Tara Baker Case | How DNA Caught Her Killer After 23 Years

The Tara Baker case is the first cold case solved under the Coleman-Baker Act, a Georgia law named in part for her. In January 2001, a 23-year-old University of Georgia law student was found dead in her Athens apartment behind a bedroom door locked from the outside. Twenty-three years later, DNA identified the man who had been inside.

This documentary covers the full Tara Baker case: who Tara Louise Baker was, what investigators found at 160 Fawn Drive, why the original 2001 investigation went cold, how the Coleman-Baker Act passed in 2023, and how new DNA testing matched a man who had been booked into a Georgia jail less than four weeks after Tara was killed. In February 2026, after a two-week trial in Athens-Clarke County, a jury convicted Edrick Lamont Faust on twelve counts including malice murder, rape, and arson in the first degree. He was sentenced to two consecutive life terms plus forty-five years.

The Tara Baker case is now part of Georgia cold case history.

0:00 Tara Baker called her friend at 9:46 PM on January 18, 2001
0:47 Who Tara Louise Baker was: UGA law student, sister, daughter
2:18 What happened inside 160 Fawn Drive
4:09 The original suspects in the Tara Baker case
5:56 Twenty-three years without an arrest
7:46 The Coleman-Baker Act and Georgia cold case reform
8:44 How Edrick Lamont Faust was identified by DNA
10:47 The 2026 trial of Edrick Faust
12:28 The sentence: two life terms plus forty-five years
14:13 The unanswered question in the Tara Baker case

Sources referenced:
— Coleman-Baker Act (Georgia HB 88, signed 2023)
— Athens-Clarke County Police Department
— Georgia Bureau of Investigation Cold Case Unit
— Western Circuit Superior Court (Judge Lisa Lott)
— Classic City Crime podcast by Cameron Jay Harrelson (24 episodes, 2020–2021)

#TaraBaker #ColdCaseSolved #TrueCrimeDocumentary

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