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 I also send out stickers and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up
with us on Patreon. If you join our five dollars tier Tier two, we also offer monthly bonus episodes in which I talk about cases which are not featured on the Trail went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon and
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