The Sugar Land Sanction: Discrepancies in the death of former Enron Vice Chairman Cliff Baxter

The Sugar Land Sanction by daniel hopsicker • Friday February 15, 2002 at 02:53 PM

An investigation in Houston Texas by the MadCowMorning News has uncovered significant discrepancies in the official version of the death of former Enron Vice Chairman Cliff Baxter. While Texas officials have been willing to share only a few facts about the case, much of what they have revealed, we have learned, is puzzling, misleading, or, amazingly, wrong.

Even more amazing is that —with billions at stake—the very real possibility that Baxter might have been murdered has been completely ignored in the press.

Early wire reports quoted Sugar Land Police Department spokeswoman Patricia Whitty saying that Baxter was found inside his Mercedes early on Friday with a gunshot wound to the head, a suicide note, and a revolver at his side.

It was an impressive litany. Police appeared to have all of their ducks in a row.

A statement released by the Sugar Land Police Department that morning broke the news...

"At 2.23 a.m. this morning (January 25) Sugar Land police officers on routine patrol discovered John. C. Baxter, a Sugar Land resident, inside a vehicle parked between two medians on Palm Royale Boulevard of an apparent self-inflicted wound to the head."

Sugar Land Police Sgt Truman Body told assembled reporters that the discovery of Baxter's body happened during a "routine patrol. It's my understanding that a deputy had seen (Baxter's) vehicle a few minutes earlier and through his routine patrol had doubled back to see if he could offer any assistance."

Even a cursory examination of the facts reveals that very little of this is true.

We uncovered this startling fact: Baxter's body had not been found by the Sugar Land police, as they have been insisting...

And rather than being "dead at the scene" when authorities 'found' him, Clifford Baxter had been still alive.

S. H. "Hal" Werlein is the Constable for the county precinct encompassing the posh Sweetwater development where Baxter lived. The Constable's Office functions much like County Sheriffs’ in many parts of the country, he explained.

Contrary to the statements of the Sugar Land Police Department, it was not two Sugar Land police officers but one of Hal Werlein's Deputy Constables who discovered the former Enron executive slumped behind the wheel of his new Mercedes sedan, parked just inside the Sweetwater development where Baxter and his family lived, in much the poshest part of town.

"Our Constable’s office has a contract deputy program which provides private security guards for the Sweetwater homeowner’s association, and it was one of these men who discovered Mr. Baxter," Werlein told us.

"The report I got from my Deputy Constable there on the scene stated he had come upon a Mercedes sitting parked in a turnout. He became suspicious and approached the vehicle, where he found Baxter still alive. He then immediately called for EMT’s (Emergency Medical Technicians)."

Why such critical discrepancies about the most crucial of details? We've all watched enough TV cop shows to grill detectives with a simple question that usually calls for a yes or no answer...

On the day we visited the crime scene, there were no gawkers at the turnout on Palm Royale Boulevard. But there is, nearby, a security kiosk that has a sign across the front reading ‘Constable Precinct Four.’

"I don’t know why the Sugar Land Police Department is saying they found Baxter, because it isn’t true," continued Constable Werlein. "My Deputy Constable found him."

Confronted with Constable Werlein’s statement, Sugar Land Police spokesperson Patricia Whitty admitted that Werlein was correct. The police statement contained inaccuracies, she stated. But she offered no explanation for how or why these critical errors or mis-statements had occurred, nor why they hadn't been corrected earlier.

There was one thing the Sugar Land Police Department was absolutely sure of: Baxter was a "definite suicide," which they had already proclaimed by 10:00 that morning.

Sugar Land police spokesmen didn't know the caliber of the gun, were unsure of the make of the car, or if a bullet was found, or where the gun was. But--and thank god!--they DID know that there were "no apparent signs of foul play."

The police captain in charge of the immediate investigation concluded that it was clear Baxter had taken his own life. He then ordered Baxter's corpse taken to a local mortuary without an autopsy.

Incredulous, Cliff Baxter's family then reportedly called on a local judge, who intervened with a counter order insisting that the body instead be taken to the county morgue for an official autopsy.

When the results of the autopsy were released last Thursday Clifford Baxter became the second American so far this year to perish through ‘suicide by zit.’

These days, explanations for mysterious suicides can apparently be found as needed, as close at hand as the nearest medicine cabinet.

