deadmonton 2005 - olivia marie talbot
Olivia Marie Talbot, 19, was shot to death November 23rd, 2005.
Jared Eugene Baker, 19, was charged with first-degree murder and use of a firearm during the commission of an indictable offence.
On October 19th, 2007 a jury found Jared Baker guilty of first-degree murder. The conviction carried an automatic sentence of life in prison with parole eligibity set at twenty-five years.
In December 2008 Baker made his first-ever public comments about how drug addiction led to his being found guilty of the murder of his "close friend" – see below.
the fetus question |
preliminary hearing
trial |
Jared Baker's letter
It was Edmonton's 34th homicide of the year, the third in the metro area in five days.
Paramedics responded to a 911 call at a townhouse at 21-1765 Millwoods Road East shortly before midnight. An unconscious woman was found just inside the entrance. By the time she was moved into the ambulance she had died.
City homicide detectives taped off the immediate area. Of interest to detectives was a dark-coloured Toyota Celica neighbours said they had never seen before.
A police dog was brought in but the murder weapon, later determined to be a rifle, was not recovered.
Olivia Talbot was six months pregnant with her first child. She died from five gunshot wounds -- three in the head and two in the body. Paramedics tried to save the life of the fetus (who was not injured) but they were unsuccessful.
Neighbours interviewed by local media said they heard a loud bang, followed by a man's screams and several more bangs shortly before midnight. One person described seeing a man leave the townhouse just after the shots were fired and saw him drive away in a car.
The day after the murder police announced that an arrest had been made.
Charged with first-degree murder and use of a firearm during the commission of an indictable offence was 19-year-old Jared Eugene Baker.
Baker and Talbot were friends since childhood and had lived just two blocks apart. Police said they were not romantically involved at the time of the shooting but they had dated briefly in junior high and remained friends.
Talbot's boyfriend and father of the child, Lane Griffith, was working out of town as a rig camp attendant. The day of the murder was their third anniversary. They first met on a bus at Mill Woods Town Centre. The child, a boy due on Valentine's Day, 2006 was to be named Lane Jr.
At his first court appearance, Baker was ordered to undergo psychological testing to see whether he is fit to stand trial and whether he might have been not criminally responsible due to a mental disorder at the time of the alleged slaying. The request had been made jointly by Baker's lawyer and a Crown prosecutor.
The fetus question
In the days after Talbot's murder, family members helped spur a debate over the rights of the unborn child, insisting that murder charges be laid in the death of the fetus.
Lane Griffith's sister, Tammy Brownlee, gave birth to her own son Nicholas when she was only 26 1/2 weeks pregnant. She said that as Olivia was over 27 weeks pregnant her baby was more than viable and his death should be classed as a murder.
Saskatchewan MP Maurice Vellacott, a member of a pro-life parliamentary caucus, said he would press for a law to protect unborn victims of violence.
Vellacott also said he thinks Michael White, who has been charged with second-degree murder and offering an indignity to a dead body in the 2005 death of his pregnant wife Liana White, should be charged with double homicide.
In November 2005 Alberta Justice Minister Ron Stevens introduced legislation allowing for children to sue their mothers for injuries sustained during car crashes while still in the womb. Alberta was the first province to introduce such legislation.
In June 2006 Mary Talbot, Olivia's mother, was in Ottawa to lend assistance for a proposed federal law that would see two murder charges laid when a fetus is killed along with its mother.
"It's not just a piece of paper they're saying no to," she told the Edmonton Sun. "It's real, live people. I want to remind them that that's why I'm here. I want to see this passed."
While a subcommittee that dealt with private member's bills had already ruled the bill "non-votable" on the basis that it was unconstitutional, the bill went before another House committee.
The bill was slated to be debated later in the month in the House, said Vegreville-Wainwright Tory MP Leon Benoit who introduced the private member's bill.
"It's time the Canadian Parliament looks at this and recognizes the need to protect pregnant women against violence," Benoit said.
Talbot said that had Olivia survived the shooting but lost her baby no murder charge would have been laid.
"I held that little boy. I saw two people in the casket, not one," she said. "For me, it's black and white ... I just can't understand why they can't see it that way."
Talbot said if the bill is killed this month, she would seek alternative avenues. "I won't give up," she said.
The proposed law was quashed.
Preliminary hearing
On October 17th, 2006 Jared Eugene Baker appeared in court for what was to be a preliminary hearing to determine whether there was enough evidence to warrant a trial.
In a surprise move in front of a packed courtroom, Baker waived his right to the hearing and was committed to stand trial on charges of first-degree murder and using a firearm in the commission of an indictable offence.
