Man Claims Wife Fell Decorating Christmas Tree and Crashed Driving to Hospital: "Didn't Make Sense"

When law enforcement questioned James Baldwin, they found inconsistencies in his story of what happened to his wife. James claimed he was driving Judy to a hospital that was a half hour away, versus a few minutes, because she didn’t like the close hospital.  

“It’s not like she had a paper cut. Or a small laceration. There was significant blood in the Jeep,” said Sgt. Calvin Rikard of the South Carolina Highway Patrol on Accident, Suicide or Murder. “He was emotionless the entire conversation.”

During the coroner’s autopsy, he discovered Judy Baldwin had a large crack to her skull.

“Probably measuring nine inches to the back and sides,” said Terry Tinker, Chester County Coroner, on Accident, Suicide or Murder. “We knew that was something that was just not clicking in this story. A lick from a fall from a ladder to the mantle is not going to cause the damage to the skull that we had.”

The deputy solicitor of Chester County decided to look further into Judy Baldwin’s death, despite the Chester County sheriff closing the case. In January 2017, South Carolina’s State Law Enforcement Division began investigating. Law enforcement found that six months before her death, James took out an accidental life insurance policy on Judy for $25,000. He was the beneficiary of the policy.

As law enforcement spoke to friends and family of the couple, they discovered their home life was not as picturesque as James made it out to be.

“Things started to come out where they were arguing, and even people in his family who knew him, they were saying he’s got some anger issues,” Lively said.

Friends also suspected James was having an affair with a woman named Teri King, giving him a second motive.

“They said everyone felt like Jamie and Teri King were having an affair,” Lively said. “And Jamie basically denied that there was something hot and heavy going on, and Teri also denied that there was an affair.”

Information from the air bag module in James and Judy Baldwin’s Jeep proved to be some of the most important to the investigation.

“This module from that Jeep revealed there was no events recorded,” Rikard said. “It basically told us that nothing had woken up the system, jarred it enough, scared it enough, to say, ‘Hey, we might need to deploy the airbag.’”

Investigators determined James Baldwin lied about the crash the night of his wife’s death.

“We were able to determine there was never any hard swerve to miss some alleged vehicle that came into his lane,” Lively said. “There was no hard hit where he would have gotten unconscious or something like that. Absolutely never happened.”

In February 2017, law enforcement were able to again search the Baldwin home for any missed evidence, and despite a cleaning, found blood spots that helped prove Judy was murdered.

“We were able to determine that because of the way the spatter was so high over the Christmas tree that she could not have just fallen, and then the blood drip…there was her blood that had actually been cast off from someone who was likely hitting her,” Lively said.

In March 2017, the prosecutor and coroner looked again at their evidence, and considered that a Santa stocking holder could have been the weapon. It had been collected as evidence the night of Judy’s death.

“Our forensic pathologist felt very confident…seeing the object, she said, ‘This fits. It matched the injury to her head,’” Lively said.

The pathologist declared the manner of death to be a homicide, forcing a grand jury that ended up indicting James Baldwin for his wife’s death. In November 2019, a jury found him guilty of murder.

“He wanted to have his girlfriend, and when Judy put her foot down, he’s like, ‘I’m done.’ He got mad,” Lively said.

James Baldwin was sentenced to life in prison.