could give a jury pause if this case ever makes it before one.
Elisa says Zahra’s father, Adam Baker, dismembered her after she died. Cell tower records place Elisa’s cell phone at the locations Zahra’s body was buried, not Adam’s. But on the 911 tape when he reported 10-year-old Zahra missing — while chuckling — Adam told the dispatcher he and Elisa, his wife, had last seen Zahra 12 hours earlier in her bed. He later changed that story, claiming he had last seen her three days earlier. That timeline doesn’t square with the other evidence in the case, yet Adam, who appears to have little else to say about what happened to Zahra, somehow remains free. Elisa remains jailed on charges she lied to investigators about Zahra being kidnapped. Authorities have been strangely silent in recent weeks on what if any role Adam played and exactly how cooperative he is being.
But the biggest speculation revolves around whether Jay Gaither, district attorney for the Hickory area, is in over his head trying the state’s highest profile case in a decade. It’s so complex, it would give a seasoned DA with a big-city staff the willies. In his eight years as DA, Gaither lost nearly 30 percent of his Catawba County murder trials, according to data Creative Loafing obtained from the state office of the courts. That doesn’t bode well.
The district attorney’s office has a history of mind-numbing mistakes in homicide cases, both before and after Gaither was first elected in 2002. The worst was featured in Colorado’s Denver Post as part of a series on the most atrociously bungled murder cases in the nation.
Francisco LaBoy was arrested for murdering his wife, Kim LaBoy, two days after she filed for divorce in 2002. She was stabbed 51 times and raped. Blood consistent with her DNA was found in LaBoy’s truck. LaBoy’s attorney won an order from the court forcing the State Bureau of Investigation lab to save enough DNA from the crime for testing by another independent lab. The DA’s office is responsible for communicating that to the SBI, but neglected to and the DNA was destroyed during testing. LaBoy won another court order in 2004 for the SBI to cease all testing, but that order wasn’t communicated by Gaither’s office to the SBI either. Rape kit swabs were tested, destroying DNA evidence.
Because of the blunders, a superior court judge barred the use of the DNA results in what should have been an open and shut case. The charges against LaBoy were dropped.
In December, Catawba County’s Observer News Enterprise editorial board questioned whether Gaither’s office was capable of successfully prosecuting the Zahra Baker case given its “mismanagement and lack of preparation.” Gaither’s office failed to file the necessary paperwork with the court to keep police warrants crucial to the investigation sealed. When given a second chance by a judge to argue for the sealing of the warrants, Gaither told the judge his office was unprepared to argue the case that day. Crucial details of the case that should have been kept secret were then blasted across the country by the media, which could endanger the prosecution of the case, the Observer News Enterprise opined.
Zahra deserves better. Whether she will get it is anybody’s guess.
This article appears in Feb 8-14, 2011.
It is unfortunate but if a person is not a VIP the odds of getting a conviction against a suspect go down the drain fast. No incentive. That’s American “justice.” AMW picks up the slack that the flawed local judical systems drop. Government really doesn’t hire the best lawyers just people who practice law. Look at Mecklenburg County cutting back monies for the courts. It has nothing to do with justice, just politics. It’s a shame since the founding fathers are more then likely rolling over in their graves and the politicans put the spin on assuming consumers are idiots. Goes to show just how dumb politicans are. Spending money on items that inflate their egos so they can feel important not about making society a better place.