Kay Baker Was Murdered By Ex-Convict Boyfriend in Lithia Florida

Kay Elizabeth Baker’s life was defined by service, steadiness, and love for her children and students. In late May 2022, that life ended violently on a quiet street in Lithia, Florida. Prosecutors later said her boyfriend, Matthew Robertson Terry, knifed her in a jealous rage after a night out. The case gripped the Tampa Bay area not only because a beloved third-grade teacher was gone, but because evidence from a nearly identical attack years earlier—an attempted murder against a former partner, Michelle Rogers—revealed a chilling pattern. What follows is a deeply detailed account of Baker’s murder on May 27–28, 2022, the response and investigation, the courtroom battle that followed, and the earlier Michigan case involving Rogers that prosecutors said foreshadowed the horror in Lithia.

Kay Elizabeth Baker: Life, Work, and Roots

Friends and colleagues described Kay as the kind of educator who learned every child’s quirks and needs, then built trust with a warm, even temperament. She taught math and science at Cypress Creek Elementary, the sort of teacher parents name with gratitude years later when a child blossoms. Away from school, Kay carved out time for her two children, weekend gatherings with friends, and little pleasures that reset a long week—music, game nights, and the small rituals that knit a close-in circle together. Born in Michigan and proud of those roots, she embraced Florida’s sunshine with Midwestern straightforwardness. The portrait that emerged at memorials was of a person who was generous with time and attention, rarely the loudest in the room but reliably the most grounded.

The Relationship With Matthew Terry

Kay and Matthew Terry were living together in Lithia. By most accounts, the relationship started with the ordinary optimism of midlife connection and quickly became complicated. Friends would later recount cycles: affectionate stretches punctuated by friction over jealousy and control. Nothing about the early months drew police headlines, but trusted confidants remembered Kay confiding worries about arguments that spun up suddenly and intensely. In the courtroom later, this history became relevant when prosecutors framed the case as domestic violence escalating with speed and ferocity.

May 27, 2022: A Night Out That Turned

On the evening of Friday, May 27, the couple went out with friends to The Landing Bar & Grill in the Valrico/Lithia area. It was the start of a long weekend. The mood at the table—drinks, laughter, familiar faces—looked unremarkable to those around them. But what jurors later saw on surveillance footage and heard from witnesses painted a tighter narrative thread: an argument sparked by perceived flirting or dancing, followed by colder body language, and then a decision to head home.

What feels routine in any relationship argument—sharp words, a stiff ride back—can be the pivot point in relationships already primed by control or jealousy. According to the state’s presentation of the timeline, that pivot happened after the couple left the bar.

The Walk Back and the First Cries for Help

Home was a short drive away on a residential street in Lithia. It was late, after midnight now—the early minutes of May 28. Neighbors later told investigators they heard raised voices, movement outside, and then a sudden commotion. What happened in the span of those minutes would become the core of the murder charge: a violent knife attack outside the home that spilled into the adjacent yard of a neighbor’s property. When a neighbor stepped out, the scene he encountered was already catastrophic. First responders were called, but Kay’s wounds—concentrated around the neck—were unsurvivable.

Within an hour of what began as an ordinary Friday night, the household and the quiet block had become the center of a homicide investigation. Deputies canvassed the area, securing the scene, collecting early statements, and beginning a search for Terry, who was no longer at Kay’s side.

Immediate Law-Enforcement Response and Evidence Preservation

Detectives and crime scene technicians moved quickly that night and into the dawn. The priority sequence was textbook: stabilize and document the scene, locate the suspected attacker, and preserve every image, impression, and fiber that could later be tested or reconstructed. Body-worn camera footage from deputies would later give jurors a visceral view of the scene as the first responders saw it: the stillness of a residential lawn, flashlights cutting across grass still damp from Florida humidity, and the distinct footprints and scuffs that indicated a struggle.

Officers interviewed neighbors in real time—what did they hear, from where, in what order, and did they see anyone run? Units spread outward, scanning common egress paths that a person on foot might take in the area. Before sunrise, investigators had begun piecing together a preliminary sequence of events built from the 911 call timing, neighbor accounts, and the location of Kay’s body relative to her home.

The Search for Matthew Terry and the Injuries He Carried

Law enforcement located Matthew Terry not far from the scene. He showed injuries that investigators would later characterize as consistent with either a struggle or self-inflicted harm—an important distinction prosecutors and defense would fight over at trial. The state would argue the wounds were an attempt to muddy the narrative or mimic a chaotic altercation; the defense would float the theory that an unknown assailant appeared, injuring both parties. From the moment Terry was found, the case trajectory pointed toward swift charging decisions, a tightly preserved evidentiary record, and a high-profile courtroom contest.

Forensics and the Anatomy of the Attack

Forensic evidence in stabbing homicides tends to be stubbornly revealing. The angle and depth of injuries, the distribution of bloodstains, the presence (or absence) of cast-off patterns, and trace materials on clothing or under nails often converge on a story more specific than either side’s rhetoric. In Kay’s case, the patterning showed extreme force directed to the neck—a signature that would matter doubly when jurors later heard about the ex-girlfriend attack in Michigan. Analysts mapped the scene: where the assault began, how it moved, and where it ended. The physical story aligned with neighbors’ memory of hearing an argument and a sudden escalation outside, not an intrusion from a stranger.