When asked by the judge if he was certain, Baker said "it was correct" that he was waiving his right.
The emotion-filled courtroom was populated by family and friends of Olivia Talbot and supporters of Eugene Baker.
Lane Griffith, Talbot's fiance and father of the boy she was carrying, began crying when he saw Baker in court.
Trial
The first-degree murder trial of Jared Baker began in courtroom 411 on October 1st, 2007 before Court of Queen's Bench Justice Mary Moreau and a jury of seven men and five women.
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Representing the Crown was prosecutor Kimberly Goddard, and acting for Baker was defence lawyer Kirk MacDonald. Three weeks were set aside for the trial.
At the centre of the case was if Baker was criminally responsible or not for Talbot's murder due to his heavy use of crystal meth at the time of the shooting.
An agreed statement of facts was entered into the trial. Baker admitted to firing five rounds from a .22-calibre rifle into Talbot's abdomen and head on November 23rd, 2005, killing her and her unborn child.
In her opening statement, Goddard told the jury they would hear how Baker decided to kill Talbot, how he had planned to kill her before but couldn't bring himself to do it, how he debated using a gun or a knife.
"You will hear ... how he took a rifle and ammunition from a gun cabinet in the basement of his house, how he stole his mother's car and went to Olivia's residence," she said.
"You will hear ... how he opened the door, told her he was 'sorry' and shot her at least five times, including deliberate shots to the head."
"This is not a whodunit. There is no issue as to the identity of the person who pulled the trigger that fateful night."
Goddard stated that Baker's delusions and hallucinations did not automatically mean he is not criminally responsible for the killing. The question, she said, is whether he knew that what he was doing was wrong.
"What was going through Jared Baker's mind at the time of the event and whether he was capable of appreciating the nature and quality of the act or knowing if it was wrong," Goddard offered.
She added that Baker had debated whether to use a gun or knife the day he headed to Talbot's home. When he called her in advance of coming over, Baker told Olivia that people were after him.
Goddard conceded that the victim "was no saint," that she too was a drug user. But when she found out she was pregnant she turned her life around.
"When she stood there in her own entryway being riddled with bullets she, like every one of us, was entitled to the protection of the law," the prosecutor said.
Defence lawyer Kirk MacDonald told the jury his client was hooked on the drug crystal meth, and often spoke of angels and demons, astrology and 9/11. He said Baker believed Olivia Talbot could read his mind, and that her unborn baby boy was telling him it did not want to be born.
He believed that by killing Talbot, "he was going the save the world and all the souls in it."
Court heard from Wende Wood, a psychiatric pharmacist at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, who said methamphetamine-induced psychosis was not uncommon in addicts.
"Methamphetamine floods the brain with chemicals. A lot of adrenaline is pumping out, and a lot of seratonin," she said. "Because methamphetamine is so strong, it can induce a psychotic episode."
"Psychosis is an extreme detachment from reality The two main symptoms are hallucinations and delusions."
Hallucinations can be auditory, visual or tactile, and delusions are false impressions or beliefs.
The chance of an episode is increased in people who are predisposed to mental illness, in those who use a lot of the drug or are suffering from sleep deprivation, she said.
Wood testified she didn't know of any methamphetamine-related cases involving extreme violence toward others.
A woman who spoke with Jared Baker an hour before he shot Talbot said he was mellow, calm and behaving normally.
Danielle Lake said Baker "didn't say anything unusual" to her when she called to see if he wanted to hang out around 10:30 p.m. on November 23rd, 2005.
"He was pretty mellow and calm," Lake told the jury of her conversation with Baker, which took olace about an hour before Talbot was shot.
Lake said she sometimes smoked crystal meth with Baker, and she never saw him display abnormal behaviour when he was high.
Baker's older brother, Justin, decribed his younger brother's behaviour much differently that night.
Justin said his brother was pacing in the kitchen, going up and down the stairs and mumbling in the moments before he stole his mother's car and drove to Talbot's house.
Justin testified he called his brother after he left in the car, and asked him where he was going. Jared replied he was going to pick up some cigarettes.
The Crown introduced Jared Baker's videotaped confession to police, recorded the morning after Talbot was shot.
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Baker revealed that he thought he was the father of Talbot's child, telling police they had sex together in May 2005.
But Baker had doubts about Talbot's faithfulness, and he raised the issue of paternity three times during the two-hour long police interview.
"Whose baby that was I could not exactly tell you," he said, later adding: "I felt like ... in my dreams, it very well could have been my baby."
Baker said he felt that his baby was "pure of heart" and that it would be raised in a world filled with Satan, that it would live a horrible life.
He said the voices in his head started when he learned of the pregnancy.
