Case 347: Zahra Baker

*** Content warnings: Child abuse, crimes against children, sexual assault *** When 10-year-old Zahra Baker was reported missing by her father and stepmum in Hickory, North Carolina, one Saturday afternoon in 2010, it sparked the largest missing persons investigation in the city's history. Police worked around the clock, hoping for a miracle, but people close to the family said they'd been expecting something like this to happen for a long time. --- Narration – Anonymous Host https://www.instagram.com/caseys.snaps/ Research & writing – Emily Shirley Production & music – Mike Migas http://mikemigas.com/ Audio editing – Anthony Telfer Sign up for Casefile Premium: Apple Premium https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/casefile-true-crime/id998568017?ign-itscg=30200S&ign-itsct=casefile_podcastsSpotify Premium https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/9gSwcv7USsbPatreon https://www.patreon.com/casefileFor all credits and sources, please visit https://casefilepodcast.com/case-347-zahra-baker Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  From journalist Olivia LaVoix, the creator of the hit investigative series The Bakersfield Three, comes the new Case File Presents series, Ada. In 2011, the body of a woman was discovered in a California vineyard. For more than a decade, she was known only as Jane Doe. Then detectives finally discovered her name. But identifying her was only the beginning. Listen to Ada wherever you get your podcasts.

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• 1:17Speaker 00

  Our episodes deal with serious and often distressing incidents. If you feel at any time you need support, please contact your local crisis centre. For suggested phone numbers for confidential support and for a more detailed list of content warnings, please see the show notes for this episode on your app or on our website. Today's episode involves crimes against children and won't be suitable for all listeners.

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  Before sunrise on Saturday, October 9, 2010, 42-year-old Lisa Baker called 911 to report a fire outside her home in the small city of Hickory, North Carolina. The dispatcher asked her for the address, but Lisa didn't seem to hear the question. Sounding flustered and out of breath, she replied, "My husband works for a tree maintenance company, and our backyard's on fire."

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  Lisa explained that because of her husband's job, the yard was full of ignitable debris, such as piles of firewood, dead branches, logs and mulch. Within minutes, firefighters arrived, anticipating a large and dangerous blaze. They were therefore surprised to find the fire was actually quite small. It was confined to a mound of chipped wood and grass, about one square metre in size. There were a few branches and some household items that had also burned, but the fire was quickly and easily extinguished.

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  Since the cause of the fire was unknown, the city fire inspector was summoned to investigate. Suspecting arson, the inspector phoned the Hickory Police Department, who sent an officer named Rob Rollins to the scene. Officer Rollins arrived at around 5:30 AM. One of the firefighters immediately handed him a small piece of paper, which Lisa's husband, 33-year-old Adam Baker, had discovered on the dashboard of a silver 1996 Chevy Tahoe SUV parked at the end of the driveway, near the site of the fire. The paper was a special, custom-printed envelope provided by the local power company for customers to mail in their monthly bill payments.

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  Scrolled across it was a handwritten note which read: "No cops. Mr. Coffey, you like being in control. Now who is in control? We have your daughter, and your pot-smoking redhead son is next, unless you do what is asked. One million, unmarked. We'll be in touch soon. No cops."

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  Adam Baker explained to Officer Rollins that Mr. Coffey probably referred to his boss, Mark Coffey, who owned the tree company where Adam worked. Mark also owned the Chevy Tahoe SUV, which he was letting Adam borrow, as well as the property which Adam and Lisa had been renting from him for the past three months. Moments later, Mark Coffey arrived at the Baker's home, accompanied by his 19-year-old daughter, Lauren.

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  When Officer Rollins showed them the threatening letter and ransom demand, both Mark and Lauren were baffled. They didn't know of anyone who was angry with Mark or might want to harm their family. Lauren obviously hadn't been abducted, and Mark's son was safe at home. The note was apparently just a hoax, or perhaps, together with the fire, a bizarre and elaborate prank. The fire was definitely the result of arson. Someone had poured gasoline in the grass, as well as inside the Chevy Tahoe, but fortunately, nothing was seriously damaged, and no one had been hurt. The firefighters moved on.

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  Mark and Lauren Coffey returned home, and Officer Rollins went off duty. By the time the sun rose just after 7 o'clock, everything at the Baker's house was back to normal.

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  But, seven hours later, at 2pm, a second emergency call was placed from their home. This time, the caller was Adam, who said: "Uh, yeah, my daughter is missing." He gave his address, then continued: "The police were out here last night, over a fire and a ransom note for my boss's daughter, and it appears they took my daughter instead."

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  Adam Baker explained that he thought his daughter might have been kidnapped by someone who mistook her for Lauren Coffey. He didn't know who was after the Coffeys, or why, but because the ransom note was addressed to Mark Coffey, and he owned the house as well as the vehicle parked there, it was clear to Adam that his daughter's disappearance was linked to Mark, too. Adam Baker described his daughter as a disabled 10-year-old with a prosthetic leg, but when the emergency dispatcher asked how long she had been missing, Adam didn't seem to know. We checked in there last night about two thirty and she was there, he said. And all this happened about five o'clock.

• 7:06Speaker 00

  So I don't know if they set a fire in the yard to distract us to go out and then they go in the door or... I don't know.

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  The dispatcher tried to clarify this, asking, "Okay, so no one has seen your daughter since two thirty this morning?" Adam replied, "No, like I said, we had all this drama last night. Me and my wife went back to bed and my daughter's, I think, coming into puberty. She's hitting that brooding stage, so we only ever see her when she comes out, when she wants something. And that's about it."

• 7:44Speaker 00

  For the second time that day, officers from the Hickory Police Department made their way to the small brick house on Twenty First Avenue Northwest. They climbed a couple of steps onto a low cement porch decorated for Halloween with cotton spider webs and plastic skulls. Upon entering the home, officers found it cluttered and dark. There were fish tanks without fish and some of the walls, floors, and bathroom tiles had been painted black. Officers learned the missing girl's name was Zara Claire Baker. Zara and Adam had moved to North Carolina two years earlier from Queensland, Australia,

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  after Adam met and married his American wife, Lisa, who most people just called Lisa.

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  It was Lisa, not Adam, who had looked in on Zara sleeping at two thirty AM, at which time nothing was amiss. No one thought to check on her during or after the fire. In addition to using a prosthetic leg, Zara was hearing impaired, so Adam and Lisa just assumed she hadn't heard the commotion or the emergency vehicle sirens rushing down the quiet street before dawn. Nor had they checked on Zara after discovering the ransom note. In fact, they hadn't even thought to tell Officer Rollins that they had a daughter. But after they realised Zara was missing, it seemed impossible to them that the events weren't connected.

• 9:17Speaker 00

  The fire was probably a ruse to draw them out of the house, they thought, leaving Zara alone inside. The lights, sirens and firefighters created a distraction, allowing the kidnapper to steal away with Zara unnoticed. Whoever wrote the ransom note had seemingly mistaken ten-year-old Zahra Baker for nineteen-year-old Lauren Coffey, and was now holding the wrong man's daughter for ransom.

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  Adam was working in the yard when Lisa ran outside shouting, "Zara's gone." He drove around to the neighbourhood looking for her, but when he found nothing, he went to see Mark Coffey. Because of the ransom note, the Bakers were convinced Zara's disappearance had something to do with him. Mark told Adam to call the police, which was when Adam returned home and called 911. Lisa suggested that Mark should go on television and offer to pay the million-dollar ransom to get Zara back.

• 10:21Speaker 00

  Police launched a search of the area, checking nearby properties, businesses and outbuildings for any trace of Zara. They also issued an Amber Alert. Amber Alerts are emergency notifications sent by law enforcement to media outlets, cellphone messaging systems and digital highway display boards, akin to a public, community-wide "be on the lookout" notice when a child abduction has occurred. Zara was described as a ten-year-old girl, standing just over five feet tall and weighing around eighty-five pounds. She used a prosthetic left leg and was partially deaf in both ears. Photos distributed to the media showed a pale girl with straight honey-coloured hair,

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  blue eyes, a wide smile and a spray of freckles across her nose and cheeks.

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  It was noted that Zara's prosthetic leg had been taken, but her hearing aids were left behind.

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  Before moving to North Carolina, Zara and Adam Baker were living in Giroux, a small town in North Queensland where Adam worked at a sugar mill. They shared a house with Adam's parents, Karen and Tony Baker. As the only grandchild, Zara was adored and doted on, a happy and busy toddler who attended preschool and enjoyed the attention of her extended family. Then, when she was just five years old, the vibrant little girl was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a form of bone cancer, in one of her legs. Zara spent eight months in a children's hospital, where doctors took extreme measures in a desperate effort to stop her disease.

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  It was a frightening and painful time, with Zara undergoing frequent surgeries, skin grafts, and chemotherapy treatments. The five-year-old endured it all heroically, but the cancer continued to grow. Eventually, there was no choice but to amputate her left leg above the knee in order to save her life.

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  Learning how to walk again after her amputation was another slow and painful process, but Zara persevered. According to her grandmother Karen, Adam never left Zara's side. He described his daughter as someone who always smiled and considered everyone her friend. Cheerful, funny, and uninhibited with hospital staff, neighbours, and even complete strangers, Zara was known as the small girl with the huge smile who was always on the go. After she healed from the amputation surgery, she zoomed around on her crutches and dreamed of learning to waterski and attending the Paralympics. She soon figured out how to swim with one leg,

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  spinning in circles until she learned how to balance her body in the water.

