Causby owns Real Tree Services and
operates the company on property at 2830 Hartland Road, about two miles due west of Foothills Regional Airport north of Morganton. He hired Baker as a laborer about six months ago.
“He started in March or April,” Causby said. “He’s just a hard-working individual.”
Causby gave his permission for law enforcement to search his property with a K-9 unit on Saturday. He said they were looking for Zahra’s remains on his industrial wood chipper and a 4-foot-high pile of wood chips.
Causby said
the dog alerted on the chipper and the pile, but two days of intense searching by a combined force of Hickory police, Burke County deputies, SBI agents and FBI agents failed to turn up any evidence.
Sources in Hickory said
investigators returned to the scene Tuesday night.
“I thought it was a waste of time when they came out to search,” Causby said. “I have a difficult time believing this. I like to think I’m a pretty good judge of people and I’d like to think I’m still not wrong.”
Causby operates his company with Baker and three employees.
He said Baker remains on the payroll. Causby described Baker as a quiet man and self-directed worker who can be funny at times and tells stories about working on a sod farm and a sugar mill in his native Australia.
Causby met Elisa Baker a couple of times when she’d come to pick her husband up after work. He said those brief encounters left him feeling unsettled.
“He (Baker) may not have had good judgment,” Causby said, referring to the woman Baker met on the Internet and moved to America to wed.
“I think the elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top. She seemed very controlling.”
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