CORI BAKER - 13 yo (2007) - Tulsa OK

A Tulsa man was convicted late Wednesday of murdering 13-year-old Cori Baker,
whose remains were discovered more than four months after she vanished.


A Tulsa County jury found Marquis Bullock, 20, guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced him to
life in prison with the possibility of parole.


The jury began deliberating around 5 p.m. and returned with the verdict about 9:40 p.m.


Bullock is accused of killing the Tulsa girl after picking her
up from the Union Alternative School, 5656 S. 129th East Ave., on Nov.
9, 2007.


Following that afternoon, “no one ever saw her again, and he
had nothing but denials,” Assistant District Attorney Bill Musseman
said in a closing argument.


Bullock did not take the witness stand in his own behalf. He
stood trial for first-degree murder, but District Judge Clancy Smith
also gave jurors the option of returning a verdict on either second-degree murder or first-degree manslaughter.


Musseman said Cori’s disappearance prompted “some of the biggest search efforts in state history.”


Some of her bones and remains were finally recovered in March
2008 in a wooded area at Paintball Adventure Games, near the Creek
Turnpike and 49th West Avenue.


A medical examiner could not determine a manner or cause of death.


Defense attorney Kathy Fry asserted that “not one piece of
physical evidence” indicated that Bullock “killed Cori Baker
accidentally, intentionally or otherwise.”


No blood or other evidence to implicate him was recovered from the car that Bullock drove, the defense lawyer said.


“Pinning a crime on him when the evidence is not there” is “not justice, Fry said during her closing argument.


Bullock was the boyfriend of Cori’s oldest sister, Courtney Baker, and he is the father of her son.


Musseman told jurors that Bullock has a demonstrated “pattern of inappropriate sexual advances to his girlfriend’s sisters.”


Linda Baker, Cori’s grandmother, testified Wednesday that
during the summer of 2007, she was “really bothered” by the manner in
which Bullock was handling Cori in a swimming pool.


“I felt very uncomfortable,” she testified. “I just didn’t like him touching her.”


Tulsa Police Detective Vic Regalado told jurors that Bullock
continually lied to police and gave four different accounts of his
actions on the afternoon Cori disappeared.


The punishment options jurors could consider were life in
prison, either with or without the possibility of parole. Ballard has
been in the Tulsa Jail since Nov. 13, 2007.