Digital and Witness Evidence From the Bar

Surveillance footage from The Landing Bar & Grill captured the hours immediately before the attack: the couple’s entry, interactions with friends, and visible tension late in the evening. Jurors later saw enough to connect the emotional tone at the bar to what happened at home—particularly the flashpoint of jealousy the state argued set everything in motion. Friends at the table and patrons nearby described the mood changing. Witness statements helped prosecutors establish both timeline and motive: a simmer that boiled over once they left the social buffer of the bar’s patio and neon.

Charging Decisions and the Early Theory of the Case

Homicide prosecutors in Hillsborough County charged Terry with first-degree murder. The state’s theory was clear from the outset: this was not a mutual fight gone wrong in equal measure; it was a targeted, rage-driven attack. The defense previewed a different story line—that Kay’s death could have been the work of an unknown intruder and that Terry’s own injuries were consistent with him trying to stop that attacker. Early motions by the state sought to admit evidence from the 2017 Michigan case under rules that allow prior bad acts to prove intent, absence of mistake, or a distinctive pattern. The judge would later permit jurors to hear about that earlier attack, a decision that shaped the entire trial.

Trial: The State’s Narrative

At trial, prosecutors built a tight, sequential case. They started with the ordinary humanity of Kay’s life—her classroom, her children, and the normalcy of a Friday night out. They laid in the fuel: jealousy and control. Then they walked jurors minute-by-minute through the bar footage, witness statements, and the return home. The forensic witnesses translated blood dynamics and injury patterns into accessible maps of what happened and where. First responders described what they saw and heard. Finally, the state put Michelle Rogers on the stand.

Rogers, Terry’s former partner from Michigan, told the jury about a 2017 night when an argument escalated and he attacked her with a knife, focusing on her neck. She survived; it was, she testified, a narrow survival. The similarity in target, method, and situational trigger—the flash of jealousy and control—was the through-line the state wanted jurors to see. With that testimony, the prosecution’s closing argument wrote itself: this was not a random horror but a pattern renewed.

Trial: The Defense Strategy

The defense leaned on reasonable doubt. They emphasized the late hour, the lack of direct eyewitnesses to the attack itself, and the possibility that someone else intervened outside the house. They suggested the earlier Michigan case would unfairly prejudice jurors into seeing a pattern where there might be none. They questioned aspects of the forensic mapping, probed for gaps in perimeter security, and argued that the state was over-inferring motive from bar-room body language and fragments of overheard conversation. The defense had to contend, however, with the cohesive fit among the bar video, the neighbor reports, the physical evidence at the scene, and the similarities to the Michigan assault.

Verdict and Sentencing

Jurors deliberated briefly—an hour or so—before finding Matthew Terry guilty of first-degree murder. In the penalty phase that followed, the same panel recommended a life sentence rather than death, a recommendation the court adopted. For Kay’s family and the school community, the relief of a definitive verdict coexisted with the permanence of loss. At the heart of sentencing statements was a simple truth: classrooms, families, and neighborhood rituals keep moving forward, but there will always be an empty seat where Kay sat.

The Earlier Case: The Attempted Murder of Michelle Rogers (2017, Michigan)

Years before the Lithia killing, in a home in Michigan, a different night unfolded with eerie parallels. Michelle Rogers and Matthew Terry were in a relationship that, like the later one with Kay, mixed ordinary affection with volatility and escalating control. One evening in 2017, an argument turned into a knife attack. Rogers testified that Terry went for her neck, delivering slashing and stabbing blows that left her fighting for breath and for her life. She survived—barely—through a combination of shock response, the intervention of others, and emergency medical care.

Michigan authorities charged Terry in connection with the attack. He was ultimately convicted of attempted murder (or a closely related top felony, depending on the exact charging language used in local statute) and sentenced to a term of years in state prison. He served roughly three years before release. The fact of that conviction mattered at the Florida trial for more than just character: the specific mechanics of the Michigan assault—an argument with a partner escalating into a focused knife attack to the neck—were, prosecutors argued, a signature. It is exceedingly rare for courts to allow past-bad-act evidence merely to paint a person as “bad.” It is permitted, however, when the earlier act bears on motive, intent, identity, absence of mistake, or demonstrates a plan or pattern so distinctive that it helps the jury decide what likely happened. That’s what the Florida court found.

Rogers’ testimony in Tampa was steady and clinical, describing pain and fear with the kind of detail that only a survivor can summon. She did not try to dramatize; she did not need to. The juxtaposition—Michelle alive before jurors, Kay gone—accomplished exactly what the state intended: it framed the Lithia homicide not as a freak occurrence but as the second instance of the same catastrophic behavior pattern.