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  Zara's determination and fearlessness seemed to blossom in the face of adversity. Once, when a family friend expressed concern for Zara because of her amputation, the five-year-old calmly reassured her, saying it was nothing to worry about. "I'm getting a barbie leg," Zara told her brightly, "so I don't want you to be upset." After she was fitted for a leg prosthesis, Zara once again had to relearn how to walk, run and play with a new and different body.

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  She tackled the challenge with poise, confidence and good humour. When she was running in a race for disabled children and her prosthetic leg came off, onlookers gasped, but Zara found it funny.

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  She was invited to attend Camp Quality, an adventure and recreation camp for children with cancer, where she scaled the climbing wall and mastered the ropes course. When another child asked her how she did all that with just one leg, Zara replied simply: “Because I want to.”

• 14:27Speaker 00

  Unfortunately, Zara’s battle with cancer wasn’t over. Two years after the osteosarcoma was first diagnosed in her leg, the cancer metastasized into her chest. At just seven years old, Zara was suddenly fighting for her life for a second time. In 2007, doctors performed a lobectomy, removing the cancerous portion of her right lung. Afterwards came a gruelling chemotherapy regimen that caused permanent damage to her hearing and left the bouncy athletic youngster weak, exhausted and increasingly vulnerable to sickness. She was unable to attend school for almost a year and more than once, fearing the worst,

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  her family sent word to relatives to come to the hospital and say goodbye. But Zara wasn’t going anywhere. After months of fragile health and countless close calls, her doctors announced that her cancer was in remission. Zara had beaten it twice. The Baker family was relieved and grateful, but knew a long road to recovery lay ahead. Zara had already been through so much and now her resilience would be tested again.

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  To encourage her through the slow process of rebuilding her health, Karen and Tony helped their granddaughter set goals and focus on her future. One of her goals was to learn to waterski once she turned 12. Another was to earn a fancy red fairy dress she'd had her eye on by bringing her post chemotherapy weight up to 23 kilos. Zara made the effort and was optimistic that she would succeed, but when the day came to check her weight, the eight-year-old was crestfallen to see the scale showed she was still one kilo short of her goal. Standing to the side, her grandmother discreetly pressed the corner of the scale with her own toe until it read 23,

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  and a joyful Zara got the red dress after all. When she was well enough, Zara even made a return visit to Camp Quality, where she joined in every activity with such tenacity and high spirits that she immediately caught the eye of a visiting reporter who featured her story in the local paper, writing: "They don't make them much tougher than little Zahra Baker."

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  Yet, just two years later, investigators looking into Zara's disappearance in the United States were encountering the opposite situation. The remarkable little girl who attracted so much attention in Giroux seemed to have gone completely unnoticed in Hickory during the three months since her family had moved there. Zara didn't attend school or play with other children in the neighbourhood. She hadn't been to a doctor or a dentist.

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  When police officers went door to door along the street of single-family homes, the troubling pattern continued. No one had seen Zara.

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  Incredibly, the news that she was missing was the first time her neighbours learned she'd been there at all. Several said they'd never seen Zara or had any knowledge of her existence. A British man who lived across the street from the Bakers said he'd unsuccessfully tried to befriend Adam, explaining: "I tried to talk to him two or three times, but every time I did, he put his head down, totally ignored me. I didn't even know he was Australian. I didn't even know a little girl lived there." Zara's total absence from her new community further raised the suspicion of investigators, who'd been dubious of the kidnapping story from the beginning.

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  For starters, the ransom note was found in a vehicle someone had poured gasoline on. Why would a kidnapper leave a note they wanted read inside a gas-soaked car near a fire?

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  Investigators were also sceptical about how long it had taken Adam and Lisa to notice that Zara was missing. Their house was small, with two bedrooms and a single bath. Both of them had been home all day, yet it was 2pm before they realised their 10-year-old daughter wasn't there. While conducting their initial search for Zara in the Bakers' house, officers found custom envelopes from the power company, identical to the one the ransom note was written on. They also recovered several papers with handwriting that looked extremely similar to that on the note. Therefore, even as police issued an Amber Alert and searched the area,

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  detectives knew they needed to take a hard look at Adam and Lisa Baker.

• 19:27Speaker 00

  In order to narrow down the timeframe of Zara's disappearance, they needed to verify when she had last been seen. The Bakers said that the previous evening of Friday, October 8, the three of them had attended an Oktoberfest event downtown at around 7pm. They'd returned home around 9pm, at which point Zara went to bed. Adam said this was the last time he saw his daughter, but Lisa said she'd last seen Zara sleeping in her bedroom at 2.30am. Detectives hoping to corroborate this were eager to find out whether anyone else had seen the family on Friday. As luck would have it, someone had.

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  Adam's boss, Mark Coffey, told police that he had dropped by the house on Friday evening and found Adam and Lisa in their car backing down the driveway. They told him they were going out to have dinner at Oktoberfest. But according to Mark Coffey, Zara wasn't in the car. With that, detectives asked Adam and Lisa to come to the police station for more formal questioning. The couple agreed and were heading outside just as evidence technicians began to cordon off their yard with yellow crime scene tape. "Why are they doing that?", Lisa asked. "Do they think Zara was murdered in there?"

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  At the Hickory Police Station, Adam and Lisa Baker were met by both local investigators and state-level FBI agents, who had been called in to help the smaller department with the case. Although the Bakers weren't formally named as suspects and had come to the police station voluntarily, they both endured a long night of intense interrogation. Lisa Baker told investigators that she was a two-time cancer survivor who also suffered from chronic pain and fatigue due to the autoimmune disease fibromyalgia. Her experience with cancer had helped her form a tight bond with Zara from the moment they met in Australia two years prior.

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  Lisa described Zara as a great kid who was her angel because she helped Lisa on days when symptoms from her chronic health conditions were especially bad. Given that Adam worked full-time, Lisa took charge of Zara's schooling, meals, and daily routine, and said that the ten-year-old was never out of her sight.

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  Zara's 11th birthday was over a month away, but Lisa had already started buying her gifts. She'd sent text messages to Adam the day before Zara went missing, letting him know that she had spent $200 on dolls. "So excited, she's going to be so happy", Lisa texted. She told the detectives that she was pregnant and expecting twins, so Zara was going to be a big sister.

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  Investigators asked if Lisa was willing to take a polygraph test and provide a handwriting sample. Although she readily agreed, Lisa failed the polygraph, and, even to a casual observer, her handwriting looked exactly like the writing on the ransom note.

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  In another interview room, Adam Baker appeared emotional and upset as he detailed Zara's history of cancer, how he'd almost lost her so many times, and how bravely she'd faced it all. He kept repeating his earlier claim that he and Lisa took Zara to Oktoberfest the previous night. Officers didn't tell him that Mark Coffey had contradicted this, but they did say they planned to check the festival's surveillance cameras to see if he was telling the truth. Adam insisted that he was.

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  By this point, investigators had run background checks on Adam and Lisa, and discovered both had outstanding warrants for their arrest. These were issued after they'd failed to appear at scheduled court hearings earlier that year to face a variety of misdemeanor charges, such as writing worthless cheques. Lisa had also been charged with failure to return some rented furniture and computer equipment, and with communicating threats.

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  Adam faced a charge of assault with a deadly weapon, after an incident where he'd been accused of running Lisa's nephew and his wife off the road with his car while trying to collect money they owed him. This contradicted Adam's assertion that the couple had no financial problems or personal enemies. Detectives asked him to take a polygraph test, and, like Lisa, he agreed without hesitation. Also, like Lisa, he didn't pass.

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  After he failed the polygraph, detectives pressed Adam on his story, and he admitted that part of it wasn't true. He hadn't taken Zara to Oktoberfest. He explained that he and Lisa had left Zara home alone while they went to the festival because she hadn't been feeling well. Lisa had warned him not to tell the police because they might get in trouble for leaving Zara alone. Adam admitted that he hadn't actually seen his daughter since Wednesday, October 6, a full three days before he'd reported her missing.

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  He worked long hours, leaving and returning home when Zara was asleep. She had also been sick with a virus, so he was especially careful not to disturb her when she was resting.

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  Given their failed polygraphs, Adam's shifting story and Lisa's incriminating handwriting sample, investigators speculated the bakers were lying to protect one another. If so, they needed to find a way to break their alliance.

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  In the course of looking into Lisa's background, they discovered a bombshell. While Adam thought he and Lisa had been legally married in Australia in July 2008, local records showed Lisa had actually been married to someone else at the time of their wedding. This meant that her marriage to Adam was legally void. When detectives asked Lisa about this, she acknowledged it was true. She'd been married to a man named Aaron Young since 1998, and although they'd split up years before she met Adam, they hadn't filed for divorce until August 2009.

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  The two remained friends, and she'd even introduced Aaron to Adam and Zara as her brother, telling Zara to call him Uncle Aaron.

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  When the police informed Adam Baker that his marriage to Lisa wasn't legal, he looked completely shocked.

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  As the night at the station dragged on, Lisa sent Adam a text message asking him to tell the police she wasn't involved in Zara's disappearance. When he didn't reply, she texted: "I guess you're not talking to me, and I guess they've got you convinced I've did something." When he still didn't respond, she wrote: "I guess me and the babies mean nothing."

