Judge sets trial date for accused murderer of UGA law school student

Tara Louise Baker

By Joe Johnson

A trial date has been scheduled for the accused killer of University of Georgia law student Tara Baker.

Edrick Faust is charged with murdering the 23-year-old student after breaking into her Athens apartment in 2001.

He was arrested in May of last year and subsequently indicted for malice and felony murder, rape, aggravated sodomy, arson, and other crimes associated with Baker’s death.

Now 50, Faust had lived just a couple blocks away from Baker’s apartment on Fawn Drive.

The indictment alleges that Faust broke into Baker’s home in the Deer Park neighborhood and killed the student by stabbing her with a knife and strangling her with a cord. He also allegedly raped and sodomized Baker and set fire to her apartment in an attempt to conceal his crimes.

The case went unsolved for over two decades —mostly because the fire destroyed the crime scene and physical evidence — until after the Athens-Clarke County Police Department partnered with the newly-formed Georgia Bureau of Investigation Cold Case Unit for a comprehensive review of the case.

 Biological evidence and DNA science along with new technology all played a role in solving the case, according to GBI Director Chris Hosey.

Faust pleaded not guilty to all charge in the indictment.

Western Judicial Circuit Chief Judge Lisa Lott has scheduled his trial to begin on October 20th at the courthouse in downtown Athens.

Edrick Lamont Faust