Dirty little secrets revealed in preacher Matt Baker's murder trial

Produced by Lisa Freed and Gail Zimmerman

Linda and Jim Dulin are convinced that their daughter, Kari, was murdered by the man they once embraced as a son-in-law: Baptist preacher Matt Baker.

"Kari was a very good minister's wife. Faith was very important in her life," Linda Dulin told "48 Hours" correspondent Erin Moriarty. "This was a man who was capable of the ultimate evil."

Read more: "The Preacher's Wife"

Matt Baker has always claimed that his wife committed suicide, just as he told the 911 operator a little after midnight on April 8, 2006:

911 Operator: This is 911, do you have an emergency?

Matt Baker: Yes, I think my wife just committed suicide.

He said he went out to get a video and gas for his car. When he arrived home, Baker found his wife lifeless on the bed... an empty bottle of Unisom and a suicide note on the table.

"I -- felt to see if she was breathing. She was not. I shook her, she didn't answer," said Baker.

Their daughters, Kensi, 9, and Grace, 5, were asleep in nearby bedrooms.

Baker says it was because of another daughter, Kassidy, that Kari took her own life. He says she had never stopped grieving for Kassidy, who had a brain tumor and died seven years earlier.

"That was a tough time for her... every year," he told Moriarty. "It never got better for her."

But Kari's mother, and her family, did not believe that Kari would have abandoned her living children. The suicide note was typed -- even the signature. Linda Dulin grew more suspicious when she discovered that there were numerous phone calls between baker and a young parishioner named Vanessa Bulls.

"We talked a lot. But I talked to a lot of friends," Baker told Moriarty. When asked if he had an affair with Vanessa Bulls, he said, "Oh, no. I did not. There was never any relationship at all other than a friendship."

Matt Baker certainly didn't seem like he had anything to hide. He voluntarily spoke with the Hewitt Police a few months after Kari died.

"And so since then it has grown into a good friendship... and I know for a fact my in-laws don't like that," he told police.

And he wasn't shy about airing his grievances against the Dulins, who had been pushing the police to investigate their daughter's death.

"I think they're mad that they think I'm moving on -- I guess they think I'm moving on too quickly..." he told police.

Baker patiently answered every question they posed:

Hewitt Police: She was lying in the bed?

Matt Baker: Mm-hmm.

Hewitt Police: Was she clothed?

Matt Baker: She was not -- she had -- I'm trying to remember. No. She was naked.

The police also questioned Vanessa Bulls, who denied any affair with Baker:

Hewitt Police: Did you ever meet him romantically?

Vanessa Bulls: NO.

Hewitt Police: Never, OK.

And that, it seemed, was the end of the police investigation.

Linda Dulin was frustrated and felt that the only way she'd know what happened to Kari was to find out herself. So she hired attorney Bill Johnston and his team of investigators.

"We became convinced that he done it," Johnston told Moriarty. Investigator John Bennett added, "It seemed like every expert we talked to told us that it could not happen the way Matt Baker said it had."

Matt Baker said he was only gone for about 40 minutes, but Kari's body showed signs of lividity, the pooling of blood after death. The experts said it was unlikely that Kari could have ingested drugs, died and reached that state in such a short period of time. Moreover, records salvaged from Baker's workplace server were incriminating.

"We got to parts of it that showed he had search terms like 'overdose' and 'death by sleeping pills,'" said Johnson.

Johnston felt that police dropped the ball, but he was hamstrung. There was no autopsy and the death was classified as suicide.

"There was a guy who was holding a Bible on Sunday telling everybody how to live and he'd murdered his wife," Johnson said. "Every minute that went by, Baker was closer to getting away with it. And he knew it."

Johnston turned to Matt Cawthon, an old friend who was a member of the Texas Rangers -- the statewide law enforcement team. Cawthon agreed, unofficially, to help.

"The next step," Cawthon explained, "was to obtain records from telephones. Any other type of records that we might need."

To get those documents, Cawthon needed the district attorney's help, but was turned down flat. "I could not understand why I could not have the basic tools that I needed to continue with this," he said.

Cawthon persisted and finally convinced authorities to conduct an autopsy -- three months after Kari died. It was too late to test for drugs in her blood, but they did find Unisom in her muscle tissue, along with traces of Ambien, a drug Kari was not known to take. The manner of death was changed from suicide to undetermined.