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  As the sun rose on Sunday, October 10, still with no reply from Adam, Lisa's text messages to him grew increasingly distraught. "I should never agree to that test. I need you, honey. I'm getting a lawyer. Are you just leaving me to go through this by myself? I guess they have you convinced I'm a monster. Why are you letting them do this, Adam? We got married, better or worse. I can't live without you and Zara. I'm being set up. You're my life. Without you, I won't be here anymore. If I don't hear from you by this evening, I won't be alive to bother anyone.

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  I am no monster."

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  Adam ignored all of these. The next day, he appeared alongside Police Chief Tom Atkins on the television programme Good Morning America. Asked whether his wife was involved in Zara's disappearance, Adam sounded tired as he answered in a quiet voice: "I wouldn't like to think so. On what I've heard so far, it could be possible."

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  Adam Baker had been just 22 when he'd met Zara's mother, 19-year-old Emily. The couple hadn't known each other very long when Zara was born in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, and within weeks of her arrival, their relationship began to fray. When Zara was just two months old, Adam and Emily decided to separate, agreeing that Adam was better equipped to care for the baby. Although Emily visited occasionally, by the time Zara was 18 months old, an Australian court officially granted Adam full custody. Adam and Zara eventually moved to Newcastle, and later Giroux, where Adam's family could help look after Zara while he worked.

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  In 2005, Adam was living quietly in Giroux with Zara and his parents. Then came Zara's cancer diagnosis, and for the next three years, he lived a parent's nightmare. As his young daughter spent months in and out of the hospital fighting for her life, he took leave from work and faced the real possibility of losing his only child. At some point during this period, Adam began visiting a website called Instant Messaging Virtual Universe, or IMVU. On IMVU, he could create a customised avatar character and chat in a cosy virtual room with people around the world.

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  Online, instead of a stout, single father who spent sleepless nights in a hospital corridor, Adam was a suave, tall figure in an elegant black suit, sporting an enormous pair of black wings.

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  It was in this fantasy universe that Adam crossed virtual paths with Lisa.

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  Although they lived on different continents, they had a lot in common. Lisa was a single parent too, having raised two daughters on her own. She understood what Zara was going through because she'd also survived cancer, twice. Her IMVU avatar was graceful and mysterious, dressed in a black gown with dark red hair falling over her eyes like a veil.

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  Like Adams, her avatar sported large wings. The two bonded through frequent online chats, and when Zara's health improved, they decided it was time to meet in the real world. In 2008, Adam bought Lisa a plane ticket to visit him in Australia.

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  Adam's parents, Karen and Tony, weren't sure what to make of their son's new relationship. Lisa was nine years older than Adam, her children were grown, and according to her, she'd been married and divorced twice already.

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  Some of what she shared about herself struck the Bakers as exaggerated or even untrue.

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  She claimed to be a police officer and a bounty hunter, and said she'd been shot in the line of duty. But it was hard for the Bakers to object when Adam seemed entirely smitten. He hadn't dated anyone since splitting up with Zara's mother eight years earlier. It was nice to see him happy in a new relationship.

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  Lisa was also attentive, caring and kind towards Zara, who was excited about having a stepmother. Any doubts the Bakers had about Lisa's past were gradually set aside, and they welcomed her into their family.

• 31:53Speaker 00

  On Sunday, July 6, 2008, Adam and Lisa were married at the Baker family home. Photos captured Adam wearing a black shirt with a red tie, while Lisa wore a white and red gown with long white gloves and a tiara in her dark hair. Zara stood between them in the special red fairy dress her grandparents bought her, grinning under a crown of red and white flowers. The idyllic image was a far cry from the situation police in Hickory would find themselves facing a little over two years later.

• 32:39Speaker 00

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• 35:04Speaker 00

  While Adam and Lisa were being interrogated at the Hickory Police Station, one of Lisa’s daughters, 21-year-old Brittany, called investigators to say she hoped her mother hadn’t done something to Zara. This ominous statement immediately piqued the detectives’ interest, and an officer arranged to meet with Brittany right away, despite the late hour. As they talked, Brittany explained that earlier in the year she’d lived with Adam, Lisa and Zara in a trailer they’d been renting. The experience had been disturbing. Lisa had a bad temper, and Brittany had seen her take her anger out on Zara often, yelling at her and hitting her. Lisa had also punished Zara by forcing her to walk up the steep road

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  that led to their trailer, causing the child pain from her prosthetic leg. Brittany loved Zara, but hated her mother, and ultimately moved out of the trailer because they couldn’t get along. The last time she’d seen Zara was five months earlier, at which point Zara had a black eye. When Brittany asked what happened, Zara wouldn’t say. Brittany felt certain Lisa was responsible, and reported her suspicions to the County Child Welfare Agency at the Department of Social Services, or DSS. What happened after that, Brittany didn’t know.

• 36:28Speaker 00

  This information added to suspicions that were already growing. Adam and Lisa stayed at the police station all night, being interviewed and polygraphed, but the detectives decided not to arrest them on their outstanding warrants... yet. They thought the investigation would benefit more from observing them in the community, rather than locking them up. Given that the baker’s house was being processed for evidence, Adam and Lisa couldn’t go home. Lisa’s 25-year-old daughter, Amber, agreed to pick her mother up and let her stay at her apartment. But almost as soon as they got back there, Lisa started talking about wanting to leave town, saying she’d like to flee the state, and possibly the country.

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  She said she had the means to leave, as she was in an online relationship with a man in the UK who had sent her $10,000 through Western Union. Alarmed, Amber called the police.

• 37:28Speaker 00

  Within hours of her initial release, Hickory Police promptly arrested Lisa on her misdemeanor charges to prevent her from running. They tracked down Lisa's online boyfriend in the UK, who explained that the two had met on IMBU, the same website where Lisa had met Adam. He'd sent her money because she told him she had cancer and couldn't afford the necessary medicine. Lisa's daughters refuted this, telling police that Lisa had never had cancer. Nor was she pregnant with twins. In fact, it would be impossible for her to conceive a child with Adam, as she'd had a hysterectomy before the two had met.

• 38:12Speaker 00

  With Lisa back in custody, investigators questioned her about Zara again. On the night of Monday, October 11, an SBI agent told Lisa that specialists from the FBI had examined her handwriting sample and matched it conclusively to the ransom note. Totally bluffing, the agent said casually, "We already know you wrote the note, we just want to know why." Catching him off guard, Lisa promptly explained that she'd written the note on a whim in a moment of anger, and it wasn't related to Zara's disappearance at all. She explained, "I guess the reason I wrote the note is because Mark Coffey dictates

• 38:55Speaker 00

  everything Adam does, and he thinks he's a god, and I'm tired of it." Lisa reiterated that she didn't know what happened to her stepdaughter, before asking for an attorney and refusing to speak further. So far, the police had made several troubling discoveries. Lisa Baker had confessed to writing a fake ransom note. Adam Baker hadn't seen his daughter in three days and had lied about it. Lisa habitually lied to Adam throughout their two years of marriage, which wasn't even legal. Adam had never applied for residency in the US either, which meant he'd been living and working in the country illegally since 2008.

• 39:40Speaker 00

  But worst of all, on Sunday, October 10, less than 24 hours after Adam had reported Zara missing, a cadaver dog had given a positive alert to the scent of human remains inside both the Chevy Tahoe Adam borrowed from Mark Coffey and the Baker's second car, a 1990 Toyota Camry sedan.

• 40:02Speaker 00

  Despite this, law enforcement teams hadn't found anything to indicate where Zara might be. Only one credible sighting of Zara had emerged from an employee at a furniture store who thought she saw Lisa and Zara browsing in her shop on September 25, nearly three weeks earlier. Police couldn't find anyone besides Adam and Lisa who'd seen Zara since then. This, combined with the other discoveries, resulted in a grim shift in the case moving forward. At a press conference held on the afternoon of Tuesday, October 12, Police Chief Tom Atkins announced that Lisa Baker admitted to writing the fake ransom note and had been arrested for obstructing the investigation.

• 40:47Speaker 00

  The amber alert for Zara was being cancelled. Struggling to maintain his composure, the chief informed the public that the search for the 10-year-old had officially become a homicide investigation.

• 41:05Speaker 00

  More people started to come forward with disturbing allegations about Lisa Baker's treatment of her stepdaughter. The wife of Lisa's nephew publicly accused Lisa of abusing Zara, beating her for just the smallest things, locking her in her room, and only allowing her five minutes a day to weet. A friend of Lisa's named Angie told police that in early September she'd gone to visit Lisa, and while waiting to be let in, she'd heard Lisa yelling at Zara for urinating on herself. When Lisa eventually opened the door, her face was red and she looked angry.

• 41:43Speaker 00

  Angie was disturbed enough to consider calling child welfare authorities, but ultimately decided not to. She didn't see Zara during her visit that day or on any subsequent visits to the home.

• 41:58Speaker 00

  And a strange conversation she'd recently had with Lisa had now taken on a disturbing significance. Lisa had told Angie she had to throw out Zara's mattress because it was stained with blood. Lisa said it was menstrual blood from one of her adult daughters, but when police followed up with Lisa's daughters, they both said that was a lie. Search teams spent days digging for the mattress in a nearby landfill to no avail.