Take for example the lead from the Associated Press report on the Cliff Baxter autopsy, calling attention to the fact that the former Enron Corp. executive had taken "a pain reliever, an anti-depressant and a sleeping aid" before "he shot himself to death after the company's collapse."

If you parse this sentence a bit—looking for a hint of an official explanation for the death of the most important witness in what some are calling the biggest scandal since Watergate—you end up with some pretty twisted pretzel logic.

No mention in the AP story about the possibility Baxter may have been murdered to prevent him from divulging incriminating information to Congressional committees investigating the Enron scandal, even though one such committee had been negotiating a deal with Baxter's lawyer's to get him to testify on the very day he 'killed' himself.

All things considered, this sounds like a pretty typical day in Mayberry circa 2002. But maybe the AP is intimating that under certain circumstances—like just before testifying to Congress, for example—mixing Prozac and Advil can lead abruptly and with no warning to a heavenly choir serenading you with the final chorus to "Goodbye Cruel World."

This sounds like logic that could have been conceived, in point of fact, by the very same people who brought us the word of Tampa teen Charles' Bishops' acne-induced self-immolation.

If it had been our last night in town before heading out for that Great Roundup in the Sky, we don't think that just before falling on our sword we would be making sure that we'd taken all our evening pills.

Instead we might 'ingest' a little Jack Daniels to steel our nerve, or a few shots of Stolichnaya to ward off the chill of cold gunmetal pressing against our clammy forehead.

Because one thing we are not going to need, on this final night, is a sleeping pill. Taking a sleeping pill just before committing suicide only makes sense if you're going to have trouble nodding off even in the Afterlife... It’s redundant, right?

In the wake of September 11th we think they need to run some kind of disclaimer before the news. At least warn viewers of sticky wickets up ahead.

The 'news' of Baxter’s List came hard on the heels of new developments in the other currently-suspicious suicide, that of the Kamikazie Kid pilot in Tampa.

Charles Bishop, the first American suicide bomber in history, committed the only authentic terrorist attack in America since 9/11. Yet authorities have still offered no explanation for his bizarre attack.

They were however forced to admit that young Charles Bishop showed no traces of accutane, the previously little-known acne medication with recently discovered suicide-inducing properties.

Regardless, it helped forestall any closer examination of whether this 15-year-old boy—whose father is a mysterious half-Lebanese half-Sicilian organized crime figure from Boston—might have overheard anything he shouldn’t have.

Instead, the young pilot was adjudged to be troubled, but not a terrorist, a strange conclusion to reach about someone who has just flown a plane into a skyscraper at 160 miles per hour.

Authorities seemed unconcerned that something similar had--and just recently--occurred.

"Unconcerned" is also a good way to describe Texas law enforcement officials after the Enron Scandal had claimed its first victim, even though Cliff Baxter was an insider who was fixin’ to talk.

Little wonder then that today even the relatively non-paranoid are entertaining suspicions that when they make the movie of the Cliff Baxter story, it won’t play like a Lifetime Original about ‘a Dad who couldn’t cope,’ but like a high tech spy thriller:

Whatever the ultimate truth of how he came to die in the middle of a chilly late January night in Texas, the most immediate consequence of Cliff Baxter's death is that Americans are now going to learn a lot less about the Enron Scandal than if Baxter had managed to hang around long enough to enter Witness Protection and get fitted for a bulletproof vest.

Baxter was talking of needing a bodyguard just 36 hours before he committed suicide.

Despite the blasé approach of the home-town Houston Chronicle to the shocking death of the most important witness in the biggest scandal since Watergate few in Houston we spoke to believe the former Enron Vice Chairman took his own life.

After going, decisively, off the record, one long-time friend of Baxter’s explained it to us this way:

"What if, for example, they had 'gotten to' John Dean before his testimony before the Watergate Committee made him a world-wide celebrity?"

"I'll tell you what would have happened. Nothing. The ‘cancer on the Presidency’ gets covered with a big gauze bandage, and we’d have all been none the wiser."

"Nobody would have seriously investigated the suicide of an obscure mid-level Nixon staffer said to be despondent over having been called to testify about misconduct in the Oval Office."

If you're talking cost-effective damage control, its hard to beat assassination.

At the Houston Yacht Club, where Baxter had taken to virtually living aboard his 72-foot yacht Tranquility Base, one club executive told us:

"Cliff Baxter was not a person who I could ever believe would kill himself. He had boundless energy, a positive attitude, and everything to live for: a wife, kids, and the time and money to enjoy them. He was anxiously awaiting, for example, the delivery of his sleek new boat, which he was going to call Tranquility Base II."

