ON THE MORNING BEFORE Thanksgiving 1992, 10-year-old Scotty Baker was summoned to the office at Paces Creek Elementary School in the poor, onetime mining town of Manchester, Ky. There school secretary Charlotte Smith told the fifth-grader that a woman had just come to fetch him. Scotty hesitated for an instant, not recognizing the woman, but he responded happily when she gently told him she was taking him to see his father. Moments later they walked out to the parking lot together and got into the woman's Buick Skyhawk. What Scotty didn't know was that, crouched in the backseat, covered by sheets, was his father's second wife, Stephanie Baker, then 22.
Minutes later Scotty Baker was dead, strangled by his own stepmother. In October, as Stephanie Baker was sentenced to life in prison for his murder, the people of Manchester (pop. 1,634) could only wonder at her brutality—and her motive. Baker, who just nine months before the murder had married Scotty's father, Donnie, 35, apparently killed the boy out of jealousy. "She wanted 100 percent of Donnie's attention," says state police detective Larry Lewis. "She didn't want anyone else in the picture. She wanted Donnie all to herself."
Those who thought they knew Baker had seen no hint of such deadly potential. She grew up in London, Ky., about 25 miles west of Manchester. There she sang in the choir at the Community Christian Church and spent two years at nearby Sue Bennett College, where she studied psychology. She had met truck driver Donnie Baker in August 1991. Divorced three years from his ex-wife Ruth, 38, Donnie shared custody of 9-year-old Scotty. Meeting Stephanie, he was smitten. "She was real sweet, real pretty, went to church," he says. "She just about blew my mind." Six months after they met, they were married on Valentine's Day 1992, with Scotty serving as ring bearer.
To friends and neighbors, all seemed well. Stephanie, who worked at Wal-Mart in nearby London, often took Scotty to the store to pick out toys, and the two were sometimes seen playing ball in the yard together. "She was as nice as she could be," recalls Dorothy Jackson, Donnie's mother. "She seemed like a perfect person."
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