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"Like Chinatown, but set in Texas." by Daniel Hopsicker February 11--Houston Texas 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 gunshot wound, a suicide note, and a revolver at his side." 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." "Baxter was dead at the scene and the sole occupant of the vehicle." Even a cursory examination of the facts reveals that very little of this is true. Baxter's body had not been discovered by the Sugar Land police, we have learned. What's more, the authorities who did stumble onto Clifford Baxter found him apparently still alive. "Tell us one more time: which one of you found the body?" 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. The MadCowMorningNews has learned that 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 crucial discrepancies in such an important case? 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," he told us. "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. She offered no explanation for how these critical errors or mis-statements had occurred, nor why they hadn't been corrected. "Trust us. We're really really sure that he took his own life." One thing the Sugar Land Police Department was sure of? Baxter was a "definite suicide," which they quickly proclaimed by 10:00 that morning. The police captain in charge of the immediate investigation stated it was clear Baxter had taken his own life, and ordered the body taken to a local mortuary without an autopsy. Incredulous, Cliff Baxter's family reportedly called on a local judge to intervene with a counter order insisting that the body be taken to the county morgue for an official autopsy instead. When the results of the autopsy were released last Thursday it became clear that Clifford Baxter had become the new year’s second ‘suicide by zit.’ Explanations for mysterious suicides can apparently be found as close at hand as the nearest medicine cabinet... The lead sentence of the Associated Press story on the Cliff Baxter autopsy report stated 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." "A pain reliever, an anti-depressant and a sleeping aid" 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 stop 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 that very same day. Must be just coincidence. The important thing, the Associated Press lead, is that on the night Cliff Baxter died he had ingested a pain reliever, an anti-depressant and a sleeping aid. All things considered, this sounds like a pretty typical day in Mayberry circa 2002. But perhaps the AP has access to expert testimony denied the MadCowMorningNews, revealing that under certain circumstances—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 chorus to "Goodbye Cruel World." But as an explanation for why Enron’s former Vice Chairman shuffled off this mortal coil it leaves something to be desired, and sounds, in fact, as if it could have been conceived by the same people who brought us Tampa teen Charles' Bishops' suicide by zit, or acne-induced self-immolation, to use the technical term. Consider: its your last night in town. You're heading for parts unknown; that Great Roundup in the Sky beckons. Before falling on your sword, do you think you'll first want a pain reliever, an anti-depressant and a sleeping aid? How about, instead, a little Jack Daniels to steel your nerve? A few shots of Stolichnaya to ward off the chill of a gun’s barrel against your head? Doesn't this sound a little more likely? Because--think about it—one thing you're not going to need is that sleeping pill... Taking a sleeping pill just before committing suicide only makes sense if you're convinced you'll have troubling nodding off even in the Afterlife. It’s redundant. "You’re already covered on that front." We think that in the wake of September 11th they should begin the Nightly News with some kind of disclaimer, maybe by adding the old Rod Serling line: "You are now entering the Twilight Zone." "News" of Baxter’s List came hard on the heels of 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. Authorities have still offered no motive for the attack, although they were forced to admit that Charles Bishop had shown no traces of accutane, the previously little-known suicide-inducing acne medication that became an instant health menace, complete with psychologists opining about it on all the talk shows. Misdirection, perhaps? Disinformation? Regardless, it helped forestall any closer examination of whether this boy—whose father is a mysterious half-Lebanese half-Sicilian organized crime figure from Boston—might have been overhearing anything he shouldn’t have at the dinner table Mob Dad Charles Bishara might have let slip... Instead, the young suicide pilot was adjudged to have been troubled, but not a terrorist, which seems a strange conclusion to reach about someone who just flew a plane into a skyscraper at 160 miles per hour. Yet authorities seemed somehow unconcerned that something similar had--and just recently--occurred. "Nothing to see here. Move along…" "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.’ Instead it will be a high tech thriller. Call it "The Sugarland Sanction." Like "Chinatown," only set in Texas. 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 we are going to learn a lot less about the Enron Scandal than if Baxter had managed to hang on long enough to enter Witness Protection. The bodyguard he was talking of needing just 36 hours before he died would clearly not have been sufficient. 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 with whom we spoke 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." "And no one would have seriously investigated the obvious suicide of a still-obscure mid-level Nixon staffer, said to be despondent over having been called to testify against men he respected about misconduct in the Oval Office." "Assassination is extremely cost-effective damage control." 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 out for a long time at the slate-gray water of Galveston Bay on an equally gray and chilly February afternoon. "Maybe he just knew too much," he shrugged. "That’s what everyone around here thinks, anyway." An investigation of what could easily be an incredibly explosive political murder—if that’s what it was—would seem to be the very definition of an ideal topic for a special edition of ‘Hard Ball.’ Alas, it seems as if Mr. Matthews, as well as all his confreres in the mainstream press, find themselves otherwise engaged. What's going on right now in Houston Texas may eventally come to be seen as the most blatant media clampdown since the death of Vince Foster. Lily Tomlin said it best. "No matter how cynical I get, I can’t keep up." |
