Welcome back to the Pathway Chili. I'm Robin, I'm Jules, and I'm
Ashley. Let's dive right into this week's case. November eighth, nineteen eighty
five, Harris County, Texas, the charred body of fifty two year old
Ed Baker, the millionaire chairman of an oil investment business, is discovered inside
his burned oak car in a remote field. Since Baker was suffering from serious
financial problems and claimed he was receiving death threats, there is suspicion that he
was murdered by people he owed money to. However, others suspect the Baker
staged an elaborate suicide in order to ensure that his family could collect on his
life insurance policies. It's also theorized that Baker may have faked his own death
and fled the country, but the actual circumstances of what happened to him remain
unknown. After that, the path went Chiley. So today we're going to
be exploring another bizarre case which was featured on Unsolved Mysteries, the nineteen eighty
five death of Ed Baker. Or was it actually a death after all?
This is a pretty unique story about a man who built up a multimillion dollar
oil investment business before it all came crashing down and he wound up debt.
The charred remains a Baker's body would be discovered inside his burnt out car in
a remote field, and on the surface, this seemed like a clear cut
case of foul play, since Baker had been experiencing severe financial problems and his
playing paranoid behavior prior to his death, which suggested that his life was in
danger. But it turned out that opinions about this case would be sharply divided,
as there was other evidence to suggest that Baker could have staged an elaborate
suicide and made it look like a murder so that his family could collect his
life insurance benefits. And there was also a third possibility. Even though investigators
were pretty certain that the victim inside the vehicle was Baker, his body was
burned so badly that some people suspected he faked his own death in order to
escape his troubles. So could the victim have actually been an unidentified John Doe.
If Baker really did die that day, was it suicide or was someone
else responsible for his death? Well, after thirty eight years, there are
still no conclusive answers about what actually happened, but the possibilities are endless.
So we're going to be exploring a number of different theories about the case on
today's episode. I have so many questions, like is it possible that the
decline in wealth came from something more complicated than just a failed business endeavor?
Like could it have been that, Yes, he's a very successful billionaire or
multi millionaire doing these oil investments, but he's also contributing money or funneling money
to something that's darker. Or is he gambling or is he part of some
other kind of elite group who's doing illegal behavior, and therefore when the finances
crash, maybe it's not just his business that's crashing those finances. Oh yes,
this definitely gets brought up a lot later in this case, there is
speculation that he was involved in the legal activity, and he was involved in
gambling. He was spending more money than he earned, so I think that
definitely contributed to his problems. And then you've got to think about the mental
health that comes with that, right, So, Like I mean, I
feel like right now, in twenty twenty three, we're all doing the thing
where it says, Okay, how do we take our family finances and cover
groceries and mortgages and car payments and children's childcare and clothes and everything that we're
looking at. Financial stress can cause significant mental and emotional health problems. It
can cause significant relational and family problems. I'm wondering when you started describing him,
I almost felt like you were describing Rivera to a point. I'm not
sure there's a similarity because there really isn't like any outward indications that he was
suffering from a mental health problem. But it's possible that he reached the point
where he realized either I'm going to be go to jail or I'm going to
wind up bankrupt, and that suicide might be the better option to almost protect
his family instead of just being a mental health crisis. Yeah, that's a
lot of people theorize is that he knew it was the end, but he
wanted to ensure his family was being taken care of before he killed himself.
Our story begins in Texas in nineteen eighty five. Our central figure is fifty
two year old Edward Gerald Baker, who goes by the name Ed and currently
lives in Houston. Ed spent the early part of his life working such jobs
as a shoe salesman and an insurance agent, and had two daughters and a
son with his first wife, but after twenty years of marriage, tragedy would
strike on Thanksgiving weekend in nineteen seventy three when Ed's wife was killed in a
car wreck. He would soon get remarried to a woman named Mary Ella and
eventually decided to start his own company called Vanguard Groups International. At the outset,
Ed only had three employees working under him, including Mary, and the
company initially specialized in such ventures as building inexpensive housing and selling partnerships in commercial
real estate development. However, by the time the nineteen eighties rolled around,
the oil industry was hitting a major boom period in Texas, so Baker decided
to start using Vanguard to sell limited partnerships in speculative oil wells. After achieving
some early success with promoting oil well exploration, it wasn't long before Baker developed
a reputation for being a brilliant strategist who was able to develop clever tax shelter
programs and sell them to wealthy investors that were happy to trust him with their
money. As a result, Vanguard would be featured in Ink magazine for three
consecutive years on their annual INK five hundred list of the fastest growing privately held
companies in the United States. By nineteen eighty four, the company was housed
in a newly constructed office building and its sales had reached to nineteen million.