In September 2007, a year-and-a-half after Kari died, the police now felt they had a homicide on their hands. Matt Baker was arrested and charged with murder. He was released on bond, thanks to powerhouse attorney Guy James Gray, who took the case pro bono.

"I only take the cases that I believe in with all my heart. And this is one of them," Gray told Moriarty.

And, Gray says, this is an injustice.

"You can't go forward with a murder case unless you can establish that it is a homicide. So, you have to establish cause of death," he explained. "And that, forensically, is just not possible in this case."

Six months after Matt Baker was arrested, his fate changed again -- dramatically.

Assistant District Attorney Crawford Long decided it was too risky to take Baker to trial, so he dropped the murder charges.

"The evidence was too speculative," Long explained. "You couldn't get beyond a reasonable doubt with that. It's not 'was it a crime and who committed it?' But 'was it a crime at all?"

But Matt Baker wasn't off the hook. Kari Baker's mother, Linda Dulin decided to sue him for wrongful death.

"I'm angry," she said. "And all he's doing is making us more determined to uncover the truth."

Linda's attorney, Bill Johnston, and his investigators were hoping any new evidence they might dig up for the civil case would help rebuild a criminal one.

"We've got a guy on the street that's a killer. I wasn't gonna let ... a guy like that outsmart me or outplay me," Johnston said. "We have to try ... to do such a good job, and have the evidence be so clear, and so strong that a prosecutor looking at it will say, 'I can do that too.'"

And Johnston had an advantage. In a civil case, he could depose Matt Baker under oath and on camera. "And he was foolish enough to allow me to," Johnston said. "He could have pleaded the Fifth Amendment."

Bill Johnston: Did you have a sexual relationship with any woman in the year prior to Kari's death other than Kari?

Matt Baker: No.

"He clearly ... described things that were impossible," said Johnston.

Bill Johnston: While you have 911 on the phone... you're dressing her. How long did it take to dress her about?

Matt Baker: Again, probably just seconds.

Asked if Matt Baker knows what he's up against, Johnston replied, "No. He's used to conning people, and -- havin' them do what he wants."

What Baker didn't anticipate was that Assistant District Attorney Crawford Long and fellow prosecutor Susan Shafer weren't giving up. They, too, believed Matt Baker killed Kari. The problem was proving it.

"You get one bite at that apple. And if you get an acquittal, it's over," said Shafer.

All the evidence prosecutors had was circumstantial. What they really wanted was the testimony of Vanessa Bulls, who they suspected was Baker's lover before Kari died.

Shafer said Vanessa Bulls is key to the case because prosecutors believed she knew some of Baker's secrets.

So far, Vanessa has had little to say to law enforcement. The only thing she admitted was that she dated Baker -- and only after Kari died.

"After his wife passed away because I didn't think there was anything wrong," Vanessa tells police.

Asked if she believes Bulls, Shafer said, "No."

Prosecutors had the phone records and a jewelry store clerk who saw Baker and Bulls checking out wedding rings just weeks after Kari died.

Working with prosecutors was Abdon Rodriguez, a savvy investigator with a reputation for convincing the most reluctant witnesses to talk. He carefully studied Bulls' interview:

Hewitt Police: Did you start to feel like he was pursuing you?

Vanessa Bulls: I didn't really want to think that because he seemed happily married.

"I could tell she was lying," Rodriguez said. "There was information there that I could tell that she had, but she didn't wanna give it up."

And for good reason. Rodriguez knew Bulls had everything to lose if she admitted knowing anything about the crime. "I said, 'We're gonna have to break her ... cause she's the one that knows exactly what took place here.'"

But after interviewing her, Vanessa Bulls was still holding back. So the prosecution gambled and subpoenaed her to testify before the grand jury.

Asked if it was risky, Crawford Long replied, "We didn't have anything to lose."

Long gave Vanessa Bulls immunity, promising not to use her testimony against her. Abdon Rodriguez added a warning:

"'I know what you did. I know what you know,'" he said. "And I said, 'You better tell the truth ... I'll be sittin' there. And if you perjure yourself,' I said, 'we will turn around and charge you with it.'"

But on the stand, Bulls stuck with her story until Crawford Long asked this question:

"I said, 'Did Matt ever tell you anything about Kari's death?' And she said, 'Yes, he said, "I killed her for you."' My jaw probably dropped down on my chest," said Long.

Baker even told Bulls how he did it.

"He told her that -- he had smothered her," said Long.