• 42:28Speaker 00

  Search teams had also been dispatched to a three-acre property in nearby Burke County, which was owned by one of Adam's coworkers. Adam had mentioned this property during his police interview, saying he frequently went there to dump debris from job sites. When he mentioned there was a large brush pile there that he was supposed to burn soon, police moved quickly to secure a search warrant. Investigators descended on the property, pulling apart brush piles, combing through woods, and even draining a pond, but there was no trace of Zara.

• 43:05Speaker 00

  On Thursday, October 14, five days after Zara was reported missing, police received a disturbing tip-off. The tipster alleged that Lisa had recently taken Zara to a house owned by two men related to her ex-husband, Aaron Young. Afterwards, Zara apparently had blood on her lower body and may have been struck on the head. One of the men later told a friend he had done something very bad and needed to leave town, leading to speculation that Zara may have been killed to cover up a sexual assault. Investigators obtained a search warrant for the property and located both men. They said they knew Lisa Baker,

• 43:49Speaker 00

  but denied that Zara had ever been inside their home or that they'd assaulted her in any way. Officers seized a soiled mattress from the house for DNA testing and subpoenaed the cellphone records for both men, but never found any evidence to support the rumor. Neither man was ever charged with any crime in connection to Zara. However, while investigating, police did uncover an illicit connection between one of them and Lisa Baker.

• 44:20Speaker 00

  According to a probable cause affidavit, Lisa and the man were engaged in an ongoing sexual relationship and were also using drugs together regularly.

• 44:31Speaker 00

  Before moving to their rental house in Hickory in July 2010, the Bakers had lived in nearby Caldwell County, which borders Catawba County to the north. There, Zara had bounced between two public elementary schools between January 2009 and June 2010, when she was in the 3rd and 4th grades.

• 44:53Speaker 00

  Records indicated that teachers reported concerns about Zara several times. They had documented her frequent absences from school and unusual bruises, including one incident when she arrived at school with two black eyes.

• 45:09Speaker 00

  Another time, Zara had an accident at school and urinated on her clothes. She became so distraught about her parents finding out that a staff member washed and dried her outfit using the school's facilities, allowing Zara to change back into her clean clothes before she went home so her parents wouldn't know. School officials had reported their concerns to child welfare authorities and also made their own visits to the Bakers' home. One teacher was so concerned about Zara that she wrote down her personal phone number and gave it to the 4th grader, instructing her to call if she ever needed help.

• 45:47Speaker 00

  When Lisa found out about this, she and Adam went to the school principal and reported the teacher for inappropriate behaviour.

• 45:56Speaker 00

  After the Bakers moved to Hickory, they didn't enrol Zara in the public school system again. When asked why Zara wasn't in school, they claimed they were homeschooling her, though they never registered as a home school with state authorities.

• 46:13Speaker 00

  In North Carolina, public schools monitor the attendance of enrolled students, but have no authority to monitor children in a home school. So, even though the Bakers weren't complying with their requirements for operating a home school, once they informed officials of their decision, no one from the public school district had the authority to question them or Zara anymore.

• 46:38Speaker 00

  The last place the bakers lived before moving to Hickory was a trailer home in the town of Hudson. It was located in a mobile home park along a quiet cul-de-sac on a road called Phillip Lane. The neighbourhood was exceptionally friendly and close-knit. Many residents there were intrigued by their new, somewhat exotic Australian neighbours, recalling that Adam introduced them to tropical fruits like papaya and mango. Just like back in Giroux, people on Phillip Lane were drawn to Zara's affectionate, outgoing personality. She would join in rowdy games with the other children and eagerly hopped onto a neighbour's bicycle for her first ride, despite having only one leg.

• 47:23Speaker 00

  But it didn't take long for the friendly residents of Phillip Lane to notice some disturbing things about their new neighbours.

• 47:32Speaker 00

  Lisa didn't try to hide her violent temper, and when she was angry, it was usually Zara who suffered the consequences. One neighbour recalled: "You could hear Zara screaming and Elisa yelling at her, so we would call the police." Another neighbour said Elisa was always beating Zara and ignored people who told her to stop. Sometimes Zara was left at home alone, hungry and without food. She snuck over to a neighbour's house to eat, then had to sneak back home again so her parents wouldn't catch her. Lisa's daughter Brittany said that during this time, she'd once gone so far as to put Zara in her car and to drive away,

• 48:16Speaker 00

  only to bring her back after Lisa threatened to report her for kidnapping.

• 48:22Speaker 00

  The month of May 2010 seemed to be an especially volatile period for Lisa. This was when Brittany had last seen Zara and reported to Caldwell County DSS that she believed Elisa had given the girl a black eye. Another relative also filed a complaint against Lisa in Caldwell County Court, alleging that Lisa had threatened to kill her, her husband and their infant daughter during a dispute over money. Just ten days after that, a neighbour on Phillip Lane filed a complaint against Lisa after she verbally abused and threatened the neighbour's teenage daughter for talking to Zara.

• 49:02Speaker 00

  Multiple people corroborated Brittany's assertion that Lisa punished Azara by making her walk up and down the steep road that led to their home, knowing it was painful because of her prosthetic leg. Sometimes Lisa followed alongside her, berating and even striking her if she didn't move fast enough. One woman told the Sydney Morning Herald that Lisa would taunt Azara, saying: "Oh, you think you're so good? I think you should get that limp out of your leg. You need to get up that hill. Walk faster." Lisa punctuated her words with slaps to Azara's head and face.

• 49:44Speaker 00

  North Carolina's state law makes any adult who suspects the abuse or neglect of any child legally obliged to report the information to DSS, the primary agency responsible for receiving and investigating allegations of child abuse. Hickory Police checked with DSS and discovered that DSS officers in both Caldwell and Kataba Counties had investigated four separate reports concerning Zahra Baker in the months before she went missing. The first report was made to Caldwell County DSS on Friday, January 29, 2010, alleging Zara was subjected to improper discipline, improper care, and an injurious environment

• 50:28Speaker 00

  by her parents. A second report with similar allegations soon followed. DSS investigators spoke with Adam, Lisa, and Azara twice, and also interviewed a neighbour and another family member. Whatever was said seemed to satisfy the DSS investigators, as both reports were officially closed a few weeks later with "No evidence of maltreatment or child safety issues found."

• 50:59Speaker 00

  Three months later, on Friday, May 28, Caldwell County DSS received a third report about Zahra. This was around the same time that Lisa’s daughter Brittany claimed to have called DSS about Zahra’s black eye. However, reports to DSS are confidential, so the specifics were never made public. DSS confirmed that social workers returned to the baker’s home immediately upon receiving this new report and interviewed Lisa and Zahra. For some reason, Adam was not interviewed until almost a month later. After speaking with Adam, the new investigation, like those before, was closed with no findings

• 51:43Speaker 00

  of concern for Zahra’s safety. Around three weeks later, on Monday, July 12, Caldwell DSS received a fourth report alleging that Zahra was experiencing improper discipline and an injurious environment. This time, social workers responding to the report could not find the bakers, as they had relocated to Hickory, which put them under the jurisdiction of Kataba County. On July 13, Caldwell DSS transferred the latest report to Kataba County DSS. Investigators from Kataba DSS immediately went to the baker’s new home on 21st Avenue Northwest.

• 52:26Speaker 00

  They arrived unannounced, a little after 6pm, finding the family still unpacking belongings from their recent move. Social workers interviewed Adam, Lisa and Zahra individually about the allegations, and returned to the home for follow-up visits on July 22 and again on August 5, about eight weeks before Zahra went missing. At that time, they concluded there was no evidence of maltreatment or child safety issues found, and the baker family’s fourth DSS case in eight months was officially closed the next day.

• 53:05Speaker 00

  Four days after this final visit from DSS social workers in Hickory, a friend of Lisa’s named Brandy noticed Zara had a black eye, which Lisa said was from Zara falling down.

• 53:18Speaker 00

  In Australia, Zara had been agile and athletic, winning swimming races and navigating ropes courses with her prosthetic leg. But in North Carolina, Lisa often explained bruises on Zara by telling people that having one leg made Zara clumsy and prone to falls. Brandy believed Lisa’s excuse, but she still thought Zara seemed sad. Wanting to cheer her up, Brandy offered to take Zara’s picture as a way of coaxing her into a smile. Lisa told her not to because of Zara’s black eye, but Brandy did so anyway. This photo was widely shared in the days after Zara went missing.

• 54:01Speaker 00

  In it, Zara wears a pink bandana with peace signs on it and is looking up at the camera, her eyes crinkled in a smile. The picture is dark and grainy, and the bruise Brandy described under Zara’s eye can’t be clearly seen. That was the last time Brandy ever saw Zara, and there were no further reports made to DSS. Lisa would have been familiar with the DSS investigative process because she had a long history with North Carolina Child Welfare Authorities, spanning several counties and going back to 1999, around the time her own daughters were Zara’s age. When Lisa met Adam,

• 54:45Speaker 00

  she told him she’d been married twice before. In actuality, she had been married six times. In 1989, while married to her second husband, Lisa’s then-mother-in-law took out a restraining order after she said Lisa got angry, damaged her property, and threatened: “I’ll burn the house down. I’m going to kill this baby. I’m going to wreck this car. I’ll kill those kids.”

• 55:14Speaker 00

  Lisa's third husband, a man named Andrew Harris, recalled that Lisa was easygoing and pleasant when they were dating, but soon after they married in 1992, she changed, becoming angry and violent. He said Lisa would take her anger out on her daughters, Amber and Brittany, who were then aged seven and three. Lisa yelled at the girls and hit them for no reason, and if she didn't feel like dealing with their needs, she would just lock them in their room.

