The Person

by Matthew Kelly

also the period that Masha Cloning went public, and Mr Baker became an instant millionaire. Only six months later, his job apparently complete and with more important things to spend his time, he sold his shares for $25M and retired. Masha Cloning was renamed “ReGen” and has since become a behemoth in the scientific and business world.

  The problems begin

  47: Anyone who has raised children would not be surprised to hear that the difficulties started around puberty, although whether or not the problems were caused by ordinary male hormones or something quite different is, to an extent, the very question this court is being asked to decide.

  48: Again, I rely upon Mr Baker’s words, who had raised the boy from infanthood:

  “It was David’s thirteenth birthday today. I wish I could say it was a day of celebration and joyousness. It was not.

  The animosity I have been describing for some time came to a head this morning. He had shown the same ambivalence to his birthday as he had to life in general in the past several months, but I was certain it was nerves or perhaps the ordinary trials and tribulations of a young boy becoming a man. I am no longer sure that is the case.

  I woke him early – before the sun had risen. He was curious but not immediately hostile. In what I thought would be an offer graciously received, I took him to Moore River for some fishing. It was to be a birthday surprise, and initially it seemed I had done the right thing for what felt like the first time in a long time.

  In fact, it was only when we were there - set up with rods in hand after some two hours of polite if not particularly engaging conversation – that tensions escalated. I mentioned, as barely more than a casual aside, that I had taken David – my first David – to this very spot as a young boy. My first David had caught a snapper - can you imagine, a six-year-old with his condition catching a snapper? – and we had cooked it for dinner that night.

  I don’t understand David’s reaction. He went quiet for a while, and then attacked me at the first opportunity, the mildest of opportunities. He does not like talking about my first David – I know it, but I cannot understand it. How can he be jealous of himself?[5]

  49: The relationship between David and his father deteriorated as the years progressed. David grew distant from his father. He was a fiercely intelligent child who achieved spectacular school results with what appeared to be little effort. He grew into a tall, solidly-built, handsome young man.

  50: From all accounts, he was respected, admired and feared. He was charming but distant. He was generous and friendly when it was to his benefit, but brutal and vengeful when crossed. He was popular with the girls at school and lost his virginity at a young age – indeed, it seems he was responsible for taking the virginity of a number of his female classmates.

  51: He finished high school with the highest tertiary entrance score the school had seen in a decade and left a legacy which would be discussed with awe for some time. What friends he had, he quickly disposed of.

  David begins University

  52: David enrolled in law at the University of Western Australia and moved out of home a week before his first lecture. It is here that Mr Baker’s journal ceases to have a great degree of relevance and I come to rely upon David’s classmates, friends and lecturers. I will however refer one final time to Mr Baker’s journal – the final entry he ever wrote, written the day after his son moved out:

  “I feel like I should say that the house is so quiet. But that is not how it feels. The house feels alive for the first time in years, as if David’s mere presence sucked the life from the walls and the floors and the air itself. Suddenly the house is speaking to me again – rejoicing as if a weight has been lifted.

  This is all a lie. It is not the house that has changed. It is me. I am too ashamed to admit that I am glad he is gone. I hate myself for saying it, yet every breath I release is one of relief. His cynicism, his smugness, his cruelty – I will miss none of these things.

  Where did they come from? Is this really the David I thought I was bringing back to life? My sweet son – would he really have become this... this distant, aloof man who looks in my direction and sees only the wall behind me? I cannot believe that. I will not.

  Then did I fail? Did the process fail?

  I need a drink. I will think about it in the morning.”[6]

  53: The drink that Mr Baker alluded to turned out to be one of many. It is not necessary for the purposes of this judgment to postulate on the reasons for his descent into alcoholism. No doubt his concerns with David played a part – perhaps that was the only reason or one of many.

  54: David continued to see his father during this period. They would meet for coffee or lunch once a week on Sunday afternoon. The only evidence of these meetings are hearsay, but from all accounts they were both perfunctory but considered necessary. David seemed to take no pleasure from them – his father and he by that stage shared little interests – yet he would attend every week without fail, often missing social engagements to ensure he was there.

  55: David’s dedication to the weekly meetings did not even appear dented when his father would drink a bottle of wine with dinner or pour bourbon into his coffee – often having finished half a bottle before arrival. David never spoke badly of his father, even it seems in the final few months when his father could not leave his bed without the assistance of vodka. David never offered to help, but nor did he judge. Outwardly, he went through the motions – as to what was happening internally, no-one was able to provide evidence.

  56: James Baker committed suicide on 28 July 2022. David was aged 19 and in his second year of law school. The funeral was well-attended despite Mr Baker’s isolation for the best part of two decades. There were many who remembered him fondly – mostly colleagues and a few friends. David spoke well at the funeral, describing him as a “brilliant scientist and loving father”. If he cried for his father, no-one saw him do it.

  Mr Baker’s estate

  57: David was named executor and sole beneficiary of his father’s estate, worth by that stage over $30M. David liquidated the investments – successful or otherwise – and set up his own portfolio.

  58: Despite his substantial wealth, Mr Baker had owned only one property – the family home which he had bought with his wife in 1984, in which the original David had lived and died, and in which the cloned David had grown up. David engaged an agent to destroy the contents of the house – not sell them, despite their significant value – and to sell the property within a week irrespective of price. As far as anyone could testify, David did not visit the house before it was sold, demolished and replaced by a set of luxury apartments.

  59: UWA offered to postpone his end-of-year exams, but he refused. Not only did he sit the exams, but he obtained the highest scores of his year in five out of six units.

  David’s reaction to the death of his father

  60: Witnesses found it difficult to describe the change in David after his father’s death, though they all agreed that there was a change. He had always been aloof, but with a glint of life – of humour perhaps – which would shine through at the most unexpected times. It seems that glint had died with his father. He had never been one who felt sympathy easily, whether it be to persons he was close with or starving children in foreign countries. That hardness appeared to be galvanised. There had previously been exceptions – now there were none.

  David’s relationship with the Defendant

  61: None of this is to suggest however that David was an outcast. To the contrary, he had a group of friends – mostly other law students – who genuinely liked him and enjoyed being in his company. He was charming, confident and had the ability to speak intelligently – disarmingly so, it seems – on an extraordinary breadth of topics. One of these friends was Mr Jonathan Carrol, who gave evidence as follows:

  J CARROL: He was brilliant. I think that’s the first thing that attracted most people to him – when you spoke with him, you felt like you were on the verge of being involved with something
life-changing, as if he were about to challenge some assumption you’d always made, or correct some misapprehension that had shaped your life.

  M KELLY: I’m sorry, Mr Carrol, but this is your friend you’re talking about. If you don’t mind me saying, you make it sound like he was your lecturer.

  J CARROL: He was... You would never have idle chatter with him or just laugh about something stupid. But when you spoke to him, he would give you everything. His full attention, his complete devotion to you. He’d always listen, he’d never be distracted. He was honest – sometimes brutally honest, and it could be shocking at first. But then you tried to think of a bad side to that honesty and you couldn’t find one.

  62: David and the Defendant, known at the time as Marisa Gemma Carlotta (“Marisa”), began their relationship in their second year of university – the year 2022, less than a month after Mr Baker’s suicide. Despite both attending UWA they had never met – Marisa studied English Literature, and their paths had no reason to cross. Their meeting only a few weeks earlier appears to have been sheer coincidence – both were waiting for a bus to take them into the city. Marisa started up a conversation for no reason other than boredom. They began to talk and ended up having dinner.

  63: Marisa gave the following evidence:

  DEFENDANT: He