Former Enron Corp. vice chairman J. Clifford Baxter committed suicide
http://www.apfn.org/enron/baxter.htm
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: http://www.apfn.org/enron/baxter.htm
Date: Wed, 05 Jul 2006 15:37:10 -0500
From: Jeremy Anderson jeremy@angelar.com
To: apfn@apfn.org
Your description of the injury required to create a stellate wound is
not entirely correct. In fact, a standard firearm, when pressed tight
to the skin, will produce a stellate rupture. This is because the skin
is burst outwards by the expanding gasses which follow the course of the
projectile.
bird shot pellets, which you suggest as the actual projectile, would not
produce a stellate wound, and would instead cause multiple individual
puncture wounds instead.
Jeremy
FULL REPORT:
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From the Los Angeles Times
Enron Founder Ken Lay, 64, Dead of Heart Attack
By Thomas S. Mulligan and Miguel Bustillo
Times Staff Writers
Published July 5, 2006, 3:37 PM CDT
The death this morning of Enron Corp. founder Kenneth L. Lay ended his pursuit of one of his last public goals: clearing his name of the fraud and conspiracy charges of which a Houston jury convicted him six weeks ago.
"I firmly believe that I am innocent of the charges against me, as I have said from day one," Lay said in a statement posted on his personal Internet site after the May 25 verdict. He added: "I will continue to work diligently with my legal team to prove that."
Legal experts said the appeal Lay was preparing was a long shot and that he likely faced more than 20 years in prison at his sentencing, scheduled for Oct. 23.
Lay was pronounced dead at 3:11 a.m. at an Aspen, Colorado hospital about two hours after officers and an ambulance were dispatched to his home in Old Snowmass for a "medical emergency," according to the Pitkin County Sheriff's Department. A coroner's autopsy results were expected to be available later this week.
Lay and his wife, Linda, who lived in Houston, were visiting Colorado for the week when he died of a "massive coronary," according to a statement issued by Pastor Steve Wende of First United Methodist Church of Houston and reported by Associated Press.
A statement issued by family spokesman Kelly L. Kimberly said that "Ken Lay passed away early this morning in Aspen. The Lays have a very large family with whom they need to communicate. And out of respect for the family, we will release further details at a later time."
The U.S. Justice Department declined to comment on Lay's death, leaving open the question of whether sentencing will go forward as scheduled in October for Lay's co-defendant, former Enron Chief Executive Jeffrey K. Skilling.
The Justice Department said in a recent court filing that it planned to pursue $43.5 million in assets from Lay to help compensate former Enron employees and stockholders who lost millions of dollars in the energy trading company's 2001 collapse.
During the trial, the usually outgoing and courtly Lay was expected to make a more positive impression on jurors than Skilling. But on the witness stand, a testy and impatient side of Lay emerged. He sparred vigorously with federal prosecutor John C. Hueston and even showed flashes of irritation under questioning by his own defense lawyer.
Two jurors said during a post-trial press conference that Lay's credibility was damaged by evidence that he quietly sold $70 million of Enron stock back to the company during 2001.
"That just defined the word 'intent' for many of us," said juror Doug Baggett.
When the trial began in late January, many Houstonians said the city had moved beyond the feelings of anger and betrayal that accompanied the downfall of what had once been one of the city's biggest business success stories.
But beneath the surface, hard feelings continued to fester, as shown by the reaction of some callers to news radio KTRH 740 AM in Houston scant hours after Lay's death. More than one caller expressed doubts that Lay really was dead and wondered whether the reports of his demise weren't part of an insurance scam.
It was a tawdry send-off for a Missouri preacher's son who had long been known as Houston's "go to guy" for important civic and philanthropic projects.
Lay, more than any other individual, was credited as the driving force behind the construction of Reliant Stadium, home to pro football's Houston Texans, and of Minute Maid Park, home to baseball's Houston Astros. Minute Maid Park is the current name of what originally was known as Enron Field.
Some of Lay's friends spoke out in his behalf this morning, hoping to remind people of his contributions.
"Some people will say he was as guilty as sin and this was God's judgment, but I for one will choose to remember the positive things about Mr. Lay," the Rev. William Lawson, founding pastor of Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church in Houston, said this morning.
Lawson, who had testified as a character witness for Lay during the trial, said he had spoken to him last week.
"I think he internalized a lot of the grief," Lawson said. "He was a chin-up type on the outside, but on the inside he was in a great deal of pain."
Enron's implosion was one of the most infamous corporate scandals in U.S. history. The energy company's failure wiped out more than 4,000 jobs and billions of dollars of stock market value. It also led to sweeping regulations and legislation — particularly the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Law — meant to curb corporate wrongdoing and restore confidence in companies' financial statements.
Lay and Skilling became the targets of a massive crackdown on corporate wrongdoing that also resulted in charges against executives of such companies as WorldCom, Adelphia Communications, HealthSouth and Tyco International.
Government prosecutors said that Lay and Skilling lied publicly about the energy company's financial health and condoned the use of accounting tricks to boost reported earnings and to hide debt.
The jury rejected the defense that Lay and Skilling were unfairly targeted by a government bent on making them the scapegoats for the company's failure.
Lay's main defense was that, despite possessing a doctorate in economics, he was a true figurehead in the last few years of his tenure. Skilling, a former McKinsey & Co. consultant with a master's of business administration degree from Harvard, took over as president and chief operating officer in early 1997 and basically ran the company from then until his surprise resignation Aug. 14, 2001, barely six months after he had become chief executive.
Most of the charges against Lay stemmed from the period after Skilling resigned and Lay had to resume the CEO's role. He was accused of lying on several occasions, including a Sept. 26, 2001 online conference when Lay assured Enron employees that "the third quarter is looking great. We will hit our numbers."
He said this despite knowing that the company's finances were unraveling, the government said.
Lay grew up poor, living for a time in a house in rural Missouri without indoor plumbing. He earned a doctorate in economics, learned the ways of the government during a spell at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and began working in the heavily regulated world of natural gas pipelines.
Envisioning a deregulated natural gas industry in which the market would set gas prices, Lay left government service in 1974 to work in the energy industry. In 1984, Lay became head of Houston Natural Gas, which soon after merged with Omaha-based InterNorth. The merged company was renamed Enron.
During Enron's peak in the late 1990s, Lay was heralded for transforming a sleepy utility into a highly profitable energy trader. Enron climbed to No. 7 on the Fortune 500 list in 2000 and claimed $101 billion in annual revenue.
Charming and well liked, Lay was a popular figure in corporate and political circles. Lay was close to former President George H.W. Bush and his son, President Bush, who dubbed the executive "Kenny Boy."
"Just about everyone who met Lay for the first time liked him, from world leaders to the ministers from Houston's poorest neighborhoods," Enron whistle-blower Sherron S. Watkins wrote in a memoir. "The crowds parted for him with something like awe, and he, in return, shook every hand and knew every name, and business could proceed with a feeling of the very best intentions."
Times staff writers Jesus Sanchez and David Streitfeld and Times wire services contributed to this story. Bustillo reported from Houston and Mulligan from New York City.
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The Sugar Land Sanction
"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."
http://www.apfn.org/enron/baxter.htm
