Former Enron Exec Found Dead in Apparent Suicide

The Enron saga slipped from scandal to tragedy Friday as J. Clifford Baxter, a former vice chairman of the company who was said to have “complained mightily” about some of its off-the-books partnerships, was found shot dead in his car, an apparent suicide.

Baxter, 43, was one of five high-ranking Enron executives identified in a whistle-blower’s letter as objecting to accounting maneuvers that ultimately pushed the company into bankruptcy. His death leaves a void for investigators who had hoped to interview Baxter in connection with several inquiries by Congress, regulators and federal agencies.

Mitch Taylor, an executive in Enron’s trading operation, called Baxter a man of “extremely high integrity.”

“I don’t believe he was complicitous in anything that may or may not have gone on here,” Taylor said. “But he was the vice chairman. It happened on his watch. I’m sure he felt horrible.”

Baxter stepped down from the company in May, just seven months after winning the vice chairman’s post, saying he wanted to spend more time with his wife and two school-age children.

“He left here because he was frustrated,” Taylor said. “He felt he was going to be burdened with the responsibility for things that occurred but given none of the responsibility to change them.”

Baxter’s redbrick mansion in the Houston suburb of Sugar Land was guarded Friday by three police officers. An American flag adorned the frontdoor and the shutters were closed. Friends dropped in throughout the day, greeted with hugs.

“We are suffering the loss of our husband, father and best friend,” the family said in a statement.

Last weekend, Baxter’s wife, Carol, reacted angrily when approached by a reporter about the unfolding crisis.

“People are being investigated. People are being sued,” Carol Baxter said outside her home.

“This is going to follow people for the rest of their lives--people who didn’t do anything wrong.”

Baxter’s body was found by a police officer about 2:30 a.m. in a black 2002 Mercedes sedan parked near the Sweetwater Country Club, less than two miles from his home.

He suffered a single gunshot wound to the head, and a revolver was found by his side, police said. Police said he also left a suicide note, but declined to reveal its contents or say where it was found.

CNBC reported that Baxter’s suicide note said he was distraught over the disintegration of Enron and the likelihood that he would have to testify against friends who worked there. The news channel said Baxter was unshaven and disheveled last week when a reporter visited his home and his Christmas tree was still standing.

A local justice of the peace ruled Baxter’s death a suicide but ordered an autopsy as part of the investigation.

Baxter spent a decade at Enron during the years it morphed from a middling operator of natural gas pipelines into a “new-economy” company that placed high-tech bets through its computerized trading operation on a wide range of energy and other commodities.

Baxter zoomed up through the company in the slipstream of his good friend Jeffrey K. Skilling, who resigned as Enron’s chief executive in August for unexplained personal reasons.

A former Air Force captain, Baxter cashed out $28 million in stock gains from the sale of nearly 800,000 Enron shares from 1998 to early 2001, according to an analysis by Thomson Financial/Lancer Analytics. Since then, Enron’s stock price has plunged from about $81 a share, the best price Baxter commanded, to mere pennies.

Baxter and other current and former Enron executives have been sued by angry shareholders, whose investments are virtually worthless. The suits allege the executives were presenting a falsely positive view of the company’s financial health to boost the stock price.

Baxter, although no longer with the company, would still have been afforded legal representation for his work with Enron, a company spokesman said.

Enron issued a terse statement Friday: “We are deeply saddened by the tragic loss of our friend and colleague, Cliff Baxter. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends.”

Skilling expressed sadness at Baxter’s apparent suicide.

“Mr. Skilling is devastated by the loss of a very dear friend,” said Judy Leon, a spokeswoman for Skilling.

Baxter was among those Enron executives mentioned in an Aug. 22 memo by Sherron S. Watkins about Enron’s growing financial problems.

“Cliff Baxter complained mightily to Skilling and all who would listen about the inappropriateness of our transactions,” Watkins wrote.

Last week, Skilling denied that he had ever had conversations with Baxter or other Enron officials about accounting problems at Enron.

Baxter’s records had been subpoenaed by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. But as of the time of his death, Baxter had not delivered any documents, which were due by Jan. 31, according to a source close to the investigation.

Baxter was credited with helping build Enron’s core trading business, which provided most of the company’s revenue in 2000.

Sources who were close to Baxter said Friday that he had challenged Skilling on the controversial off-balance-sheet partnerships and resigned because he had been unable to get them stopped.

“He had enough money. He didn’t have to work there anymore,” one colleague said. “Cliff would feel guilty about what he didn’t do. That was the nature of who he was.”

