Man who killed prof remembered as troubled soul with quirky sense of humour
Published Wednesday November 5th, 2008
PERTH-ANDOVER - The man who killed a popular university professor then took his own life was remembered at his funeral Tuesday as a troubled but beloved soul with a quirky sense of humour.
Nicholas Wade Baker was described by childhood friends as someone who loved sports and had a knack with computers.
About 100 friends and family members gathered at a church in Perth-Andover, near where Baker grew up, to pay respects to a young man whose life took a horrific turn last week.
Police say Baker, 27, killed his father-in-law John McKendy, 59, a highly-regarded sociology professor at St. Thomas University, at the McKendy home in Douglas, near Fredericton.
Baker's wife, Laura, was also injured in the attack. She suffered non-life threatening injuries and remains in hospital.
Baker's body was found Saturday in a parked car in Moncton. Police have ruled out foul play in his death.
While mourners tried to remember Baker in happier times, a family friend read a poem at the service on behalf of Baker's sister that shed light on the young man's recent troubles. The poem was written by the brother of another suicide victim.
"The phone calls you made late into the night/Were your cry for help from your troubles and fright/ Would we have done anything different to reach out to you?/There's just no way of knowing what only God knew," the poem read.
Melissa McLaughlin, a childhood friend of Baker's, didn't mention last week's events in her eulogy. She said Baker loved his wife very much.
"Although I never had the opportunity to meet Laura, Nick's wife, I know for a fact from speaking with Nick on messenger, emails and Facebook that she made him very happy," she recalled. "You could see the love he had for Laura in his bright blue eyes and his handsome smile."
McLaughlin said Baker should be remembered as a man who cherished his family and friends.
"Nick's untimely, tragic death has left us all heartsick and shocked, but we cannot forget the loving, caring, and vibrant funny son, brother, uncle, nephew, cousin and friend that we all knew," she said, holding back tears.
"I love you, Nick, and I will miss you dearly."
A memorial service for McKendy is scheduled for St. Dunstan's Cathedral in Fredericton today at 2 p.m.
But while the two principals in the tragedy will soon be laid to rest, friends of McKendy say they will not be able to move on until they know more about circumstances surrounding the murder.
Sylvia Hale, a sociology professor at St. Thomas, said Tuesday McKendy alerted the police that Baker had been threatening the family via email, and that he was concerned for his daughter's safety.
RCMP Cpl. Claude Tremblay said Monday that neither McKendy nor his family told the police they feared for their safety.
Hale said McKendy told her the day before he was murdered that his daughter had been getting "a huge amount of emails from this guy, including basically, 'get yourself back to me or else"¦' type stuff, but that it wasn't specific enough for the police to take action."
Carmen Gill of the Muriel McQueen Fergusson Centre, a Fredericton-based family violence research organization, said the murder highlights the need for a committee to examine deaths stemming from domestic violence.
Gill said such a committee could examine the facts and recommend ways to help prevent similar cases in the future.
"What we really want to know is what really happened, what didn't happen, and how can we prevent the next killing," she said Tuesday.
The coroner's office in Ontario has had a committee studying such deaths for the past five years.
Greg Forestell, New Brunswick's acting chief coroner, says the province has been examining the Ontario model and would like to do the same.
He said it would work similarly to the province's child death review committee that was established in 1997.
Hale said she's hopeful the tragedy will bring changes to the way police treat cases of domestic abuse. But today she wants to mourn the loss of her friend.
"John was protecting his family. He was doing everything he knew how," she said.
"The memorial to John's life is one thing, dealing with how police manage family violence is something else. So we're pretty determined not to hang on to the memory of how John died, it's how he lived that matters."
- with files from Canadian Press
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