Scared Monkeys Discussion Forum

Paul Baker missing from SC 1987- Step mom arrested in 2009 kidnapping
Susan Baker and James Baker have been arrested in connection with the disappearance of 7 month old Florida girl.
The girl was found yesterday alive and well....
where is their son that has been missing for 22 years last left in Susan Baker's care????????

figured I'd start a thread for Paul Baker those of you who became familiar with his father and step-mother recently in the shannon thread... let's finish sleuthing this... WHERE IS PAUL BAKER?????

It's great you've started a thread for Paul Baker, Penny.  Wouldn't it be great if he could be found alive?  Do you have any articles you've found concerning this case?  If so, they could be posted here with links.   I'll be in and out today, but would be happy to help search for items to post here concerning his case.  Other monkeys may also be posting what they have or can find.  The problem with some of the cases that are a bit older is the articles are often archived and fees can be charged to access them. But this might be a good time to post articles and info that's been found in Shannon's case that involved the babysitter, and possibly articles will resurface, given what's happened recently.   Thanks again for making a thread for Paul Baker, Penny.   ::MonkeyAngel::

Great idea Penny, maybe Susan will give new info about this child in and effort to plea down in this current case she is involved with..

Here is a link to Paul's candle group...

http://www.gratefulness.org/candles/candles.cfm?l=eng&gi=PLB

I've come across a lot of stuff in the past 2 days... all with links
I'm so glad you guys are interested in doing this thread too I know it is definitely a cold case buuuuttt...
I will hopefully get time later to start researching more and definitely post whatever you have... at least that way we can get our own little archive going...
searching posted a lot of good links yesterday in the shannon thread so i'll copy most of those later
be back later guys...

http://www2.dothaneagle.com/dea/news/crime_courts/article/bonds_set_for_women_charged_in_missing_chipley_baby_case/106613/

Bonds set for women charged in missing Chipley baby case.

I realize this was on Shannon, how ever, POI in Pauls case is the charged in Shannons case. The state asked for a higher bond due to her charges in Pauls case.

http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/b/baker_paul.html

http://missing87975.yuku.com/topic/2946/t/CHILD-ABDUCTION-PAUL-BAKER.html

http://www.angelfire.com/mi3/mpccn/pbaker.html

http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/PubCaseSearchServlet?act=viewChildDetail&caseNum=600583&orgPrefix=NCMC&seqNum=1&caseLang=en_US&searchLang=en_US

http://www.helpfindthemissing.org/forum/showthread.php?p=686098

http://www.lowcountrynewspapers.net/archive/node/119506

http://www.lowcountrynewspapers.net/archive/node/120065

God I hope they find out what happened to this little boy now.....see...you never get away with something like this....Karma has a way of coming back and biting you in the azz, maybe Misty should read this story......Thank God for baby Shannons rescue and here's hoping they find Paul through this......

http://npaper-wehaa.com/bluffton-today/2009/11/05/#?article=635850

http://z10.invisionfree.com/usedtobedoe/index.php?showtopic=8742

http://www.thedestinlog.com/news/chipley-11815-long-alive.html

hhhm interesting the bakers lived outside of paris island when all of this happened and we know he was in the navy...
this flyer says that with info to contact
Naval Criminal Investigative Services
washington DC
202-433-9183
So was it the navy that did the investigating since he was living on base when this happened...
all military crimes seemed to not get solved when they implicate one of their own... JMO
o/t but i was watching some talk show the other day and it was a momof an at the time 17 year old that got her azz beat by her boyfriend on the base they were living at... the head honcho flew the girl back home to mom and asked that the mom not make a big deal about it... the mom pressed charges and the whole reason they offered to send her home was so that when "they" investigated it no one would see how bad she was beat

Site with lots of good articles
here are the headlines
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BEAUFORT: Father and stepmother allegedly beat toddler before he vanished in 1987.
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A Chipley couple has been extradited to South Carolina in connection with the disappearance of their 3-year-old son 13 years ago.
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BEAUFORT: 13 years after he vanished, mother hasn't given up hope of finding out what happened to her son.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


this caught my attention ... misprint or was the original charge/investigation about paul and then only the sister remained and thus they charged her with beating the only child that was left to prove it with?

They were charged with assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature for allegedly beating him before he vanished 5-March-1987. Susan Baker told police she put him down for a nap that day and returned to find him missing.

Deputies and police searched the area around their home for several days but found no trace of the little boy. After the disappearance, the couple's 6-year-old daughter was removed by state social workers who discovered broken bones and sores on her body.

Susan Baker was arrested and convicted for assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but a judge suspended the sentence to time she'd served in jail before trial.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
and also what i noticed making me think that an abuse investigation may have been underway at the time of his disappearance

Distinguishing Characteristics: Blonde hair; blue eyes. One of Paul's teeth was pushed into his gum at the time he disappeared.

flyer describing hisdisappearance and with age progression pics

another flyer which states he was last seen wearing wearing red pants, a camouflage shirt, a blue jacket and gray tennis shoes.

strange since he was supposedly taking a nap

dated 2002

Investigators think Paul Baker might have been the victim of foul play, but his whereabouts remain unknown.'
"We think the child was murdered or died accidentally and the body was disposed of,"'
Bromage said. "We still have him listed as a missing person."'

Couple gets new lawyers in missing boy case
Monday, July 8, 2002

(snipped)
James and Susan Baker, face charges of child neglect. Though the charges are more than 13 years old, the case has yet to come to trial.' The conflict of interest arose because the primary investigator on the case at the time
is now employed as an investigator with the Beaufort County Public Defender's office. Gene Hood, chief public defender, filed the motion to have new counsel appointed.' The Bakers were both represented by attorneys in the public
defender's office.'

