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Cracks In Cliff Baxter Case
By Reed Irvine
Accuracy in Media, www.aim.org
May 16, 2002

Carol Baxter may regret having fought so hard to keep the police from releasing the suicide note allegedly written by her husband, Cliff Baxter, the former Enron Vice Chairman. The note was released in spite of her efforts to keep it secret, and copies were published in papers around the country. Dan Nagao, who became friends with Baxter when they were students at Columbia University, saw a copy of the note, and his suspicions about the cause of death were immediately aroused.

He could not visualize Cliff Baxter printing a note like that entirely in block letters, including his name at the end. Nagao had received letters from Baxter at Christmas time every year until last year. He said that all those letters had been written in longhand. He was not the only one who found it hard to believe that a graduate of the Columbia University School of Business Management would block print his handwritten notes and letters. This may explain why Mrs. Baxter did not want the note made public. The expensive lawyers she hired to block its release had argued that it contained "intimate, personal family facts" that should be kept private. That turned out to be false, leaving the possibility that the note was forged as a plausible explanation of why anyone would spend a lot of money to have it suppressed.

After releasing the note, the Sugar Land police closed the Baxter case, declaring his death a suicide. That means they think Baxter wrote it. If Baxter customarily wrote notes and letters in cursive, the police should not have authenticated the suicide note solely by comparing it with a known sample of Baxter's block letters, which would be easy to copy. His fingerprints have to be on the note, and good and writing experts should be consulted.

The police and the medical examiner who performed the autopsy have overlooked an even more critical clue than the note. That is the quantity of Ambien, a hypnotic drug found in Baxter's blood and stomach. Dr. Joye Carter, the chief medical examiner for Harris County, ruled Baxter's death a suicide before the toxicology report was completed. Nearly all the news media began calling Baxter's death a suicide with no evidence to support it. When the toxicology report was issued on February 1, it didn't get the attention it deserved.  (The toxicology report and my comments on it are posted here, ED)

The police had informed the medical examiner's office that on January 23, two days before he died, Baxter bought 30 ten-milligram. Ambien tablets. The prescription was for one a day. Patients are told to go to bed immediately and warned not to drive a car. If they don't follow those instructions they may experience a hypnotic trance in which they can be easily controlled by others. The police found only 25 tablets in the bottle. In 24 to 30 hours Baxter apparently took five Ambien tablets, three more than the number prescribed. Dr. Ronald Graeser, a forensic pathologist familiar with Ambien, says that in that case Baxter would have been so heavily drugged that it would not have been possible for him to drive his car to the spot where it was found with his body slumped over the steering wheel.

His body was found at 2:27 a.m. on January 25, probably less than 30 hours after he took the first tablet. He probably took another tablet on the night of the 24th and either went to sleep and was later awakened or remained awake and experienced a hypnotic trance, during which he ingested three additional tablets, enough "to drug him out of his mind" according to Dr. Graeser. If he could not drive, the suicide scenario collapses, being based on the assumption that he drove his car to the location where it was parked.

This hypothesis could be proved or disproved by an analysis of the quantity of Ambien. found in Baxter's blood. The toxicology report says only that it was present. The chief toxicologist says it was not calculated. The toxicology group leader said she thought it was, but she also said that because the death had been ruled a gunshot suicide (by Dr. Carter, her boss) it may have been skipped because it was not considered important. When told that it might prove that the death was a homicide, she said, "That's probably the reason we didn't quantitate it."

Accuracy in Media has asked the commissioners who oversee the medical examiner's office to ascertain and disclose how much Ambien was found in Baxter's blood. They have forwarded our request to the chief medical examiner, Dr. Joye Carter.

 Reed Irvine can be reached at ri@AIM.org.  

CBS News Report: The Mysterious Death Of An Enron Exec

WASHINGTON, April 10, 2002
Cliff Baxter (AP) (CBS)

It may be the biggest outstanding mystery in the Enron story: the death of Cliff Baxter, a former top  Enron executive. He'd just agreed to testify to Congress in the Enron case. A congressional source tells CBS News that Baxter wasn't a target in the probe, he was to provide evidence against others. But on the morning of January 25th he was found in his car - shot dead.

Police were criticized for calling it a suicide before investigating, so they kept the case open. The fact that it's still open more than two months later has made the Cliff Baxter case prime fodder for murder conspiracy theories, reports CBS News Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson. Adding to the mystery is a letter - perhaps a suicide note - that Baxter's wife is fighting to keep private. Groups like the Texas Freedom of Information Foundation want at least part of it made public. "I believe very strongly that Enron is mentioned in it," said Joel White, the group's attorney.

More questions are raised in police, autopsy and lab reports obtained by CBS News. Police won't talk while the case is open, so CBS News asked two experts - independent coroner Cyril Wecht and former homicide detective Bill Wagner - to review the reports. While suicide appears likely, both experts say the documents make it impossible to discount foul play. Asked why he couldn't rule out murder, Wagner said, "because murder can be made to look like a suicide. ... Someone who is knowledgeable about forensics can very well have the ability to stage a murder, commit a murder and stage it to look as if it was a suicide, understanding what the police are going to be looking for.

