HE had planned to leave his young, attractive, 22-year-old wife Ena and their two young daughters Lacy, two, Renee, one, to go back to his mother’s house. But if 26-year-old Carl Baker had carried out his plans in August 1995 as he had envisaged, it would have been, in all probability, a matter for the Family Court.

Instead, the 26-year-old labourer, who was at the time employed at Appleton Estate in St Elizabeth, had moved all his personal belongings from the one-bedroom board house he had shared with his wife and daughters and placed them in a barrel outside in the yard near a fowl coop on the evening of August 9, 1995.

Inside the fowl coop, the police later found a television set and a fairly new two-burner gas stove, among other items.

Then the following morning, August 10, 1995, residents of Coker district in St Elizabeth woke up to find the one-bedroom board house of the Bakers burnt to the ground, and the gruesome sight of Ena’s charred, skeletal remains outlined on the concrete floor.

Even more blood-curdling was the sight of the remains of the couple’s two young baby girls … their final resting place: a burnt-out bed.

This was a horror story, never before seen or heard of in the sleepy district of Coker, residents of the area said, as especially the elderly wrung their hands in disbelief. The outpouring of grief and pain were unmistakable. Long lines of country folk came out to, at least, have a look or even a glance at the well-protected crime scene.

At that stage, the question being asked by the villagers in the otherwise small, quiet community in which they dwelt for several years was: What manner of man would have heard screaming coming from a house with flames shooting skywards – in which house he was fully aware that his wife and two infant children were locked, with no means of escape- and do absolutely nothing about it?

Because, by then, it had been noised abroad that the accused man, Baker, had been responsible for the tragedy, even though there were no eyewitnesses to what had actually happened.

Therefore, Coker district became an immense point of interest as the curious, the would-be script writers, the press and other interested persons, joined the constant stream of visitors to the death scene.

With diligence, the St Elizabeth police wrapped up the case in short order and as the records will show, for what the trial judge described as “the cold and calculated murders of his wife and two infant children”, Baker was later convicted on three counts of capital murder by a mixed jury in the St Elizabeth Circuit Court.

On November 26, 1996, the late Justice Ellis, senior puisne judge, sentenced Baker to death as the Criminal Justice Administration Act makes provision for a person who is convicted of more than one count of capital murder to be sentenced to death.

Before coming to their conclusion that Baker was indeed guilty of the acts alleged, the jury had listened in what can only be described as utter amazement, from the look on their faces, as the cautioned statement given by him to the police was read to them following voir dire proceedings.

According to the cautioned statement, Baker told the police that he and his wife had quarrelled on the night of August 9, 1995. In the course of the heated argument, he claimed that the quarrel ended up into a fight, during which, he said, his wife stabbed him twice on his hand.

In retaliation, it was his story, that he picked up an axe and hit his wife in the head.

“After she received the blow, she knocked out,” he stated, but went on to explain that while he was taking up the axe “the table shook and the kerosene lamp which was on the table, fell off and broke. The oil spread and a fire started”.

The evidence disclosed that although there were four metal 45-gallon drums, each filled with water nearby, Baker made no attempt to at least try to put out the blaze. No assistance was called for by him.

What he did, as narrated by him in the cautioned statement, was to run from the flaming house, escaping through a window — leaving his wife, Ena, and their two children behind.

One must remember that Baker’s wife, Ena, could not have tried to escape in the circumstances, because according to Baker, she had been lying prostrate on the concrete floor, having been “knocked out” with an axe by him earlier. Besides, who is to say what the state of those two frightened-to-death baby girls must have been at the time?

The cautioned statement further revealed the cold-heartedness of the man, for he told the police that as he ran, he could hear screaming coming from the house, which was locked. But he never turned back.

And to show how the accused man had prepared a well laid-out road map for the way forward, in the course of their investigations, the police had later unearthed from two plastic buckets found in the fowl coop outside in the yard, a quantity of knives, forks and dinner plates, which Baker said belonged to him.

He had confessed to having removed the items on the evening of August 9, 1995, at the same time when he removed the television set and the four burner gas stove.

Under cross-examination, the accused admitted that he never attempted to take his wife and children from the house while it was ablaze. He agreed that he could have attempted to put out the blaze with the four metal 45-gallon drums, each filled with water nearby.

At the conclusion of the prosecution’s case, Baker gave an unsworn statement from the dock. He told the judge and jury that his wife had been in the habit of going out and returning home late. He spoke to her about that but nothing changed. As a result, he said, they had frequent quarrels ending with the quarrel on the night of August 9, 1995.

He ended his testimony with the words: “I did not set the house on fire.”

The jury, having listened to His Lordship’s summing up, returned the guilty verdicts in short order.

Baker responded stoically to the sentences of death pronounced on him by the learned trial judge for taking the lives of his 22-year-old wife, Ena, and their two infant daughters Lacy and Renee.

Several grounds of appeal were subsequently filed in the Court of Appeal by the appellant complaining in respect of the trial judge’s summing up. A panel, comprising the now retired president, Justice Ian Forte, Justice Henderson Downer (now attached to the Office of the Children’s Advocate as legal advisor) and Justice Paul Harrison, president (retired) found no fault with the trial judge’s summation, dismissed the appeal and upheld the murder convictions and death sentences.

A further appeal by Baker to the United Kingdom Privy Council was dismissed in January 1999.

Next week: Cocaine-induced German tourist kills Jamaican woman in MoBay hotel room

Sybil E Hibbert is a veteran journalist and retired court reporting specialist. She is also the wife of Retired ACP Isadore ‘Dick’ Hibbert, rated among the top Jamaican detectives of his time. Send comments to allend@jamaicaobservercom.