Her life was marked by pain / The Zahra Baker case

Ten-year-old Sarah Baker’s life was doomed from the start. Born in Australia in 2000, her mother suffered from depression, so her father primarily cared for her. When Sarah was six, doctors diagnosed her with bone cancer. It was so severe that her left leg had to be amputated. Sarah bravely accepted the situation, saying:

“It’s okay, I’ll get a leg.”

Just a few months later, doctors discovered that the cancer had spread to her lungs. Sarah underwent chemotherapy, but this treatment left her deaf. Despite this, Sarah was happy; she skipped around the hospital and laughed constantly. In 2008, Sarah’s father moved with her to the USA. He had met a woman from North Carolina online.

Lisa Fertschalt and they wanted to build a new life together. No one suspected that this woman had other plans for Sarah. And this is Sarah’s story. Sarah was born on November 16, 1999, in Wagawaga, New South Wales, Australia.

She was the only daughter of Adam Baker and Emily Dietrich. Emily suffered from depression after her birth, which is why her father took care of Sarah most of the time from the beginning. The relationship between the two broke down; it just didn’t work between Adam and Emily anymore. So, in 2004, Adam got custody of Sarah.

He moved with her to Giru in Queensland, where his parents lived, because he got a job in a sugar factory there. While he was at work, Cararen Baker, Adam’s mother, took care of Sarah, and that worked quite well. Sarah was a very easy child to care for. She always had a smile on her face and loved spending time with her grandmother and with… to play with her, but then in 2006, when Sarah was 6 years old, she was diagnosed with bone cancer.

The cancer progressed so quickly that the doctors decided to amputate her left leg; there was no other option. They had to remove it above the knee. Sarah dealt with the situation incredibly bravely. She always said:

“It’s okay, I’ll get a Barbie leg.”

Even after the surgery, the little girl didn’t lose her zest for life. She hopped around the hospital ward on crutches, full of energy and life. She was happy. A few months later, more precisely in 2007, the doctors discovered that the cancer had spread to her lungs. Sarah received chemotherapy. This treatment seemed to stop the tumors in her lungs, but in return, Sarah became deaf.

She had to wear hearing aids in both ears. Adam and his mother, Karen, devoted themselves entirely to her, doing everything to make sure she was okay. Their own lives almost suffered as a result. But then one evening, Adam was in front of his computer, surfing the internet on MySpace, when he met a woman named Elisa Fertscheld.

And, as these things happen, the two of them started writing to each other. They chatted online and soon after, they talked on the phone, and then Elisa even visited Adam. She made the long journey from North Carolina in the USA to Australia to finally meet Adam in person. The two got along famously and began planning a future together.

After a few weeks, Elisa had to return to the USA, but Adam and Sarah would soon have children. Elisa wrote the following on her MySpace page:

“Who says long-distance relationships don’t work?”

Her page was decorated with skulls and bones; she described herself there as a Gothic fairy. After her trip, she told her friends that she had finally found her soulmate in Adam, with whom she wanted to spend her life.

Sarah and Adam’s move was planned for 2008. Before they packed their things, the community, Sarah’s school, and a charity raised money to buy Sarah a wheelchair and a laptop. Sarah had always been interested in Australia, and everything related to it fascinated her. Before her departure, Sarah had a special experience with the military during a camping trip.

Soldiers gave her a helmet to put on and took photos with her in front of armored vehicles. Sarah was absolutely thrilled, and then came the day of departure. Sarah didn’t really want to leave Australia; she didn’t want to leave her grandparents and friends behind. Saying goodbye was very, very difficult for everyone. In 2008, Adam and Sarah left Australia and went to the USA, where Elisa was already eagerly waiting.

Elisa, by the way, had been married for six months, and when Adam and Sarah arrived in North Carolina, she was still married. The three of them moved to the city of Hickory, a city with about 43,500 inhabitants. For the first few months, everything seemed to be going great. Adam was happy to be with Elisa.

The two got married, and Sarah slowly got used to her new life. She went to school and made new friends, but then everything suddenly changed. Adam and Elisa decided to take Sarah out of school to homeschool her, which is much easier in the USA than here. Later, it was assumed that Sarah was taken out of school because there were indications that she was being abused at home.

Neighbors said that Elisa Baker had a very, very fiery temper and wasn’t above physical punishment. Repulsed neighbors overheard Elisa hitting Sarah. They felt incredibly sorry for the girl. A woman who was friends with the Bakers noticed at the beginning of 2010 that Elisa had a swollen hand. She confronted her, and Elisa told her that she had beaten Sarah.

She said that she had hit her leg and Adam had confronted her about her hand. She said that she had fallen and injured herself. Elisa didn’t want Adam to find out because she knew perfectly well that he would be furious. At that time, no one knew that investigations for child abuse had already been initiated against Elisa in the past, but no wrongdoing could be established, and so the investigations were dropped.