The Bakers moved to Florida, where they were living in 1999, when fresh evidence in Paul’s case led Tanner — just elected as Beaufort County Sheriff — to extradite the couple back to South Carolina.

Both faced charges of assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature for allegedly beating 3-year-old Paul before he disappeared.

Susan Baker was charged with criminal domestic violence against Paul. Her case was brought before a grand jury in 2000 but she was not indicted.

Related charges of unlawful neglect were dropped in 2003. The couple went back to Florida.

Frighteningly similar:

http://www.angelfire.com/mi3/mpccn/pbaker.html

Paul's parents, James Baker and Lynda Solorzano, separated in the mid-1980s. James' affair with Susan, who was employed as their children's babysitter, caused the breakup of the marriage. Solorzano said that she moved out of their home with Paul and his sister Nina shortly thereafter. She claimed that James never paid child support afterwards. Solorzano had limited financial means after their separation and applied for public assistance. She was pregnant with her new boyfriend's child by the time her divorce from James was finalized. Solorzano said that the judge sided with James and agreed that she did not have the means to support Paul and Nina. James was awarded full custody of both children and married Susan afterwards.
The Bakers purchased a home in Beaufort, South Carolina by 1987. Susan told authorities that she put Paul down for a nap inside their residence on March 5 of that year. Susan claimed Paul had vanished by the time she returned to check on him. He has never been seen again. An extensive search of the Bakers' property produced little evidence as to Paul's whereabouts.

Another neighbor, she said, reported seeing a gray van departing. A woman who identified herself as Susan Baker’s niece, Tabatha Phillips, confirmed Susan Baker drives a gray van.

She also confirmed she believes Susan Baker is the person of interest in the case, but claimed the only reason she was a potential suspect “is because of all that crap that happened way back when.”

all that crap way back then was a 3 year old child missing and presumed murdered by police ... his name was paul baker

reminds me so much of haleigh  ::MonkeyWaa::

here is a pic of the she devil herself
(taken from an article regarding her bond hearing for the charges against shannon dedrick)

full names
susan elizabeth baker
james arthur baker

Child Abuser Susan Baker..

Former Beaufort resident Susan Baker was interviewed Thursday by a Beaufort County Sheriff's Office investigator about the disappearance of her stepson 22 years ago, after a missing 7-month-old girl in Florida was found in a box under her bed.

Beaufort County Sheriff P.J. Tanner and 14th Circuit Solicitor Duffie Stone called a press conference Thursday afternoon to discuss developments in the disappearance of 3-year-old Paul Baker who went missing from his Beaufort home in March 1987. The toddler was never found.

Tanner declined to compare the disappearance of Baker to that of Shannon Dedrick, who had been missing since Saturday and was found late Wednesday in a box under Baker's bed. Washington (Fla.) County Sheriff Bobby Haddock expects to charge Susan Baker, her husband James and the child's mother Chrystina Lynn Mercer.

http://www.islandpacket.com/breaking_news/story/1024740.html
(http://i604.photobucket.com/albums/tt126/jerseygirl12345/MISSING_Susan_Baker_1106_highlight_.jpg)

Home Of Susan Baker in Florida where Shannon was found..

(http://i604.photobucket.com/albums/tt126/jerseygirl12345/HomeofSusanBakerinFlorida.jpg)

Interesting audio... Click on the islandpacket link..Beaufort County Sheriff P.J. Tanner and 14th Circuit Solicitor Duffie Stone conduct a news conference Thursday to discuss the 1987 disappearance of Paul Baker.

possible maiden name susan elizabeth shirley
based on her dad's obit

hi jerz hh and others
Jers that is interesting audio i am in a rush to get off of here but i will re listen later or tomorrow... glad that they are not in the business of helping her defense...
made me realize tat since there was arrests in shannons case we will get those docs under the sunshine act... we will want to go over those with a comb
they have always thought she was a wicked woman...
he will not help her defense by elaborating but keeps reminding us under the freedom of info act we can get what we want

A very intersting audio... Connectioning the dots... I hope she gets the death penalty.. It explains alot what happened with the Paul Baker case..

Susan Baker was involved in another missing child case in South Carolina more than two decades ago. She had been a baby sitter for James Baker and his now ex-wife before she married him, a family member said.

Susan Baker told authorities her stepson, 3-year-old Paul Leonard Baker, disappeared from the family's Beaufort, S.C., home on March 5, 1987, while she napped.

A massive manhunt turned up nothing. She and her husband, James Baker, were extradited to South Carolina in 2000 and charged with assault and battery in Paul's disappearance, according to police reports provided by the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division. But a grand jury never indicted them and the child was never found.

Paul's grandmother said she blames Susan Baker for her grandson's disappearance. Lambert gained legal custody of Paul's sister.

She was glad the case in Florida has renewed interest in Paul's disappearance.

"I'd like to know if my grandson is dead or alive," said Linda Lambert, 65, of Mebane, N.C. "I'd like some closure."
Susan Baker did serve prison time after authorities investigating Paul's disappearance discovered her 6-year-old stepdaughter had been badly beaten. Susan Baker was sentenced to 10 years in prison but the punishment was suspended to 80 days.

Florida officials refused to answer questions Thursday about the South Carolina case. They would say only that investigators from that state were in Chipley and had spoken with Baker.


http://www.federalnewsradio.com/index.php?nid=29&sid=1801297

Sheriff says latest charges might help solve 1987 case of missing toddler..

Before drifting off to sleep, 6-year-old Nina Baker heard her stepmother screaming at her little brother to lay down and take a nap, the girl's grandmother said. Then, the house in Shell Point fell silent.

