"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."
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.
"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.
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...
"Was the victim alive when
you found him?"
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.
"Trust us. We're really really
sure that he took his own life."
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.
This is probably just coincidence.
"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 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.
"Suicide by Zit."
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?
"You’re already covered
on that front."
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.
"You are entering the Twilight
Zone."
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.
Clearly a steep price must
be paid for a clear complexion in America today.
Or a clear conscience.
Was this misdirection? Disinformation?
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.
"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,’ but like
a high tech spy thriller:
"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 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.
And here we thought you only
need a bodyguard when you're trying to stay alive.
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.
Alas.
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.
Last word goes to Lily Tomlin,
who said it best:
"No matter how cynical I
get,
I just can’t keep up."
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