However, as Ed's wealth grew, it seemed like he wanted to change his
lifestyle, and in March of that year, he decided to divorce Mary after
ten years of marriage. In September, Ed married his third wife, Karen
Wallbridge, but the marriage would prove to be short lived, and Ed would
file for divorced from her only five months later. Only four days after the
divorce was finalized, Ed got married for a fourth time to Sandy Hawk,
one of his employees at Vanguard. Okay, if anyone's listening, if you
were going to be his fifth wife, it's time to start looking at the
trail right and there, and is probably not someone you're going to rope down
and have as a long term partner. So surprising, very surprising. You
have this successful man. He sounds like he's almost a narcissist who says Okay,
I've been successful. I don't need her, even though she stood beside
me and help me start this company. And this one's not so fun either,
And I can get whatever I want because I'm a wealthy man. And
he just kind of seems to pick and choose what he wants when he wants
it. Don't you feel like he's probably already engaged in an affair, like
the idea that four days later he goes on and he marries that employee of
Vanguard, And it's like, clearly you were obviously engaged in some kind of
extramarital affair prior to this divorce, because just your timeline seemed to be like,
whatever's convenient if she starts to have too many opinions, or if I
find somebody who I think is better looking or more fits the idea of the
successful guy that I've become. It's exactly what Actley said. It just falls
under this really narcissistic behavior. And it's pretty cringe when you look at this
long list of women. But ugh, get like Ash said, if there
was a fifth wife, you would definitely be looking at all of these other
wives that came before you, and these short marriages and I mean, the
one ended in tragedy. We can't count that, but it seems like a
man who wanted to be on the rise and wanted to project a certain image,
and his wife was like merely an extension of him, exactly. And
as he gets more and more successful, or as he thinks he gets bigger
and more grandigoes, he's like, oh that one not so much. Not
you either, No, thanks, thanks for helping me, but I'm going
to continue to keep going. Doesn't sound like the person i'd want to have
chasing me for a short term. But I will say, even though he
did get married four days after the divorce was finalized, we all know,
especially if money is involved, a divorce would have taken a really long time.
And you do have people who say, I've been filed for divorce for
two years, you know, and because of the court systems were waiting on
stuff. But Ed's gross so far in his his grandiose behavior. I think
that's an extension of of that. Oh yeah, we're going to talk more
about this on our next episode. But I have the feeling that Ed was
suffering from a serious midlife crisis as he got into his fifties and got more
rich because he did a number of weird things around this time period, and
the fact that he went through so many wives in such a short amount of
time. It was just kind of par for the course for him during this
time period. Doesn't the name Vanguard remind you, do either of you?
Watch Seinfeld? Yes, vandal Ay Industries exactly. Yeah. And it also
reminds me of them, didn't the leader cult leaders? Yeah? I'm like,
yeah, I think he did keep going there or whatever. Yes.
And if another man, if you just look at him, I'm I question,
what was it. I don't see it either about good old Vanguard.
So Ed's going to hire George Constanza to be his LATEX sales yes, and
start his own colt. It was also around this time period when Ed began
to spend money excessively and became heavily involved in high stakes gambling. However,
this would eventually come back to bite him because, without his investor's knowledge,
Baker had been borrowing their money to support and maintain his lavish lifestyle. He
likely assumed that he would be able to repay that money once he attracted another
round of investors, But as nineteen eighty five rolled around, the price of
crude oil started dropping in a huge way. This would lead to an oil
glut, which drastically worsened over the next two years and had a major negative
impact on Houston's economy. As a result, Vanguard started experiencing serious financial hardship
as Baker found himself unable to attract many people to invest in his oil well
deals. As the years went on, Vanguard's investors, most of whom had
invested a minimum of two hundred thousand dollars each, were clamoring for their money,
but Baker was unable to repay them. Three lawsuits were filed against Vanguard,
including one from Window Energy, who complained about having invested in an oil
drilling operation which was never completed. Okay, so basically he's running a Ponzi
scheme where he just continues to make these false promises, collect money, and
use them for his own benefit, is what he's doing here exactly. And
like Ponzi schemes weren't as well known in the nineteen eighties, but these would
definitely come into the spotlight a lot during like the late nineties and early two
thousands, with people like Bernie Madoff and with like the two thousand and eight
financial crisis. But whenever you do something like this, it's always going to
fall apart, where eventually you just do not have enough money to maintain your
lifestyle and pay back your investors in the house of cards comes crashing down.
Who do they say, borrowing from Peter to pay Pal? Is that is
not the phrase? Yeah, that's the phrase. Yeah, exactly. I
Also you got to think, too, he's got kids, right, that
are they're probably adult kids at this point, but he's he's got kids too
that are you know, I'm sure part of this lifestyle or you know,
their dad's an important figure in their life. And so this would be incredibly
stressful to say. Not only do I have the investors that are coming after
me, I have legal repercussions coming after me. Eventually this could turn into
criminal charges. And I don't know how much he's worried about his temporary wives,
but I do assume he would be very concerned about the fact that he
does have children and possibly you know, other little kiddos that are counting on
him, and not only is his lifestyle falling apart, but theirs could be
too. By October of that year, Vanguard was on the verge of bankruptcy,
and Baker's issues with his investors, as well as some tax problems,
meant that he was not only in danger of losing his company, but he
could also be facing potential jail time. Baker told his private investigator, Bob
Gail, that in order to escape financial ruin, he was arranging a baileut
with two men from Miami who were going to loan him a million dollars.
According to Gail, Baker was very concerned because he'd heard these men might have
some sort of connection to the mafia in organized crime, so he wanted Gaile
to run a background check on them. While at around seven thirty pm on
the evening of November sixth, Ed suddenly showed up at the home of his
ex wife, Mary, and he appeared to be very paranoid and anxious.