Little Paul Baker hasn't been seen or heard from since that day in March 1987,

Paul was 3 years old when he disappeared, and his case remains unsolved. His stepmother -- who admitted shortly after Paul vanished to abusing Nina -- was a prime suspect, but two attempts to charge Susan Baker and the children's father, James Baker, went nowhere because of a lack of evidence, investigators say.

Now comes renewed hope from 400 miles away.

A five-day search for 7-month-old Shannon Dedrick of Chipley, Fla., ended Thursday when the girl was found in a 2-by-3 cedar box that had been shoved under her baby sitter's bed.

That baby sitter was Susan Baker.

Authorities say Shannon's mother, Chrystina Lynn Mercer, gave her to Baker early Saturday, then reported her missing about 10 hours later. Shannon likely was kept in the box for 12 hours before investigators discovered her late Wednesday, Washington County Sheriff Bobby Haddock said. Clothing was packed around the box to muffle any sound, and baking powder was placed inside to mask the stench of dirty diapers. Investigators believe Shannon had been shut in the box on and off for several days.

"(Susan Baker) is a wicked woman," Beaufort County Sheriff P.J. Tanner said during a press conference Thursday to discuss his agency's involvementin the Florida case.

On Thursday in Florida, Mercer was charged with interference of child custody, desertion of a child and several other charges in her daughter's disappearance.

Charges against Baker included neglect of a child with aggravated circumstances and interference of child custody. Baker's husband, James Arthur Baker, was arrested Wednesday night but released. He remains under investigation, Haddock said.

Tanner said Staff Sgt. Brian Baird -- a Navy investigator who worked on Paul's disappearance before coming to work for the Sheriff's Office -- was in Chipley on Thursday and was part of the team that interrogated Susan Baker.

http://www.islandpacket.com/news/local/story/1025171.html

WAS A CHILD KILLED?

Linda Lambert agrees.

Contacted Thursday at her home in Mebane, N.C., Paul and Nina's maternal grandmother left no doubt about what she thinks happened to her grandson March 5, 1987.

"(Susan Baker) killed Paul," Lambert said.

Within 18 days of Paul's disappearance, Susan Baker was in custody, but the charges stemmed not from her stepson's case but from her physical abuse of Nina.

A doctor at Naval Hospital Beaufort who examined Nina shortly after she was removed from the Bakers' home discovered Nina had not received medical attention for a broken hand and had "several ulcerated sores on her back where she had been whipped."

Susan Baker was charged with assault and battery with intent to kill but pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison but was released from jail after 80 days when the sentence was suspended for time served.

That decision by Judge Luke Brown disappointed the Sheriff's Office and the Child Abuse Prevention Association, which helped organize searches for Paul and has followed Susan Baker's court cases through the years.

"I don't have a qualm with the reduced charge," CAPA executive director Susan Cato told The Beaufort Gazette in June 1987. "I just think she should have served more time."

Brown, now retired and living in Ridgeland, told the Gazette on Thursday that he could not say, in retrospect, if he should have given Baker a stiffer sentence -- he could not recall details of the case or if the sentence was the result of a plea bargain.

"His explanation at the time was that (prosecutors) were trying to punish Susan Baker for the disappearance of Paul and that they didn't have a case," Cato said Thursday.

Nina lived in foster care in Beaufort before Lambert gained custody.

Now 29, Nina is a licensed practical nurse living near Raleigh, N.C., with three children of her own, Lambert said. She would not provide contact information for her granddaughter or for her daughter, Nina's biological mother, Lynda Solorzano. Attempts to reach them independently were unsuccessful.

Lambert said she once asked her granddaughter what she heard and saw the day Paul disappeared.

"(Susan Baker) kept hollering at him to lay down and go to sleep," Lambert said Nina told her. "This went on for a few minutes and then -- nothing. Silence."

http://www.islandpacket.com/news/local/story/1025171.html

MASSIVE EFFORTS, NO LEADS

Paul's parents, James Baker and Lynda Solorzano, separated in the mid-1980s after Baker allegedly had an affair with their baby sitter.

James Baker eventually was awarded full custody of their children and later married the baby sitter, Susan Baker.

Paul's disappearance came just after the family moved to Beaufort in 1987.

According to a Gazette article published two days after Paul's disappearance, Susan Baker said she put her stepson down for a nap at about 11 a.m., and then nodded off herself. She told the newspaper that she was awakened by a phone call from James Baker, at the time a sergeant stationed at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort.

Susan Baker, then 27, said that's when she went to check on Paul and discovered him missing.

James Baker told the newspaper he called his wife between 12:30 and 1:30 p.m. after he was notified by the station's family services that a woman had called claiming that she had Paul and that he was OK. He said he was told the phone call was long distance.

A sheriff's deputy confirmed with family services that a phone call had been made but offered no other details.

James Baker suspected Solorzano made the call and told the Gazette that "I still feel like my ex-wife knows where he is at" in an interview a few weeks after Paul's disappearance. However, authorities here and in North Carolina determined Solorzano was not in South Carolina at the time and had nothing to do with her son's disappearance.

Despite the mysterious phone call, investigators didn't suspect kidnapping.

They suspected foul play.

For weeks, search parties looked for Paul in the neighborhoods and salt marshes surrounding the family's home. Another search was conducted on Lemon Island after an anonymous tip from someone claiming to have seen birds flying "heavily" in the area. Deputies and volunteers searched by foot, by boat and by helicopter, the latter sometimes provided by the air station and equipped with infrared cameras. Paul's case was entered into a national missing-children's database.

Those efforts brought no new leads.

Acting on tips about nine weeks after the disappearance, deputies found areas in the Bakers' front yard that appeared to have been "disturbed," but they turned up no clues after digging several holes there.