Elisa had a daughter and a son from previous relationships, who were then raised by their fathers after they separated. Shortly before Sarah was taken out of school, two teachers visited her home after she arrived at school with a black eye. The teachers simply wanted to see what was going on and whether Sarah was okay.

Child protection services were also contacted and visited the family, but they found nothing wrong. Sarah seemed Things seemed to be going well at home, but the concerns of the school and the neighbors were justified. Sarah was anything but well at home. Sarah was locked in her bedroom for most of the day and was only allowed out briefly for meals.

Elisa flew into a rage over every little thing and took all her anger out on Sarah. She hit the girl. Neighbors said she was constantly yelling at her but always had excuses for the girl’s injuries. Elisa said that Sarah was simply clumsy and constantly fell over because of her prosthetic leg. In retrospect, the neighbors regretted not having more space.

Everyone liked Sarah very much; they should have called the police more often, every time something seemed strange to them, one of the neighbors later said. And then in October 2010, Sarah suddenly disappeared from one day to the next. On October 9, 2010, the fire department received an emergency call from Elisa.

It was early in the morning, 5:20 a.m., when Elisa reported a fire in the backyard of her house. The fire department quickly brought the fire under control; it was just a pile of grass that was burning. But then the police arrived. Upon arriving at the house, they found a ransom note taped to the windshield of Adam’s company car, a Chevrolet.

The note read:

“Mr. Coffee, you like control. Who’s in control now? We have your daughter, and your red-haired, pot-smoking son is next. Unless you do what’s demanded, one million unmarked. I’ll be in touch soon.”

The police learned that Mark Coffee owned the house where Adam and Olisa lived.

They contacted Mark Coffee, who was at home with his daughter and they were fine. Mark Coffee wasn’t just Adam’s landlord; he was also Adam’s boss. The police and fire department concluded that the fire was arson. The police didn’t know what to do with the note, as Mark Coffee and his daughter seemed to be okay. The officers left the house, but then later that same day, around 2 PM, Adam called the Hickory police station.

He said he believed his daughter Sarah had been kidnapped. He told the dispatcher on the phone about the fire early that morning, the ransom note that had been found, and now his daughter was missing. A patrol car was dispatched back to the Bakers’ house, and a police officer searched the house and the surrounding property, but he didn’t find Sarah.

Adam then voiced his suspicion that someone had deliberately started the fire to distract him and Melisa in order to kidnap his daughter. He suggested the kidnapper thought Mark Coffee lived in the house with his family and that the whole thing was a case of mistaken identity. Adam explained that after the fire was extinguished early that morning, he went straight to work and hadn’t checked on his daughter, nor had Elisa.

She had simply gone back to sleep. By the next day, October 10th, word had already spread through the community that a girl was missing. At that point, the FBI also became involved. Around 10:45 a.m., Elisa was arrested. The police had filed charges against her for check fraud and failure to return property.

The police stated that the arrest was not related to her missing stepdaughter. An FBI investigator was asked to search the family’s house and property with her dog, which was trained to find people, dead or alive. The dog clearly indicated human remains on two vehicles parked there. Both cars were immediately taken to the police station where they were examined.

The police had high hopes that they could shed light on what had happened to Sarah. Investigators questioned neighbors if they had seen the girl. They also searched sheds and outbuildings on neighboring properties as well as wooded areas in the vicinity, but they found nothing. They had absolutely no trace of Sarah.

The girl seemed to have vanished into thin air. Elisa told the police the same story that Adam had already told the police officer. Adam, Sarah, and she had been at the Oktoberfest in Hickory between 7 and 9 p.m. on October 8th. When they got home, Sarah went straight to bed. Around 2:30 a.m., she checked on her stepdaughter again and then went back to bed. Around 5:20 a.m., she woke up because of the small fire outside and called the fire department. Elisa told the officers that Sarah must have been abducted from the house by someone when the fire broke out. Adam was taken separately from Elisa was questioned by the police, and he suddenly changed his earlier statement.

During the interrogation, he said he hadn’t seen Sarah since October 6th. At that point, the police officers got the feeling that something was very wrong. Did Adam and Elisa have anything to do with Sarah’s disappearance? Police officers examined footage from various surveillance cameras in the neighborhood, but they found no evidence of the girl.