Mary said that she had never seen Ed look this bright and before, as
he started rambling on about how he was being followed and that over the past
two weeks he'd received some letters at work containing death threats. Ed also told
Mary that earlier that day he received two threatening telephone calls at his home number,
even though it was unlisted, and the caller said quote today is your
day to die. I feel so bad for Mary in this moment. I
mean, this is the woman, remember who started the company with him when
it was a legitimate business. It's something that you know, she was part
of the action, and when it starts to skyrocket, he divorces her like
it's almost as if she really was his right hand man. She really was
his best friend, saying, not only am I helping you grieve the death
of your late wife, I'm the wife to step in after that role.
I know from experience that's not an easy position to be in. She also
is encouraging him to chase this stream of a new endeavor and they do it
together, and then he leaves her, and then she watches him start to
kind of have this grandiose lifestyle from wife to wife to wife, and then
all of a sudden, he's back on my doorstep. And as much as
you would kind of be frustrated with him, this is the man who was
your best friend and husband for many years. You guys did a lot of
things together, including your family, and he's scared and he's overwhelmed, and
I'm not so sure that there wasn't some kind of complication if he received money
from someone other than a financial institute who was going to quote help him.
Trust me, there were heavy strings attached to that money. So it's like
blood money. In my opinion, no one is going to just help you.
I've learned that the hard way right financially, with business, no one's
out to just help you. There's always something at the back end that they're
going to get tenfold for whatever they're offering to give you. So could he
have been right? Could he have been scared that these people wanted more than
he could repay and now he's indebted to them and he might have to pay
with his life possibly, Or like we talked about it earlier, he could
be setting an elaborate plan in motion. But at this point I almost feel
like he actually is legitimately overwhelmed and scared. He has real names to give
to his private investigator. If he was just super vague with everything and he
didn't have names of the actual people to run background checks, I would say
what you just said, Ash. He was setting up this whole idea of
there being this imminent threat to his life in order to be able to have
this elaborate stage suicide so that the insurance companies would pay out and you know,
his debt would be forgiven or whatever the situation. But the fact that
these people have names, I don't know. It does sound like he could
have been in danger. And I will say about Mary is that she seemed
like a very decent person that even though Ed had divorced her years earlier,
it sounds like she still legitimately cared about him and was fearful about his life.
And we'll talk more about this later on, but I find it interesting
that as the years went on, it would be Mary, his ex wife,
who seemed to be more anxious to find answers about what happened to Ed,
rather than his current wife Sandy. So Mary was would pretty much be
the torch bearer at trying to find answers and being an advocate for him over
the next several years. I assume that was her love. I mean,
I assume that they truly did life together, whereas it sounds like these second
are the third and fourth wife might have been luxury items who were arm candy
for a man who had more money than he knew what to do with and
started to want to have somebody who was young and attractive and fun at a
party, these kinds of things. Whereas Mary was that person, she was
his rock. I'm sure through many griefful moments mourning his wife, I'm sure
that she was there when days weren't good in a small business startup, and
she was there when the days were good until he decided to leave. So
I very much believe she not only loved him, but she loved his family.
And in this moment, she's going like, as much as I think
sometimes you are the dumbest man I've ever met, I don't want anything to
happen to you. I feel like, aside from his late wife, it
has to be the most meaningful relationship that he's ever cultivated. And unfortunately,
probably due to his midlife crisis, he used her bit like a stepping stone
and then went through wives really fast, and at that point he wasn't married
to them for very long. And it doesn't seem like he seemed all that
interested in the day after the relationship. It was more like the external,
how it made him appear and how others perceived him, and how his wife
was an extension of him. But it feels like from the information that we
have, his relationship with Mary was different, especially since she was the one
that he trusted to go to with this information. It speaks to the depth
of their prior relationship for sure. So before he left Mary's house, Ed
mentioned that he had sent his current wife, Sandy, to her daughter's home
in Austin for her own protection. Hours later, at approximately one am on
the morning of November the seventh, Sandy said that she spoke to Ed over
the phone from Austin and he told her that he was holed up in his
bedroom because he had just received another threatening phone call. He said there was
a good possibility he might die and asked Sandy to remain strong before he ended
the call. Later that morning, at nine to fifteen am, Ed's gardner
showed up at his residence and discovered that the house had a broken window and
appeared to have been burglarized. When the gardener went inside and entered Ed's bedroom,
he noticed that the telephone have been knocked off a table and an ashtray
was overturned on the floor. Though the rest of the house did not appear
to be ransacked, there was no sign of Ed anywhere, and while a
shotgun he owned appeared to be missing, most of Ed's personal items, including
his jacket and a wallet containing credit cards and nine hundred dollars in cash have
been left behind. Okay, I mean knowing that we have two theories murder
or suicide, or potentially a murder he committed, put the body in the
car, and fled. You could see this from both sides, right,
But I'm almost inclined at this moment to think he had sent Sandy to her
daughter's house for her own production. I genuinely think he was scared, whether
it's legitimate or not perceived or not imagined, I think he was scared.
And he also makes a phone call over to say that he had just received
another threatening call. So he is confiding in Sandy, and he is confiding
in Mary's and then that night he disappears and he doesn't take important things.