• 55:46Speaker 00

  In 1994, Lisa met her fourth husband, Daryl Partnam. Lisa's mother had recently died of cancer, and she told Daryl that nine-year-old Amber had cancer too. This didn't stop her from hitting Amber in front of Daryl, who said Lisa liked to smack around both of her children. Her fifth husband, Jeffrey Allred, said her temper wasn't only directed at the children, but at him too. Jeffrey said that while they were dating, he and Lisa were happy and enjoyed dreaming about their future. But as soon as they were married in 1997,

• 56:26Speaker 00

  "It was like a light switch went off, and she said, 'I got him now.'" Jeffrey said Lisa was abusive and violent, attacking him with rocks and beating him with a baseball bat. He became so fearful that when he made up his mind to leave her, he waited until she went out to the store, then fled without a word, taking nothing but a single suitcase.

• 56:55Speaker 00

  While investigators were learning a lot of troubling information about Lisa Baker, they still hadn't found anything to lead them to Zara.

• 57:04Speaker 00

  Adam continued to nominally cooperate by talking with them whenever asked, but he wasn't helpful at all. His answer to nearly every question was that he didn't know.

• 57:17Speaker 00

  Police believed Lisa was the key to finding Zara, but she hadn't spoken to them since the night she admitted to writing the ransom note. The fact that she was now being represented by two attorneys, one of whom was appointed by the state and specialised exclusively in defending death penalty cases, led police to assume that Lisa was worried she'd eventually be charged with murder.

• 57:43Speaker 00

  With the frustrating lack of evidence, all they could do was continue chasing leads and hope they'd get a break. But when that break finally came, it wasn't what anyone expected.

• 57:57Speaker 00

  At 8pm on Sunday, October 24, 15 days after Zara was reported missing, a local prosecutor entered the Hickory Police Department accompanied by Lisa Baker's defence team, as well as a private investigator named Steve Ayers. The group had just come from a meeting and they had two major developments to share. Lisa was ready to talk about what really happened on the day Zara went missing, and she knew where Zara was.

• 58:29Speaker 00

  Her attorneys would negotiate the terms of her cooperation with the prosecutor, but first, they wanted to give the police something to prove that this time Lisa was telling the truth.

• 58:41Speaker 00

  Steve Ayers then handed over a plastic bag with the promise that it contained a key piece of evidence which had come into his possession.

• 58:51Speaker 00

  Inside the bag, police found a small Stanley brand handsaw.

• 58:58Speaker 00

  Three days earlier, Lisa Baker's legal team had sent private investigator Steve Ayers on an unusual errand.

• 59:07Speaker 00

  Lisa had given her attorneys a full account of what happened to Zara and said she could even tell them where to find the missing 10-year-old. But Lisa's lawyers weren't willing to approach the district attorney or the police with any of this new information until they had some proof that their client was telling the truth. So, on Thursday, October 21, as the massive police search for Zara was entering its 12th day, Steve Ayers had driven northwest towards the town of Hudson, stopping when he reached a circular storm drain on a narrow, cracked road near a manufacturing plant. In the dark, damp recess of the drain, he found a common, inexpensive hand saw,

• 59:52Speaker 00

  right where Lisa had said it would be. Ayers carefully retrieved the saw and placed it in a plastic bag, which he taped shut and labelled with the date and his initials. When he turned the bag over to the Hickory Police three days later, they were shocked and angry that the defence team had secretly collected a piece of evidence rather than alerting law enforcement officials right away. But Lisa's attorneys didn't apologise, explaining that they had wanted to verify Lisa's story before negotiating a plea deal with prosecutors. North Carolina is a capital punishment state, and as they saw it, their client's life was literally on the line.

• 1:00:39Speaker 00

  Besides, the police hadn't heard of Lisa's story yet. When they did, they would have to agree. It was so terrible and bizarre, no one in their right mind would want to believe it.

• 1:00:56Speaker 00

  Lisa's story began four weeks earlier, on the morning of Friday, September 24. She said Zara had woken up around 9am and hadn't felt well. Adam was away at work, so Lisa boiled four eggs for Zara's breakfast, then left her at home alone while she went shopping at Walmart. Around 3 o'clock that afternoon, Lisa returned from the store. She gave Zara some ravioli and sent her into her bedroom to eat it alone.

• 1:01:29Speaker 00

  An hour later, Lisa said that she walked into Zara's room to discover the ten-year-old lying on her bed, unresponsive. Lisa claimed she tried to perform CPR and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation for twenty or thirty minutes, but couldn't revive her. Finally, she called Adam, who arrived home between five and five-thirty. When he realised that Zara was dead, he told Lisa to sit down, saying that he would take care of it. He suggested she take some Xanax to calm herself. Later that evening, he wanted to go to Walmart, so the two of them went together, leaving Zara's body lying in the bedroom.

• 1:02:14Speaker 00

  According to Lisa, the next morning, Adam carried Zara's body to the bathroom and laid it in the tub. He took some trash bags from the kitchen, along with a handsaw, and shut the bathroom door behind him. From the living room, Lisa listened to the sound of running water coming from the bathroom for a long time. When Adam finally emerged, he had filled several plastic trash bags with the remains of his daughter. Adam wrapped the bags inside a blanket and an old car cover, and loaded all of it into the back of Mark Coffey's Chevy Tahoe. Lisa rode along in the passenger seat, while Adam drove out of the city and along the rural

• 1:02:58Speaker 00

  back roads, pulling over from time to time to dump one of the bags out in a patch of brush or woodland. Later, when speaking to the Charlotte Observer newspaper, Lisa changed some details of this story. She claimed Zara hadn't been sick on the day she died, and that she'd actually discovered her dead as soon as she returned from Walmart. Lisa said, "I walked over to the bed and shook her a little bit. She hadn't been gone long. She wasn't cold."

• 1:03:32Speaker 00

  In this version, Lisa also claimed that when Adam came home, she insisted they call 911, but he said no, he didn't want to alert authorities to his illegal immigration status. Instead, he warned Lisa not to follow him as he headed for Zara's bedroom, carrying the saw, some gloves, and the trash bags. When he returned, Lisa said she confronted him, demanding, "You need to tell me what you've done with her." Adam replied cryptically, "I had to do what is going to save us both." Lisa said she knew that whatever he had done was wrong,

• 1:04:14Speaker 00

  but she didn't tell anyone or go to the police because she was raised to believe that the man makes the decisions, and you don't argue. Investigators listened to Lisa, sickened and appalled, yet also disbelieving. There was plenty about her assertions that didn't make sense. Why wouldn't she just call 911 as soon as she found Azara unresponsive? Why would Adam be so desperate to conceal his daughter's death if she'd really died from an illness or natural cause? And why would they decide two weeks later to stage the fire, ransom note, and kidnapping story when it didn't appear that anyone had even noticed Azara's disappearance?

• 1:04:59Speaker 00

  As hard as it was to believe Lisa's story, the reality was that investigators from multiple agencies had been searching for Zara for weeks and hadn't found one clue as to her whereabouts. Therefore, when Lisa said she could lead police to where she and Adam had left Azara's remains, they had no choice but to follow her.

• 1:05:25Speaker 00

  The next morning, officers from Hickory Police and the North Carolina FBI set out to recreate the route Lisa said Adam had driven a month earlier while disposing of his daughter's body. From the backseat of a police vehicle, Lisa directed the investigators northwest, out of town towards the mountains. She told them to follow a winding two-lane road, climbing in elevation as the pavement ended and the road became packed with gravel and dirt. It was raining as they drove up and down the road, waiting for Lisa to spot something familiar. She then changed her mind, saying she couldn't recognise anything after all.

• 1:06:08Speaker 00

  Eventually, the increasingly frustrated and car-sick investigators decided to turn around and head south. Halfway between the towns of Granite Falls and Hudson, Lisa told them to turn off Highway 321. Following her directions, they merged onto Christie Road, which consisted mostly of fallow fields, forests and brushland. Lisa finally called for them to pull over and stop at a metal gate that blocked a footpath leading down to a stream known as Gumpowder Creek. She gestured into the brushy woods beyond the metal gate and said Adam had thrown Zara's arm there.

• 1:06:53Speaker 00

  Search teams were dispatched to Christie Road, while the officers escorting Lisa continued their somber drive. The next place she took them was four miles further east, to a parking strip in the grass beside Dudley Shoals Road, near an overpass spanning a small river crossing. Lisa said Adam had pulled over and she'd watched from the car as he walked into the woods carrying a bag that contained Zara's torso. He returned to the vehicle moments later, empty-handed, and drove away.

• 1:07:29Speaker 00

  While Lisa was showing a sergeant this area, he received a phone call from the search team that had just started looking at the previous location. They had already found something. It was a silicon cup that looked like the upper end of a prosthetic leg.

• 1:07:48Speaker 00

  The sergeant immediately took Lisa back to Christie Road where she was shown the piece of silicon.

• 1:07:55Speaker 00

  When she saw it, Lisa began to cry and said, “Oh my god, that’s Zara’s.” The search team kept combing through the tangled brush and woods along the roadside, working intently throughout the dreary rainy afternoon. Their effort was rewarded when someone pulled a small prosthetic leg from the undergrowth.