Nearly three years after Kari's death, Crawford Long had all the proof he needed to finally indict Matt Baker.

It was unbelievable news for Linda Dulin. "I remember ... just falling to my knees and I was crying," Linda Dulin recalled in tears. "I was overwhelmed."

In March 2009, Matt Baker was re-arrested and charged with Kari's murder. The state's star witness is Vanessa Bulls.

"I don't think she's told everything," Rodriguez said. "I don't -- and I mean there's still more."

Nearly four years after claiming he found his wife, Kari, dead, Matt Baker is now on trial for murder.

"You'll hear Matt Baker say his wife has just committed suicide, that he found a note, but Matt has a variety of stories about what happened that night," Assistant District Attorney Susan Shafer told the court.

Shafer promised the jury that they will meet the "other woman."

"You'll hear him repeatedly and consistently say he never had an affair with Vanessa Bulls ... You're going to hear from Vanessa Bulls. You're going to see her. ...She's going to tell you about how Matt brought her into their marital bed. While Kari was still alive," she continued.

Baker has always denied that affair, so no one in the courtroom was quite prepared for what his defense attorney, Guy James Gray, had to say.

"Matt Baker was, in fact, having an affair," Gray told the court.

"I got fooled. Got fooled by Matt Baker," Gray told Erin Moriarty.

Asked when he realized Baker was lying about his involvement with Vanessa Bulls, Gray replied, "Roughly a month before the trial, something like that."

"Both of them lied to the families, both lied to the cops and both of them lied to try to cover up this affair," Gray continued in court.

Gray says that doesn't mean that Baker killed his wife. Instead, he goes on the attack and tells the jury that Kari was in a precarious emotional state.

"At the time of her death she took a mixture of medicine... She used sleeping pills on a regular basis," he told the court.

"I was trying to steel myself for the stories they were going to spin about Kari," Kari's mother, Linda Dulin, said. "She wasn't there to defend herself and that broke my heart."

Gray also zeros in on the lack of evidence.

"You got no physical evidence ... you got no cause of death," he told Moriarty. "You can't even really be certain it was a murder."

"Was it suicide or was it murder?" Assistant D.A. Crawford Long said. "I describe it as the most difficult case I've ever prosecuted."

Long expects to get help from a surprising witness -- Matt Baker himself.

Baker was unusually talkative in the years before his trial.

"It's all the truth. Everything that is from me is the truth," Baker had said in an interview with "48 Hours".

"You're not nervous about talking... If it ever goes to trial, that something you might say here could be used against you," Moriarty asked Baker.

"And if it is then you deal with it at the time," he replied.

And that time is now. Baker's contradictions and lies are coming back to haunt him:

Erin Moriarty: She was awake when you --

Matt Baker: Correct.

Erin Moriarty: And she was talking? She said goodbye to you?

Matt Baker: When I left, she was asleep.

While a defendant can't be forced to testify, everything Baker said already can be used against him at trial.

There are interviews with "48 Hours:"

Erin Moriarty: Did you have an affair with Vanessa?

Matt Baker: Oh, no, I did not.

Civil depositions: "I proceed to talk to the 911 operator as I put her clothes on her."

And his statement to police: "I knew she was depressed. I knew she was down."

Baker's claim that Kari was a despondent, dysfunctional parent is disputed by witness after witness and even her grief counselor.

Three days into the trial, Linda Dulin finally comes to face to face with the man she is convinced killed her daughter.

Dulin testifies that after her daughter died, Kari's grief counselor told her that Kari had found crushed pills in Matt's briefcase. Kari feared he was going to harm her. Dulin later confronted Baker.

"He told me that clearly some youth had found his briefcase and ... spit the pills in there so that they wouldn't have to take them and that he reported this to security [at the youth center where Matt worked]," Dulin testified.

"Were you able to make any determination that it was reported?" Crawford Long asked.

"It was not reported," Dulin replied.

And there's Matt Baker's claim that in the time it took paramedics to arrive -- around four minutes, he managed to dress Kari in her shirt and panties, get her to the floor and perform CPR -- all while cradling the phone on his shoulder.

"Do you believe that he is moving her at all while he's on the 911 call?" Moriarty asked Shafer.

"I don't even think he's in the room," she said.

Pictures taken the night of Kari's death also contradict Matt's story. He told investigators that he found Kari's body with both arms stretched out flat on the bed.

"He actually drew a diagram of how he claimed her body to be," Shafer explained.

