Athens jury convicts man in 2001 killing of UGA law student Tara Baker

Editor’s note: This article was updated with sentencing details.

ATHENS — After more than two decades and a trial centered on DNA evidence and an alternative suspect, an Athens jury on Tuesday convicted Edrick Lamont Faust of malice murder and 11 other felony counts in the 2001 killing of University of Georgia law student Tara Baker.

Baker was found dead in her rental home Jan. 19, 2001, one day before her 24th birthday.

She had been beaten, stabbed, strangled and sexually assaulted, and her bedroom was set ablaze in what prosecutors called a deliberate attempt to destroy evidence. The case went cold until 2024, when advanced forensic DNA testing linked biological material from Baker’s body to Faust.

Superior Court Judge Lisa Lott sentenced Faust on Thursday to two consecutive life sentences, plus an additional 45 years in prison.

Faust, 50, was also found guilty of rape, aggravated assault, aggravated sodomy, arson and other charges. The jury, composed of eight men and four women, began deliberating Monday afternoon. They returned the verdict just before 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday.

Baker’s mother, Virginia Baker, and siblings, Meredith, Adam and Kevin, were in the courtroom gallery when the verdict was read.

“For more than two decades, we have lived with the absence of the life she was building,” the family said in a statement. “We have imagined the attorney she would have become, the causes she would have championed, and the people she would have helped. That future was taken from her in an act of violence that forever altered our family.”

The victim's mother, Virginia Baker, reacts to the guilty verdict Tuesday after more than two decades since her daughter was killed. (Kaleb Tatum/The Red & Black)

Prosecutors, led by Western Judicial Circuit District Attorney Kalki Yalamanchili, argued the DNA match, combined with Faust’s proximity at the time and his responses in a 2024 interview with investigators, proved guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

“The evidence was always there,” Yalamanchili said in his closing arguments. “The world and technology just needed time to catch up to deliver justice.”

Defense attorney Ahmad Crews maintained throughout the trial that the DNA evidence, although present, did not prove Faust committed murder, rape, arson or the other charges. He criticized the investigation and told jurors that Baker’s then-boyfriend, Chris Melton, was the killer.

“The person that killed her knew her, they were angry,” Crews said in his closing arguments.

“This is an overkill. This isn’t a random stranger.”

UGA posthumously awarded Tara Baker a law degree in 2004. (Courtesy)

Melton testified emotionally on the stand about his relationship with Baker, how he learned of her death from her mother and the toll of being suspected by police.

“I would wake up so many times for the longest time in the fetal position,” Melton said, “where I had just cried myself to exhaustion.”

Police interviewed Melton’s parents and a co-worker, accounting for his whereabouts the early morning hours on the day Baker was killed. Melton had a bank transaction that morning, about 50 miles away in Loganville, not long after Baker’s estimated time of death.

Crews spent time in his opening statement and closing argument challenging Melton’s alibi. Yalamanchili countered that Melton had cooperated fully with police for more than two decades and that authorities had confirmed the alibi.

Faust did not testify. The defense did not call any witness or present evidence after the state rested its case.

Tara Baker's family attended a 2025 hearing for Edrick Lamont Faust. A jury found Faust guilty of murder in Baker's death in 2001. (Abbey Cutrer/AJC)

The verdict came after a trial punctuated by heated objections and mistrial motions from Crews, who was ordered during opening statements to pay a $1,000 fine for contempt. “This trial has been worse than practicing in Communist Russia,” Crews later said during witness testimony. “(Faust) doesn’t stand a chance in this courtroom.”

Prosecutors noted there were no fingerprints or hair at the crime scene that pointed to any suspects, and initial DNA testing yielded no clues. As years passed and case files swelled to tens of thousands of documents, police conducted more than 100 hours of interviews, ruling out at least a dozen people of interest.

The Coleman-Baker Act — a Georgia law signed by Gov. Brian Kemp in 2023 to provide resources and attention to cold cases — led to the break. The GBI assigned new agents to conduct additional DNA testing and reexamine evidence. Swabs from the original sexual assault examination produced DNA profiles that matched Baker, her boyfriend and another male.

Using a national database, authorities found a probable match that led them to Faust, who had lived off and on at a residence roughly two football fields from the crime scene.

Faust had a lengthy criminal record. Between 1997 and 2021, he was convicted of robbery, battery, shoplifting, aggravated assault, attempting to elude, DUI, drug possession and other crimes.