ATHENS, Ga. (Court TV) — A Georgia man is facing life in prison if convicted in the cold case murder of University of Georgia law student Tara Louise Baker.
Baker, a first-year law student, was last seen the evening of Jan. 18, 2001, at a UGA library. Just before 10 p.m. that night, she told a friend she planned to leave the library soon and head home. According to the indictment, firefighters responding to a fire at her apartment discovered her body. Investigators determined the blaze was intentionally set.
(L) Edrick Faust appears in court Aug. 20, 2024. (R) Tara Louise Baker (GBI)
Prosecutors told jurors that Baker was sexually assaulted, stabbed in the neck, strangled with a printer cord and left on her bedroom floor just hours before her 24th birthday. Her bed was deliberately set on fire using a blanket taken from the living room, an act the state says was meant to destroy evidence.
“The physical evidence tells a coherent story of the crime,” prosecutors said, pointing to the knife found beneath Baker’s body and the stopped clock in her room.
Investigators found signs of staging at the crime scene, including wiped surfaces, tampered doors and windows, and no usable fingerprints. Even the bathtub drain was removed in an exhaustive effort to preserve potential evidence.
For more than two decades, the case went unsolved. Prosecutors emphasized the persistence of investigators and advances in forensic science, explaining that in 2024, the Georgia crime lab was finally able to isolate male DNA from preserved evidence. That DNA was identified as a major contributor and run through CODIS, a database containing roughly 26 million profiles.
On April 30, 2024, the DNA matched Edrick Faust, marking the first time his name appeared in the case after 23 years. Prosecutors say a warrant was then obtained to confirm the DNA match through additional swabs.
The defense countered aggressively, telling jurors there is no direct evidence placing Faust at the crime scene. Defense attorneys stressed the absence of fingerprints, eyewitnesses or contemporaneous links between Faust and the victim. They highlighted that hair found in Baker’s hands was Caucasian, not African American, and warned jurors against allowing moral judgments about Faust’s lifestyle or choices to influence their decision.
Defense counsel also revived scrutiny of Chris Melton, Baker’s boyfriend at the time, noting his initial status as a prime suspect, alleged inconsistent statements and visible injuries to his hands documented shortly after the murder. The defense framed the state’s case as an attempt to retrofit a suspect to a cold case using DNA alone, urging jurors to focus on reasonable doubt rather than the emotional weight of the crime.
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