Welcome back to the Path Went Chile for part two of our series about the
unexplained death of Ed Baker. Robin, do you want to catch everyone up
on what we talked about in our previous episode. Well, this case takes
place in Houston, Texas in nineteen eighty five, and Ed Baker was the
fifty two year old millionaire chairman of an oil investment business called Vanguard International.
Edit is currently on his fourth marriage. His first wife was killed in a
car accident during the nineteen seventies. By the nineteen eighties, Ed and his
second wife had started up bait oil investment business, Vanguard, and because of
an oil boom, he has now become a millionaire. But he is going
through some sort of midlife crisis because he has since gone through two other wives.
He's got a gambling habit, and he has been spending a lot of
his investors' money and essentially creating a Ponzi scheme where he takes money from them
and spends them on himself. But now that he's not getting as many investors
and there's an oil bust, the house of cars has started to collapse,
so he's facing prison time and he's been giving off hints that his life might
be in danger because he borrowed a lot of money from some criminals. One
night, he went to see his second wife and said that his life was
in danger and that he didn't have much time left. And shortly thereafter Ed
went missing, and his burned out car would be discovered in a remote field,
and it appeared he'd been shot, and then someone had used gasoline to
set the car on fire. But he has been burned so badly that there's
been so many theories about what happened to him. There's been speculation that he
might have been murdered by the people he borrowed money from, or that this
was an elaborate suicide, because it turned out he had some life insurance policies
for his family and had specifically asked them if they would pay out in the
event of a suicide, and at least one of the insurance companies told him
no. So they figured that he could have shot himself or maybe had an
accomplice who set his body on fire afterwards to try to make it look like
a murder. But another theory is that perhaps he faked his own death,
that he found in John Doe and killed him and then set the body on
fire until it was beyond recognition, and then skipped the country with all the
profits because it turned out there was millions of dollars missing from Vanguard, and
they wondered if he might be living on the proceeds. But it's been now
thirty five years and there have not been any conclusive answers about what happened to
him. It is generally suggested that the body found in the car did belong
to ed Baker, but they have never been able to figure out if his
death was a homicide or a suicide, and it's always been shrouded in mystery.
Now, this is not one of those stories where I'm going to pretend
that the victim was a saint, as ed Baker did commit a number of
financial indiscretions prior to his death. It sounds like Ded was a decent,
law abiding man for the first part of his life, but succumbed to greed
once he finally attained wealth, and it seems like his success caused him to
experience some sort of weird midlife crisis, as he divorced his second wife and
went through two more marriages during the last year and a half. Of his
life and went overboard with his gambling and spending habits. Incidentally, I've always
loved Robert Stach's description of this during the Unsolved Mystery segment. As he says,
quote, he began to indulge in high stakes gambling. Baker also underwent
two facelifts, took disco lessons, and purchased a flashy new Jaguar end quote.
I don't know why, but the random mention of disco lessons always cracks
me up, particularly since this was the mid nineteen eighties when disco's popularity was
in sharp decline. So let this be a cautionary tale. Stealing money to
pay for disco lessons will lead to financial ruin. But in all seriousness,
even if ed was operating his business honestly for the first few years, it
sounds like things reached the point where he was operating a Ponzi scheme. He
was spending his investors' money on himself to maintain his lifestyle, assuming that all
the money he received from new investors could make up for that. But when
the oil boom came to an end and Baker can no longer require new investors,
the House of Cards started a fall Unsaw Mysteries actually featured a number of
fraud segments about white collar criminals who became wanted fugitives for doing this exact thing.
But the key difference is is that Baker wound up dead. So here's
one of the things that's really sad about this story. I remember last time,
Robin, you were telling us kind of about his background in his personal
life as well, where he has the loss of his first wife and then
he marries his second wife and they truly start over together. They're building this
new business. It seems like she's really his rock, his best friend.
She works there, do seem to start this as a legitimate business. And
then at some point it's like he snaps and this midlife crisis. He just
says, you know what, I'm done with my second wife, who's been
the one to help build all of this with me. I'm going to look
for the fastest, the youngest, the prettiest, the most expensive of all
of these things. And I think that snap is where he starts to get
into trouble. Right. He throws away what was stable and he's chasing better,
bigger, even though he had that stability. And that is so sad
because he goes back to her from what you told me last time to say,
I'm scared for my life. And she was still the rock even when
he was remarried, even when he had moved on. When he was scared
at the end of his life, he went back to her and said,
I'm scared something's going to happen to me. Yeah, it's pretty sad,
particularly the mention of the facelifts, that he's desperately trying to make himself look
younger. And of course we joked about the disco lessons, and this is
a guy in his fifties, and it sounds like he wants to be like
John Traubolt and Saturday Night Fever and make himself look considerably younger and hip.