Now, if you're going to complete suicide, I don't think you need your
wallet, although keep in mind you have your car and the registration for that
and stuff. But to make it easier on people, wouldn't you want your
wallet at the scene to make an identification super easy? You'd think if you
were planning it. Now, if you weren't planning this and you were apprehended
or something happened to you. Leaving your wallet behind becomes a very serious issue.
And there's also the fact that the only item that appears to be missing
is his shotgun. And you keep wondering yourself if he was kidnapped, why
would his shotgun be missing, Like, why wouldn't they use their own guns
to get him out of the house. So it makes you wonder is there
a reason that he took that when he disappeared. Maybe he fell for fear,
in fear of his own life, and that was the quickest weapon for
him to grab, but somehow he was apprehended in the process. But I
agree these people are they're as mobbed up as they seem like they are,
or is threatening so much so that he is so paranoid. He's confiding in
both his ex wife Mary and his current wife Sandy, and he's telling his
private investigator that he's scared. These guys have their own guns, so they
didn't take his gun to do this. But I do agree with you ash
In that if he was going to stage an elaborate suicide, I would think
identification of the body would be a really important thing, So you would want
to make it as easy as possible for the investigators at the scene to be
able to draw the conclusion that it is indeed your body. Ed remained a
missing person for the next twenty four hours, but shortly after nine am on
the morning of November eighth, the Harris County Sheriff's Department was contacted by some
farmers who reported finding a burned out vehicle in a remote rice field located next
to a dirt road about twenty miles outside of Houston. When the Sheriff's and
arrived at the scene, they discovered that the burned out vehicle was a Jaguar
Sedan and the charred remains of a person were in the passenger seat. The
body was burned so badly that they could not even tell if the victim was
a man or a woman, and its weight had been reduced to thirty two
pounds. A check of the Jaguar revealed that it was registered to Ed Baker,
but due to the condition of the remains, the authorities could not say
with absolute one hundred percent certainty that the victim was him. However, the
medical examiner's report noted that there were at least sixty points of similarity between Ed's
dental records and what was left of the victim's teeth and jaw, so the
official consensus was that it was him. In addition, a ring was found
with the victim, and Sandy would positively identify it as a ring that she
had given to her husband. A burnt thirty two caliber revolver was on the
vehicle's passenger side floorboard beneath the victim's feet, and there did appear to be
a gunshot wound in his head. The cartridge under the revolver's firing pin had
an indentation which seemed to indicate it had been fired, while the other five
shells inside the gun looked like they had exploded from the severe heat of the
fire. There also appeared to be remains of a shotgun inside the vehicle,
which may have been the missing shotgun from Ed's residence. A total of three
empty one gallon cans of gasoline were found inside and around the vehicle, so
it seemed pretty obvious that someone had intentionally set the Jaguar on fire and this
was a case of arson. Okay, so many questions here. If this
is some mafia related or planned attack on this man and they have the plan
to go in. We're going to kidnap him. We're going to put him
in his own car and drive him somewhere, shoot him, set the car
on fire, and tried to burn all the evidence. If they have the
wear withal to buy gas cans and gasoline plot when they're going to attack this
man, make threatening phone calls. I'm going back to the shotgun we just
mentioned. Why would his shotgun be part of the plan. You came prepared
with a murder weapon. If you went to this extent to attack him right
and to kill him and to get rid of him, why not just kill
him in his home right there and set that on fire. That's very bizarre
too. Why risk taking him from his home to the car and driving with
someone who is likely panicked. Why would you do all that? No one
else was in the home. It's not like they had to isolate him away
from anybody else. That's odd to me. I'd also like to ask,
do we know you said? The medical examiner reported there's at least sixty points
of similarity between Ed's dental records and what was left of the teeth and draw
area. I'm curious how rare would that be for other people to match that,
like, is that something that one in ten thousand would have, one
in one hundred would have, one in a trillion would have What are we
looking at there? That's a good question, because I don't really know how
they conducted dental records investigations back then, Because this was nineteen eighty five,
it was still a much different time. DNA testing was still a couple of
years away, So today they would just use DNA to positively identify beyond a
shadow of a doubt if it was him. But here, you're trying to
do dental records for a very burnt out body, and I can't imagine what
the teeth looked like at this point. So he said there were at least
sixty points of similarity. But if it's sixty out of say eighty or ninety,
then that sounds like a pretty convincing match. But if it's sixty out
of a couple hundred, then maybe that isn't so convincing. But he did
think that there was enough similarities that he felt that the victim was ed.
So witnesses reported having seen smoke in the rice field early on the morning of
November the seventh, which meant that Ed's death likely took place only hours after
his final phone call with Sandy. Around that same time period, an eyewitness
had been driving through the area and noticed a blue Chevy pickup truck with chrome
rails and mag wheels rapidly speeding away from the field, but the truck was
never found and it was unclear if he had had any connection to what happened.
