Jury finds man guilty in murder of Oakdale nanny

After more than a week of testimony, a Washington County jury deliberated only two hours Friday before reaching a guilty verdict against Thomas J. Fox in the vicious knife slaying of Oakdale nanny Lori Baker.

After the verdict was read, Fox sat with his head bowed as members of Baker's family sobbed in the Stillwater courtroom. Judge Greg Galler immediately sentenced Fox, 46, to spend the rest of his life in prison on his conviction for premeditated first-degree murder.

"She was worried about growing old without kids. She just wanted to have a family and be happy," Scott Baker said of his 39-year-old sister, found dead in her apartment bedroom in December 2011 with at least 48 stab wounds. "She was a pillar in the nanny community. She was just a sweetheart. I used to make fun of her and say, ' "Mary Poppins 5" is coming out.' She was that kind of lighthearted, caring person."

Fox also was found guilty on a related charge of first-degree murder with intent to commit aggravated robbery. Sentencing on that conviction will come later.

County Attorney Pete Orput, who teamed with assistant prosecutor Imran Ali, said after the verdict that the case was one of the most difficult he has tried in his long career because Fox scoured his blood from the crime scene. Fox's conflicting explanations for his whereabouts at the time Baker was murdered hurt his defense, Orput said.

"The jury saw through it in an amazingly short time, in my experience," he said.

Fox was Baker's boyfriend for a few months preceding the murder, but family members didn't know anything about him except a first name, Scott Baker said Friday.

He had fled from a St. Paul halfway house at the time he met Baker and never disclosed his extensive criminal background. He has been in prison since the murder on a probation violation from an unrelated charge.

Fox was a crack addict who used Baker's credit card several times to withdraw money from ATMs to buy drugs. On the night of her murder, he had sex twice with a prostitute in Minneapolis in Baker's car.

"I am deeply sorry for what happened that evening," Fox said in comments to the Baker family after the verdict. "I made bad choices. I did not kill your lovely daughter." When he began disputing facts of the case with the family, Galler cut him off.

Orput, in his closing argument to the jury, hammered on inconsistencies in Fox's statements to police about what happened in Baker's apartment that night. Orput said Fox knocked Baker down with a punch to her eye and began stabbing her with a kitchen knife to force her to disclose the personal identification number for her credit card.

"This is a murder where we don't have an eyewitness, but we have a ton of evidence," Orput said.

"He got treated like a liar, like a fugitive, like a crack addict, and they didn't try to do anything different," Murphrey said.

Orput, in his rebuttal, took exception to Murphrey's claims. "Playing the race card is the last desperate attempt to keep you from looking at all this evidence, and I object to that," Orput said.

Orput said that Fox killed Baker when he found out she "was about to deep-six this relationship," but Murphrey said there was no evidence that Baker had become aware of Fox's criminal background before she was killed.