BY TANYA ALBERT
The Cincinnati Enquirer
WILMINGTON, Ohio -- Tracey Baker says he had nothing to do with Carrie Culberson's death, and that there's no "Baker code of honor" that's keeping him from telling police where her body may be.
"I don't know nothing," Mr. Baker testified in his own defense in Clinton County Common Pleas Court Friday. "That's just the truth. I don't know any other way to explain it to them."
Mr. Baker is accused of helping his half-brother, Vincent Doan, dispose of the 22-year-old Blanchester woman's body. Mr. Doan is serving a life sentence for murder, but police are still searching for Ms. Culberson's body.
On the stand, Mr. Baker spent the day denying earlier testimony that implicated him in helping cover up the murder, and explaining comments that he says were taken out of context.
Last week Mr. Baker's estranged wife, Lori Baker, testified that Mr. Doan showed up at their house about 3:15 a.m. on the August, 1996, night Ms. Culberson disappeared. The brothers left together and came back with blood on them, she testified.
But Mr. Baker, a truck driver, said that wasn't true.
Referring to an August 1996 log book from his semi-truck, he said he got home about 11:15 p.m. the night Ms. Culberson disappeared. He said he changed clothes, got something from the refrigerator and took a quick shower before going to bed. He testified he didn't get up until about 6:15 a.m. and that he got in his truck to drive to Chicago to deliver steel coils loaded on it.
Mr. Baker said he "absolutely" did not go anywhere with Mr. Doan that night.
He also testified that comments he made to his former girlfriend, Robin Eden, about red paint from Ms. Culberson's car being on his semi-truck, and that comments about plastic garbage bags in his pickup truck being left over from cutting up the body and getting rid of it were taken out of context.
"It was just cutting up, joking," Mr. Baker testified. "I know it was nothing to be joking about . . . but all these rumors were going around and people were following us."
Mr. Baker testified that the red paint was on the outside of his semi-trailer, not on the inside, as Ms. Eden testified last week. And, he said, it came from a tanker truck that hit his semi-truck while it was parked in a parking lot.
When Ms. Eden asked him about it, he said he thought she was joking,Mr. Baker testified.
Mr. Baker also testified that a pair of boots police retrieved from his semi-trailer in October 1996 were Mr. Doan's, not his. Those were the boots that Mrs. Baker testified had blood on them after Mr. Baker returned the night Ms. Culberson disappeared. Forensic tests showed the boots had human blood on them, but the blood was too degenerated to determine whose it was.
As Mr. Baker's direct examination finished Friday, he testified that he loved his brother, but not enough to cover up for him. He said he's lost his house, semi-truck and family since being arrested in September.
Mr. Baker is charged with two counts of obstruction of justice, one count of tampering with evidence and one count of gross abuse of a corpse. He will take the stand again Mondayfor cross-examination.