Neither did they find new evidence two years later, when they again searched the by-then empty home in Shell Point. A Gazette article about that search said the Bakers had moved into on-base housing in December 1987 and were still in the Beaufort area.

http://www.islandpacket.com/news/local/story/1025171.html

'WE CAN STILL PROSECUTE'

It is not clear when Susan and James Baker moved to Florida, but they were extradited to South Carolina in 2000 as prosecutors tried to connect them with Paul's disappearance.

However, a grand jury would not indict either Baker on a charge of assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature. In 2003, a charge of unlawful neglect of a child was dismissed, according to Daniel Brownstein, spokesman for 14th Circuit Solicitor Duffie Stone's office.

The evidence was "very, very, very shaky, very limited," said Sheriff Tanner, who started a cold-case squad soon after he was first elected to office in 1999.

Adding to the difficulty, Tanner said, was that the best witnesses in the case were the Bakers themselves. Because they are married, they would not have to testify against each other.

Stone said Thursday in the joint press conference with Tanner that because no verdict was rendered in those cases, double jeopardy would not be a factor should new evidence emerge to link the Bakers to Paul's disappearance. There is no statute of limitations in South Carolina to prevent the Bakers being tried for a 1987 crime, Stone said.

"We can still prosecute a criminal offense at any time," Stone said.

However, Susan Baker's 10-year suspended sentence in connection with her abuse of Nina could not be reinstated because she completed her five-year probation, according to Stone.

Tanner said he has been in touch with Baird, the local deputy sent to Chipley to assist in the investigation of Shannon's disappearance and to see if new facts could be gleaned about Paul's disappearance.

Tanner declined to say what has been learned so far or to compare the cases.

"All we would be doing is help Susan Baker's attorney build a defense ... and we're not going to do anything to help her down in Florida," he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.


http://www.islandpacket.com/news/local/story/1025171.html

Details released about investigation 22 years ago for missing boy

By JEFF KIDD
jkidd@beaufortgazette.com
843-706-8175
Published Monday, November 9, 2009

The father of a boy who hasn't been seen since he was reported missing from his Shell Point home more than 22 years ago told authorities at the time that he suspected his wife -- the boy's stepmother -- killed the child, according to documents released by the Beaufort County Sheriff's Office.

But James Baker changed his mind two days later, saying Susan Baker didn't have anything to do with Paul Baker's disappearance, according to a 1987 summary of the missing-child investigation. Paul Baker was 3 when he disappeared March 5, 1987.

Susan Baker is under arrest and James Baker, a former sergeant at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, is under investigation after authorities in Chipley, Fla., on Thursday discovered 7-month-old Shannon Dedrick hidden in a cedar box under Susan Baker's bed.

Authorities said the girl's mother, Chrystina Lynn Mercer, gave the infant to baby sitter Susan Baker early Oct. 31, then reported her missing about 10 hours later. Mercer was charged with interference of child custody, desertion of a child and several other charges. Charges against Susan Baker included neglect of a child with aggravated circumstances and interference of child custody.

James and Susan Baker were both suspects in Paul's disappearance. Susan Baker claimed he was taken from their home while she napped.

A massive manhunt turned up nothing. The Bakers were extradited to South Carolina in 2000 and charged with assault and battery in Paul's disappearance, but a grand jury never indicted them.

Susan Baker was convicted of abusing her stepdaughter, Nina Baker, soon after Paul's disappearance. She received a 10-year sentence, which was reduced to time served after 80 days in jail.

After the Bakers' arrest last week, the Beaufort County Sheriff's Office released 72 pages of reports and other documents associated with their investigation of Paul's disappearance.

Among the details included:

* Susan Baker took a polygraph test eight days after Paul's disappearance. Results were inconclusive because she was obese, under stress and taking muscle relaxers. However, the technician who administered the test said he believed Baker was lying.

* Four days later, James Baker took a polygraph and failed.

* Carol Garvin, a former cellmate of Susan Baker, told investigators that the woman claimed James Baker severely beat Paul on the day he was reported missing and that the two of them buried the child in the yard of a friend living nearby. Baker allegedly told the cellmate she was taking the "rap" for her husband.

* Investigators asked Nina, then 6, about her brother's disappearance. "Mama told me not to talk to you about (that)." The report said Nina appeared nervous and unwilling to talk.

* James Baker told authorities his wife usually disciplined the children and that he thought she was too hard on them. She once beat Nina so hard, he had to pull her off the child, he said, and she also beat Paul after he defecated on his bedroom floor. However, during the same interview, Baker told interviewers he thought the child's biological mother -- Baker's ex-wife, Linda Mott, later known as Linda Solorzano -- was responsible for Paul's disappearance.

* Later the same day, however, James Baker said he believed Susan Baker killed Paul and threw him in Battery Creek. She had asked him to take a walk down to the river -- they had never taken a walk there before -- and he thought she was going there to make sure the body couldn't be seen.

James Baker said he thought his wife snapped because of frustration with Paul, who had been "sick, whining, messing his bed and wetting his pants" in recent days. Nina was placed in the custody of the Department of Social Services after her father said she might be in danger if she remained in the same household as Susan Baker.

* The next day, James Baker said he no longer believed his wife killed Paul.

* Susan Baker told investigators she was stressed from taking care of the children and that she wanted James Baker to send them to North Carolina, where Mott lived. She also said she wanted to move to Florida, but her husband wouldn't let her.

* Nina later told investigators Susan Baker beat her with a stick and sometimes made her stand in the corner because she is bad. She said she didn't know where Paul was.