In a bizarre turn of events, hours after the discovery of the burnt
out jaguar, the body of a young man who appeared to be in his
early twenties and dressed in nothing more than a camouflaged shirt, was found about
a quarter mile away from the scene. The victim had been handcuffed and killed
by several blows to the head, which crushed his skull. Initially, there
was speculation that this man might have been hired to kill Baker before someone else
killed him, but the investigation later determined that he was murdered in a dope
deal, which was completely unrelated to the Baker case. As far as I
can tell, this young man's name has never been released publicly, and there
virtually no details available about what happened to him, but he was likely killed
around twenty four hours after the first eyewitness sightings of the smoke from the burning
Jaguar. So it was nothing more than an odd coincidence that these two events
happened to take place in the same area. That is so sad I could
see where Initially you'd go, Okay, wait a minute, is something connected
here, But it's pretty clear that they're not. It's just two tragedies occurred
on the same evening. But okay, what about back to this eyewitness and
the blue Chevy pickup truck with chrome wheels that are flying away, right,
it really kind of looks chaotic to someone enough for them to remember and mention
it. We know the problems with eyewitnesses. I won't get started with it.
But was anything ever able to be done? I know a blue Chevy
doesn't really give you a whole lot of details, but was anything found from
that truck? It doesn't sound like it. I haven't read anything. If
they looked for tire tracks to like indicate if the pickup truck might have been
near the scene where Ed's car was found. They obviously thought it was an
important because they did reveal it on Unsolved Mystery several years later, and they
thought it might be a vital clue. So maybe the witness shared some information
to make them think that this truck had some connection to what happened. But
then again, like at that point, the motorist is not going to know
that someone has just been murdered in that field, So are you really going
to distinctly remember a truck speeding away before you know the significance of what happened.
It could be something where once he learned about Ed's death, he just
thought back and says, oh, I remember seeing the speeding truck, So
maybe it's significant to the case and that's why he came forward. Do we
know anything about the trajectory of the gunshot? I know it doesn't look like
they have that information. They never released it publicly. That's too bad,
because I think you could see if somebody else was going to put a gun
to his head and kill him, you're going to be looking at a certain
trajectory, Whereas if somebody is going to end their own life, say with
a rifle, you're going to get a very specific trajectory, don't you guys
think? I think so, yeah, because I'm currently working on another case
where the trajectory of the bullet and the victim could make a big difference in
determining whether their death was murder or suicide. But it's also possible because things
were spurt so badly with his body that maybe they just couldn't tell clearly in
this particular case. Shortly after the discovery of Baker's body, his attorney,
Wardbucy, received a letter from him which read, quote, mister Wardbucy,
there have been threats on my life in the past month that I don't know
how real they are. Just in case, I've written Sandy a letter that
I want you to keep to give to her in case something should happen to
me. I hope this isn't silly, but in these days and times,
crazy things happen every day. Maybe I'm just reacting, but I've never had
a threat before, and it just kind of gets to me. I guess
you've had experience with clients before, so you understand if anything should happen.
Please help Sandy and my kids all you can. You've always been a good
friend and I know I can count on you. Thanks Ed Baker end quote.
Indeed, Ed didn't close a second letter, which he asked us to
give to Sandy, though the contents of the second letter have never been revealed
publicly. WHOA, that's so heavy. It's heavy for both circumstances, like
ooh, I just got chills if he was going to complete suicide. The
fact that this man was able to sit back and say, Okay, I'm
going to go ahead and set this up, so that's my family to be
taking care of financially. I'm going to write my attorney letter. But then
he sits there. I can't imagine what it would take to say goodbye to
rebel or like, think about, you know, if I got to say
goodbye to buddy, Like, what would you actually say? What would you
put in something that's that important? So having to sit down and write something
like that would be so overwhelming, and then to pretend to function afterwards if
you knew you were going to complete suicide would be one of the most just
bizarre, heavy things I think you could do in life. I don't even
know where that's going, but that's heavy. And then imagine if this is
legit. Imagine if he knows he got in with the wrong people, he
has a massive debt to pay. There's only one option, and it's make
a deal with the devil, and he knows the devil's incredibly dangerous, and
this devil has basically told him you'll never be able to repay this debt.
In fact, I'm just going to take your life for it. And he's
having to prepare for like when is that going to happen to me? Also
a horrific heavy burden to be carrying around. Yeah, we know that Ed
mailed it to buc like a short time before his death, but it didn't
arrive until after Ed was already dead. So you could construe this as a
setup where if he was planning suicide, he's just planting the seeds by sending
this final letter to say I want you to take care of my family because
my life is in danger. But on the other hand, it could be
authentic where he wasn't planning to kill himself, but he felt that, oh,
I'm not long for this world. I may be murdered soon, so
I better send this letter to my attorney to get my affairs in orders.
So I know that war Busy we'll talk about it later, has his own
ideas about what happened to Ed, but I cannot imagine his reaction getting that
letter after finding out that this close friend of yours has just been killed under
strange circumstances. So, following her husband's death, Sandy immediately started expressing her
belief that her husband had been murdered. She suspected that he was the victim
of a mafia hit because he owed a two hundred and fifty thousand dollars loan
to some organized crime figures. Sandy claimed that six weeks before Ed was killed,
she accompanied him on a trip to Miami, and while he never shared
specific details about what was going on, Sandy suspected that the reason Ed went
down there was to meet with these organized crime figures and try to arrange another
way to pay off the loan, since he had already spent all the money.
It would also turn out that Ed over fifty thousand dollars in gambling debts
to at least two casinos in Las Figter Vegas. Investigators would soon discover that
in the days prior to his death, Ed called his life insurance agents.