• 1:08:20Speaker 00

  Comparing the serial number printed on it to the number recorded in Zara’s Australian medical records, they had a match.

• 1:08:35Speaker 00

  Case file will be back shortly. Thank you for supporting us by listening to this episode sponsors.

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• 1:10:51Speaker 00

  The discovery of Zara Baker's prosthetic leg encouraged investigators as it indicated that Lisa Baker was finally being cooperative. The following day, she promised to show them additional sites where Adam had thrown away important evidence. She led them to a dumpster behind an apartment complex in Hickory, where she said Adam had thrown Zara's prosthetic leg. The police hadn't yet told Lisa or her attorneys that they'd already found Zara's prosthetic leg on Christie Road, so she was either lying or confused. Either way, it wasn't a good sign for the investigators, and nothing new was recovered.

• 1:11:34Speaker 00

  The following day of Wednesday, October 27, forensic investigators descended on the Baker's home to conduct a thorough examination of the bathroom and Zara's bedroom. They took apart the bathtub and sink drains and removed piping, looking for traces of blood, bone, and human tissue. They also took a number of items from the home, including prescription pills, empty pill bottles, multiple cell phones, and a stun gun. In Zara's bedroom, investigators found what looked like blood on the floor and ceiling, as well as a spray pattern of tiny drops of blood on the wall beside her bed. Someone had sponge-painted the walls with pink paint,

• 1:12:18Speaker 00

  covering up the blood. In total, investigators collected thirty-three samples of possible blood evidence from the baker's house, all of which was determined to have come from Zara. Experts analysed the blood spatter on the wall and determined that it had likely resulted from someone lying in the bed being inflicted with repeated blows. Police already thought that Lisa's story about Zara dying naturally was ridiculous, and now they had evidence pointing to a homicide. But they desperately needed to find Zara's body if they were to have any hope of proving exactly how she died beyond a reasonable doubt.

• 1:13:03Speaker 00

  While one team scoured the baker's home, others continued searching the wooded areas Lisa had taken them to. It was rough to rain. There were dry creek beds that flooded when it rained, steep ravines, boulders, and lots of litter and household trash. Making their job even harder was the fact that these two areas were known to local residents as "boneyards", meaning they were used as dumping grounds for unwanted animal carcasses. Everything from deer hides and offal from hunting trips, to roadkill, deceased livestock, rats, snakes, and even family pets. Bits and pieces of bones were scattered everywhere, making it difficult for the search teams

• 1:13:46Speaker 00

  to identify which might be human. For an entire week, searchers snapped photos of everything they thought could possibly be a child's bone, and sent the images to the state medical examiner's office for guidance. Finally, on Wednesday, November 3, just ten metres into the woods off Christie Road, a police officer spotted a small, but distinctly human bone. It was the same area where Zara's prosthetic leg had been found, and where Lisa said Adam threw Zara's arm. Comparing DNA from the bone to a profile they'd extracted from DNA on Zara's toothbrush,

• 1:14:28Speaker 00

  authorities were finally able to confirm they had found a trace of Zahra Baker.

• 1:14:35Speaker 00

  Hickory Police Chief Tom Adkins appeared on the verge of tears as he confirmed in a press conference that the bone found on Christie Road had been identified as Zara's left humerus, the bone from the upper arm. Searchers had also found pieces of a child's pelvis, rib cage, right clavicle, right femur, and vertebrae. Investigators had been holding out hope of finding Zara alive, but now had to accept that she was dead and had been the victim of depraved cruelty.

• 1:15:12Speaker 00

  By this point, there was an abundance of evidence pointing to Lisa Baker as the prime suspect in Zara's death. But it was hard to see how Adam Baker could be innocent. His constant refrain that he didn't know anything provoked skepticism from the start. Public suspicion escalated even more when the recording of his 911 call was released to the media.

• 1:15:37Speaker 00

  On the call, Adam greeted the dispatcher as though he was phoning a friend, saying, "Hey, how you doing?" He waited for them to respond before requesting police assistance. Later on, while speaking to the police dispatcher, Adam laughed while describing how his missing daughter liked to stay in her room due to puberty, adding, "She's hitting that brooding stage." Given that Adam was reporting the possible abduction of his disabled 10-year-old daughter, his casual and friendly demeanor was jarring. People couldn't reconcile how a father in such a frightening situation could sound so calm with no sense of urgency.

• 1:16:21Speaker 00

  Then there was the fact that he'd driven to see Mark Coffey and then home again instead of immediately dialing 911.

• 1:16:30Speaker 00

  Adam had confessed that he'd initially lied to police by saying he'd taken Zara to Oktoberfest on the night of Friday, October 8. But he took no responsibility for this, claiming he was just following Lisa's instructions. Possibly the largest factor undermining Adam's credibility was the fact that he'd never given a clear, consistent answer to something most parents of young children wouldn't have to think twice about: the last time he'd seen his daughter. After admitting to the Oktoberfest liar, Adam had told police the last time he'd seen Zara was on Wednesday, October 6. Days later, in a TV interview, he gave an entirely different response, stuttering as

• 1:17:14Speaker 00

  he said the last time he saw Zara out of bed would have been on the Tuesday. Taken aback, the interviewer asked if he meant to say Thursday. Adam immediately agreed, shaking his head sheepishly and stating: "Thursday, I'm sorry, I've had very little sleep." In another interview with Australia's 60 Minutes programme, Adam was asked to clear up the confusion about when he'd last seen Zara. He appeared to think for a while before finally saying: "It's very hard to talk about stuff with the case at the moment", adding that he didn't want to do anything that may impede justice for Zara.

• 1:17:57Speaker 00

  The host asked whether he understood that by not answering the question clearly, he was making people suspicious. Adam simply answered: "Oh yeah, I understand that." Even after police concluded that Zara had most likely died on September 24, like Lisa claimed, Adam continued to say he'd seen his daughter not long before reporting her missing on October 9.

• 1:18:24Speaker 00

  Whenever questioned about the case publicly, Adam's standard answer was a shrug or a headshake, with a soft spoken "I don't know." If he was pressed as to how he could not know something as basic as when he last saw his only child, he usually said he worked long hours and wasn't home much. When he returned home, Lisa told him that Zara had gone to bed early, and he would then look in on her. "I checked every night," Adam said. "From what I could tell, she was in bed. It looked like she was in bed. There was something in the bed."

• 1:19:04Speaker 00

  Even if Lisa had arranged Zara's bedclothes to make it seem as though Zara was there when she wasn't, for this trick to work, it meant that Adam hadn't tried to touch or speak to his daughter once, not even over the phone, for weeks. It would also mean he hadn't had a single day off from his tree trimming job, even when it was raining. Adam's foreman disputed his claim of extremely long work hours, telling the Hickory Daily Record that Adam worked a standard 35-40 hour week and went home around 4:30 or 5:30 each day. During September and October in western North Carolina, it wouldn't have been dark outside at that hour.

• 1:19:51Speaker 00

  While investigators didn't think very highly of Adam as a parent, most were eventually satisfied that he wasn't involved in his daughter's death. They came to the conclusion that Adam had an extremely passive and subdued personality, plus a habit of nervous laughter, as demonstrated in the 911 call. These traits were off-putting, but they didn't mean he was being deceptive or uncooperative. He was always willing to talk and visited the station anytime they called. The longer officers talked to Adam, the less they suspected him, instead concluding that he was perhaps willfully blind to what was going on in his family.

• 1:20:33Speaker 00

  Other factors, such as heavy cannabis use, might have impeded his competence as a parent as well.

• 1:20:40Speaker 00

  However, at least one law enforcement officer disagreed with this assessment of Adam as an innocent and hapless man. Burke County Sheriff John McDevitt, whose department assisted with the search for Zahra, told reporters: “He seems concerned. I don’t know how sincere his concern is.”

• 1:21:02Speaker 00

  When one journalist asked if he believed Adam, McDevitt said flatly: “I don’t.” Then there was the question of how it was possible that Adam hadn’t recognised his wife’s handwriting on the fake ransom note. Police officers with no expertise in handwriting analysis, who’d casually compared the note to handwriting found in the baker’s house, immediately saw the resemblance. Yet Adam, the first person to find the ransom note and examine it, didn’t find it familiar. It was also unclear how Adam could have been oblivious to Lisa’s abuse of Zahra, given the four DSS investigations which he was interviewed for.

• 1:21:44Speaker 00

  In his interview with 60 Minutes, Adam said he’d noticed Zahra having a black eye only once. She apparently told him she’d fallen in the bathroom and hit her face on a cabinet, and he’d believed her.

• 1:22:00Speaker 00

  Yet, Adam appeared to know that Lisa had a violent temper and could be abusive. In a 2011 interview with WBTV News, Adam said: “Lisa is very manipulative, very controlling, and abusive.”

• 1:22:17Speaker 00

  When the interviewer clarified: “To you,” he laughed nervously and said: “Yeah, to me.” At least one of Lisa’s ex-husbands accused her of being physically abusive, and more than one former spouse accused her of psychological and emotional abuse.

