A 12-year-saga ends with killer's plea

STAUNTON – Twelve years ago, while documenting the murder scene, Augusta County Sheriff’s Capt. Randy Fisher looked up and saw him.

Sitting on the front stoop of a neighboring home, sipping from a thermos of coffee, Kenneth Wayne Baker, watched as authorities excavated a septic tank to retrieve the body of Ruth Naomi Mays.

Fisher snapped Baker’s photo.

Holding the picture Thursday in Augusta County Circuit Court, Fisher, now the county sheriff, recounted the scene to Judge Victor V. Ludwig. The sheriff didn’t have to reach far into his memory to recall the sounds and sights of that warm June afternoon.

“I know it was a mess,” he said. “I look at the pictures and I can still smell that scene there.”

Baker, 43, of Churchville, pleaded guilty Thursday to second-degree murder and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony in Mays’ killing and aggravated sexual battery in separate case. His admissions came after a dozen years of doctors’ evaluations which, until April 22, ruled him unfit to stand trial.

With a desktop covered in evidence, Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Rupen Shah submitted to the court documents, videos and photos – all of which spoke to the murder.

In a 1998 interrogation by Augusta County Sheriff’s Office sergeants Dwight D. Wood and William Lemerise, the detectives asked Baker what he thought as he sat on the porch, sipping coffee.

“Just all those people out there,” Baker said. “One thing in this whole thing I think is sad, too, is somebody like that lived a pretty unremarkable life and then their name and picture is in the paper more times when they’re dead than it was the whole time they were alive.”

Authorities found Mays on June 12, 1998, stuffed into a septic tank at the home of Baker’s neighbor on Crawford Drive in Churchville, a short distance from the woman’s home. Mays had been shot four times in the abdomen and twice in the head, according to an autopsy report. She’d been missing for four months.

During the interrogation, Baker told authorities he was in bed when he heard something in his house. He reached for his .22 caliber Ruger rifle and stepped into the hall.

When he saw someone in the kitchen, he fired.

“So what did you do at that point, when you cut the light on, Kenny?” Wood asked. “When you saw who it was.”

“It was her,” Baker said.

“Who is ‘her?’ ” Wood asked.

“That ugly woman.”

The detectives probed for more details, searching for any clue as to whether Mays survived the initial shots.

Baker dodged their questions and spoke instead about gaining custody of his children. Neither records nor anyone else verified Baker’s claim that he had children. His ex-wife said he dreamed them up in his head.

Baker first received psychiatric care as a 6-year-old after exhibiting aggressive behavior toward first-grade classmates, according to court documents.

He was committed to the now-defunct DeJarnette Center for 11 months.

Baker has a long history of drug abuse, according to court records.

He graduated from high school in 1985, and in 1989 landed a job at McQuay International in Verona. He was fired in 1997 for missing work, according to court documents.

A self-described “daredevil,” Baker was involved in four traffic crashes, one of which left him with frontal lobe damage to his brain, according to court records.

“He reported that he occasionally hears the voices and experiences visual depictions of his deceased grandmother and of a close friend who died in a motor vehicle crash,” a doctor’s report stated.

The voices “always tell me to live my life,” Baker told doctors.

In his interrogation, Baker finally confirmed he fired the lethal shots into Mays’ head – but only after she threatened “calling the law and a bunch of stuff like that,” he told police.

During subsequent stays at various medical facilities, including Western State Hospital, Baker’s name re-surfaced last year when he sexually abused a 97-year-old mentally and physically incapacitated woman at Living Waters in Fishersville.

Fisher said Baker’s conviction brought closure for Mays’ family. He recalled futile searches for her in the months after she went missing.

“She had basically disappeared from the face of the earth,” the sheriff said.

When doctors asked Baker about the insanity defense used in court, he told them that sometimes people “blow a gasket.”

“Sometimes in life people just snap,” he said. “They snap and need psychiatric help. Then they go back to Western for another evaluation by a doctor and a judge decides they may stay on meds.”

Baker is scheduled face a sentencing hearing Oct. 28 in Augusta County Circuit Court. He faces a maximum 63-year sentence.