* A letter sent to James Baker in 1987 was examined by SLED in May 2000. The letter was signed "Your friend," and indicated Paul was safe in North Carolina. The letter was believed to have come from the Beaufort County Detention Center, where Susan Baker was incarcerated. A handwriting analyst said it was "probable that the letter was authored/handwritten" by Susan Baker.

http://www.islandpacket.com/news/local/story/1029221.html

Missing Child Case In Florida Linked To 1987 Beaufort Case
By C.H. Ellis
A missing child investigation in Chipley, FL has generated new interest in the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office investigation into the disappearance of 3-year old Paul Baker in March of 1987.

Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office Investigator SSgt Brian Baird, one of the original investigators in the Baker case, has traveled to Chipley, FL (WashingtonCounty), where he is working closely with state and local law enforcement agencies on the disappearance of a 7-month old child, who was later discovered hidden in the home of 50-year old Susan Elizabeth Baker.

Susan and her 51-year old husband, James Arthur Baker, were the subjects of the investigation into the disappearance of their son, Paul, on March 5th, 1987.

Recent media attention into the FL child’s disappearance and recovery has sparked renewed interest in the Baker case. At this time there is no new or additional information available in regards to the missing person case of Paul Baker. As both investigations are still currently active, no information will be released that could potentially jeopardize the course or outcome of either investigation.

Those seeking further information on the case of Paul Baker may submit a Freedom of Information Act request to the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office via internet (www.bcso.net), as the incident reports up to and including the arrests of Susan and James Baker in June 2006 are available for review and dissemination. Please reference incident report # 870000004528.

http://beaufort-news.com/news/?p=1027

 
  Paul Leonard Baker
Missing since March 5, 1987 from Beaufort, South Carolina
Classification: Non-Family Abduction
 
Vital Statistics

•Date Of Birth: June 29, 1983
•Age at Time of Disappearance: 3 years old
•Height and Weight at Time of Disappearance: 3'4; 40 pounds
•Distinguishing Characteristics: White male. Blonde hair; blue eyes.
•Marks, Scars, Tattoos: He has scars on his right index finger and on his chin.
•Dentals: One of Baker's teeth was pushed into his gum at the time of his disappearance.
 
Circumstances of Disappearance

Baker was living with his father and stepmother, James and Susan Baker at the time of his disappearance. They have been arrested in connection with his disappearance. They were charged with assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature for allegedly beating him before he vanished March 5, 1987.

Susan Baker told police she put him down for a nap that day and returned to find him missing. Deputies and police searched the area around their home for several days but found no trace of the little boy.

After the disappearance, the couple's 6-year-old daughter was removed by state social workers who discovered broken bones and sores on her body.

Susan Baker was convicted for beating the girl and sentenced to 10 years in prison for assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature. Paul has never been found.
 
Investigators

If you have any information concerning Baker's whereabouts, please contact:
Beaufort County Sheriff's Office
Lt. Bob Bromage
843-470-3200
All information may be submitted on an anonymous basis.
NCIC Number:
M-238491459
Please refer to this number when contacting any agency with information regarding this case.
 
 
http://www.bcso.net/Cold_Cases/baker.htm

Documents from the investigation of Paul Baker. 

http://media.islandpacket.com/smedia/2009/11/10/18/20091110BAKER_MISSING.source.prod_affiliate.9.pdf

http://www.wjhg.com/news/headlines/69431242.html

http://www.newsherald.com/news/baker-79099-dedrick-shannon.html

A tangled web, from South Carolina to Chipley
Victim of past abuse watched local case with interest

Hundreds of miles and 22 years of mystery separate baby Shannon Dedrick and toddler Paul Baker.

Susan Baker will always tie them together.

Baker remains jailed in Chipley on charges stemming from the nationally publicized search for 7-month-old Shannon Dedrick, who was found hidden in a box under Baker’s bed four days after her mother reported her missing. Baker was her baby sitter and, investigators say, wanted to raise her.

Baker was a baby sitter and later stepmother to 3-year-old Paul, who went missing in 1987 and never has been found. Baker served time for abusing his sister, then-6-year-old Nina Baker, and remains the prime suspect in Paul’s disappearance.

Few said they believe Baker when she says she had nothing to do with it. Least of all: Nina and her mother, Lynda Solorzano.

As investigators worked to tie together two mysteries decades apart, The News Herald tracked down both women, who agreed to tell their stories.

Painful memories

Nina Baker Hernandez is 29 years old now with three children of her own, but she still remembers being kept in a locked closet by her stepmother, Susan Baker, two decades ago in South Carolina.

Her memory has spared her some of the rest.

“I know I don’t remember everything,” she told The News Herald in an interview last week about her past with Baker. “I don’t remember how I got the scars on my back. I have scars on my fingers. … I don’t know how I got those, either.”

After Paul disappeared March 5, 1987, authorities discovered 6-year-old Nina was bruised and suffering from broken bones. They removed her from the Baker home, and Baker, then 27, was arrested soon after that. She later was convicted on charges of assault and aggravated battery.

Her 10-year sentence ended after just 80 days (credit for time served) and eventually she and Nina’s father, James Baker, moved to Chipley.

Hernandez still remembers her punishments. She remembers the days when she was first learning to count, when Baker punished her for faltering at the number 10.

For each mistake, she said, Baker repeatedly dunked her head in a bathtub filled with water, bringing her up at intervals for short breaths. When she finished, the water was red with blood.

For the most part, she has put the abuse behind her. “I can’t dwell on it” and still raise a family, she said.

But the reduced sentence struck her as unfair, and for years after Baker’s release, Hernandez wondered if her brother, Paul, was dead or alive and, either way, if Baker made him disappear.

Asked if her father could be involved, too, she said, “Either she’s that good at lying and covering things up, or he’s that blind.”