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In a rambling monologue that at times didn't seem to make sense, Baker recounted for police the events of November 23rd, 2005.
He got home from work around 2 p.m. and had a couple of beers. He started a fire in the backyard pit and threw the pipe he used for smoking crystal meth into it. He said he was contemplating drug treatment. He spoke with his mother, became emotional and went downstairs to rest.
But he couldn't sleep. The voices started in his head, and he called them on. He snorted a line of speed and tried to choose between using a gun or a knife to kill Talbot. He decided on a gun, and grabbed one from the cabinet in his parents' basement.
He grabbed his wallet, his smokes and the bullets, and stole his mother's car. For the first time in his life he said, he drove slowly.
He parked outside Talbot's house and waited, then called her on his cellphone and said he was freaking out. He said he had a gun. She invited him in.
He went to the door. She gasped when she saw the gun, he said.
"I just said, 'Sorry, OV,' ... and that was it," he told police. He said he thinks he fired the first bullet into her abdomen, and she doubled over.
"I unloaded the clip out into her and jogged back to the car, not knowing what to do," he said. "As far as I know she was a friend or the devil in disguise."
He had contemplated killing Talbot for months, Baker said. He had come close, once, on a deserted road with Olivia at his side and a gun in the back seat of his car. He didn't have the heart to do it.
He believed the baby Talbot was carrying was his, even though she claimed it was the child of another man. He said he didn't like to see her doing drugs – including meth – while she was pregnant. It wasn't fair to the baby, he said.
He said Talbot could read his mind, the baby may also have been Lucifer's child, and that killing Olivia was his way of saving the world and all the souls in it.
"In my dreams, he was saying, 'Kill me.' It was almost as if I felt like her baby was asking me for that sacrifice."
Baker drove away from Talbot's Mill Woods townhouse, threw the gun into the North Saskatchewan River off the Anthony Henday Drive's westbound bridge and went home. He tossed the leftover bullets into the kitchen garbage. He stayed home until detectives came to interview him, and he confessed.
"I confess to murdering Olivia Talbot. I feel that she is in a better place now and I loved her," Baker said. "I loved her a lot."
He told police he was not happy about the murder and that he wished that he didn't have to do it. He said there was a part of him that wanted to kill her and a part that didn't.
"I'm still not sure," he said. "She could have been an angel and she could have been a demon."
Baker contemplated the media coverage of his crime and the punishment he would face, lamenting the fact he could not get the electric chair.
"I don't think I'm a crazy person really. I'm actually quite sane."
At one point in the taped interview, Baker put his hands in a praying gesture and said, "I am deeply sorry, Olivia." He asked the police to apologise to Olivia's parents on his behalf.
In the coutroom watching the monitors, Talbot's family members were seen trying not to cry, but the tears came anyway.
The issue of the child's paternity was settled by homicide Det. Ernie Schreiber who said that tests done on Baker and Talbot's then boyfriend, Lane Griffith, both came back negative.
“It was determined [Baker] was not the father of the child,” Schreiber said.
The detective also told the jury of several diaries which were seized from Baker's bedroom.
On a page under a date one week before Talbot's murder, Baker wrote "When Life Turns Upside Down, Turn With It!" and "God Forgives thows who know no better."
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An undated post-it note stuck to the page said: “Olivia's Quote. you bluffed, I raised, you folded.”
Another post-it said: “Olivia stop smoking GiB AKA crystal meth. Your fucking with a life that's not yours. Karma Bitch.”
On the first page of the diary containing the two post-its, it said: “Drugs don't fuck people. People fuck people.”
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The trial continued with another videotape showing Baker and police looking over the Anthony Henday Bridge where Baker said he threw the gun. The weapon was never recovered.
"The loss of the mother is the loss of the child," Alberta's chief medical examiner testified.
Dr. Graeme Dowling said three of the bullets – including two fired at close range at her head – each did enough damage to cause the "rapid death" of the 19-year-old mother.
"It's my conclusion that this individual died as a result of multiple gunshot wounds."
Dowling testified three bullets struck Talbot's womb during the shooting, and that the fetus received only a single "skin injury or graze wound to its buttock."
Those three bullets were fired from at least two to three feet away, striking Talbot in a tight cluster near her navel, Dowling said. One struck the aorta, the blood vessel providing blood to major organs.
The two to Talbot's head struck from a closer range, entering her brain above her left eyebrow and in front of her left ear.
He added he found methamphetamines in her body at sharply higher concentrations than would be typical for someone limited to prescribed amounts.
Dowling said it was difficult to conclude how high her drug consumption was or how it would have affected her.
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Jared Baker took the stand and told the court of his state of mind in the late fall of 2005.
