thank you today I have moved a little bit further north from Atlanta as you can see by the mural there behind me I'm in Athens Georgia now home of the Georgia Bulldogs and rival to my Alabama Crimson Tide I'm going to be spending just a little bit of time here in Athens because it's a college town as you can imagine there are quite a few crazy stories from here in this area that I can tell I'm starting this Athens series off with an unsolved case that is no longer getting any attention from the Clark County Athens Police Department it's just that in this case it's several years old now and they have exhausted all of their leads they have investigated all of their theories that people have come up with over the years and on top of all this they have a bunch of new cases coming in day in and day out that they have to attend to so hopefully with us putting the story out today and with everyone's help maybe we can drum up some new leads for them to investigate and hopefully uh get the case moving somewhere again either way though on January the 19th of 2001 the Athens Clark County Fire Department was called to a local house fire once that fire department put the fire out and they gained entry into the home they located the human remains of a woman which appeared to be in strange circumstances today I'm going to be going to the location where this happened and I'm going to tell the story of the death of Tara Louise Baker from here in Athens Georgia foreign Athens has a nice downtown area Athens Georgia actually has some rich history when it comes to the music industry some very notable bands have come from Athens REM The B-52s Widespread Panic and there's a few more they all have come from here in Athens as well as it being a college town work Street records another record Studio looks like they close off this entire block just for shopping and eateries and stuff that's cool there's this placard here first flight in Georgia 's Pioneer Aviator Benjamin Thomas Epps he was born here looks like he opened the first Automotive Repair Garage right here out of this building and uh he would wind up building his first airplane a monoplane with an upright buggy seat bicycle wheels and a 35-foot wingspan he built it right out of his garage out of this building and it looks like across the street there there's a statue it looks like there's a statue of him right there you know that's definitely a statue of him building his first plane Epps garage monoplane there on the plans in his hand there that's cool interesting to know that that just happened right there across the street Tara Louise Baker was born in 1977 in East Point Georgia she was one of four siblings and in 1995 she graduated from Lovejoy High School she immediately enrolled to Georgia College in Milledgeville Georgia in 1998 she graduated with two separate bachelor's degrees Tara she was super super smart and she was destined for great things after the New Millennium and the Y2K virus scare Tara decided to use her smarts and she enrolled right here at the University of Georgia in their law school program she wanted to be a lawyer Tara was about a month into her second semester here at Georgia when late one afternoon Tara and a friend of hers who was also in law school they spent the afternoon and the evening in the UGA Law Library studying and getting ready for a test in one of her classes they were right here inside of this building right in front of us this is the law school library Tara wanted to do good on that test because that next day when she was going to take it it was also her 24th birthday so she was excited to to both do good on the exam and celebrate her birthday afterwards that night Tara's friend left this library at about 7 30 p.m expecting that Tara was going to leave shortly thereafter but at 9 46 PM that friend received a call from Tara who was still here at this Library studying Tara just called her to ask if she had made it home safely and during that conversation the friend made reference to Tara still being here studying all by herself and Tara told her that she was going to leave here and hit home at about 10 pm which was about 15 minutes from the time they were talking on the phone when they hung up that phone call Little did this friend know that this was going to be the very last time anyone would talk to Tara Louise Baker ever again the next morning at 11 23 a.m 911 dispatch received a call about a home that was on fire this home right here the Athens Clark County Fire Department arrived here on the scene to heavy smoke and Flames billing up from the rear corner of the home Fighters could not get into it but it was also deadbolted so they kicked in the front door and they entered the home while they went through the home trying to locate the source of the fire the firefighters noticed that all four burners on the kitchen stove were turned to the on position and high as they continue to make their way through the home they also found that a bedroom door and an adjacent bathroom were both locked after kicking in both of those doors they finally found the source of the Flames inside of a back bedroom over in the back corner as they started moving items around and extinguishing that fire just before they had it almost all the way out they located human remains laying on the floor in that bedroom as quickly as they could get the fire out the chief at the fire department that had responded to the call immediately called in law enforcement and an investigation got underway they had learned from Neighbors that the person living in the home was Tara Baker and on top of that her 1996 Dodge Neon was parked directly out in front of the home law enforcement was also able to connect that car to her through its registration it took only a short amount of time for test results to come back from the crime lab and they positively identified the remains as those of Tara Louise Baker while this was going on fire investigators went through the home with a fine tooth comb and they ultimately ruled that the fire had been intentionally set an autopsy was performed on terrorist remains where they discovered that prior to the fire even being started Tara had been beaten very very badly she had been stabbed multiple times she was strangled and she had been sexually assaulted once these results came back from the medical examiner it was clear that whatever happened to Tara Baker between 10 pm and 11 20 a.m that next morning it had been bad she as I said had been beaten stabbed sexually assaulted and to finish her off they strangled her to death the killer obviously didn't want to get caught so they tried to set a fire hoping that it would burn down the entire home and it could hide their crime but unfortunately for them a Good Samaritan happened to be driving by they saw the smoke and they called 9-1-1 just in enough time for firefighters to get there and put it out and find her remains law enforcement has not released any other information on Tara's case we don't know if they found any evidence in the home linking someone to the crime it's not believed that this was a robbery a typically a robber would not want to hang around and spend that much time with the victim this crime seemed to be more personal than that they thought it was someone who knew Tara that may have either been stalking her or at some point could have even dated her or possibly it was someone that wanted to date her and that she had rejected at some point one way or another it seems like the person knew Tara even if she didn't know them I do know that early on in the investigation a former boyfriend of terrorists was given a polygraph test and he passed it he was cleared as a suspect very early on just like I have been doing with all of my recent stories I have reached out to the Athens Police Department and I spoke to the league detective over this case but obviously this is still an open investigation and he couldn't share any information or crime scene details or anything like that with me for fear that it could possibly hurt their case if they ever did find someone responsible for this horrible horrible attack on the sweet and innocent lawyer to be everything that I have just shared with you is all of the information that's available in the death of chair Baker pretty much since they found her and the investigation began no new information has come to light and this case has basically been cold now for over two decades meaning some psycho killer has been on the loose for a long time unless they committed a crime somewhere else and got locked up for it but I don't know that any DNA evidence was retrieved from this Terra Baker case to match it up to anyone who's currently in prison or someone who has been in prison because of that I'm making a plea to anyone out there watching this video right now if you or anyone you know has any information about the attack and the murder of Tara Louise Baker here in Athens please reach out to the Athens Clark County Police Department I know the reward was at like 26 000 or something like that and I don't know exactly what it is now but a reward could be yours if you have any information leading to an arrest that is gonna do it for this story today from here in Athens Georgia and the death of Tara Louise Baker I want to thank you all so much for watching I really appreciate it if you're new here go down hit that subscribe button then hit that notification Bell so you get notified every time I upload a video if you're one of those that's asking how to support the channel there's links in the description box below but you guys just watching my videos and hitting the thumbs up that's all I need thank you all I will be back again with another one from here in Athens Georgia until then please all of you stay safe and stay healthy much love to you all [Music] [Applause] [Music]