Bill Johnston: On her back slightly at an angle?

Matt Baker: Slightly at an angle.

Shafer said, "There's no way. No way."

The proof: crime scene photos which show an uneven pooling of blood, or lividity, in Kari's arms.

According to Shafer, the fact there was more lividity on Kari's left arm as opposed to her right said, "that that arm was lower than the rest of her body. Blood sinks to the lowest point. ...so either her head was on the other side of the bed with her left arm hanging off, or her head had to be at the foot of the bed with her left arm hanging off - neither of which was what he described and diagrammed."

And then there are those computer searches. Matt Baker visited online pharmacies searching for the sleeping pill Ambien.

"Is your business - your Internet business - a library or a store?" Shafer asked a witness.

"We're not in the information business. We're purely a commercial business," he replied. The witness, who flew in from Spain, says that online pharmacy has one purpose. "The number one reason you find yourself in this situation is you want to buy something," he testified.

The witness says Baker attempted to buy a generic form of Ambien and placed it in his online shopping cart. But, when cross examined by defense attorney Gray:

"They went through the process of looking at it but it was aborted and no purchase of Ambien was made," Gray stated to the witness.

"Correct. Yes," he replied.

And there's no evidence that Baker bought Ambien anywhere else or that he forced Kari to take that or any other drug.

"If there is not clear-cut proof, then we don't convict," said Gray.

But the defense's biggest challenge is yet to come ... when the state's star witness, Vanessa Bulls, takes the stand.

"We had no knowledge of what she would say until she testified in the courtroom," Gray explained.

"'You really need to turn yourself in or I'm gonna tell what you did,'" she testified. Then she mimics Matt Baker in a sing-songy voice. "And he said, 'You better not do that.'"

Four days into Matt Baker's trial comes the moment everyone has been waiting for. On the stand is the prosecution's star witness: the self confident, almost smug, 27-year-old teacher, Vanessa Bulls.

"Were you worried the jury might really dislike her?" Erin Moriarty asked Assistant District Attorney Susan Shafer.

"Oh, yeah," she replied with a laugh. "We were very aware of that problem going in."

Susan Shafer has another problem with the witness. "There was a lot available for attack by the defense," she said.

Susan Shafer: Did you tell the truth about the affair?

Vanessa Bulls: No. I didn't admit to it. I completely denied everything.

For years, Vanessa Bulls lied to everyone about her relationship with Matt Baker.

Knowing the jury might just dismiss Vanessa Bulls as a liar, Shafer says she was willing to go with her testimony because, "We believed that this was, in fact, the true story."

Bulls begins by telling the jury how she met Baker at church in the fall of 2005"

Vanessa Bulls: One time I was sitting by myself in the church... He came in and he just sat down and started talking to me... and said, "Whoever finds you is going to be a lucky man."

Vanessa was a single mom going through a divorce.

Vanessa Bulls: He said he'd counseled people with divorce before. ...he said he's lost a child... and God could get you through anything.

She says Matt often complained about Kari.

Vanessa Bulls: His wife was sooo depressed... He said that she was a horrible mother... a horrible wife. ...they didn't have sex anymore.

Susan Shafer: And at the time were you buying into what he was telling you about Kari?

Vanessa Bulls: I was buying into everything.

In early March 2006, Baker invited Bulls to continue counseling at his house. It was the first time, she says, they had sex.

Vanessa Bulls: He asked if he could hold my hands to pray, and he did. ...then afterwards, he started to kiss me... Then he just took my hand and led me to the bedroom.

Vanessa Bulls: I was extremely remorseful. I couldn't believe what just happened.

But the affair continued. And so did Baker's bitterness towards his wife:

Vanessa Bulls: He referred to her as a "fat bitch." Said that he wanted her out of his life.

Just a few weeks later, Kari was dead. Within days, Bulls says, Baker told her exactly how he did it.

Vanessa Bulls: He said, "I'm going to tell you what happened that night. One time." And then he said, "I never want to talk about it again."

Under the guise of a romantic evening, Baker gave Kari a mix of wine coolers and pills he said were sex stimulants. He said he handcuffed her to the bed, started kissing her and touching her all over... until she fell asleep.

But Bulls says Baker had filled the capsules with crushed Ambien to knock his wife out:

Vanessa Bulls: He said he kissed her on the forehead and either said, "Give Kassidy a hug for me," or "Give Kassidy a kiss for me." Then he said he got the pillow and put it over her face.