Nina and Paul’s real mother, Lynda Solorzano — the woman James Baker left to marry Susan, the family baby sitter — said she still has no clues to explain what happened to her son. Susan and James Baker, in the early stages of the case, accused her of taking Paul.

“I hope they just make a big sensation out of it and really get her this time,” she said of the Chipley case. “I’m wondering how many children she was involved with before then. She always was a baby sitter for people; that’s how she got involved with Nina and Paul and James.”

For 22 years, she and Hernandez questioned each missing child case in the news.

“I’ve always expected that eventually her name would come up,” Hernandez said. “Every single one that came over, I would sit there and watch until they would tell me who was involved.”

Now that it has, “I hope they convict her,” she said. “I hope she doesn’t get off this time.”

Becoming a suspect

At the Beaufort County, S.C., Sheriff’s Office, about 40 miles north of Hilton Head Island, Paul Baker’s missing-child case file is about an inch thick. Dozens of pages of reports and interview summaries released by the Sheriff’s Office show Susan Baker was a suspect in the case almost from the start — and even before she became a suspect, she was less than cooperative with investigators.

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) also worked the case; James Baker was a sergeant at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort.

The day of Paul’s disappearance, Susan Baker told investigators she had put him down for a nap at 11 a.m., and when she awoke — she’d been fast asleep, too, knocked out by a combination of muscle relaxers and alcohol — Paul was gone. The initial report lists her as the complainant and Linda Mott (now Solorzano) as the suspect.

Searches through a nearby river bed and marsh grass turned up nothing. Over the next several weeks, and eventually years, the many tips called in to investigators led nowhere. People suggested Paul was dumped in a landfill or a bog, buried like a dog in a neighbor’s yard, sold for cash or sent to Sarasota. Some tips were debunked; others simply couldn’t be traced.

Meanwhile, a nervous 6-year-old Nina, when investigators asked about her brother, answered, “Mama told me not to talk to you about (him),” according to one report.

Asked last week if she can remember anything she might have seen or overheard, Hernandez said, “There’s a lot of things I don’t remember. I can’t tell you why I don’t remember; I just don’t. I wish I did. I’ve searched my mind.”

Days after the initial report, James Baker failed a polygraph. Susan Baker’s polygraph was listed as inconclusive because she was stressed, obese and taking pills. Even before she took it, she told the polygrapher, “You know I’m going to fail,” according to a report. Afterward, she said, “I failed, didn’t I?”

But in various interviews with investigators, James Baker began to recount how Susan “was too hard on the children,” how she beat Nina nearly to death and, eventually, how he believed “Susan had killed (Paul) and threw him in the river.”

‘I don’t think the truth’s in her’

James Baker suspected his wife, he said, because the day after Paul went missing, Susan, suffering from a chronic sore back, wanted to take a rare walk to the nearby river, Battery Creek. According to the report, James Baker thought maybe it was “to check to make sure the body couldn’t be seen.”

Investigators next turned to Susan Baker, who maintained in her interview she did not know where Paul went, but acknowledged both children were straining her and “she didn’t get married to raise children.”

She said “that she was the one that got up when the children (were) sick, that she was the one that put her arms around them and comfort(ed) them,” an investigator wrote.

Paul was very sick for four days just before he disappeared, sometimes soiling his bed and his clothes. Susan said “she felt he was antagonizing her by whining and wetting in his pants.”

She began to yearn for an escape to Florida, where she could “wash her hands of the whole mess,” the report said.

She was becoming a suspect in the disappearance when James Baker recanted his statement, a sudden change of mind. The investigation continued down other alleys.

An investigators’ timeline of the case shows deputies serving a March 24, 1987, search warrant found blood splatters inside the Baker home and sent samples to the FBI. It’s unclear what happened to them.

Months later, when investigators came back to the Bakers for new written statements, Susan Baker had grown paranoid.

“Mrs. Baker stated to her husband that the only reason we wanted another statement was to see if they lied and to compare statements,” a deputy wrote.

Investigators even hypnotized Susan Baker’s cell mate (from Baker’s stint in jail for the abuse of Nina), who spoke of a boy’s body in a garbage bag but not much else.

“She lies to everybody,” Solorzano said of Baker. “I don’t think the truth’s in her.”

Losing the bet

The investigation plodded into the late ’90s. About that time, Hernandez came to Chipley on what she thought was a simple visit to her father. Authorities were monitoring it.

In 2000, Beaufort County and NCIS investigators filed aggravated battery arrest warrants for the Bakers. Washington County sheriff’s deputies made the arrests.

The Bakers waived extradition, but a grand jury eventually found insufficient evidence to indict on that charge.

Investigators had another angle, though — a photocopy of a letter, the original somehow lost, believed handwritten by Susan Baker during her 1987 stint in jail. Addressed to James Baker and signed, “Your friend,” the letter suggested Paul was safe in North Carolina.

Armed with that, the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office filed a child neglect warrant — long-awaited charges related to Paul’s actual disappearance — and the charges stuck. They believed the letter was Susan Baker’s ploy to divert suspicion, and that, in itself, was suspicious.

A grand jury indicted the Bakers, but that was as far as the case went.

Prosecutors dropped the case because the child neglect charge was a misdemeanor count in South Carolina, so even if the Bakers were convicted, they wouldn’t be severely punished. Authorities decided to wait for more evidence to file more serious charges.

It was a gamble they lost.

The Chipley case has not opened any new leads into Paul’s disappearance, Beaufort County Sheriff’s Cpl. Robin McIntosh said Thursday, but Hernandez said she hopes for the justice she was denied.

“I know you can’t prosecute someone for something they’ve done in the past,” she said, “but I hope the judge does take that into consideration.

“I would like to know (about Paul) either way. Either tell us he’s dead and at peace, or tell us, ‘I sold him,’ so we know he’s alive. Let us breathe, either way.”