Appearing mild-mannered and speaking quietly with a slight lisp, Baker told the jury he came to believe that conversations and documents contained subliminal messages. He believed his girlfriend had taken his sperm to the United States to sell it to the government to create an baby that may be the second coming of Jesus Christ.
"I was trying to figure out who I was, and what everyone had been keeping from me," he said.
"At parts I'm thinking I'm Jesus, an angel. At one point I do stay on the fact that I am the son of Satan – I could not be Jesus," he told the jury.
He said he not longer believes these things.
During a detailed cross examination, Crown prosecutor Kimberly Goddard deconstructed Baker's elaborate stories, suggesting he was angry at Talbot for doing drugs while pregnant, lying that the baby wasn't his and refusing to allow him to raise the child.
“It wasn't about destiny. It was about jealousy and anger,” Goddard said. “I'm going to suggest that when you went over there, you were angry. And, it was this anger which drove you to kill Olivia Talbot.”
Baker admitted he was angry at the time of the killing, but denied that was the reason for killing her and the baby.
“No. I chose to shoot her because I thought I would be saving everyone else. That was the only reason,” he said.
The prosecutor also accused Baker of coming up with more details of his alleged delusions than he initially told police, as a result of speaking with psychiatrists, and questioned him about his admitted belief in free will.
“So that night on November 23rd, you had a choice, didn't you?” Goddard asked. “That's correct,” Baker replied.
“The voices didn't make you kill Olivia Talbot, did they?” asked Goddard. “No, they didn't,” he answered.
The trial then heard from four mental health experts who offered their views on the state of Jared Baker's mind at the time of the shooting of Olivia Talbot.
The assessments from three psychiatrists and a psychologist formed the last evidence entered in the trial, prompting one reporter to say the case was now "shrinkwrapped."
After closing arguments were presented, the jury was sequestered and stayed in downtown hotel overnight.
The next morning, on October 19th, 2007, they returned to courtroom 411 with a verdict: guilty of first-degree murder and using a firearm in the commission of an offence.
Baker was automatically sentenced to life imprisonment without a chance of parole for 25 years.
Upon hearing the jury's verdict, family and friends of Olivia Talbot clapped lightly, while her tearful mother hugged supporters gathered in the courtroom.
Baker flushed and blinked rapidly, and looked at the floor.
Jared Baker's letter
A powerful anti-drug message was issued for the 2008 holiday season – and it wasn't from the Alberta Alcohol and Drug Abuse Commission, but from a young man at the Edmonton Institution, the maximum security prison northeast of the city.
"Don't follow the path of addiction – no matter how fun the path may seem, it always heads to HELL," said the now 22-year-old Jared Baker.
Baker was convicted of first-degree murder in October 2007 after he gunned down his former girlfriend, 19-year-old Olivia Talbot. The pregnant teen died on November 23rd, 2005 in a hail of bullets inside the entrance of her Mill Woods townhouse.
Defence lawyer Kirk MacDonald failed to convince a jury that Baker, a crystal meth addict, was not in his right mind at the time of the killing.
Baker, who is serving a life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years, is in D-Unit of the Edmonton Institution. He wrote to crime reporter Byron Christopher after Christopher asked him how he felt about drugs now that he's off them.
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Baker's letter to Christopher arrived on December 19th, 2008. It was his first-ever contact with a reporter.
The killer warned young people not to make the mistake he did and get involved in drugs. According to Baker, he first smoked marijuana in junior high and later tried crystal meth, sharing the drug with his best friend.
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"I was naive. I thought I was sharing and doing something good, but I was really sharing the source of all that is evil in life. Words cannot express how bad I feel this day for sharing such a horrible drug with someone so close to me."
Baker did not identify his "close friend", but a fellow prisoner said it was a reference to Olivia Talbot.
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"Weeks, months and years went by as addiction consumed every minute of my life", Baker said, adding that crystal meth made him feel good "but I never knew how it could destroy my brain and affect my thinking."
Baker explained he became a "slave to the addiction" and that it devoured all that was good in his life, ruining his relationships and taking over his mind. "I did the drugs to cope with my problems, not realizing they were in fact the source of all that was wrong in my life."
He said the drug made him experience a "false reality." A reflective Baker writes, "knowing what I do today, I would have never given up all that I did for some measly drug."
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"Looking back I see the endless pain and grief I caused, not only to myself, but to my family, my friends, and the community. Sitting in my cold cell I would like nothing more then (sic) to take all the pain away. But I can't, and it hurts my heart everyday knowing that I wish I could go back in time and flush the drugs out of my life."
Full-sized images of Baker's letter can be seen here and here.
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