He inquired about whether any of the policies he had taken out would still be
paid to his family in the event of a suicide, and was told that
at least one policy valued at five hundred thousand dollars when not two days after
Ed's body was found, his twenty three year old son, Blake Edward Baker
would be arrested and charged with making a terrorist threat after he allegedly phoned up
Sandy and threatened to kill her if she did not pay him the two hundred
thousand dollars he felt he was entitled to from his father's estate. In spite
of this, Blake passed a polygraph when questioned about his father's death and was
not considered to be a suspect. Yikes, that's heavy too. You have
a dead man and the son's like, here we are, I'm going after
wife number four. See what happens here. It's very bizarre, very bizarre
that Ed calls and says, does suicide count on my policy? I mean,
for me, when you're thinking about, like, oh I might be
sick, I want to check and see if cancer is covered. I might
you know, we're going on a big trip. I want to see if
a plane crash is covered. But I don't need to know if suicide's covered
because that's not in my repertoire of possibilities. So unless that is something that's
crossed your mind and something that you think your family may need protection from and
care for after your death. Why would you ask that question? Like,
I have done quite a bit to get life in terms, especially after Buddy
passed away. You go through a lot if you're trying to get your family
protected, And I don't know if my policy covers that or what the stipulations
are, like, I don't need to know that. A lot of times,
after a certain number of years, they will pay out, but they
won't do it in like the short term. I think there's like a suicide
indemnity clause that a lot of them have, Like after five years it's fine
and you would be paid out for that, but they don't want people who
are intending to complete suicide to buy a policy and then you know, six
months later they've got to pay out. Or wonder if in the eighties,
Jules, do you think in the eighties it was too I'm unsure, but
if this policy for five hundred thousand wouldn't pay out and then he ends up
dead shortly thereafter, I believe that both things can be true. That he
could be paranoid because he's under threat, But I think in a situation like
that you might be looking to be able to control your own fate rather than
waiting to be murdered or you know, something terrible done to you. If
they're asking you questions, trying to figure something out, maybe trying to tell
you that, like your loved one may take on your debt, that he
may choose to exit this world on his own terms, and he wants to
make sure his family is protected. Because it's just so strange that just before
he dies he's asking insurance companies about suicide, because why else would he be
concerned if he worried that they're going to stage it to look like a suicide
if he's murdered. That just doesn't really sound plausible to me personally, Yeah,
exactly. It just seems like too much of a coincidence, Like on
its own, someone wanting to know if their policy will pay out in the
event of a suicide. I could see someone calling them to ask that.
But then a few days later he's found dead in a circumstance where there's ambiguity
about whether his death was a homicide or a suicide. So you think he
heard that from his insurance company and realized, well, if I kill myself,
I have to do whatever I can to make it not look like suicide
so that the policy will pay out. On November sixth, shortly before he
went missing, Ed officially revised his will, removing Vanguard Group International from his
life insurance policies and making his family the beneficiaries. According to his updated will,
Sandy would receive five hundred thousand dollars and her daughter fifty thousand, while
Ed's owned two daughters received two hundred and twenty five thousand dollars each and Blake
one hundred and fifty thousand. His ex wife, Mary would receive five hundred
thousand from an insurance policy that she had as collateral on a ten year alimony
agreement, but one of the insurance carriers refused to pay out any death benefits
since it could not be conclusively proven that Ed's death was not a suicide.
Indeed, the fact that Edd inquired about whether these policies would pay out convince
some of the investigators, as well as Ward Beaucy, that Ed could have
taken his own life. The theory was bolstered by the fact that a gun
had been found on the floorboard beneath Ed's feet, leading his speculation that he
shot himself. While investigators found it unlikely that Ed would have been able to
pour gasoline over his body and set himself on fire before pulling the trigger,
they could not discount the possibility of Ed bringing an accomplice to the scene who
poured the gasoline in and around the vehicle and then started the fire after Ed
shot himself in order to make his death look like a homicide. Ward Beauty
believed that when Ed revised his will and sent him the letter about taking care
of his family, he already knew he was planning to kill himself in order
to escape his financial and legal problem, so he intentionally sent Sandy out of
town before he went through with his juicide in order to give her a plausible
deniability. Sandy refused to accept the idea that Ed took his own life and
hired her own independent private investigator, who concluded that his death was not a
suicide. Sandy did agree to take a polygraph test, but the result seemed
to indicate that she was withholding information. One month later, she agreed to
take a second polygraph, but we were unable to find out how those results
turned out, and Sandy eventually moved to Europe. So she fails the first
polygraph, right, it says that she might be with holing information, but
then she agrees while she's hired a private investigator to take a second polygraph.
That's bizarre. You would think at some point she'd be consulting with her private
investigator or trying to talk to an attorney or something somebody and they'd be like,
wait a minute, the police said you failed a polygraph test. Don't
go back in there, Like, do not talk to them anymore. They're
setting you up to be roped into this case, It's very likely that Ed
did send Sandy away. We know he did for her quote safety will to
spare me from discovering a body or being in the immediate scene when I'm discovered
as a deceased individual. That's protecting her too, right, getting her away
from the scene, it's helping her not have any culpability. And he's already
possibly set up this letter that'll be sent to her as well. So did
she know what was going on? We don't know what their marriage was like.