 

(http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff15/sueann37/ku3ta3-bakerjamesandpaulfront.jpg)

http://www.newsherald.com/news/baker

Former Marine sergeant struggles to put disappearance of son behind him as wife is accused in Baby Shannon case
December 03, 2009 07:14:00 PM

CHIPLEY — James Baker answers so many hard questions the same way: He doesn’t know, can’t remember, won’t speculate.

The disappearance of his 3-year-old son, Paul, is a hazy mystery he hopes someone else can solve. The discovery of another missing child, an infant boxed under a spare bed in his Chipley mobile home, is something only his wife can explain.

Much of James Baker’s story is about oblivion.

“You just don’t know the emotional turmoil I’m going through right now, anyway,” Baker said Thursday in an interview with The News Herald, his first conversation with the same newspaper that interviewed his wife, Susan, before she was exposed as a suspect in 7-month-old baby Shannon Dedrick’s disappearance.

“Do I trust her? Well, that’s… I got mixed emotions about this right now.”

The 51-year-old former Marine Corps sergeant was detained Nov. 4 when Washington County sheriff’s investigators found Shannon hidden in the cedar box in his home. He was released without charges shortly afterward, as authorities said they believed the case centered on wife Susan Baker and the baby’s mother, Crystina Mercer, who allegedly agreed to give up her daughter.

Investigators described it as a secret exchange. Susan Baker, who also was identified as the baby’s step-aunt, wanted the little girl for herself, they said.

As detailed in an exclusive News Herald interview with Susan Baker before her arrest, she was very involved in the baby’s life.

James Baker, meanwhile, was not. He was oblivious to the baby under the bed, a hiding spot in Susan’s “little room, her office,” a place the husband rarely went.

“It took them two hours to find the baby, and they had dogs in there,” Baker said of the search in his home. Shannon, lying quietly beneath a latched wooden lid, was boxed with baking soda to mask the smell of her diapers.

“I wasn’t looking for the baby, and I was at work probably about 95 percent of the time,” he said. “The baby didn’t cry that loud, either.”

He remains free of charges in the case. But recycled questions persist about the 22-year-old disappearance of Paul, who vanished in March 1987 and left investigators in Beaufort, S.C., suspecting his father, James, and stepmother, Susan.

Authorities never had enough evidence to close the case.

“I’m not going to discuss anything about my son being missing other than I’m glad it’s gone to the forelight, so if somebody does know something, maybe someone else will remember something,” Baker said flatly in the interview Thursday.

He did discuss some of it, though, including his initial suspicion toward his wife (he once told investigators he thought she killed Paul and threw him in a river, but later recanted) and his hope that somewhere, Paul has survived the past two decades. The “couple times” he approached his wife about his son, she denied knowing what happened to him, he said.

“For many years, I believed in my heart he was still alive and he’d come back in my life and say, ‘Hey, Dad, I’m here,’ ” he said. “But right now, because he’d be in his twenties now, and other things, I really don’t know anymore.”

Meanwhile Thursday at the Bay County Jail, Susan Baker again declined an interview request. She momentarily agreed to one several days ago, but changed her mind at the last minute.

James Baker’s interview Thursday ended abruptly as his cell phone cut out. He didn’t return a message after that.

Florida arrest brings no new leads in 1987 case of missing Beaufort child

Published Saturday, March 27, 2010

After months of investigation, it appears that a 23-year-old missing-child case will remain unsolved.

Local law enforcement and family members hoped that the high-profile disappearance of 7-month-old Shannon Dedrick from her Chipley, Fla., home on Halloween would shed some light on what happened to Paul Baker, a three-year-old boy who vanished from his family's Shell Point home on March 5, 1987, and was never seen again.

A five-day search for Dedrick ended when the girl was found in a 2-by-3 cedar box that had been shoved under her baby sitter's bed. Her baby sitter was Susan Baker, Paul Baker's stepmother and the same woman some believed was behind the boy's disappearance more than two decades earlier.

The Beaufort County Sheriff's Office sent one of its investigators to Florida to interview the woman in the hopes of cracking the case, but Beaufort County Sheriff P.J. Tanner said police didn't get the break they had hoped for.

"We had high hopes that something in that investigation would lead to additional information in the Paul Baker case, but unfortunately that hasn't happened," said Tanner, who helped search for the missing toddler as a deputy in 1987.

Linda Lambert, Paul's maternal grandmother, said she hopes the case will be solved and those responsible brought to justice. She includes Susan Baker on that list.

"I feel like eventually she'll break," Lambert said from her home in Mebane, N.C.. "She's not going to have fun in jail so maybe while she's sitting in there, she'll tell someone something."

According to a Gazette article published two days after Paul's disappearance, Susan Baker said she put her stepson down for a nap at about 11 a.m., and then nodded off herself. She told the newspaper that she was awakened by a phone call from husband James Baker, at the time a sergeant stationed at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort.

Susan Baker, then 27, said that's when she went to check on Paul and discovered him missing.

The Bakers moved to Chipley shortly after she was released from jail after serving 80 days of a 10-year-sentence for beating Paul's older sister, Nina.

Susan Baker has been jailed since being arrested in Florida last year and is set to stand trial this summer for her role in Shannon Dedrick's disappearance. Florida authorities say Baker, the infant's step-aunt, took Shannon from her mother, Tina Mercer, early Halloween morning in a secret exchange at the end of the dirt path to Mercer's trailer. Baker was charged with neglect of a child with aggravated circumstances and interference of child custody.

http://www.islandpacket.com/2010/03/27/1187313/florida-arrest-brings-no-new-leads.html

http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/b/baker_paul.html


http://charleyross.wordpress.com/2010/11/16/susan-baker-gets-25-years/
Susan Baker gets 25 years

Paul Baker's remains have never been recovered.