This yacht club skipper, a man with relatively extensive business dealings with Cliff Baxter, stared for a long time at the slate-gray water of Galveston Bay on a dreary February afternoon. Then he shrugged...

"Maybe Cliff just knew too much," he said. "That’s what everyone around here thinks, anyway."

An incredibly explosive political murder—if that’s what it was—would seem to be the very definition of Hard Ball.’ You would think it would be the the ideal topic for a special edition of the show of the same name.

It seems as if Mr. Matthews, along with most of his brethren in the mainstream press, find themselves otherwise engaged.

What's going on right now in Houston Texas may eventually come to be seen as the most blatant media clampdown since the death of Vince Foster.

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Even more amazing is that —with billions at stake—the very real possibility that Baxter might have been murdered has been completely ignored in the press.

I've always wondered about this. OTOH, I doubt that if this really was a hit-made-to-look-like-suicide, those who ordered the thing wouldn't have left any loose ends about it.

Tuor

MadCowMorning News...

But, remember, it was the National Enquirer, that vestage of journalistic integrity, that bastion of truth, that broke the Clinton scandals--as the major media remained quiet. Initially, the NE reports were poo-pooed.

Almost any significant "incident" nowadays breeds conspiracy theories. Trouble is...the major media has proved themselves to be not fully trustworthy in their reporting and the government "officials" have also proved themselves to be not always forthright.

Recall that for nearly 3 days, shoebomber Reid was a lone individual, nutcase, with no links to terrorism and just a misguided neurotic guy who acted on his on volition. Now, we know he had direct connections and was in the thick of terrorist plotting.

MadCowMorning News, whoever they are, do raise intriguing questions--and so far, answers from "officials" haven't been forthcoming.

. . . even though one such committee had been negotiating a deal with Baxter's lawyer's to get him to testify on the very day he 'killed' himself.

I'm reminded of DeMohernshilt (sp?), Lee Harvey Oswald's Dallas 'handler' prior to Nov 22, 63, who died from a 'self-inflicted' gunshot the day prior to his scheduled appearance before a House Committee on Assassinations in the late 70's.

it is reminiscent of the vince foster case; that police detective who ordered that the body get no autopsy is not a trustworthy person in my opinion, that was not a reasonable decision, this case was all over the news, the guy was scheduled to testify later that day I think, the police detective should lose his job; but most likely his whole organization has been compromised; just like the FBI and so much else was corrupted in the foster case.

Very interesting article. I remember when Enron exec, Sherron Watkins testified before Congress. I watched some of it on tv. She was asked something to the effect if she thought Cliff Baxter's death wasn't a suicide. Her reaction was strange. She took a long time to answer then said said something like she had no reason to doubt the police. Then she went on to say she wasn't comfortable talking about him. Spooky stuff.

A potential witness which might cooperate with authorities is in a dangerous position. With billions at stake, a contract has the possibility of being a cheap alternative to the truth the witness might divulge. A good example of this, although money was not the object, was the drivers license examiner who met a fiery fate the day before she was to testify in court. Police have since declared it to be a homocide.

Well, lets think about this for a minute......

1. Baxter left Enron some months before his death because he was unwilling to participate in the kind of business being conducted there, so we've been told.

2. Now, a few months later, hes ordered a new boat, and he feels things are heating up enough that he wants to get a personal body guard. With 15 to 17 million in the bank, he can afford one with no problems.

3. Before his new body guard can be put into action, Baxter suddenly kills himself.

4. He's found barely alive in his car with a gun, a note, and a hole in his head. But, the cops do not know the caliber of the bullet that ultimately killed Baxter, though there is a gun found on the scene.

5. The police tell us lies about who actually found Baxter. Why?

6. No one in the media is concerned that there may be foul play here. Why?

7. No autopsy was done. Why?

And those are just some of the things that come from news sources. How many other key points don't add up?

There was no bullet ever found,

There was little damage to victim’s mouth,

body was laid out neatly on its back as "though for a funeral,"

victim’s car keys were not found in his pocket when first searched, but were subsequently found in his front pocket,

Almost all the photographic evidence is either lost or destroyed.

All of the x-rays have either disappeared, or were never taken, contrary to the official autopsy report.

Gun was made from parts of two different guns.

Oh, sorry that was Vince Foster’s 'suicide', never mind............

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