But of course now he's blowing all this money and getting himself into more trouble
and he's going for younger women. And like I said, it doesn't sound
like Ed Baker was a bad guy until the early nineteen eighties and then it
just snapped for him and he just abandoned his second wife, Mary and then
just decided I'm going to be this like high flutin guy who lives life to
the max, even though he can't sustain it. I feel like two facelifts
is a lot by the time you're fifty. I watched this guy on YouTube.
His name's doctor Gary. He's amazing, and he always breaks down potential
procedures that celebrities have had, and he's just like the nicest guy ever and
not at all smarmy, like what you would think for a stereotypical plastic surgeon
that would be on YouTube. He's the antithesis of that. But he talks
about facelifts and he says that once people start, you basically have to go
every ten years to get a revision one. So he always says that people
should wait until they're as old as they possibly can if that is something that
they're interested in. So if it wasn't a botch facelift that he was fixing,
he likely got a facelift when he was around forty, which seems like
it's pretty young to be having that kind of surgery. And I mean,
especially at the time, it was less likely that anyone would have had that
type of surgery, let alone men. So I think that would likely speak
to that deep insecurity and that midlife crisis that we've been referencing since Part one.
It really is sad that it seems like he couldn't find any satisfaction no
matter what he seemed to have in his life, even when from the outside
things look perfect. He clearly was just unhappy with the way that everything was
going on the inside. One of the strangest details of Ed's apparent midlife crisis
was his short lived third marriage to Karen Wallbridge, which only lasted five months
before he got remarried to his fourth wife, Sandy. The only reason we
even know anything about Karen Walbridge is because of a twenty fifteen book written by
Patricia Goldstone titled Interlock Art, Conspiracy and the Shadow Worlds of Mark Lombardi.
Mark Lombardi specialized in what was described as conspiracy art, as he created conceptual
artwork which featured drawings of alleged financial and political frauds before he was found hanging
in his apartment in two thousand in an apparent suicide. The main reason Ed
Baker gets a few brief mentions in this book is because Karen Wallbridge was lifelong
friends with Mark Lombardi and they were apparently romantically involved at some point at the
time Karen got married to Ed. She was nearly twenty years younger than him,
and it was pretty much no big secret that she only hooked up with
him for his money. According to Karen, Ed had her followed by detectives
because he thought she was having an affair, and after he got remarried to
Sandy, he was supposed to pay Karen for the annulment to their marriage,
but this never happened. Garan is one of the people who believes that Ed
might have faked his death and fled the country. But while this book doesn't
delve very deeply into this case, it does imply that a lot of money
provided to Baker, which allowed his company to have such a successful expansion,
was provided by mob financiers and real estate investors, who were both involved in
a CIA network which was operating in Texas during that time period. However,
even though I have no problem believing that Baker got in way over his head
and may have found himself in serious debt with some shady figures near the end
of his life, I am going to stop short on believing that his death
was a massive conspiracy involving the CIA. Oh, for sure, I don't
think necessarily that federal agents were involved but I am not going to say that
the mob or pressure from shady people may not be involved. Remember last time,
Robin and Jules, you were telling me that at the end of his
life, he was kind of offered a deal where he could get some financing
from people who were going to quote help him pay his debt off. And
we mentioned nothing comes for free, right, someone who's going to help you,
quote get out of debt, there's a catch, There's going to be
something that comes with that money, right and expectation, And it seems like
Ed Baker was in over his head. But then if he really had taken
money from some of these cetier groups to try to keep that lifestyle or even
just stay afloat and not get caught as quickly, I don't put it past
a financier coming after him. No, I agree, I agree. I
think we definitely went into an in part one that everybody believed that he was
in debt to some really dangerous people. So I definitely I agree with you
Ash. I think that there is a possibility that they could have been involved
in what happened to him, But I'm more inclined to believe that his connection
to the mob or the people that he potentially owed money to or a driving
force for the potential actions that he then took, which you know, calling
of the insurance company and asking if there was a suicide indemnity clause or if
it would pay out in the event of suicide. Just is one of those
things that pushes me more towards that side. But yeah, I don't think
it was a CIA conspiracy. I definitely don't believe that. Yeah, definitely
not. They never mentioned that on Unsolved Mysteries, and the only source for
that was in that book we just talked about. But now I'm going to
talk more about these people who allegedly loan money to Ed. I know that.
Almost immediately after Ed died, his wife, Sandy, publicly stated that
she believed her husband was killed because of his failure to pay back at two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars loan to some organized crime figures in Miami, and
Ed's private investigator, Bob Gail, also confirmed that Ed had asked him to
look into the backgrounds of two men from Miami who were going to loan him
some money and see if they had mafia connections, but it's never been released
publicly. Who these men were, and it's unclear if Gail found anything in
their backgrounds to suggest they had connections to organized crime. However, I do
think it's interesting that Gail was one of the people who pushed forward the theory
that Ed faked his own death, which makes me wonder if he found something
which made him believe this story about the loan did not check out. But
given how much money he owed his investors, I can definitely believe that Ed
would have been desperate enough to borrow money from anybody he could in order to
save his company exactly. I think he was desperate at this point, and
then you started seeing him making these kind of decisions to say, Okay,
what are my options out and one of those would be borrowing money from,
like you said, anyone who would give him money. But there's also remember
that phone call to the insurance company saying is my life insurance valid if there's
a suicide. He's also looking into other options and other ways that he could
quote get out from the mess that he's made, and none of them,
none of them offer him any kind of healthy alternative. It's prison, engage
with, you know, seedy individuals, or possibly take his own life,
So basically you're just borrowing time if that is the case, right, like,
if you don't see that there's any other way out of this mess,
and that you may not be able to recover financially if you're taking a loan
from people who are mobbed up, a very high risk loan, I might
add, I'm sure, and then you know that in the end you're likely
not going to be able to pay that. Are you then kind of keeping
in your sites that suicide is an option and you're just basically on borrowed time.