Why the Michigan Case Mattered So Much in Florida

Criminal courts are wary of “once a wrongdoer, always a wrongdoer” reasoning. But when two incidents share uncommon features—the nature of the relationship, the trigger, the target area, the weapon, the tempo of the assault—courts often let jurors consider the earlier event for specific, legally permitted purposes. In Kay Baker’s case, the similarities were more than thematic; they were anatomical. The neck is a fatal target; repeated focus there speaks to intent to kill, not to a random scuffle’s chaotic slicing. When the jury compared the forensic roadmap in Lithia with Rogers’ account from Michigan, the state’s theory solidified: when angry and jealous, Terry turned to a knife and went directly for the most decisive wound.

Domestic Violence Pattern Recognition

Stories like Kay’s and Michelle’s illustrate how domestic violence can look deceptively ordinary from the outside until it doesn’t. Warning signs often appear in clusters: rapid intensification of the relationship; possessiveness masquerading as protectiveness; monitoring or interrogations about social interactions; cycles of contrition followed by renewed control; and threats—explicit or implied—about consequences if a partner embarrasses, flirts, or pulls away. Friends sometimes perceive the friction but underestimate its potential for lethal escalation. When a partner has a known history of extreme violence, the risk is dramatically higher. Risk-assessment tools in the domestic violence field elevate lethality scores sharply when there has been prior strangulation, neck-focused assaults, threats with weapons, or stalking. In both the Michigan and Florida episodes, neck targeting was central.

The Classroom, the Children, the Community

Cypress Creek Elementary felt Kay’s absence immediately—an empty classroom, a desk with lesson plans, science kits neatly stacked, math manipulatives in labeled bins, and a bulletin board reflecting a teacher who planned for continuity. Administrators brought in grief counseling for students and staff. Parents rallied in practical ways: meal trains, rides, and support for her children. Vigil speakers emphasized the everyday kindnesses that defined Kay’s presence on campus and the pride she took in demystifying math for nine-year-olds who arrived convinced they “weren’t math kids.”

The Legal Aftermath and Appeals Posture

After the life sentence, the ordinary machinery of post-conviction litigation began: notices of appeal, preservation of trial objections, and potential challenges to the admission of prior-act evidence, jury instructions, or sufficiency of evidence. In a case with tight timelines, short deliberations, and closely matched forensic and testimonial evidence, appellate relief is typically a long shot. The admission of the Michigan evidence—so pivotal to jurors—was anchored in established rules; unless the defense could show a clear abuse of discretion or unfair prejudice that outweighed probative value, the verdict would likely stand.

What the Evidence Showed, In Plain Terms

When stripped of legal framing, the evidence array looked like this:

• A known, specific conflict: jealousy triggered by perceived dancing or attention at a bar.
• A short interval between conflict and homicide.
• A private context: just the couple returning home after midnight.
• A violent knife assault concentrated on the neck, consistent with intent to kill quickly.
• Immediate flight or separation by the suspected attacker and injuries on him that prosecutors argued were consistent with a staged or secondary component of the same altercation.
• Forensic patterns aligning with a fight outside the home, not an intrusion by an unknown third party.
• A strikingly similar prior episode in which the same man attacked a romantic partner with a knife, again focusing on the neck area.

Evidence cases rarely line up in such tidy columns, but here the boxes checked themselves.

Lessons for Prevention and Response

Every domestic violence tragedy invites the same hard question: what, if anything, could have changed the outcome? Friends and communities can’t control a perpetrator’s choices, but they can lower the friction for a victim to seek help. That looks like nonjudgmental listening, practical safety planning (spare keys, a code word with a neighbor, a bag stashed at a friend’s house), and guided connections to advocates who can help navigate protection orders or emergency housing. Where prior serious violence exists, law enforcement and the courts may be able to impose protective conditions as part of probation or parole supervision. Employers, including schools, can offer confidential counseling and leave flexibility.

In the courtroom, allowing jurors to hear about earlier, highly similar attacks does not bring a victim back. It does, however, recognize a reality domestic-violence professionals already know: past conduct—especially distinctive, near-lethal conduct—can be the clearest predictor of future harm.

Remembering Kay and Honoring Michelle’s Survival

Kay Baker is remembered in the details—the way she greeted children in the morning, her patience with tricky concepts, the habit of sending a quick encouraging message to a colleague after a tough day. Her family, friends, and students carry those details forward. Michelle Rogers, still here, bore the emotional weight of turning her own trauma into testimony. Her survival years earlier did not prevent the Lithia homicide, but her voice in that Tampa courtroom likely ensured jurors saw the full truth about pattern and intent.

Closing

The murder of Kay Elizabeth Baker on May 27–28, 2022, in Lithia, Florida, was not only a sudden catastrophe on a quiet suburban street; it was the terminal point of a pattern that had already been written once before. In Michigan in 2017, Michelle Rogers lived to tell the story of a jealous, knife-wielding partner. In Florida in 2022, Kay did not. The justice system cannot reweave the life that was cut; what it can do—what it did here—is recognize the pattern, hold the responsible party to account, and let the community begin the work of remembrance and repair.