• 1:22:37Speaker 00

  Some red flags for intimate partner violence emerged during the police investigation into the Bakers, such as Lisa attempting to control Adam by threatening to harm herself, her feigning pregnancy and illness, and seeking to scare Adam into doing what she said by telling him he would be in trouble with police for being in the country illegally. Isolating one partner from their friends and family is another tactic of domestic abusers. It appears that after Adam and Lisa moved to the US, they moved frequently and didn't keep in touch with Adam's parents, family or friends back in Australia. Studies show that intimate partner violence is often overlooked,

• 1:23:19Speaker 00

  downplayed or outright denied when the victim is male and the perpetrator female.

• 1:23:26Speaker 00

  Lisa Baker did admit in court proceedings to verbally, physically and psychologically abusing Zara before her death. It is possible Adam experienced some form of domestic abuse as well.

• 1:23:41Speaker 00

  Few people were inclined to see Adam Baker as a victim, however. The predominant feeling towards him was outrage. Although he was never charged with anything related to Zara's murder, he couldn't go anywhere in Hickory without being recognised. Everywhere Adam went, he was called murderer and told he was destined for hell. When he returned to his former home to retrieve some belongings, a crowd visiting a memorial to Zara that had sprung up around the oak tree in the front yard quickly grew hostile, with people shouting that he should be locked up. Lisa Baker thought so too. Speaking to a journalist from prison, she later said:

• 1:24:26Speaker 00

  "I took the blame for everything, and I shouldn't have. I'm very angry he's not here."

• 1:24:36Speaker 00

  But it was Lisa’s own story about what happened to Zara that permanently turned the investigator’s focus away from Adam and settled it on her alone. From the outset, the details of Lisa’s story were inconsistent. Detectives therefore found it significant when there were two specific parts of her story that didn’t change. The first was the date of Zara’s death, Friday, September 24. When police examined data from the bakers’ cellphones from mid-September to mid-October, they found that only one of them had been in the areas where Zara’s remains were found: Lisa Baker.

• 1:25:17Speaker 00

  Furthermore, all of her cellphone activity in those areas was on September 24. Data from cell towers on that date tracked Lisa’s phone leaving home a little after 2:30pm, travelling north on Highway 321 and spending time in the Christie Road and Dudley Shoals areas, both sites where some of Zara’s bones and her prosthetic leg were later recovered. Between 3:30 and 4pm, Lisa’s phone pinged a cell tower near the storm drain where the private investigator later retrieved the handsaw. By 4:45pm, she was back at home in Hickory, having taken a two-hour drive through all the locations

• 1:26:01Speaker 00

  she later told investigators Adam had driven her to.

• 1:26:06Speaker 00

  They knew Adam hadn’t been in the car with her because she had used her phone to call him nine times along the way. Each time he answered, his phone connected to a tower in Burke County, more than 10 miles to the west. Adam said he was working at a job site in Burke County on September 24, and both his cell data and his coworkers confirmed it. Therefore, only Lisa could be placed in the areas where Zara’s remains were left and on the afternoon of the same day that she said Zara had died.

• 1:26:42Speaker 00

  The other consistent detail in Lisa's story was that Adam hadn't been present when Zara died. Although she wavered on her own whereabouts at the time, at no point did Lisa say that Adam had been there. For investigators, who did not believe that Zara died naturally, this was significant. If Zara was murdered, it meant that only Lisa could have killed her.

• 1:27:10Speaker 00

  Proving this would still be difficult. An autopsy of Zara's partial skeleton found the cause of her death to be undetermined homicidal violence. The medical examiner found blade marks on some of the bones that indicated someone had used at least two different cutting tools to dismember her body post-mortem. At least one bone was partially sawn through before being snapped.

• 1:27:37Speaker 00

  But, there wasn't any specific evidence of injury before her death.

• 1:27:43Speaker 00

  Consequently, the prosecutor had limited forensic evidence to take to a jury. There was the blood from Zara's bedroom wall and the cellphone records, but everything else was circumstantial or based on Lisa's unreliable accounts. Not confident that the state had enough to win a conviction for first-degree murder, which carried a possible death sentence, the prosecutor was willing to cut a deal with Lisa's defence team. He agreed to charge Lisa with second-degree murder instead.

• 1:28:16Speaker 00

  This was not a popular decision. At the memorial for Zara at her former home on 21st Avenue North West, signs appeared that read: "Justice for Zahra Baker: Protect Your Children", "DSS and School System Failed Zara", and... "God, please let someone pay for this."

• 1:28:42Speaker 00

  Almost a year after Zara's death, on Thursday, September 15, 2011, Lisa Baker pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, as well as nine other felony counts ranging from bigamy for her overlapping marriages to obstruction of justice for writing the fake ransom note. In exchange for leading the police to some of Zara's remains and agreeing to plead guilty, Lisa hoped for a lighter sentence. However, the charge of second-degree murder was enhanced with so-called aggravating factors, allowing the judge to impose more prison time under the sentencing guidelines.

• 1:29:22Speaker 00

  The aggravating factors included taking advantage of a position of trust, hiding and desecrating a body, and killing someone very young and infirm. The plea also stipulated that Lisa had secreted Zara from other members of her family before and after her death, likely a reference to the way she'd pretended Zara was alive by texting Adam about her upcoming birthday, or telling him she was asleep in her bedroom, or that she wasn't feeling well and needed to be left alone.

• 1:29:55Speaker 00

  Given the opportunity to address his ex-wife before she was sentenced, Adam Baker read a statement in the courtroom. "I trusted you with the most precious person in my life," he said. "Zara loved you more than anything in the world. She looked up to you, wanted to be like you. Yet, you filled her life with lies. You have destroyed my life. You have also made my life hell with false accusations that I was involved in hurting Zara. You have destroyed my family's life, and you have devastated a community. There are no words to explain the hate I have for you or the hurt and pain I feel every day for the loss of Zara."

• 1:30:41Speaker 00

  He concluded by asking: "If at any time you actually cared for Zara, please tell us where we can find any more of Zara's remains, so she can be laid to rest complete."

• 1:30:55Speaker 00

  Zara's birth mother was also in the courtroom that day, having travelled from Australia to attend the proceedings. Now thirty-one years old, Emily hadn't seen her firstborn child in more than eight years. She hadn't even known Zara had been living in the US until she typed her name into Google one day and it was flooded with news sites reporting on the search for the missing girl.

• 1:31:20Speaker 00

  When it was Emily's turn to address the courtroom, she also spoke of feeling that Zara hadn't properly been put to rest, saying: "My only hope now is that she is in a place where she will no longer feel the pain of mortality, where she can rest and no longer have the need to be so courageous. I hope she is in a place where she can feel my love and the immense love she has drawn out from people all across our planet. While today we sit here in this courtroom to see justice be carried out, I feel there will be no real justice for Zara. Her life was taken by an evil selfishness that none of us will ever understand or comprehend.

• 1:32:05Speaker 00

  While part of Zara is still out there, this will never be over."

• 1:32:12Speaker 00

  In direct contrast to the story she'd told her lawyers and the police, when Lisa pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, she explicitly admitted to killing Zara and dismembering her body. She also admitted that she had physically, verbally, and psychologically abused Zara before her death. Lisa chose not to make any statement of apology or remorse herself, but her attorney said on her behalf that she was devastated and very sorry. He asked the judge for leniency, reminding him that if not for Lisa's cooperation, Zara might not have been found. He said. A Lisa had a choice.

• 1:32:55Speaker 00

  She could have kept her mouth shut and this case never would have been solved. For once, she did the right thing.

• 1:33:04Speaker 00

  For the murder of her stepdaughter, Lisa Baker was sentenced to serve between 14 and 18 years in state prison, with credit given for the 341 days she had already spent in jail. After the hearing, Emily told reporters that while Lisa may have killed Zara, in her eyes, Adam ultimately shared the blame as well. “There’s a big difference between being not guilty and being innocent, and I don’t think he is innocent of what happened,” Emily said. He played all his own part. Just one month after pleading guilty, Lisa began giving interviews from prison in which

• 1:33:46Speaker 00

  she insisted that she was actually innocent and had been pressured into the plea deal by her attorneys. In a 2013 interview with North Carolina’s Channel 9 News, Lisa said Zara had been a blessing, calling her “the light of my eyes”. “I pled guilty to something I did not even do, and it wasn’t even a murder,” she said. Incredibly, she also told the interviewer that she didn’t turn Adam in to the police after he dismembered his child because she thought it could have something to do with his Australian culture, Lisa said. “I thought it was maybe a strange ritual that he’d done. For all I know, the aborigines.

• 1:34:31Speaker 00

  I don’t know. I regret not telling sooner.” The word “aborigines” is an offensive and outdated term used to refer to Australia’s indigenous people, and Lisa’s racist accusation about their traditions have no basis in reality. In a letter Lisa sent from jail to a collector of crime memorabilia, she sounded resentful that Zara’s history of cancer had amplified public interest in the case, writing: “I just wonder if Zara hadn’t survived cancer and been from Australia, if it would truly be like this. There are so many missing kids.

• 1:35:16Speaker 00

  But Zara isn’t missing.”

• 1:35:20Speaker 00

  Lisa's ex-husband, Aaron Young, whom she'd introduced to Adam and Zara as her brother, told a reporter that he believed Lisa had always been jealous of the attention Zara attracted everywhere she went. While Zara's medical history was remarkable and made an impression on people, it was her naturally high-spirited and friendly personality that primarily drew others to her. Those in North Carolina who met her, record her as well-mannered, well-behaved, and full of fun. She was a joy to be around. Lisa, on the other hand, had a history of trying to solicit sympathy for personal gain, usually by pretending to be chronically ill.