But I would just think that I would be pretty worried if you're going
to take a loan like that, that even if you decide to end your
own life, that it could potentially fall on the shoulders of your family members.
Yes, that is true, because we have seen examples of that where
the is like, well, just because you killed yourself or died, does
not mean we're canceling this debt, and it might fall on your family members.
And this might be why Bob Gail was one of the people who believe
the theory that Ed could have faked his own debt, that maybe he figured,
well, if I bring my wife Sandy in on this and then we
kill somebody else and think my own death and skip the country will be home
free. But of course that's definitely the least likely of any of the theories
that's been pushed forward. It's also interesting how Ed owed fifty thousand dollars to
a pair of casinos at the time of his death. So when Sandy said
that Ed had already spent the money which had been loaned to him from these
men in Miami, that could be another way of saying he gambled it all
away. I guess the biggest problem with the idea that Ed was murdered by
the mafia for failure to repay his debts is that if he was dead,
they would never get that money back. Well, no one has ever openly
stated this. You do get the impression that some people might have suspected that
Sandy was personally involved in her husband's murder, or at the very least knew
more than she was letting on. Yes, Sandy was established as being out
of town over one hundred and sixty miles away at the time Ed was killed,
but she still could have conceivably hired to hit Mandy get rid of him,
and then after finding out what had happened. She starts off spouting a
story about a two hundred and fifty thousand dollars loan to the mafia in order
to take suspicion off herself. Sandy did take a polygraph test which seemed to
indicate that she was withholding information, and she also collected a larger chunk of
the money from Ed's life insurance policies than anyone else in his life, even
his own children. Immediately following Ed's death, his son Blake, wound up
being arrested for threatening to kill Sandy until he received his share of his father's
estate. Unfortunately, we were unable to find out what ultimately happened with Blake's
legal situation and if he wound up doing any prison time, but his actions
suggests that there was a major hostility between him and Sandy, so I wonder
if Ed's side of the family didn't like her too much. Whatever the case,
Blake was never considered a suspect, and while I can't positively confirm this,
there's a comment on the Unsolved Mysteries website stating that Blake was a drug
addict, which could provide an explanation for his behavior. During online searches,
we also managed to find a photo of a grave for a Blake Edward Baker,
who was buried in Gonzales, Texas, after he died in October nineteen
ninety five at the age of thirty three. We can't be one hundred percent
sure if this is the same guy, but the ages do match up.
That is so sad. I hope it's not his son, because it sounds
like he was battling quite a lot in life. But let's go back to
this idea of Blake and his relationship to Sandy. If you were under the
assumption Sandy knew anything anything. Let's say that ed comes to her and says,
listen, honey, it's bad. It's bad to get killed, and
you're gonna get killed or we're going to lose everything we have. I'm gonna
end my life, and I need you to get out of here as soon
as possible, right or I'm going to have someone help in my life.
I'm going to take care of this, but you can't be here. If
you assumed that Sandy was okay with that, and assumed that she knew she
would financially be protected if he died, I could see absolute hatred for her,
right, because the assumption would be that at the end of the day,
it wasn't worth going to the mattresses with him, right, like it
wasn't worth saying us against the world, bankrupt in an apartment, you know,
with no fancy cars, like I love you that much that we're just
going to do this and fix it. I will wait the ten years are
going to be in prison, Like none of that is what happened. If
you're assuming Sandy knew it was, I will gladly leave and then when you're
dead, I'll take your money and everything will be good. So if that
is what you assumed, no wonder you'd go berserk as one of his or
someone who loved him, even the wife that was so good to him,
right, and that he went back to and said, I'm scared. I
could just see this kind of distaste in my mouth of saying like did she
know question Mark, no way to prove that she did fail that first lie
detector test, but then she said she was going to take a second mom
which we don't think she necessarily took or don't know the results of. But
I can absolutely see where this decision if you truly truly were someone's partner for
life, you would say, listen, whatever happens, we'll figure it out,
Like even if that means you go to prison, and maybe down the
road we get a divorce. Like, I'm still here as your friend to
support you. I don't want you to lose your life, do you know
what I mean? But if it was so easy it was just to go
off out of town and then recover his life insurance policy, I could see
where a lot of people say Sandy knew more than she said. It's quite
interesting how little Ed's children backed her into this story, because we know we
had issue with Blake and that he had two other daughters from his first marriage,
but there's next to no information about either of them, and they've never
commented on the situation publicly. I mean, they went through a major tragedy
themselves because they lost their mother in a car accident during the early nineteen seventies.