Baker thought Kari was dead, Bulls says. So he was startled when Kari suddenly gasped for air.

Vanessa Bulls: He said, "Oh sh-t." And then he said he ...put the pillow on her face, but then he said he did this with his hand where her nose was, so he would be sure to suffocate her.

"I know what my child was screaming inside of her head," Linda Dulin said in tears after hearing how her daughter died. "She was screaming out for her babies. I know that. I know that."

Even more devastating for Dulin is that her daughter didn't have to die. Vanessa Bulls admits she knew Matt was plotting to kill Kari:

Vanessa Bulls: He talked about putting something in a milkshake. ...making it look like she had hung herself. ...maybe doing a drive-by shooting. ...make it look like she overdosed on sleeping pills. ...tampering with the brakes of her car.

Bulls even knew the day Baker intended to murder his wife: April 7, 2006.

Susan Shafer: And you didn't report that to anybody?

Vanessa Bulls: No.

"Vanessa could have saved your daughter," Moriarty noted to Dulin. "She knew what day your daughter was going to die."

"I know," Dulin cried. "I know."

Two weeks later, a smiling Vanessa Bulls was by Baker's side, helping to chaperone Kensi's 10th birthday party.

Susan Shafer: Did it at all occur to you that if he killed one wife, he might kill another?

Vanessa Bulls: I thought he would, but he promised me that he would be so happy that he would never do that.

She continued dating him and kept her mouth shut"

Vanessa Bulls: Not only had I known about this and not done the right thing -- in truth, who would believe me? [She cries.] He was a preacher. I felt like I was stuck.

Even after she broke up with Baker months later, when police began looking into Kari's death, Bulls says she was afraid to talk.

Vanessa Bulls: He started saying, "I killed my wife for you and now you're leaving."

Vanessa Bulls: At that point I was ... worried that he would come after me and put a bullet in my head, to be blunt.

But Matt Baker's lawyer, Guy James Gray, says Bulls is a liar -- pure and simple.

"If what she said was the truth, it was pretty dramatic and pretty damning," he told Moriarty. "I don't believe much of what she said."

And when it's his turn to cross examine Bulls, Gray attacks her credibility.

Guy James Gray: Was that statement true or not true?

Vanessa Bulls: It was absolutely false. I was untruthful. I was still keeping that part in. I'm sure I denied that part completely.

"Isn't it possible that Vanessa Bulls is finally telling the truth?" Moriarty asked Gray.

"Possible? Sure. Not very likely, though," he replied.

When the defense presents its case, Gray calls only one witness -- a forensic expert who speculates that traces of DNA found on the suicide note might be Kari's.

Guy James Gray: Out of all the people tested, which one had the highest group number that would indicate the highest probability of a touch?

Witness: Kari Baker appears to have the highest number.

Guy James Gray: Nothing further, Judge.

Gray hopes this will create doubt in the minds of the jurors.

"If the primary source of DNA on that piece of paper was Kari Baker's, then ...she musta taken her own life," he said.

Says Crawford Long, "I felt - we had proven our case... I was concerned.... how the jury would feel about Vanessa."

As they deliberate into the night, the jurors have a series of questions for the judge:

Is it possible for us to see Matt Baker's complete deposition video?

Do we have to find guilt by use of drugs and suffocating?

Can we have a transcript of Vanessa Bulls' testimony please?

The questions made Linda Dulin "very, very nervous."

"We were concerned," Shafer said. "It was frightening."

"It may be that, you know, maybe that they can't figure it out," said Bill Johnston.

"As the hours went on, I became more nervous," Linda Dulin said. "I went off by myself and just prayed a lot."

"You're always nervous until they come back in," Assistant D.A. Crawford Long said of the deliberations. "There's no such thing as a slam dunk.

Especially in this case, after prosecutors lost their chance to put Matt Baker on the hot seat.

"It's the only case I've ever tried that I didn't put my client on the stand," said Baker's attorney, Guy James Gray.

The defense attorney said he couldn't risk it, and for good reason. "They had a trap, you know."

The trap: a fireman's dummy at just about Kari's weight when she died.

The prosecution's plan was to have Matt Baker demonstrate, in front of the jury, what he claims he did after he found his wife dead and naked in their bed.

"When I'm on the phone with the operator, I'm putting her clothes on her and taking her off the bed," he explained in an interview with "48 Hours."