John Clifford Baxter was born Sept. 27, 1958, in Amityville, N.Y. He was captain in the Air Force from 1980 to 1985 and went on to earn an MBA from Columbia University’s Business School, where he was 1987 class valedictorian. He joined Enron in 1991 after a stint as an investment banker.

Baxter moved up through the ranks with Skilling and Andrew S. Fastow, Enron’s chief financial officer, ousted in October because of investor discomfort over his management of two of the controversial off-balance-sheet partnerships.

Baxter had negotiated the $3-billion purchase of Portland General in 1997 and had worked on an aborted attempt to sell it to a California entity. In 2000, Baxter was chairman and chief executive of Enron North America and wanted to leave the company, sources said, but Skilling urged him to reconsider.

Baxter was given the job of chief strategy officer in June 2000 and was named vice chairman just four months later. He was charged with selling Enron’s under-performing international assets in 2000 but had only mild success.

Baxter was an “idea man” who couldn’t tolerate handling day-to-day operations or nitty-gritty details that made a deal work, one former executive said.

“He was a concept guy: ‘I want to do this, but don’t bother me with the details.’ He was very brash and arrogant,” the former executive said.

Baxter was also a vigorous smoker: “It was a sad day when they made Enron a nonsmoking building,” joked one former colleague.

And he wasn’t shy about the wealth he accumulated. He entertained other Enron brass on his boat and at pool parties that neighbors in the family’s swank neighborhood watched from afar, uninvited.

Baxter’s taste in vehicles was elite and varied. He had a stable of exotic cars, and no one ever knew which one would pull into the corporate garage with Baxter at the wheel on any given day.

“One day it would be a fancy BMW; the next day it would be a Ferrari,” a former colleague said. “He made a lot of money, but he spent a lot of money. . . . He liked a lot of toys.”

No one blinked an eye when Baxter decided to resign in May, the former executive said. He had made a lot of money and was ready to “hang it up” and spend time on his boat with his family.

“People were laughing when Skilling left that Cliff must have told him how much fun it was.”

A yachting enthusiast, Baxter joined the Houston Yacht Club in Clear Lake 2 1/2 years ago. He kept his 70-foot cabin cruiser, named Tranquility, at the club, volunteering time and money to help with club regattas.

The club runs four or five national regattas a year, attracting national sailing personalities, said general manager Ross Tuckwiller, and Baxter would pitch in, taking VIPs out on his boat to watch the races.

He was seldom seen there without his wife and children.

“He was a very good supportive member,” Tuckwiller said. “Very nice guy and good to the staff. He was a great guy.”

Chuck Buckner, the volunteer commodore, or president, of the club, said Baxter sold his cabin cruiser in the last few weeks and dropped out of sight.

A partner at Ernst & Young in Houston, Buckner hadn’t seen Baxter since right before Christmas, when he expressed his dismay over the Enron debacle.

“He expressed how concerned he was about how people saw all of this,” Buckner said.

Baxter didn’t go into detail about any of the accounting matters but worried out loud about the “run on the bank” that had seemed to bring the company down nearly overnight.

“My sense of Cliff is he would really be bothered if he thought people felt badly of him,” Buckner said. “To some people it’s like water off a duck’s back, but not Cliff. I’m absolutely shocked. It’s a tragedy. We’re all so sorry that he felt he needed to do this.”

Buckner described Baxter as a conscientious family man who joined the club to provide activities for children, a boy of high school age named J.C. and a preteen girl named Lauren. Baxter recently warned Buckner that all members should learn how to radio for medical help, after he heard a woman on another boat calling for help for her sick husband.

He had also expressed his desire to take longer trips with his family in the cabin cruiser.

Former colleague Michael P. Moran, once general counsel for Enron’s gas pipeline group, said he was “saddened and shocked.”

“As long as I’ve known Cliff, I never knew him to be a person who was depressed, who would bring it to taking his own life,” Moran said. “He was an idea guy in very substantial jobs.”

Concerned that other Enron employees, both high and low, might be considering the suicide route, the Houston Crisis Intervention Center opened a telephone hotline with counselors.

At the Antioch Missionary Baptist Church in a small park directly across the street from Enron, U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Houston) and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, in town to take up the cause of the Enron employees, asked local ministers to keep their church doors open over the weekend to counsel people.

“Do not dive into the isolation of death and suicide. Anyone who is distraught or feeling in need, do not feel alone,” Lee told the audience made up of local religious leaders and a few Enron workers.

*

Brooks reported from Los Angeles and Romney and Streitfeld from Houston. Times researcher Lianne Hart in Houston contributed to this report. Also contributing were staff writers Jeff Leeds and Rone Tempest in Houston and Edmund Sanders in Washington.