Saturday, March 17, 2007
Killing Jared - Salon
Matt Baker was a restless teenager in suburban Las Vegas who loved gangster movies and acting cool. Nobody could imagine he wanted to murder his best friend and bury him in the desert.
Matt Baker was the first to pay his condolences when the news came that the body of Jared Whaley, one of his best friends, had finally been found in the desert outside of Las Vegas, on March 2, 2004. The 17-year-old Whaley had been stripped naked, shot twice, and some of his teeth had been cut out.
...
Today, Matt Baker sits in a Nevada prison, convicted of murdering Jared Whaley, shooting him in the chest and head with a shotgun. He will spend at least 35 years in prison, a sentence longer than the ones received by his four teenage friends, also involved in the killing. ... Matt never explained why he killed Jared.
...
Matt moved to the valley from Pomona, Calif., with his mom (he told friends that his dad had died before he was born). She worked as a clerk at a jewelry store on the Strip, living paycheck to paycheck and not always quick to pay bills. "By the time I was arrested," Matt wrote me, "I had lived in eleven different places I can recall, but I lived at my grandmother's twice so that means I moved twelve times.
...
Kids of tough, resilient single moms, with nonexistent dads, Matt and Jared were selfish to a fault, and became more so the more they hung out. They weren't much for responsibility -- neither one had ever had a job, nor much of a plan of what to do after high school, and now they talked about dropping out of high school too. A lot of what made their relationship work was that Matt was incredibly shy, and he was just in awe of Jared's nerve, his ability to say whatever he wanted without caring what anyone thought.
...
Anything to do with a real, honest-to-God murder would probably have stayed that way if another Shane -- Shane Johnson -- hadn't moved to town. ... The year before, he had transformed from clean-cut junior ROTC member when he followed his older brother into membership in a KKK spinoff, the International Klans of America. "It was fun," he would tell me. "We went to lots of barbecues, told jokes, ate good food. I had a bad home life, and it gave me a new family." ...
Matt Baker was a restless teenager in suburban Las Vegas who loved gangster movies and acting cool. Nobody could imagine he wanted to murder his best friend and bury him in the desert.
Matt Baker was the first to pay his condolences when the news came that the body of Jared Whaley, one of his best friends, had finally been found in the desert outside of Las Vegas, on March 2, 2004. The 17-year-old Whaley had been stripped naked, shot twice, and some of his teeth had been cut out.
...
Today, Matt Baker sits in a Nevada prison, convicted of murdering Jared Whaley, shooting him in the chest and head with a shotgun. He will spend at least 35 years in prison, a sentence longer than the ones received by his four teenage friends, also involved in the killing. ... Matt never explained why he killed Jared.
...
Matt moved to the valley from Pomona, Calif., with his mom (he told friends that his dad had died before he was born). She worked as a clerk at a jewelry store on the Strip, living paycheck to paycheck and not always quick to pay bills. "By the time I was arrested," Matt wrote me, "I had lived in eleven different places I can recall, but I lived at my grandmother's twice so that means I moved twelve times.
...
Kids of tough, resilient single moms, with nonexistent dads, Matt and Jared were selfish to a fault, and became more so the more they hung out. They weren't much for responsibility -- neither one had ever had a job, nor much of a plan of what to do after high school, and now they talked about dropping out of high school too. A lot of what made their relationship work was that Matt was incredibly shy, and he was just in awe of Jared's nerve, his ability to say whatever he wanted without caring what anyone thought.
...
Anything to do with a real, honest-to-God murder would probably have stayed that way if another Shane -- Shane Johnson -- hadn't moved to town. ... The year before, he had transformed from clean-cut junior ROTC member when he followed his older brother into membership in a KKK spinoff, the International Klans of America. "It was fun," he would tell me. "We went to lots of barbecues, told jokes, ate good food. I had a bad home life, and it gave me a new family." ...
Labels: murder
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