If I'm a young new bride, maybe she wasn't, maybe she was
older than him. But I was a young new bride married to a man
who claimed he was a multi millionaire even if he was having financial problems,
he likely would have you fallen in love with Sandy under this pretense that he
was going to provide her with the world and they were going to have these
amazing moments together. If he was going to end his life and I was
going to get his life insurance, like, would I be willing to go
stay with my daughter and come home and have all of my worries gone and
money? Possibly? Could I also have been so stressed and overwhelmed or not
understood a question, failed at first polygraph Eve and tried to prove my innocence
with the second one. Yeah. Also, it would not be smart legally,
but I could see both sides of the coin here. Yeah. It's
never been conclusively established if she took the second polygraph because I was unable to
find that information. So it's possible that maybe her attorneys talked her out of
doing it. But there has been speculation that the reason that she failed the
first one and they thought she was withholding information is that even if she was
not directly involved in Ed's death, maybe she knew that when I go to
Austin and I'm away from town, and he's going to go kill himself and
ensure that I'm taking care of financially, which is not something she would want
to admit. But like I mentioned earlier, Sandy has not exactly been an
advocate for Ed. She pretty much stayed out of the spotlight. Whereas Mary,
his ex wife, was the one who appearing on unsaw mysteries doing interviews
and seemed a lot more concerned about finding out what happened to him, whereas
Sandy was off just living her life in Europe. So this could be an
indication that she knew Ed's death was a suicide and all she cared about was
living off the life insurance money. And it might have been that she didn't
know exactly, but she might have strongly suspected it based on his actions.
And I think if you're taking a polygraph and they're asking these questions about whether
you knew he was going to end his own life, and you had strong
suspicions based on behavior and evidence that could come up as you're withholding information,
I would think and I mean they weren't married for that long at that point,
were they not? Really? No, only a few years at most?
Yeah, son know, like exactly like ash had said, maybe they
were married under the pretense that, you know, he was this wealthy guy.
And I don't know why we think that he's probably older than her.
He might not be. They could be the same age, but it seems
like that would have been something given his midlife crisis type behavior, he would
have been dangling in front of her like a carrot. So when the walls
started to come crashing down and she's going, WHOA, this isn't what I
signed up for, and then realizing that he's in debt to these people that
are potentially dangerous and this could be her life. I mean, we don't
know how in love she was or she wasn't, but we do know like
you'd mentioned that, she wasn't an advocate for finding out what happened to Ed,
Well, she's staying out of the spotlight. She just wants results,
the support the conclusion of murder or not being a suicide, potentially because it's
financially advantageous for her to do so, because if it's found to be a
suicide, then nobody he gets paid anything, correct or at least the one
policy, right, Yeah, they didn't get other money paid out from other
policies, but I think the most expensive one of the five hundred thousand dollars
one was the one where you would not get it paid out if it was
proven to be suicide. Well, even though the burned body found in the
Jaguar was officially identified as Ed Baker, some people, including Ed's private investigator
Bob Gail, had an additional theory about what might have happened to him.
They wondered if perhaps the remains did not actually belong to Baker, and consider
the possibility that he may have killed an unidentified victim before placing their body in
the Jaguar and then setting fire to it in order to fake his own debt.
He then escaped his troubles by fleeing the country and living off the money
he had embezzled from his investors. Indeed, when Vanguard Group's International filed for
bankruptcy following Baker's death, at least ten million dollars could not be accounted for.
Whatever happened, The investigation soon hit a standstill, and even though the
story was featured on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries in October of nineteen ninety two,
it failed to bring the case any closer to a resolution. So after
thirty eight years, the exact circumstances behind the death of Ed Baker are still
unclear. So I guess you could say the path went chili. So when
you say Robin, at at least ten million dollars couldn't be accounted for,
even though we know there was a formal filing of bankruptcy and things like that.
Is it something that he had simply embezzled. Do we think it's deeper
with some kind of illegal trade that would have no record? Is it the
gambling debts? Like, what's the assumption of where that ten million dollars would
be? We really don't know. I mean, it's possible that he could
have embezzled it and already spent it by that point so it was gone,
or he could have given it to some criminal figures. But there has been
speculation that maybe he put it in a secret bank account somewhere as his emergency
fund, and that after he faked his death he just disappeared and lived off
this money. We really don't know. Anyway. This is a pretty unique
case, as you're not going to find two many mysteries about unexplained deaths in
which there are three possible solutions homicide, suicide, or faking their own debt.