"The experts found several things highly unusual. First the peculiar ammunition: not regular bullets but something called "rat-shot". "This kind of ammunition cannot be easily or readily traced back to the gun from which it was fired," explained Wecht. "It's not as frequently used by people for any reason. It's not the type of ammunition one finds in guns - it has a specific purpose: shooting at snakes and rodents in order to get a distribution pattern of the small pellets contained within the nose portion of the bullet. It's not something that a person is likely to have and to use if they intended to kill themselves," said Wecht. Other unanswered questions include mysterious wounds on one hand and unexplained shards of glass in Baxter's shirt. All reasons to look deeper to rule out murder. But Wagner says glaring police errors may make it harder to close the books on the Baxter case. First, nobody wrapped the hands to preserve evidence. "When the body did finally arrive for the autopsy, the hands hadn't even been bagged," said Wagner. 

"I'm just amazed frankly that the hands were not bagged," Wecht said. "From what I've seen looking at the vehicle, it doesn't appear they even fingerprinted it," continued Wagner. "The police narrative is vague for this type of investigation. It's important to get a timeline of the events that took place through the course of investigation - that appears to be lacking in the original report from the crime scene. Without that, without being able to piece together what was done when, it's very difficult to understand the events that took place and how they unfolded from that report," said Wagner.

The gun and other evidence were moved before photos were taken. The body was moved as well. There's a puzzling mention of blood outside the car from someone laying Baxter on the ground. Wagner says that only should have happened if rescuers pulled him out to revive him. But even that scenario doesn't add up - the body is back in the car when the funeral home arrives "and that's something that is not explained in the police reports," said Wagner. "I think there were some very important things omitted from the original investigation report that should have been included in it. I would like to have known what were the first couple things the Fire Department did to treat the victim allegedly as he was sitting in the car and from that point how did they change the initial crime scene. What was moved? Did hey remove the body from the vehicle? It's actually unclear how they treated the actual scene," Wagner said.

Incredibly, even though an autopsy is required by law, none was ordered. By the time that decision was reversed, Baxter's body was being processed at a funeral home. The coroner says police still won't tell her exactly who handled and who saw the body before it finally reached her and won't even give her routine information. The official finding on Baxter's death may well end up being suicide, but for now his death certificate remains unsigned. And at least one provocative question is left permanently unanswered: what, exactly, Cliff Baxter would have told investigators about the biggest corporate scandal in history.

Baxter Autopsy Evidence: Was it Suicide or Murder?
by Larry Dicken
2/5/02

Consider the following points raised by the statements made in the autopsy report, which includes a drug toxicology report.

1. How did this man get out of the house and go to his car, apparently parked almost directly in front of the house, in what appears to be his sleeping outfit or at least casual in the house outfit: a T-shirt, underwear and sweat pants. No socks and shoes.

2. There was a abrasion would on his left hand with black (asphalt perhaps, but not analyzed) material imbedded. Indicating he was shot from the right and fell with left arm outstretched to the left. Meaning he was standing on the street when he was shot or fell out of the car with an open drivers side door.

3. Blood was found soaking his clothes but no mention of blood on the car seat etc. This would be in the police report, which apparently has not been made available.

3. There were numerous small glass shards embedded in the T-shirt on his right shoulder. The same side as the gun shot entry wound. Indicates he may have be shoot through a closed passenger side glass car window, or perhaps a window in his home or another building at some other location.

4. The type of bullet used is not standard equipment for most people who own guns. It was Teflon coated and contain hundreds of small pellets (called in report - rat shot). The spread of the shot particles would indicate that the shot was fired from about three feet, or perhaps more, away from the victim's head. That must have been a weird way to commit suicide. He did not have 3 foot long arms. There was also no gunpowder residue surrounding the entry wound, which is typical if the gun is held next to the head when the trigger is pulled.

5. The toxology report shows the guy had recently taken three medications and would have been a semi-sleep state when all of this occurred - not a likely state for one to commit suicide with a gun. Besides, why not just overdose on all the meds - that would have done the job. The drugs in his system were: Ambien, a non-narcotic sleep medication, Norpropoxyphene, a narcotic pain reliever and Citalopram, an seratonin re-uptake inhibitor (anti-depressant) like Zoloft. The latter would have, along with the Ambien, made him very sleepy.

6. Additional info on the anti-depressant Baxter was on - Celexa (brand name for Citalopram). He would have not been using this drug if his doctor believed there was a chance that he was having suicidal thoughts, as this drug might increase the chances (very low risk side effect) of him attempting suicide. Zoloft is really the drug of choice for most depression cases these days and is even less likely to cause attempted suicide. This would be a nice setup to enhance the suicide theory if one thought it needed some help - the drug combo caused it. It is likely he had been using Celexa for some time - probably when he found out the company was screwing everyone and he wanted out. Maybe even before because he knew he was doing really bad things at Enron.

Almost looks like he was routed out of bed taken to his car that had been moved in front of his house and shot. What did this man know that required him to be silenced forever?