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=13280294
Paul Leonard Baker
Birth:    Jun. 29, 1983
Death:    Mar. 5, 1987

Victim of domestic violence.
 ::snipping2::
Foul play is suspected in Paul's disappearance. However, his body has never been found. His was a young life that was taken far too soon.
 
Burial:
Body lost or destroyed
Specifically: Beaufort, South Carolina
Maintained by: lynda solorzano
Originally Created by: Always with Love
Record added: Feb 09, 2006
Find A Grave Memorial# 13280294

http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/PubCaseSearchServlet?act=viewChildDetail&caseNum=600583&orgPrefix=NCMC&seqNum=1&caseLang=en_US&searchLang=en_US
PAUL BAKER

http://projectjason.org/forums/index.php?PHPSESSID=chm4aokqhsfj7kh1rrm24ilpg2&topic=7352.msg41660#msg41660
Missing Boy: Paul Baker--SC--03/05/1987

http://www.islandpacket.com/2010/10/15/1408971/susan-bakers-stepdaughter-tries.html#storylink=misearch
Susan Baker's stepdaughter tries to move past horrific childhood
By JEFF KIDD
jkidd@beaufortgazette.com
October 15, 2010

 ::snipping2::
In a case that drew national attention, Baker was arrested Nov. 4, 2009, after law enforcement officers searched her trailer in Chipley, Fla., and found 7-month-old Shannon Dedrick in a latched cedar box beneath Baker's bed. Shannon had been missing for days and was found with an overflowing diaper and a bad rash, but she was otherwise unharmed.

Baker, Shannon's baby sitter and a friend of her parents, faces a sentence of as much as 35 years after her conviction earlier this month of aggravated child abuse, interference with custody and giving false information to Florida law enforcement. Judge Allen Register ordered her jailed without bond until her sentencing, expected Nov. 8.

"At her age, even if she just gets 20 years, she'll be 70 years old by the time she gets out," Nina said in a recent phone interview from her home near Durham, N.C. "... Nothing can ever make it up for what she did to me and my brother. If she spent her entire life in jail for my brother's death, it wouldn't make up for what she did. However, it all seems to work out. Good people get what they deserve; bad people get what they deserve.

"It just takes time."


A CHRONICLE OF MISDEEDS

Susan Baker was Nina's stepmother.

And her dedicated tormentor.

The abuse started about the time the family -- newlyweds Susan and James Baker, and James' children from a previous marriage, Nina and Paul -- moved to the Shell Point area after James was stationed at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort.

Paul, then 3, disappeared from the home March 5, 1987. He hasn't been seen since.

While his case remains unsolved, suspicion -- and the subsequent investigation -- quickly centered on Susan.

But authorities could never make charges stick. More than a decade passed before they even tried: Susan and James were charged in connection with Paul's disappearance in 2000, but a grand jury refused to indict; charges were brought again in 2003 but subsequently dropped.

In the days after Paul vanished, James turned Nina over to the Beaufort County Sheriff's Office to be placed in foster care, telling investigators he feared for his daughter's safety.
Much more...

http://www.islandpacket.com/2010/11/15/1445663/susan-baker-sentenced-to-25-years.html#storylink=misearch
Susan Baker sentenced to 25 years in 'Baby Shannon' case
By CHRIS OLWELL
The (Panama City, Fla.) News Herald
November 15, 2010

CHIPLEY, Fla. -- More than two decades after she became the prime suspect in the disappearance of her stepson, a former Beaufort resident was sentenced to 25 years in prison for stealing her neighbor's baby and keeping her locked in a wooden box.

Susan Baker, convicted last month in the disappearance of Shannon Dedrick, was sentenced Monday.
 ::snipping2::
Beaufort-area authorities still consider Susan Baker a suspect in the disappearance of her 3-year-old stepson, Paul Baker, who vanished from the family's Shell Point home on March 5, 1987.

Susan and James Baker were charged in connection with Paul's disappearance in 2000, but a grand jury refused to indict; charges were brought again in 2003 but later dropped.

However, while investigating Paul's disappearance, authorities discovered his 6-year-old sister, Nina, had been abused by Susan Baker, the children's stepmother.
 ::snipping2::
Susan Baker pleaded guilty to assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature for abusing Nina. She was given 10 years in prison but released after 80 days when a judge suspended her sentence for time served, a move that dismayed child advocates in the Beaufort area.

She and James Baker later moved to Florida. The couple divorced but were living together at the time of Dedrick's disappearance, according to Wilson.

One of Susan Baker's attorney in her latest case, Rachel Seaton-Virga, told the judge during Monday's sentencing that anything more than 10 or 20 years could amount to a death sentence for her client, who Seaton-Virga said is in poor health.

"Really what we're asking for is that she not die in prison," she said.

Baker was arrested in November 2009 after officers discovered Shannon under Baker's bed in a small wooden box after searching five days for the 7-month-old child. The child was discovered with an overflowing diaper and an angry rash but was otherwise in good health. Shannon is living now with family members in Texas.

At her trial last month, Baker testified she made an arrangement with Shannon's mother, Crystina Mercer, to exchange custody of the child permanently to Baker. Mercer also was charged in the case, but the most serious charges were dropped and she was released from jail after serving a maximum sentence for giving false information to law enforcement, a misdemeanor.
 ::boxingcasey2::

Link to Shannon Dedrick's Thread:

http://scaredmonkeys.net/index.php?topic=6410.0
Shannon Lea Dedrick, 7mo old missing from home 10/31/09 Chipley, FL(FOUND ALIVE)