Usually, when a deceased person is found inside the remains of a torchtout
vehicle and they've been burned so badly that the remains only weighed thirty two pounds,
you're not going to assume that a suicide took place, but in this
case you can't completely discount that possibility. While the idea of Ed Baker faking
his own death and disappearing to start a new life might seem unlikely, this
is not the first case we've covered on this podcast in which someone has attempted
to do this. You might be familiar with our episode about Clarence Roberts,
who was also featured on Unsolved Mysteries, and you can see some parallels between
Clarence and Ed Baker. Clarence had also got himself into serious financial trouble before
his body was found inside a burning barn in what appeared to be a suicide,
but it soon became obvious that the burned body found in the rubble did
not belong to Clarence, and that he likely killed an unidentified vagrant in order
to fake his own debt. Clarence is a pair. Plan was for his
wife, Geneva, to collect on his life insurance policies and they could go
off to live somewhere on the money. But since the insurance companies did not
believe Clarence was dead, they refused to pay out, So Clarence was presumably
forced to spend an entire decade in hiding before he died for real in another
fire. We're going to talk more about this later on, but some suspected
that Ed Baker was attempting a similar scheme with his wife. Do you remember
when we covered that on the Pathway Chili? While say, okay, first
of all, what kind of karma is that? Well, that is carbon
It's possible that Clarence killed a poor, homeless person and sets their body on
fire, is stuck, miserable and poor, waiting for his wife that's never
going to come, and then he dies in a fire. Karma. Oh
it's so great. That is seriously what I was thinking about when you talked
about Sandy and eventually moves to Europe. I mean, listen, I've definitely
moved to leave behind emotions and things like that, but I don't need to
go to Europe, right like a hop and skip from Texas to Arkansas's fine,
but you know Sandy goes to Europe after she fails a polygraph test,
and we know that somebney was paid out to her or to somebody in the
family. So is it possible that Ed was setting her up to meet him
over in Europe. That's a heavy, heavy, elaborate, detailed scheme,
But it's not unthinkable if we knew more about the probability of those dental records,
Like what does a sixty point match mean? Does that mean that you
know, it's an eighty percent probability that you can positively identify the body,
or is it like these are sixty points that are on fifty percent of the
population. It just is so vague, and until we have more context there,
it's really hard to know. Now, I'll stay right up front that
Robin does not believe at Baker faked his own death, and I happened to
agree with him. They were able to make a pretty close match between Baker's
dental records and what was left of the burn victim's teeth, as well as
his jawbone, as I just mentioned. But the only reason that they could
not say with absolute one hundred percent certainty that it was him was because it
took place during a time period before DNA profiling became a common practice in criminal
investigations. Interestingly enough, Unsolved Mysteries would later produce another segment about a man
named John Rubis, who was the leader of a multi million dollar drug network
in Puerto Rico. Much like the Baker case, Rubus's charred remains were found
inside a burnt out car in a remote field in San Juan, and all
they could use for identification was some loose teeth and a fragment of jawbone.
However, there were a number of witnesses who had supposedly seen or talked to
Rubus after he was killed and given his immense wealth and power, this led
to speculation that he faked his own death and the remains in the vehicle belonged
to someone else. However, DNA testing was eventually performed on the jaw fragment
and it proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the victim was Rubis.
Maybe he pulled out his own teeth it was a dire jaw though, Yeah,
probably not. No, I mean, if it was teeth then maybe,
but hid entre job owed seems like much. Yeah, and I'd wager
that if ed Baker's remains were exzuomed today and subject to DNA testing, the
exact same thing would happen. Though I'm not sure this will ever be done,
since I don't know if anyone is still actively working on this case,
but I definitely think that we can rule out the entire fake death theory,
and our next episode will focus on the debate between Baker's death being a homicide
or a suicide. Let me just ask this question, because Ash, you
might know, you've done a lot of homicide investigations with teeth. Isn't there
not always the material that you can test for DNA? Like after many many
years when they find bodies and stuff, they can't always test for DNA?
Can they based on the material left and teeth, like, if there's enough
or not? All right, give me one second, let me google this
while you asked me directly, hold on your own death, and we want
you to check for us if you pull out our teeth. Yeah, yeah,
No, it's not always possible. It says that teeth are usually successful
samples of DNA, but intact teeth and the proper parts of the teeth that
contain the best possible quantities. The richest quantities of DNA not always available,
So it depends on the decomposition of the corpses and the damage done to the
teeth more so than decomposition. So if a shotgun had, you know,
ruined all the teeth of all the yeah, it is possible that a tooth
fragment may not have what's needed to make as good of a match. And
of course, with odentology and bite marks and things like that, if you're
trying to test with the jaw from that, we all know that that has
been proven to be a subjective science. It's not as reliable. So there's
a whole lot of problems when you're trying to rely on teeth in general in
murder cases. Okay, I am definitely going to agree with you guys.
I don't think Sandy got to reunite with Ed over in Europe. I definitely
don't think that that's the case. But what I felt uneasy about this entire
time was Ed in his own car, Ed inquiring about the suicide on his
insurance policy, Ed writing that letter, Ed sending Sandy away, and Ed's
shotgun missing and found on the floorboard or close to his body in his car.
Again, if I was someone in the mafia going to make a hit
on you, I don't know that I would take you out of the house,
into the car to a remote place, shoot you, light the car
on fire, and risk so many opportunities for people to see us in transport
and in that field killing you. So it seems like his shotgun being present
is a massive red flag. But those gas cans and the fire burning to
that extent is really questionable because how did he set that fire and then also
shoot himself those don't you know, It's very difficult to have both those happen,
So that's bizarre. I think it's possible, and I think it's most
likely a suicide. But I'm excited about the next episode because I need more
facts to make a better conclusion. Yes, I think this would be a
good time to bring it into part one. But join us next week as
we present part two of our series about the Unexplained depth of Ed Baker.
Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit about the Trailment Cold
Patreon. Yes, the Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three years now,
and we offer these standard bonus features like early ad free episodes, and
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until next time, be sure to bundle up because cold trails and chili pass
call for warm clothing. Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy