Dead girl’s stepmother led troubled life
HICKORY, N.C. — Elisa Baker had an uncanny ability to stay ahead of her multiple husbands, The Associated Press discovered in an investigation of the woman who led authorities to the dismembered remains of her disabled, 10-year-old stepdaughter.
In seven years, she had no fewer than 42 different addresses. During a different three-year stretch, she was married to three men at the same time.
In interviews with three dozen people, and a review of hundreds of court and police documents, AP unraveled a life of deception described by friends, family and the vulnerable men she wed.
Baker is charged with obstructing the investigation of the disappearance of Zahra Baker, the freckle-faced girl who fought bone cancer. No one has been charged in Zahra’s death.
The stepmother has been the center of the investigation, though, and the details of her strained relationships and early family life help explain why.
Neither Baker, 42, who is jailed, nor her attorneys, responded to repeated requests for comment. Other members of her family, including her daughters, declined to speak with the AP.
Early marriage
Born Elisa Fairchild, she grew up as the middle child of three girls whose parents worked in the western North Carolina textile mills and furniture factories in the late 1960s.
In school, Elisa was popular.
“We went to football games. School dances — she was a good dancer,” said Jerry Allen Winkler, who dated her off and on in high school.
Elisa and Winkler both dropped out of school and lost touch for about a year before he ran into her at a local gas station. She was with her newborn, Amber, and told Winkler the baby’s father had left her.
Winkler asked her out, and a week later, he proposed.
Since they were both younger than 18, they needed their parents’ permission.
They were married Sept. 14, 1985. Within days, Winkler was overwhelmed. “I was 17 and married with a kid. It just hit me all at once and I wanted out,” he said.
Winkler’s father was upset, too, because he was tricked into giving permission. The father asked a judge to annul the marriage, which was done less than four months after it began.
Second marriage
Nearly a year later, she met Joseph Proctor, who walked with a limp from a near-fatal car accident. They dated for months, and when she told Proctor she was pregnant, he proposed.
They were married Sept. 5, 1987. She was 19; he was 28. Their son, Douglas, was born a few months later. A year later, they had their second child, Brittany.
The marriage was rocky.
Their divorce wasn’t final until 1992, but the relationship ended Christmas Day in 1990 when Elisa walked out. She gained custody of Amber and Brittany; Douglas went to live with Proctor.
‘Nothing nice’
Andrew Harris Jr recalled the first time he spotted Elisa, nursing a Jack Daniels at a little honky-tonk in Lincolnton.
“We just hit it off,” he said. “She was easy to talk to.”
They married a few months later on April 17, 1992.
Soon her personality changed. She was often angry, and she took it out on her daughters, Harris said.
After a fight in early 1994, Harris left the house for a few days. When he returned, it was empty. No furniture, guns or fishing rods.
“There was nothing nice about that woman,” he said.
Gone again
In the fall of 1994, a neighbor told Darrell Putnam she had found the perfect woman for him. Putnam was 30 and had been deaf nearly his entire life. He can understand speech with his hearing aids on, but his disability made it difficult for him to find dates, said his mother, Margie Putnam.
Within weeks, they moved in together.
“I wouldn’t see her for days,” Darrell Putnam said, at times using sign language as his mother interpreted. “She would go out and get drunk and carry on. She was never home.”
Worse, when she was there, she would “smack around” her children, Darrell Putnam said.
They married Feb. 4, 1995, but their relationship quickly disintegrated.
One day after work, Putnam found her in bed with another man. He walked to his mother’s house, and returned a few days later. Everything was gone, including his hearing aids.
‘Couldn’t take abuse’
Jeffrey Allred remembers, with a shudder, the last time he saw Elisa in the spring of 1998.
She had put her daughters in the car and headed to Walmart for groceries. When the tail lights receded in the night, he pulled a packed suitcase from a bedroom closet, jumped in his truck and headed in the opposite direction.
“I just couldn’t take the abuse anymore,” said the 6-foot-2 Allred, who weighs 260 pounds.
He said she beat him with a baseball bat and threw rocks at him. He was so spooked that he never divorced her; he was too afraid he might see her in court.
They married Oct. 3, 1997, then she changed. “It was like a light switch went off and she said: ‘I got him now,’?” he said.
Hours on the Internet
Aaron Young, who met Elisa while she was married to Allred, picked up the pieces. It was the first time a woman had paid attention to him.
As a child, he had rickets, a condition that made him self-conscious and shy.
The couple were married Aug. 8, 1998. She was 30; he was 20.
It was during their marriage that Elisa discovered the Internet. She would spend long hours in front of a computer.
Aaron Young’s mother spotted her kissing another man in a car in 2007, and her sixth marriage ended.
In early 2008, Elisa said she was headed to Australia and she wouldn’t be returning.
‘Looking for attention’
The first time Adam Baker saw his future wife in person was at the airport. They had met through Instant Messaging Virtual Universe, a website where users create three-
dimensional characters to represent themselves, using the avatars in a virtual world.
He was 33; she was 40. His friends and family had their doubts.
They were married in his family’s backyard July 8, 2008. A few months later, Adam Baker told his mother he was moving to the U.S.
In September, the couple moved into a house in Hickory. On Oct. 9, they reported Zahra missing. About a month later, Zahra’s prosthetic leg was found. Then her remains, in locations 5 miles apart.
“She was always looking for attention,” said Allred, her fifth husband. “She always wanted to be known, to be famous. Well, I guess she got what she was looking for after all.”