And while I get the impression that they probably liked Ed's second wife,
Mary, whom he got remarried to, I'm sure they had issues with Sandy
as well as Ed's third wife, Karen. Feeling that they're possibly just gold
diggers who were after their father for his money, So that's why I get
the impression that they did not get along with Sandy. But they did get
a decent amount of money from Ed's life insurance policies. But I'm sure they
were resentful that Sandy got the largest piece. And I've always been interested to
know whether Blake and his two sisters what they personally believe happened, if they
believe their father was murdered, or or if his death was a suicide that
he staged just to ensure that they got the life insurance money. Anyway,
I know that Sandy eventually moved to Europe, but it's interesting how she was
not interviewed during the Unsolved Mystery segment, even though Ed's ex wife, Mary
was Mary claimed that an Ed visitor shortly before his death, he said it
was his idea to send Sandy to Austin for her own protection, which kind
of goes against the idea of her traveling there to establish an alibi. As
far as I can tell, it was after Ed Sandy away that he decided
to go to the trouble of advising his will to ensure that she got the
largest payout from his insurance policies. It was also Ed who contacted the insurance
companies to check if his policies would still pay out in the event of a
suicide, and he sent a letter to his attorney, Ward Busy, asking
him to watch over Sandy and his kids. The evidence does clearly show that
Ed seemed to believe his days were numbered and wanted to ensure that his family
was taken care of. Now, if you believe the fake death theory,
this could come across as a similar scheme to the Clarence Roberts case, where
Ed killed someone else and burn their body before going into hiding and waiting for
Sandy to collect the insurance money. Afterwards, they would both take off to
Europe together to live a life of luxury. However, like we stated in
our last episode, I do think the dental records match is compelling enough to
conclude that it was Ed's body inside his burnt out car. But let's just
assume that the theory about Ed completing an elaborate suicide is correct. Even if
Sandy was not directly involved, perhaps she still had advanced knowledge that Ed was
planning to do this. It definitely would be interesting to see the contents of
the final letter that Ed wrote for Sandy, as he had asked word Bucy
to pass it along to her. These letters are the main reason why Bucy
was one of the biggest believers in the suicide theory. During his Unsolved Mystery's
interview, Bucy says the letter addressed to him read quote, if you're reading
this, I am dead. Since the letter was dated November the sixth,
the day before Ed was killed, Bucy asked how Ed could have known it
would arrive after his death, unless he was planning to take his own life.
Well, the problem is that Bucy's quote during his interview is very misleading,
and they actually do show the entire letter on screen during the Unsolved Mystery
segment. In our last episode, you heard us quote it word for word,
and at no point did Ed actually write quote, if you're reading this,
I am dead. While Ed was obviously providing Bucy with instructions for how
to handle things in the event of his death, he was not flat out
predicting he would die. I wonder too, if there becomes this kind of
psychosis about the big threat against you, like he knows he's in hot water,
but he starts over preparing for his death, like the moms following him,
the CIA could be involved. You know, Oh my gosh, they're
out for me. They're gonna kill Sandy too. Let me write this letter,
let me get my life insurance in play. Does it start to become
like a conspiracy theory in his own brain where all of a sudden, he's
going, they're gonna kill me. They're gonna kill me. I gotta get
out of here. And he's so scared or so paranoid that he does end
up taking his own life beyond just this very well thought out planned financial exit.
I feel like he does a lot of things to prepare, but I
wonder if in that preparedness does it make him heightened to this point of like
he creates the idea that's his only option. But don't you think in a
situation like that too, people will go, Okay, well, this is
the foregone conclusion. I can't pay back this money, ergo I am going
to end up being murdered. So am I going to just sit around and
wait to see when and how they do it to me in this state of
fear? Or Am I going to take matters into my own hands and handle
my own exit from the earthly plane. That is true. Like even though
these actions of his could be a point towards him planning a suicide, it
could be the reverse that he figured his days were numbered and says, I
have to prepare because I'm going to get killed anyway, so i want to
make sure that my family is taken care of after I'm gone. All that
being said, Whilbusey's story about the letter might have been misleading. There is
some logic to what he was saying. Ed did a number of things to
suggest that he was preparing for his own death, though this could have been
because he was suspected he was going to be killed in the near future,
Like we just mentioned, Well, it doesn't seem suspicious that Ed would check
on his life insurance policies and revise his will if he thought he was going
to die. It is odd that he would specifically ask his insurance carriers if
the policies would pay out in the event of his suicide. Why would you
worry about something like that if you believed that you were going to be murdered.
