Milpitas woman killed 2 of her friends the same day, one in hit-and-run, police say

SAN JOSE — A South Bay woman has been officially charged with a second murder count that backs suspicions from victim families who believed she killed two of her close friends within hours of each other late last month, strangling and stabbing one in a San Jose home then running down the other with her car in an alleged ambush in Milpitas.

Anila Baby, 32, of Milpitas, was charged with murder Thursday in the death of Ann Mary Mathew, 39, who was found dead by her husband the afternoon of Aug. 28 at their San Jose home on Linda Vista Street off Toyon Avenue near the San Jose Country Club, according to police and 911 emergency dispatchers.

Around 1:50 p.m., Mathew was discovered “on the ground, in a pool of blood, with a knife next to her,” according to a dispatch recording archived online. A probable cause affidavit from San Jose police states that Mathew had injuries to her head and extremities “and appeared to be strangled”; the Santa Clara County medical examiner would later conclude that she died from “combined strangulation … blunt trauma of head and face; and incised wounds.”

San Jose police said at the time that homicide detectives determined that Mathew and her presumed attacker knew each other, and Baby was “quickly identified” as a suspect.

By that point, Baby was already in police custody in Milpitas, accused of driving over 35-year-old Anjana Hari at the Mill Creek Apartments on Dixon Landing Road in Milpitas less than two hours before Mathew’s body was found.

A second murder count has now been added to the criminal complaint against Baby, and she is being held without bail in the county Main Jail.

She was arraigned in a San Jose courtroom Thursday afternoon; she did not speak or enter a plea, and was ordered to return to court Nov. 17. Her attorney Shawn George declined to comment on the case.

Deputy District Attorney Marisa McKeown said the victims’ families are devastated and struggling to piece together why their loved ones were killed, allegedly at the hands of their best friend.

“The number one question that investigators are working on right now is: Why would a woman kill her two best friends in the middle of the morning in cold blood?” McKeown said after the court hearing. “Both women were mothers. They are residents of our community and they and their families are suffering terribly from the ultimate question of, why would someone do this?”

If convicted on the charges as currently filed, Baby would face 50 years to life in prison.

The new affidavit indicates that the link between the two killings was made primarily from blood, DNA, and physical evidence connecting Baby to both deaths, as well as Mathew’s missing cell phone being found in the defendant’s SUV.

At Mathew’s San Jose home, homicide detectives found evidence of a struggle “and blood clean up,” and that her phone was gone, according to the affidavit. They also reviewed motion-activated surveillance footage from the home, and found that someone had deleted video clips recorded at 10:37 a.m. and around 11:35 a.m.

McKeown said Thursday that appears to have been deliberate. “We do believe that in the course of committing the crime in San Jose that the defendant was involved in potentially attempting to cover up her crimes,” she said.
One of the video clips that remained showed a sandal on a front door mat. Detectives obtained a witness statement attesting that Mathew “received an unexpected visitor” around the time the first surveillance clip was deleted, and that no one else went to the home until Mathew’s husband found her.

Additionally, detectives stated that the sandal seen in the video clip matched what Baby was reportedly wearing when she was arrested in Milpitas, and that officers found Mathew’s phone in Baby’s vehicle. Surveillance footage and license-plate reading cameras, as well as Baby’s cell phone signal, all placed her at Mathew’s home around the time she was killed, according to the affidavit.

Baby and Hari both lived at the Milpitas apartment complex, and public records show Mathew also recently lived there before moving to San Jose. They all hail from the southern Indian state of Kerala, according to media from that region that have been covering the killings. Family and friends have established GoFundMe pages to support the survivors of Mathew and Hari.

Around noon on Aug. 28, Milpitas police were called to a collision in the apartment parking lot, with witnesses describing a blue Toyota Highlander SUV fleeing the scene, and hitting three parked vehicles on the way out.

An affidavit written by Milpitas police detectives stated that responding officers found Hari suffering from “severe head trauma and bleeding,” and she was pronounced dead at the scene.

Police then got a report that the SUV drove recklessly past responding patrol vehicles and abruptly pulled into a nearby Walgreens parking lot on North Milpitas Boulevard. Two detectives caught up to the vehicle and arrested Baby, who was incoherent and unable to answer questions, and showing visible injuries and blood on her arms and legs, according to the affidavit.

The Milpitas investigation confirmed through family members that Baby and Hari were good friends and neighbors at the Mill Creek complex. Witnesses to the deadly collision told police that Hari seemed relaxed and smiling as she approached Baby’s SUV, but that once Hari stepped in front of the vehicle, Baby abruptly accelerated from a dead stop and hit Hari with the SUV’s passenger-side tires before speeding away.

Another resident of the complex told police they recognized Baby as she drove out of the parking lot and had to move out of the way of her speeding SUV. A Milpitas traffic investigator later found that there were no tire friction or skid marks indicating Baby tried to brake, helping police conclude she intentionally hit Hari.

McKeown added Thursday that Baby called Hari prior to the fatal encounter.

In relation to the Milpitas arrest, San Jose police wrote in their affidavit that the injuries and blood on Baby were inconsistent with a collision, and that the amount of blood on her did not match her own injuries, suggesting they were connected to Mathew’s death. They also stated that blood on Baby’s clothing matched Mathew’s DNA.