In the early 1980s, the booming Texas oil business made millions of dollars for many people seemingly overnight. Fifty-two-year-old Ed Baker was one of those investors whose figurative and financial fortunes were both turned by the Texas Tea, and the businessman loved flaunting his wealth. As long as he was making money for his clients, everyone loved Ed Baker.

By the mid-1980s, however, the black gold had become fool’s gold. As the oil business plummeted, so did the fortune of Ed Baker. Not wanting to relinquish the high life, the desperate Baker used his company’s funds to continue his extravagant living. To pay his investors, he robbed Peter to pay Paul, but soon no one was left.

Ed Baker still flaunted his wealth, but it was now financed by the money he owed his investors. Many who had loved him now loathed him; some, perhaps, enough to want him dead.

Ed Baker

Ed Baker had been a struggling shoe salesman and insurance agent in Houston before striking it rich in the oil business. In 1978, he founded Vanguard Groups International, a company building inexpensive housing. When that did not prove lucrative, he remodeled his company in 1980 to sell limited partnerships in commercial real estate. Baker began selling partnerships in speculative oil wells the following year. The timing was fortuitous as the Houston oil industry was in its heyday.

Baker became a multimillionaire and was perceived as an investment guru adept at developing tax shelter programs for wealthy investors. By 1982, four years after Baker founded the company, Vanguard sales reached $19 million and INC. Magazine recognized it as one of America’s fastest growing privately held companies. Baker’s personal fortune was estimated at $66 million. The glory days, however, were short-lived.

By 1985, Houston’s oil industry was crumbling and Baker’s clients, and his money, were both dwindling. He began using investors’ money to support his extravagant lifestyle of gambling, fancy cars, and beach homes. He apparently assumed he could repay investors with money from the next group of investors. By October, however, there was no next group.

Vanguard Groups International, flourishing only three years earlier, was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, and the company’s CEO, who once was one of the richest men in Houston, owed millions of dollars to his investors and the I.R.S. In addition, he was possibly facing several years in prison.

Baker told friends and family he had received multiple letters at work threatening his life as well as two death threats via phone calls to his unlisted home number. On the evening of November 6, he arrived at the home of his second wife, Mary Walker, in a state of panic, saying he had received another death threat and believed he was being followed. When his wife Sandy, whom Ed had sent to his daughter’s home in Austin as a precaution, called her husband at 1:00 a.m. on November 7, he told her he had received another death threat.

Later that morning, at approximately 9:15 a.m., a gardener found a window to the Baker home broken. The bedroom phone was off the hook and an overturned ashtray lay on the floor.

When Baker failed to arrive for work that morning, he was reported missing. Most of his personal items, including his wallet with all of his credit cards and $900 in cash, were found in his home; the only item determined missing was his shotgun.

Baker Goes From Boom to Bust

On the following day, November 8, Harris County deputies were called to a remote rice field two miles north of Katy, the western part of greater metropolitan Houston. Three gallons of gasoline cans surrounded a burning vehicle. On the passenger seat lay the disfigured remains of a charred body.

The vehicle was a 1984 Jaguar sedan registered to Ed Baker. Forensic tests indicated with near certainty that the burned body was his, but they could not definitively determine so.

A burnt .32 caliber revolver lay on the car’s right front floorboard. The cartridge underneath the firing pin had an indentation in it, as if it had been fired, but the other five shells appeared to have been exploded by the heat.

A shotgun was also found in the car. It was presumed to be Baker’s, but it was burned beyond abling of identification.

Charred Car and Body Found 

Another unburned body lay approximately 1500 feet from the car. A young man wearing only a camoflauge shirt had been handcuffed and beaten to death. Police initially believed this man may have killed Baker, then himself been killed. It was, however, determined that he had been killed in a dope deal several hours before Baker’s car was found in flames.  Investigators concluded the victim had no connection to Ed Baker and that it was a coincidence that his body was dumped in the same area where Baker’s charred Jaguar was found. I could not find any source identifying this man. Some say he was a teenager; others state he was in his early twenties.

A motorist reported seeing a blue Chevy pickup truck with chrome rails and mag wheels speeding away from the fire scene. The vehicle was never located.

Second Body Found

Later that day, Baker’s attorney, Ward Busey, received a letter purportedly from his now-deceased client.

The letter read in part: “If you are reading this, I am dead. I’ve had some threats on my life. You’ve been a good friend to me. Please take care of Sandy and the kids and do what you can for them. And enclosed is another letter that I would like you to take out to Sandy and to give her for me.”

The handwriting was determined to be consistent with Baker’s and seemed to indicate that he had committed suicide.

Suicide Letter

Sandy Baker disagreed. She and Private Investigator Bob Gale believe the former oil tycoon arranged a desperate cash bailout from an ill-reputed source out of Miami which may have been associated with the mafia. Sandy says that several weeks earlier, she and Ed had traveled to south Florida where he tried to negotiate an extension to pay his debts. The request for leniency, she says, was not-so-politely denied, and that he was warned of serious punishment if the money was not paid.

Sandy says she knows of $250,000 her husband borrowed from the unsavory characters, but she believes his overall debt owed may have been in excess of $1 million.

A Mob Hit?

Bob Gale believes the figures associated with the mafia may have murdered Ed Baker; Sandy is convinced they did so.

Keith Lyons, an independent private investigator, also believes Ed Baker met with foul play.

He, however, believes Baker was murdered by a disgruntled investor as opposed to the mafia.

Keith Lyons

Private Investigator

Authorities disagree with both of the private investigators; they believe Ed Baker committed suicide.

In the days prior to his death, Baker had called his life insurance agents and specifically asked if his policies would pay in the event of his suicide. One of them, valued at $500,000, would not. Police found Baker had also written letters removing Vanguard as beneficiary on his insurance policies in favor of Sandy and his children from his first marriage.

Authorities believe Ed Baker may have shot himself and that he had an accomplice set the car on fire to look like a homicide so that Sandy and his children would receive the money from the insurance policies.

Baker’s attorney, Ward Busey, also believed his client committed suicide, citing the letter that he received from Baker on the day his burned car was found. He believed Baker, fearful of going to prison or being killed, felt he had no other alternative.

Arson investigators, however, are skeptical of the suicide scenario. They do not believe Baker would have been able to pour gasoline on himself, ignite it, and have the wherewithal to stay calm enough to shoot himself.

Ward Busey

Ed Baker’s Attorney

Shortly after Ed Baker’s probable death, his twenty-three-year-old son from his first marriage, Blake, was arrested on charges of threatening to kill Sandy if she did not pay him $200,000 from the estate. The charges, however, were later dropped.

Both Blake and Sandy Baker took polygraph tests with regard to Ed Baker’s death. Blake’s results indicated he was being truthful, but Sandy’s suggested she was withholding information.

Sandy moved to Europe following her husband’s presumed death. Blake Baker died in 1995 at age thirty-three.

Was Baker’s Family Involved in His Death?

Today, the fate of Ed Baker is still part of Houston lore. If he did not perish in his burned Jaguar, then he likely succumbed to his burning greed. Some, however, are convinced that he fled to an unknown location, perhaps the Caribbean, to live in luxury on funds embezzled from his investors, as over $10 million from Vanguard remains unaccounted for. No evidence suggesting such a possibility has been found.

Three months after Ed Baker’s charred car was found, Vanguard filed for protection pending reorganization under Chapter 11 of the federal bankruptcy law.

Baker Done In

SOURCES:

• Austin American-Statesman
• El Paso Times
• Houston Chronicle
• Inc. Magazine
• Tyler Courier-Times
• Unsolved Mysteries