If Ed's financial problems were so out of control that he knew there was
no way he would ever dig himself out of that hole. He may have
planned to as lade as an escape, but to ensure his family would be
taken care of financially, he had to ensure that his death looked like a
homicide. On the surface, it seems plausible that Ed could have been killed
because he owed people money. But here's an important quest question besides Sandy and
Mary, did I ever tell anyone else that his life was in danger?
Remember? He just suddenly showed up at Mary's house out of the blue one
night to tell her what was going on, and then he wound up going
missing several hours later. He told Mary that he'd been receiving threatening letters at
his workplace, But did anyone actually see these letters or confirmed that they existed?
That's the thing that I mean. He does tell Mary that there's this
threat and this idea that people are after him, but is it just his
words? He was the one behind all of that. When he reaches out
to the private investigator, When he reaches out to the man who he's trying
to help him prepare for the end of his life, like if something happens,
right when he shows up and tells Mary that he's in trouble, when
he sends Sandy away, I'm in trouble. People are after me. Like
you said, who else knows that? Right? You would think that he
would have shown all of that to the private investigator or to the attorney who's
helping him, and he didn't to our knowledge. I also going back to
you know, is this a plan to make it look like a homicide?
I think he has to. It has to get so elaborate that he says,
it needs to look like someone killed me, so that that one policy
that doesn't count and won't qualify if this is a suicide gets paid out to
my family. But remember the cars burned out. But there's his own shotgun
on the floor of the car, which would make sense in the location if
he had shot himself. And we talked last time about this fire in the
car, and I think it would be possible if you poured the gasoline in
a thoughtful enough manner and you threw the match at the back of the vehicle
or something. I feel like you could sit in the front seat and have
time to pull the trigger before the fire engulfed you to a point of death.
I agree love the way you praised that though. If he threw the
glass lean over himself in such a thoughtful manner, it just makes it sound
nice. It's lovely, a lovely little Indian of everything exactly. It would
take a certain amount of time to spread it, but it takes two seconds
to throw a match. You ensure it's lit, and then you could pull
the trigger. I think the fact that they discounted, some people discounted that
this was possible, I think it's kind of shortsighted because it seems entirely possible.
But it had to be dramatic enough, like you know, there had
to be a question mark enough which that would cause to have that insurance policy
pay it off. So to me, that's a very thoughtful, kind of
intelligent way that he plans this suicide if it was a suicide to say,
well, I'm at least going to cause enough question mark where they have to
pay my family out. And I wonder if he was worried too that if
the mob was after him, maybe they wouldn't be too worried about setting an
example because not enough people knew about who he was and knew about what he'd
done. Maybe they would just make him disappear and bury his body somewhere and
then he's got to be missing for like seven years before there would ever be
any payout. So if you're worried that somebody could just disappear you and your
family is left with nothing until they go to court and have you legally declared
dead in like seven years, I can understand why he could have made that
choice as well. Yep, that's definitely a good choice. It's better to
establish that he's dead right away rather than being missing for several years. So
that's a theory where both things could be true, Like his life could have
been in danger, but his death could have also been a suicide at the
same time. So if Ed really was in danger, there really doesn't seem
to be any logical reason for him to have visited Mary that night, unless
he wanted to plan some seeds and give off the false impression he was about
to be killed. That way, when he wound up dead under suspicious circumstances
a few days later, Mary would be able to corroborate a story about his
life being threatened and make the police less likely to believe his death was a
suicide. To be honest, for many years, I never found the suicide
theory to be that plausible. But I reevaluated things a little bit when I
read some articles published in the Houston Chronicle and other local newspapers following Ed's death,
as they contained some interesting pieces of information not mentioned on Unsolved Mysteries.
Even though Ed's body was found on November the eighth, the segment never mentions
that his gardener discovered he was missing on the morning of November the seventh,
when he showed up at the Baker residence and discovered a broken window. While
there were a few overturned items in Ed's bedroom, the place wasn't exactly ransacked,
and quite frankly, it kind of gives me the impression that the whole
scene might have been staged. And remember, there's this idea that if people
went in and kidnapped him, If there were one or more people that are
in there kidnapping this man, they have to quietly get a grown man out
of his house, drive him in his own car. So get him into
the car, get him to this location, risk being seen in public with
him. Why not just kill him in his own house? And why kill
him with his own shotgun? You would show up to a stage I mean
to have planned murder with a weapon. If you truly were the mob by
the mob after money, trying to get revenge on him. You wouldn't just
go there to chat. You'd come to kill him. And I think you'd
do it with as little risk as possible, which is just kill him the
moment you see him. And of course, yeah, I could see them
taking out out into a remote field and setting him on fire to send some
sort of message. But like you said, why not just do it at
the house. Why not set the house on fire and burn it down,
because that would be very symbolic that you take money from us to build this
expensive house for yourself and then don't pay us, then we're going to kill
you. Sure, it's possible that Ed could have been kidnapped by intruders who
broke in and forced him to drive out to this remote rice field in his
own Jaguar, But the detail that strikes me as particularly odd is how the
shotgun he owned appeared to be the only item that was missing from the house.