Moriarty and Shafer attempt their own demonstration.

"He has the phone to his shoulder, dressing her without sounding out of breath," Moriarty said. "Lifting her... Once he says that he has her dressed... he moved her."

Video: Excerpts of Matt Baker's 911 call

Matt Baker to 911: Her lips are blue, her hands are cold ...

Matt Baker to 911:No, no, no she's not breathing at all. No pulse, anything.

911 Operator: OK put her on the floor ...

"How did you get her off the bed?" Moriarty asked Baker.

"I put my hands under her shoulders and pulled her - pulled her off," he replied.

"There's a reason that the term dead weight is used," Shafer commented as she and Moriarty together attempt to move the dummy.

"And all of this is happening in what period of time?" Moriarty asked Shafer.

"I measured it in a little less than 90 seconds," she replied.

"I don't know that Houdini could've done that, and I didn't think he could, either," Long said.

Because Matt Baker didn't testify, the jury never got to see him do the demonstration. And as the hours tick by, it seems like Gray made a wise call keeping him off the stand.

"Generally, the longer the time.... it's better for the defendant," Gray explained.

More than seven hours go by before jurors reach a verdict. Matt Baker is found guilty of first-degree murder.

"I felt absolute relief that Matt Baker would never again be in a position to take a life or destroy lives," said Linda Dulin.

Asked what did he said to his client, Guy James Gray replied, "Since the day he walked into my office and told me he was lying, I talked to him only for strict legal necessities and had no other conversations."

Incredibly, the attorney who once so believed in his client, stopped trusting Baker once he confessed to the affair.

"You cannot be a good lawyer for somebody if you don't believe 'em. And that's the position I was in," Gray told reporters following the verdict.

Prior to trial, Gray had asked to be taken off the case, but Matt insisted Gray remain his lawyer.

"I gave him my advice they needed to go get a different lawyer to handle it. ...I did not want to be there," Gray said. "The judge made me be there and they requested that I be there and I did my duty."

When asked if he's sorry he took on the case, Gray replied, "Oh, yes ... I've never in my life been forced to go to trial in a case that I didn't think I was on the right side. Hardest thing I've ever done."

Still, Gray says he defended Baker the best he could under the circumstances.

"I still think I did a decent, credible, lawyer job. But," he said, "I had no heart in it."

At sentencing, Linda Dulin gets the last word: "I'm talking to you, Matt, today, OK? You haven't looked at me in almost four years. Can you look at me today? You murdered the mother of your children. ...But the most tragic victims, Matt, are Kensi and Grace - those sweet, sweet babies."

Matt Baker is sentenced to 65 years with the possibility of parole.

"Are you finally ready to admit that you killed your wife?" Moriarty asked Baker.

"No. Because I didn't," he replied. I did not suffocate, did not shove pills down her throat, did not do anything to hurt my wife."

"You're saying that Vanessa Bulls lied about it all," Moriarty remarked.

"Absolutely," said Baker.

"Why would she lie about this?" Moriarty asked.

"She thought she was gonna be with me and I walked away from the relationship and she was upset and mad," he replied.

Susan Shafer says Matt Baker came "incredibly close" to getting away with murder.

"If the Dulins hadn't pursued him, he certainly would have," said Crawford Long.

The Dulins' ordeal was not over yet. Kensi and Grace wre still living with Matt's parents.

"They've been taught to hate us," Linda Dulin said. "We'd been portrayed as the people who caused all this."

A year-and-a-half after Matt Baker went to prison, Jim and Linda Dulin were back in court seeking custody of their granddaughters.

"...the odds were not in our favor," Linda said.

To their surprise, they won.

Now, they say, their home is the girls' home.

"Grace is 12 ... she loves the arts and she's in band and she plays the piano and -- just a joy to be around," Linda Dulin beamed.

"Kensi will be 17 next week," she explained. "She is very excited about the prospect of college ... she's a hoot to be around.

"All we want now is for the girls to be teenagers," Linda said. "...we never, ever, want them to feel like they have to choose who to love."

"I live with three women. And the other night ... they were all laughing and giggling ... and just having a grand old time," Jim Dulin said tearing up. "That was a symphony."

"I see Kari. I see her every day in her daughters. She would be relishing what we're experiencing," added Linda.

No charges will be files against Vanessa Bulls.

Matt Baker lost all his state appeals. Now he plans to take his case to a federal court.