Daniel Wade Moore: Juror Speaks
/in homicide, murder/by Eyes for LiesFor those of you who have interest in the Daniel Wade Moore case, a juror from the 2nd trial (that ended in a hung jury this past week) left a comment on my blog last night that is interesting reading.
It is in response to my post on Daniel Wade Moore and Dr. Tipton, and the comments made back in November 2005: An Innocent Man Convicted.
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Daniel Wade Moore: Mistrial
/in Uncategorized/by Eyes for LiesI wrote about Daniel Wade Moore back in back in November of 2005. Daniel Wade Moore’s original conviction was thrown out, and his new trial began in February.
Today after six days of deliberation, the jury was hung, and the new trial was declared a mistrial nine years to the day Karen Tipton was found dead.
How ironic is that?
After the trial, the jury’s vote was 4-4-4, with 4 being undecided (source). After deliberations, 8 people were for acquitting Daniel Moore, but 4 people were hold outs so it looks like this will go to trial for a third time.
I was happy to hear that 8 people were for acquittal. I can’t believe they will try this for a 3rd time.
Mechele Linehan
/in 48 Hours, murder/by Eyes for LiesMechele Linehan was profiled on 48 Hours this past weekend. The segment was titled Love and Death in the Wild.
Mechele was a beautiful girl who knew the power of attraction, and she learned at a very young age how to use it. She had no problem attracting men so when she took a job as an exotic dancer at the age of 18 in Alaska, it would come as no surprise that the men encircled her off the stage as well.
48 Hours found several men with whom she dated, and who wanted to marry her. And supposedly she was engaged to three men at one time (or at least they thought they were). Each of the guys being much older than her. Two of the three talked to 48 Hours.
Read more The story is long and involved, but Linehan never married any of them men, and one of them, Kent Leppink, turned up dead during the time Linehan was seeing him. At the time of Leppink’s murder, however, Linehan was out of town.
With that, Linehan was never charged, and eventually moved on to Washington state, married a doctor, got a master’s degree and had a child.
Eight years would pass before a cold case unit picked up the case and followed up on it, and when they did, they narrowed in on Mechele.
Leppink left behind a letter from the grave professing his love for Linehan, but also said that if anything happened to him that looked suspicious to look at Michele or the other people in her life.
I am not going to detail all the events of the story as you can read all about it on 48 Hours website yourself, but I will tell you that Linehan was finally arrested, charged and convicted of the first degree murder of Kent Leppink yet she still swears to this day she had nothing to do with his murder.
Linehan’s husband and a friend appeared on 48 Hours to stand beside her in their belief she is innocent as did a handful of people who swore Mechele was a manipulative, deceitful liar.
With that, I wanted to share with you what I saw. Is Mechele a decent person whose life story is being twisted and used against her, or is she a mastermind deceiver?
First off, I think the facts don’t bode well for Mechele at all. I think most people will see logically her behavior and actions don’t add up to “love” as she led these men to think it was. The life insurance policy for Kent is exceptionally unusual. Most young 20-year-olds don’t think of taking out a life insurance policy on someone — let alone someone they now profess was likely gay (which I don’t believe for a minute). It defies logic. I find the timing of Mechele’s calls about Kent’s life insurance policy before his death is exceptionally odd, too. I see a whole host of red flags, and I could probably post an entire post about those, but putting all of this aside, what do I see?
Mechele plays the part of a sweet, innocent, demure women in the interview with 48 Hours. She is soft-spoken, and gentle (she reminds me a bit of Melanie McGuire in that sense). She softly weeps as she wipes the tears from her eyes begging for you to sympathize with her.
I find this classic deceptive behavior. When I see people talking really soft and demure, when they are a grown adult, no matter happy or sad, it is almost always a red flag for me. It’s unusual behavior for adults unless they are especially shy and reserved which clearly Mechele wasn’t, or she wouldn’t have stripped in a club for a living. Any time I see this mousy behavior, I go into high alert. It’s a big red flag.
Furthermore, Mechele’s emotions don’t jive for me. They are off, not on target, or as they should be. You can see her assessing the situation, and playing the interviewer. She even gets so brash as to say that if she cried in front of the jury, the jury would hold it against her, or if she didn’t, they would hold it against her. It was the manner, and way she said it that raised a red flag for me. Clearly, she was thinking how she could manipulate the jury. Unfortunately, 48 Hours didn’t load any video of Mechele for me to critique for you.
This case is about circumstances that are a too unusual, about a suspect whose stories don’t add up, and about a woman who was an incredible manipulator who I suspect learned to harness the power of sex in men who were lonely and longing to get what she craved: money.
I also don’t trust her other boyfriend or friend Carlin either. He makes my hair stand on edge.
I feel sad for Mechele’s husband, her daughter and her friend. They can’t see the real Mechele. She’s a cold, calculating woman who obviously had no problem using people and disposing of them to suit her needs–no matter how ruthless it was.
Matt and Kari Baker
/in 20/20/by Eyes for LiesMatt Baker was featured on ABC’s 20/20 this weekend. Matt was a Baptist preacher, and his wife, Kari, an elementary school teacher.
On April 7, 2006, Kari turned up dead in their home. Matt says she asked him to go rent a movie after the 11 p.m. news, and to gas up the car. When he returned, she was naked on the bed, dead, and had left a suicide note: an unsigned, typewritten note that consisted of one small paragraph (only a few sentences).
Investigators ruled her death a suicide (by overdose). No autopsy was performed on Kari.
A lone detective took photographs of the scene and the justice of the peace — who didn’t come to the house — made a ruling of suicide over the phone and without an autopsy (ABC 20/20).
But Kari’s family didn’t believe it, and after several months, they managed to dig up enough questions that the justice of the peace changed his ruling. In September, when Texas Rangers went to arrest Matt at a school where he was a substitute teacher, Matt fled the scene, but shortly thereafter turned himself in (source). Matt was arrested and charged in the murder of his wife and is now awaiting trial.
Read moreThere is a pile of circumstantial evidence in this case that doesn’t bode well for Matt. Kari’s suicide note, typed and unsigned, is very unusual. Women usually have a lot more to say than one small paragraph if they are going to write a suicide note. I would really like to see what the note said, but I haven’t been able to find it anywhere.
Matt also has admitted to searching for overdosing on sleeping pills on the Internet, but said it was only because he was concerned about his wife.
“I did research to see can you overdose, is that even a possibility that I need to worry about, my wife overdosing on sleeping pills,” Matt said (source).
I find Matt’s words here interesting. When I watch Matt talk, he gives the classic thinking-on-your feet speech behaviors. He doesn’t seem to be recollecting things, but rather thinking as he speaks. This is not conducive to honesty.
Kari confided in a counselor before her death that she found crushed pills in Matt’s briefcase, and she told the counselor she feared Matt might kill her, because she believed he was having an affair. And cell phone records and records from Matt’s work phone reveal several times a day for weeks she was calling the daughter of the music director at the church where Matt was preaching.
“She was kind of panicked about the whole situation when she found those crushed pills. No. Really, she was a lot panicked,” Shae Dickey, who taught with Kari Baker at Spring Valley Elementary School in Hewitt, told the Tribune-Herald. “She suspected that he was having an affair, and she told me she thought he was trying to kill her (source).”
And within days of Kari’s death, Matt was seen with the music director’s daughter shopping for jewelry, apparently an engagement ring. Matt says he was just looking to buy his daughter earrings.
I also find Matt emotionless. Listen to Matt’s 911 call here when he finds his wife’s dead body.
Doesn’t he sound like this is a routine call to say, perhaps, the cleaners? Does he sound like a husband who is upset or distraught that his wife is dead?
Worse for Matt is that he couldn’t even keep his facts straight on 20/20. He changed his story about finding and reading the suicide note. When he talks to the 911 operator, he says he found the suicide note. Yet when he talks to 20/20, he says that the police officers found it, and when John Quinones questions him, you can clearly see that he gets nervous.
John Quinones also asked Matt if he was capable of killing his wife, and the way Matt answered this question really raised the hairs on my head. He stopped, thought about it, and then answered. He said, “Absolutely!…” I think he meant to say absolutely not, but he forgot the word “not” in his scheming brain. I wish there was a clip of that segment online, but I have been unable to find it.
You can read the affidavit in this case here:
Baker Affidavit Page 1
Baker Affidavit Page 2
Baker Affidavit Page 3
I don’t believe Matt for a variety of reasons, and I don’t believe you need “Eyes for Lies” to see why.
There are too many witnesses coming forward to say they saw Matt do something for which Matt has a totally different version of events, or denies. Second are Matt’s lack of emotions when he talks about a wife he supposedly loved. Third, Matt’s speech shows signs of thinking-on-his-feet behavior. And last, Matt can’t keep his facts straight, and he tells different people different things, which strongly supports someone who is less than honest.
This will be interesting to watch go to trial.
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