The Unsolved Mystery segment mentioned a revolver being found on the floorboard of a
burned out Jaguar, but they did not mention the remains of what appeared to
be a shotgun were also found inside the vehicle, so if Ed was acted,
why would he have taken his shotgun with him even though his body was
badly burned. I think they were able to determine that he received a gunshot
at some point, and it likely came from the revolver. But regardless of
whether this was a murder or suicide, it still comes across a strange that
two separate guns were found inside the car. I'm dead on with you,
Jules. The shotgun alone is one of the most frustrating things for me here.
It's the thing that makes me ninety eight percent sure that this was a
suicide, because again, that was his shotgun in his car. Just doesn't
make sense. There were apparently eyewitness accounts of smoke coming from the field during
the early morning hours of Remember the seventh, which means that even though the
vehicle was not discovered until the following day, it must have burned only a
few hours after Ed's final phone call with Sandy, So theoretically, after he
finished the call, Ed could have overturned some items in his bedroom and broken
his front window and order to create the false impression of a break in before
driving out into the field. To take his own life. We do have
the eyewitness sighting of an unidentified pickup truck which appeared to be speeding away from
the field during the early morning hours, which might suggest that someone else had
been there it was involved in Baker's death, but for all we know,
the truck could have just been pass throughs through the area and has no connection
to this case. However, even if this was a suicide, the person
driving that truck still could have been involved with what happened. As One of
the theories pushed forward by people who believed the suicide theory is that Baker had
an accomplice who set fire to his vehicle after he shot himself. Indeed,
the biggest issue with the suicide theory is that it really would not have been
easy for Baker to kill himself in that fashion, especially if he was alone.
It wouldn't have been easy, but it would have been possible, And
I don't necessarily think it's impossible for there too have been somebody that helped him.
You know, did Sandy owe this person money from the life insurance?
Is it possible that Ed had arranged it where he'd get some of the money.
But I could see there being a need to ensure that that car burned
fully, and the way that it is possible for him to have set it
on fire may not have ensured that it burned fully without someone supervising the flames.
So if you said I'm going to throw the match, I'm going to
shoot myself and the car is going to be engulfed, that is very probable.
But in the event that that fire stopped, let's say at the back
seat, and all of a sudden there's Ed's body with a self inflicted wound,
then his family loses. So if he went to all these other lengths
to ensure that his policies included X, Y and Z, or didn't include
if he were to stage all of this, if he were to send Sandy
away, write the letter to the people that were helping him, look for
his private investigator to look into people that were involved in his case, would
he then go to the extent to say, for ten thousand dollars, can
you please make sure that this happens if my family's protected, and like it
sounds insane, It sounds insane, But if you were loyal to someone and
loved their family, could you see people willing to do that I wouldn't personally
want to be involved, but I could see someone saying yeah, for money
or for the fact that your family can't be left desperate. I could see
people helping. Yeah, oh one hundred percent. Like I can understand in
a situation where, you know, say, a systant suicide isn't acceptable somewhere,
and somebody that I love asked for my help. I think, given
certain circumstances, if they were truly in pain and they couldn't leave, and
they just wanted that to happen, I would consider that It's a very different
thing to light somebody on fire and watch them burn. But I could,
like you said, Ash, there are people out there who would say,
okay, like for the the right price, I could do that, or
because I care about your family. I think maybe both things, but it's
possible. I don't know how likely it is. I'm more inclined to think
that he lit the fire himself and just was educated enough on the process of
how fire burns, how to oxygenate it, and just figured, okay,
well, if it doesn't fully burn me, then you know, at least
I've been shot, and it'll look like these people that are after me because
I planted the seed that I'm you know, in danger from these mob figures
so people will believe it. But I mean it is possible. Yeah,
it could be a thing where he told the person you don't even actually have
to do anything. You just have to hang around the scene and make sure
that this burns as fully as it can and totally destroys my body, because,
like you said, if he's already dead, it's not like he can
do anything if the fire goes out and doesn't burn all the evidence that he
hopes it does. So he could have just told this person, well,
if it doesn't burn that thoroughly, could you just please like pour an extra
cannagatine over it and make sure it burns even more and then, if not,
just drive away. I did an interview with a detective for an episode
like way Back a couple of years ago, and he said, one of
the things that you never forget once you've smelled it is the smell of burning
human flesh. He said, It's just it's something you can't shake. It's
horrific. That's why I'm thinking that if someone made me an offer, because
you set my body on fire after I'm already dead, It's like you would
have to pay me a lot of money, or I would have to be
very devoted for that person to just be around and experience that smell of burning
flesh. Yeah, I don't think any amount of money would get me to
do it. I would really have to love somebody, and they would have
to make a real compelling argument for why it had to be done in order
for me to do it. The authorities found no less than three empty one
gallon gas cans at the scene, But I have no idea if they were
able to trace these gas cans and figure out if they might have been linked
to Baker. Even those suicidal people can be capable of some pretty extraordinary things,
it would still take an incredible amount of willpower to pour gasoline over your
body, set yourself on fire, and then have enough wherewithal to point a
gun at your head and pull the trigger. But still, if Ed's entire
motivation for ending his life in such a bizarre fashion was to eradicate all evidence
that his death was a suicide and ensure his family could collect the life insurance,
how could he have been certain that the fire would burn hot enough to
destroy his body so thoroughly what if the gun managed to stay in his hand
after he shot himself. This is why I'm inclined to believe that if this
was a suicide, Baker potentially had at least one other person there to ensure
the whole scheme when office planned, and perhaps this person was the driver of
the mysterious pickup truck. I have no idea who Baker would have enlisted to
do this, but it would have been their responsibility to ensure that Baker's body
and the vehicle were burned as thoroughly as possible, which technically could have made
this an assisted suicide. As strange as this situation sounds, it's not unprecedented.
There are documented cases of people making their suicides look as unusual as possible
to make everyone think that they're a victim of a homicide. As an example,
look at the two thousand and nine death a fifty one year old Bill
Sparkman, who was found tied to a tree with a rope around his neck
and died of an apparent asphyxiation. Sparkman was nude and had been gagged,
and he also had a word written on his chest and it felt to hit
Marker. But as bizarre as the whole scene was. A thorough investigation revealed
that Sparkman's death was a suicide, as he was suffering from cancer and had
staged his death to look like a homicide so that his family could collect on
some life insurance policies. Totally six hundred thousand dollars. So who's to say
that Ed Baker couldn't have attempted the same thing. And you know, I
think it goes beyond money. I think it's very possible Ed did stage the
same thing. But you know, suicide carries it different stigma with it.
And when you have someone who chooses to in their own life, despite the
reality that it's grounded in mental health or you know, decisions that are far
bigger than most people can understand, there's a shame and a kind of lack
of care given to the family after someone dies of suicide. And so I
wonder if that also plays into people's decisions when they in their own life to
say, I'd rather my family also have this vision that I was hurt by
someone else, so there can be someone else to be angry at, there
can be an unknown person to blame and kind of ruminate on, versus that
I chose to leave them or that quote, they feel they didn't do enough,
or they question themselves of what else could I have done to save him?
You know? Does it also spare the family when someone's trying to make
it look like something else happened? I mean, is that part of the
thought process that could go into some of these more bizarre cases is where it's
not just the money. I want my family to think differently of me as
well and be treated differently as well. And it could be an ego thing,
like we discussed in our last episode, whether Ed could have been a
narcissist and he may have had the mentality while suicide makes you look weak,
and I don't want people to think that I gave up and took my own
life, So that could have motivated him to try to make his death look
as elaborate as possible so that people would think he was murdered and not believe
that he ended his own life on his own accord. And this leads us
back to Sandy. Even if the story about Ed's life being in danger because
he owed money to the mob was a complete fabrication, he was still facing
a ton of trouble because of his financial indiscretions and there was a very good
chance he would go to prison. So Ed probably figured that no matter what,
his life was ruined and suicide was the only way out, but he
still wanted to make sure his family was taken care of. If Ed told
Sandy about this plan beforehand, then this would have motivated her to share a
story about Ed's failure payback alone to organize crime figures, planning the seeds that
her husband was a victim of foul play, and allowing her to collect on
his life insurance policies. I may not put much stock into polygraphs, but
this could explain why the results of Sandy's test seemed to indicate that she was
withholding information. It wasn't because she had him murdered, but because she knew
he had orchestrated an elaborate suicide plot. Like we mentioned earlier, when Ed
visited Mary's house and told her his life was in danger, this might have
been only done for show. Look, I certainly do not rule out the
possibility of foul play here, and if you had asked me about this case
a few years ago, I probably still would have said that Ed was murdered.
But when you look at the big picture and examine all of Ed's actions
prior to his death. Everything seemed pretty calculated. If this was a suicide,
then I guess the only way to truly solve this case would be if
someone was complicit or had knowledge about what Ed was going to do. However,
since many years have passed, I'm not sure anyone is still actively working
on this case anymore, so we'll probably never know the truth. But if
you happen to have any information about the unexplained death of Ed Baker, please
contact the appropriate authorities. Jules Ashley any final thoughts on this case. My
gut tells me that Ed decided he had gotten so over his head right and
so over his head that his only option not just to escape what he had
created, but to provide an out for his family as well, was to
in his own life and to allow them to collect on those life insurance policies
and tried to rebuild after his death. I think he had gotten in a
position where he and Mary had started a legitimate business. Then he started to
see wealth, started to hang out with people who might have had more wealth
than he did, and he wanted to play fast and loose bigger than the
means he had, and he got in this world where you just keep spending
and keep spending to keep up, and you find yourself in a position that
says, I can't do it anymore, Like I'm in big trouble at this
point, and so are the people that I care about. And so I
do believe Ed ended his own life. I think that's pretty evident with the
shotgun found in the car, and also with the I believe sixty points of
dental matches that were able to be performed despite how charred the body was when
it was recovered. But it doesn't matter at the end of the day,
because whether or not you trust what Sandy says, there are so many people
involved in this case. I feel really sad for Mary, who seems to,
despite not always being treated respectfully, stood by Ed's side and was there
when he was scared at the end of his life. She also helped him
with his three babies that were from his original marriage when he lost his first
wife. And there are a lot of people who were relying on Ed and
he wasn't able to get himself out of the mess he created. I don't
believe that this necessarily was a homicide. Was someone else there to help him
in his life and protect his family. I think it's a possibility, but
I think Ed was the one who had this decision and said, I'm going
to make this so air tight that at the last thing I'll do. I've
gotten them into a lot of trouble, but the last thing I want to
do is make them financially stable and safe without me being here. I mean,
there's a lot of judgment that could go into that, but there's also
a lot of where you step back and say, I could see, when
you're that far buried that you could turn to this as an option to say
I'm done. There's no way for me to get out of this, but
I could protect the people that I care about, and that seems to be
what he did. Yeah. I think that both things can be true,
and that Ed's life was under threat and that he owed a lot of money
to some dangerous people. But I don't believe that he was murdered. I
think that he took great care to ensure that his loved ones were taken care
of, and this was a very elaborate setup. I believe it was absolutely
his body. I don't think he was in Europe with Sandy, and I
do believe that, of course Sandy wasn't physically involved, but I think she
had some kind of knowledge about what Ed was planning, or at least had
some great suspicions. I mean, it's a really sad case because his kids
are left behind to wonder what happened, and the idea of thinking that your
father was murdered in a really brutal way, and you know, having a
private investigator that Sandy hired second that it wasn't a suicide probably gave fuel to
their fire of thinking, oh my gosh, like somebody has done this to
our father. How horrific. Unfortunately, we don't know how his children felt
about this and where they stood on the suicide versus murder. But I mean,
I really really feel horrible for them in this situation because nobody wants to
have their parent and their own life, but nobody ever wants to think of
their parent being abducted and then shot and said on fire. It's all just
so horrific. And whether or not somebody else was involved in this careful orchestration
of this plan, the one thing that really does stick out to me is
those gas cans are left behind. I wonder if they ever dusted them for
Prince, and the fact that if you were somebody that was going to end
somebody else's life, like if you had somebody who was like a co conspirator
in this grand scheme or somebody murdered him, I believe they would have taken
those gas cans with them, And the fact that they didn't makes me just
lean slightly more towards the fact that he executed this on his own and Sandy
and potentially maybe other people may have had knowledge, but he was the one
who was responsible for setting himself on fire and pulling that trigger. Yeah,
now that you mentioned the detail about the gas cans, I'm thinking to myself,
if he really wanted to make it look like murder, why didn't this
accomplice take the gun out of the car after he shot himself, Because if
there's no gun found at the scene, then no one is ever going to
think suicide. So yeah, that is another point which leans me away.
With an accomplice being involved, makes me lean towards Ed doing this to himself.
Like many cases and unsolved mysteries about suspicious suicides. When I originally became
familiar with this, case thirty plus years ago, I usually automatically bought the
narrative that foul play had taken place. But of course, as the year
has gone on, a lot of these cases from the show that were considered
to be suspicious suicides now look like they probably were suicides all along. And
I think you could still apply that to Ed Baker, though this is a
different type of suicide where it's not one that's like the result of depression or
mental health issues. It was a guy who got himself into some serious trouble
and was making a calculated effort trying to make his suicide look like a homicide.
I mean, i'd lfiely admit that of all the victims we featured on
the show, Ed Baker is not one of the most likable because he did
do some bad things. He did some financial indiscretions, he went through women
a lot during the last few years of his life, fan he betrayed some
people who cared about them. The sympathetic figures in this story are definitely Add's
children and his second wife, Mary, because even though even though he suffered
a tragedy by losing his first wife, and he and Mary started their company
Vanguard international together, he wound up having this weird midlife crisis where he decided
that he wanted to be with younger women. But it sounds like Mary still
genuinely cared about him and was concerned when during the last days of his life
when it looked like he was suffering a mental breakdown and he was thinking his
life might be in danger. And she is the one who helped keep the
story in the spotlight, appearing on unsolved mysteries and trying to seek answers about
what happened ed, whereas his last wife, Sandy, pretty much just stayed
away from the spotlight and was content to move on. But yeah, when
you look at it, it does seem like a calculated effort to kill himself
and ensure that his family would be taken care of, which I guess is
a honorable thing to ensure that your family will be financially secure after you're gone.
At the same time, you're making them live through the horror of thinking
that someone they cared about was murdered in a very horrific fashion and leaving them
with uncertainty. But when you look at all the evidence, it does seem
like this was a very calculated suicide in a very unusual situation, Robin,
do you want to tell us a little bit about the Trail Went Cold Patreon?
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