Meanwhile, Elisa had to take a lie detector test and failed miserably. She was asked if she had hurt Sarah, if she knew anyone who had harmed Sarah, and if she knew who had written the ransom note. On Monday, October 11th, Adam Baker and the Hickory police chief appeared on the TV show “Good Morning America.” They asked for information; if anyone had seen Sarah, they should please come forward. On the show, Adam said he hadn’t seen his daughter since October 7th due to his work schedule. These were three different statements from him about when he had last seen Sarah: first, it was October 8th, then the 7th, and then on the TV show… Suddenly, the seventh…

The police naturally wondered when he had last actually seen his daughter. On the same day, officers went to the tree care company where Adam worked. There, dogs picked up suspicious smells, including in piles of wood and in a wood chipper. Then, the next day, Tuesday, October 12, the police chief suddenly announced that Elisa had admitted to writing the extortion letter.

The tree care company’s premises were searched, but they found nothing. On October 13, Elisa had to appear in court. She was charged with obstruction of justice. The judge set bail at $72,000. Along with the other charges, the police received many tips about Sarah, but none of them were really useful. In front of the Bakers’ house, people from the town gathered, leaving stuffed animals and lighting candles.

Adam thanked the police and the public for all their efforts to find Sarah.

“I just hope they keep looking. Try to find my baby,”

he said. Later in October, the police searched a landfill about 32 km from Sarah’s home. There, garbage from the entire region was dumped. They had somehow hoped to find Sarah’s prosthetic leg there, but they found no evidence.

Other investigators continued to focus on Elisa Baker and her past. They learned that Elisa had been married to three men simultaneously a few years earlier. These bigamous marriages had begun in the 1990s, and this constituted another charge, as bigamy was, of course, illegal. On October 24, police officers drove Elisa to her former home in Hatzen.

Beforehand, she had told the investigators she could lead them to the place where Sarah’s remains, blood, bones, and bodily fluids could be found in the drains of the house. Then, on October 27, police found Sarah’s prosthetic leg near a stream. This, of course, triggered an intensive search for further evidence in the area.

They found another bone, which was immediately sent to the crime lab for DNA testing. The pressure on Elisa increased, and then Elisa told the officers that both she and Adam had disposed of Sarah’s remains. She now confessed and said that Sarah had already died on October 24, but that she had only discovered her on the morning of the Reported missing on October 9th, police checked cell phone tower records in the area where Sarah’s remains were found.

It turned out that only Elisa had been in the area; Adam had not. In November, investigators found numerous other scattered remains of Sarah in the area, as well as a blanket used for Sarah’s transport. Police officers also traced Elisa’s internet activity. On her MySpace page, where she called herself Gothic Fairy, she listed her hometown as “never Neverland.”

The page featured photos of Sarah. In one of the pictures, Sarah was dressed all in black, and Elisa had written “the dark child lol” underneath. She also frequently visited a website that offered chainsaw massacre role-playing games. Sarah’s biological mother, Emily, traveled to the US. She visited the house, which had become a memorial with all the stuffed animals and candles.

She later said in an interview:

“Elisa Baker had no right to just throw something away that was in the way. I want her in prison, reminding herself every day of her life why she’s there and what she did. She needs to sit there and rot.”

The police received the results of the DNA analysis confirmed that the remains found were those of Sarah.

Adam Baker consistently denied any involvement in his daughter’s dismemberment. Adam’s lawyer said Elisa’s claim was merely a desperate attempt to distract from the truth. Sarah’s autopsy revealed that she died from unspecified violence. Sarah’s skull, right arm, and most of both legs were missing. Adam Baker was never charged.

However, Elisa was charged on February 22, 2011, with second-degree murder. The now 43-year-old pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in September 2011. She avoided the death penalty because she helped the police find Sarah’s remains. Handcuffed and dressed in a pink prison jumpsuit, Elisa showed little emotion when she appeared in court.

She told the court, or rather confessed, that she had desecrated and hidden Sarah’s body. She also verbally, physically, and psychologically abused her. Adam was present throughout the entire trial. He said he hated his wife. He spoke to her directly and said the following:

“Lisa, I entrusted you with the most precious person in my life. Sarah loved you more than anything else in the world. You took the life of the most wonderful and loving little girl.”

Sarah’s real mother, Emily, left a statement in court saying that her daughter had been taken apart like a human jigsaw puzzle and disposed of like trash for wild animals to eat. Elisa Baker was eventually sentenced to 18 years in prison for Sarah’s murder.

Adam wasn’t charged with Sarah’s murder, but before Elisa’s trial, he received charges of identity theft and obtaining property by false pretenses. Adam had assumed the identity of a man named James Starbuck and used his information to get electricity to his apartment. The real James Starbuck is the husband of Elisa’s daughter, Brittany Starbuck.

He had previously faced charges of unjustified threat and assault with a deadly weapon. He was ordered not to leave North Carolina without informing the district attorney’s office. He also had to wear a tracking device on his ankle and report to U.S. immigration authorities once a week. We’ll meet at the customs office, and that brings us to the end of today’s meeting.