January 25, 2002

Former Enron Vice Chairman Is Dead of Apparent Suicide

A former top Enron Corp. executive who resigned from the company last May was found shot to death in a car Friday, an apparent suicide.

J. Clifford Baxter, a 43-year-old former vice chairman of the energy giant, was discovered dead in a Mercedes-Benz parked on a median not far from his home in the Houston suburb of Sugar Land. He had been shot in the head. A suicide note was found, police said, but its contents weren't disclosed.

Mr. Baxter resigned several months before Enron's collapse in the biggest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history. Enron's sudden downfall and accounting practices are being investigated by federal prosecutors, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, securities regulators and 11 congressional committees and subcommittees.

The House Energy and Commerce committee had asked to interview Mr. Baxter. He hadn't been subpoenaed, and no date had been set for an interview. "Our investigators were interviewing someone else and his name came up," said Rep. Jim Greenwood (R., Pa.).

"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," the company said in a statement.

Mr. Baxter had expressed concern about the structure of Enron's web of partnerships, according to a letter written in August to then-Chairman Kenneth Lay by Sherron Watkins, a company vice president. In her letter, Ms. Watkins said Mr. Baxter "complained mightily to [then-CEO Jeff] Skilling and all who would listen about the inappropriateness of our transactions with LJM," one of the partnerships founded in 1999 by Mr. Fastow.

Ms. Watkins identified Mr. Baxter in a section of her letter stating there is "a veil of secrecy around LJM and Raptor," another entity involved in the partnerships. The letter to Mr. Lay stated that "we will implode in a wave of accounting scandals" unless the company halted practices that eventually sent it into bankruptcy.

Mr. Baxter was one of 29 former and current Enron executives and board members named as defendants in a federal lawsuit. Plaintiffs' lawyers said the executives made $1.1 billion by selling Enron stock between October 1998 and November 2001. The lawsuit said Mr. Baxter had sold 577,436 shares for $35.2 million.

His body was found early Friday by a police officer checking on a car parked in a residential area. He was in the driver's seat, shot with a revolver. Jim Richard, a Fort Bend County justice of the peace, ruled Mr. Baxter's death a suicide but ordered an autopsy as a precaution.

"I have no inkling whether the unfortunate event had anything to do with the investigation," said Mr. Baxter's attorney, Michael Levy.

At the time his resignation was announced, Enron said Mr. Baxter's primary motive was to spend more time with his family.

Mr. Skilling himself abruptly resigned in August, citing personal reasons. Mr. Skilling was "absolutely devastated at the loss of a very good friend," said his spokeswoman, Judy Leon.

Ms. Watkins said in a statement she was "deeply saddened and stunned."

Although Mr. Skilling's departure had raised concerns among investors at the time, it wasn't until October, when it emerged that transactions with certain partnerships had reduced shareholder equity by $1.2 billion and masked debt the company was carrying that concern rose to crisis level.

Mr. Baxter had joined Enron in 1991 and was chairman and CEO of Enron North America prior to being named chief strategy officer for Enron Corp. in June 2000 and vice chairman in October 2000, the company said.

He was born in 1958 in Amityville, N.Y., and graduated from New York University in 1980. He was a captain in the U.S. Air Force from 1980-85 and received an M.B.A. from Columbia University in 1987, according to the company.

Updated January 25, 2002 8:48 p.m. EST