Alex Baber’s fascination with true crime traces back to his childhood and is deeply intertwined with his family history. In the 1970s, a series of disappearances of itinerant workers on the farm of his maternal grandfather, Neil Eady, in the Tarpon Springs area near Tampa, Florida, sparked suspicions. After Eady’s death in the early 1980s, the family sold the land and demolished the barn, where human bones and remains were later discovered beneath the furnace. Baber recounts this as a “crazy” chapter in his family’s past, noting that his grandfather was suspected of being a serial killer, and that his uncle, Jeremiah Eady, was a convicted murderer.

On Christmas Eve in 1969, Jeremiah Eady fatally shot his sister, Vivian Eady-Londros, and her husband at close range with a shotgun. Following his father’s departure from the family when Baber was six, his mother relocated with Baber and his two older brothers to northern Florida, where they lived in isolation in a cabin she built on the Suwannee River. Baber describes the setting as “in the middle of the woods” and characterizes his early school years as challenging due to bullying and social anxiety. Diagnosed with autism at age 12, Baber found solace and stimulation in reading detective fiction and true crime magazines.

His early encounters with crime stories were also shaped by the pain his mother endured after the murder of her sister. Baber developed a keen interest in criminology and pursued it independently. Despite excelling academically, as demonstrated by high GED scores, he left college shortly after enrolling. A turning point came in 2007 after watching the film "Zodiac," which deepened his engagement with true crime and inspired him to teach himself forensic science techniques including handwriting analysis, biometrics, cryptography, and crime scene investigation, largely through self-study and online resources to avoid classroom environments.

Finding limited employment opportunities in forensic fields, Baber took work as a bodyguard and in a warehouse performing night shift data entry. In 2021, with inheritance funds and financial support from several victim-advocate groups, he founded the Cold Case Crime Analysts (CCCoA). Initially, the organization comprised Baber, his then-wife J-Lynn, three private investigators, and several forensic experts. Baber selects cases that personally resonate with him and frequently responds to inquiries from families of missing persons, often working on a pro bono basis. Among the cases that continue to captivate him is that of the Zodiac Killer, which remains a driving force behind his investigative efforts.