• 1:36:04Speaker 00

  She'd received $10,000 from the UK man she met online after convincing him she couldn't afford medicine needed for cancer treatment. In 2007, she also deceived a friend into hosting a final birthday party for her by pretending she was dying. She told Adam that she was a double-cancer survivor, just like Zara. She told other people she had a brain tumor and suffered from seizures. She once told some neighbours she needed a kidney transplant but couldn't find a donor. Some of them were willing to be tested for suitability, but gradually realised that Lisa's health never deteriorated and she wasn't really sick.

• 1:36:49Speaker 00

  Lisa also had a history of using her own children's health in a bid for attention. When her daughters were younger, Lisa would tell people they were terminally ill, claiming that Brittany had a fatal disease and Amber had cancer. There was even a time when she pushed Amber around in a wheelchair, even though Amber's health and mobility were totally fine. One of Lisa's sisters said this was a particular obsession for Lisa, and a pattern the family witnessed for years, adding that Lisa... "Always made out like her children were sick and possibly dying. Same with herself. She always had 10 to 20 illnesses."

• 1:37:35Speaker 00

  It's also possible that Lisa was exaggerating or faking chronic illnesses to accumulate prescription medications. During the search for Zara, investigators uncovered enough compelling evidence that Lisa was involved in selling drugs to call in the Federal Drug Enforcement Agency. Federal agents found that Lisa accumulated the pills by going from one doctor to another, collecting prescriptions. After she was charged with Zara's murder, Lisa was also indicted on seven counts of federal drug violations. She pleaded guilty to possessing tens of thousands of pills and admitted that she sold them

• 1:38:16Speaker 00

  to her 16-year-old nephew and other high school students. For this crime, she was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Adam told investigators that he knew his wife took prescription medications, but when it came to the drug-related allegations against her, his response was familiar: he didn't know. When a reporter asked him about all the accusations that had emerged against Lisa, Adam simply said: "I'm surprised all the time." On Tuesday, April 17, 2012, just over a year and a half after Zara was believed to

• 1:38:59Speaker 00

  be killed, two men were hunting wild turkeys in a forested area off a Caldwell County road called Winkleaway when they made a shocking discovery. One of the men immediately called the sheriff's department. "I found a human skull, small in size," he reported. When asked if he was sure it was human, he replied confidently: "Yes, it is." Winkleaway is a gravel road that runs parallel to North Carolina's State Highway 268, about 30 miles north of Hickory. Four weeks into her prison sentence, Lisa had told a reporter for the Charlotte Observer

• 1:39:42Speaker 00

  that she anticipated Zara's head would be found up Highway 268. She said she hoped police would find the skull, because if they did, it would prove she wasn't lying about how Zara died.

• 1:39:57Speaker 00

  It took almost a year to complete DNA testing, but in February 2013, it was confirmed that the skull belonged to Zahra Baker. Investigators had long believed that finding Zara's skull would reveal crucial information about how she had died. However, the skull didn't show any evidence of trauma or injury. The forest off Winkleaway was searched extensively, but nothing else of Zara was ever found.

• 1:40:30Speaker 00

  Lisa Baker served fourteen years for the murder of her stepdaughter, and was released from state prison on Wednesday, July 2, 2025. She was then immediately taken into federal custody to begin serving her ten-year sentence for selling prescription drugs to high schoolers. She is scheduled to be released from federal prison in March of 2032, when she will be sixty-three years old.

• 1:41:01Speaker 00

  The lenient prison sentence that Lisa Baker was given for her crimes against Zara prompted North Carolina's state legislators to introduce a new bill known as Zara's Law. Introduced in December 2011, the law increased the penalty for certain crimes, including concealing a death, dismembering a corpse, and failing to report a person's death to authorities. If these increased penalties had existed at the time of Zara's death, a judge could have added up to seven years to Lisa's sentence. In 2013, North Carolina passed an additional law increasing the penalties for parents who fail to report a missing child within twenty-four hours, for concealing the death

• 1:41:46Speaker 00

  of a child, and for making a false report of a missing child. As difficult as it was for the public and Zara's loved ones to accept the unknowable circumstances of her death, it was also hard to accept those of her life. She had survived cancer and chemotherapy, only to have her life taken in a senseless act of human cruelty. Her father had nurtured her through years of illness, but turned away while she was abused by his wife. Everyone who met Zara loved her, but no one had protected her.

• 1:42:24Speaker 00

  Her sunny spirit had always drawn people to her, yet, in the end, she was all alone. Zara's birth mother, Emily, relinquished custody of her daughter during Zara's infancy because she was suffering from such severe postnatal depression that she was afraid she might hurt her baby. "It's hard to explain it to people who haven't been parents," Emily told North Carolina news outlet WCNC. "I suffered from postnatal depression with all three of my children, but sadly, with Zara, I didn't know I had it. You don't realise you have it, you just think you're inadequate. I didn't want to hate my child.

• 1:43:07Speaker 00

  I didn't want to be that news story where you hear a mother has drowned her child, or couldn't stop them crying so they smothered them. I didn't want to be that mother." Emily withdrew from Zara's life so she wouldn't cause her harm. For Zara's life to then be taken away by another woman she came to call mum instead was devastating. In September 2011, after Lisa Baker was sentenced, Emily travelled to North Carolina alongside Seven News Australia journalist Robert Avardia. She visited the sprawling memorial for Zara at the oak tree in front of the house on 21st Avenue North West.

• 1:43:52Speaker 00

  Looking at the house itself made her feel angry and sick, but she was blown away by the outpouring of love for Zara, evidenced by the hundreds of stuffed animals, balloons, flower arrangements, candles, pictures and cards that covered the ground.

• 1:44:09Speaker 00

  Emily chose a sheet of paper from the pile and began to read aloud. Zara, I'm so sorry that your stepmother... Clamping her hand over her mouth, she broke down in tears.

• 1:44:24Speaker 00

  Eventually, she managed to continue reading and discovered the letter was from another child. It said: "I'm so sorry that your stepmother hit you whenever she made you walk up that hill. And now, I wish I could be friends with you, but my mother told me you're probably in heaven with the angels and God. Surely God is taking great care of you. I am ten years old too, and just to let you know, your stepmother will be in jail for a long, long time. P.S. Bless you, Zara, and I will pray for you."

• 1:45:07Speaker 00

  Emily was approached by some of the neighbours who wanted to apologise for not knowing that Zara had been living there.

• 1:45:15Speaker 00

  Contemplating the memorial and these conversations, Emily told Robert Avardia:

• 1:45:22Speaker 00

  "I do feel a certain amount of happiness that I got to come over here and to see how loving everybody is. But, it upsets me that there are so many loving people around here, yet, it can still happen."

• 1:45:39Speaker 00

  The elderly couple who owned the land where Zara's prosthetic leg and some of her bones were found constructed a permanent monument as a reminder of what can be lost when a community fails to protect its most vulnerable. They built a covered shelter with a bench where visitors can rest, read about Zara's life, look at pictures, and leave their own tokens of support or remembrance. An Australian flag flutters from the roof and bright pinwheels in the grass spin in the breeze as cars pass by. The couple even installed lights to illuminate the memorial at night time, as well as a statue of an angel and a headstone.

• 1:46:22Speaker 00

  A large wooden sign reads: "If you suspect the child is being abused, remember, Zara, do something. Don't stop until you know the child is safe."

• 1:46:39Speaker 00

  While the memorial for Zara on 21st Avenue North West had initially provided a place for people to pay their respects, the house itself was subject to frequent vandalism. Deciding he'd had enough, the owner, Mark Coffey, gathered up over 2,000 toys and stuffed animals from around the oak tree and donated them to a local children's charity. He then had the tree cut down completely and said he was considering having the entire house bulldozed to the ground.

• 1:47:13Speaker 00

  A heart-shaped cardboard sign immediately appeared where the tree had been. It read: “To the homeowner, Zara’s dad and step-mum took away her hopes and dreams, and now you take away her memorial from her. Shame on you.”

• 1:47:34Speaker 00

  In the spring of 2012, the city of Hickory constructed a more permanent memorial to honour how Zara lived. The Zahra Baker All-Children’s Playground, located on 6th Street South East, was designed and equipped to be accessible for children with disabilities. It has fully accessible swings, a special slide, and even a wheelchair-accessible treehouse. Zara’s name is everywhere, from a stone block with her picture to a bright metal sculpture that twirls in the wind. On any given day, children of all ages and abilities filled the playground with games and laughter, perhaps the best tribute for a girl whose obituary described her as:

• 1:48:19Speaker 00

  “A strong, courageous, and fun person who was everyone’s friend.” Zara never met a stranger. She had a beautiful smile, an energetic personality, and a wonderful sense of humour that gave her the ability to turn the worst possible situation into a fun situation.

• 1:48:41Speaker 00

  Adam Baker returned to Australia. About a year after the opening of the Zahra Baker All-Children's Playground, Zara's ashes were sent to the police station in Port Stephens, New South Wales, where Adam was living. For Zara's final resting place, Adam and his mother Karen chose a spot on the Tasman Sea coast at Nobbie's Beach, where she had spent plenty of happy days playing, swimming and watching whales from the shore.

• 1:49:11Speaker 00

  A police officer walked into the water carrying a small wooden box. Then he opened it over the waves and let the ashes of the little girl drift away.