Tara Baker cold case: UGA law student’s 2001 killing finally solved

Tara Baker was 23, a University of Georgia law student from East Point, when investigators found her dead inside her burned Athens apartment off Fawn Drive on Jan. 19, 2001, the day before her 24th birthday. Police and forensic examiners later concluded this was not a fire case at all, but a violent homicide scene, with Baker stabbed in the neck, strangled, beaten and sexually assaulted before the blaze was set to destroy evidence.

The last known stretch of her life was narrow, and that narrowness became the case’s most important clue. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation says Baker was outside the UGA law library around 7:30 p.m. on Jan. 18, 2001, and later called a friend from the library around 9:30 p.m., saying she planned to leave around 10. After that, the trail went cold. For years, her family kept the case alive while Athens-Clarke County Police, the GBI and federal partners returned to the file as methods and databases improved, but no arrest came.

The turning point arrived in 2023. Georgia’s Coleman-Baker Act took effect on July 1, creating a formal process for reviewing cold-case murders and establishing the GBI Cold Case Unit within the agency’s Office of Special Investigations. In September 2023, that unit partnered with Athens-Clarke County investigators for an in-depth review of Baker’s death. The reinvestigation leaned on biological evidence, DNA science and collaboration with the FBI in Atlanta and other partners, and that work finally produced a suspect.

On May 13, 2024, the GBI arrested Edrick Lamont Faust of Athens and charged him with murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, concealing the death of another, arson, possession of a knife during the commission of a felony, tampering with evidence and aggravated sodomy. What had sat as a 23-year cold file was suddenly moving again, this time with a named defendant and a path to court.

That path ended in conviction. A Clarke County jury found Faust guilty in February 2026, and Chief Superior Court Judge Lisa Lott sentenced him on Feb. 19, 2026, to life in prison plus 45 years. After the arrest, Baker’s family thanked the GBI, Athens-Clarke County Police Department and FBI and asked for privacy as they processed the case. Virginia Baker’s statement was read in court, and Adam Baker told the judge he had forgiven Faust. For Tara Baker, the long wait for accountability ended the same way many cold cases do, with old evidence, new science and one reopened file that finally refused to stay buried.