The Mysterious Death or Disappearance of Texas Oilman Ed Baker Part 2

Gone Cold - Texas True Crime

Vincent Strange

True Crime

4.6 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 8 January 2026

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After the discovery of the burnt car that belonged to millionaire Houston oilman Ed Baker, speculation was abound. Though the medical examiner finally ruled that the body found inside was indeed Edward Gerald Baker’s, some folks didn’t buy the ruling. They insisted the oilman had faked his own death and skipped country to avoid the lawsuits against his company or worse – jail time. Harris County Sheriff’s Investigators, however, didn’t really buy that. Though they seemed to believe that Ed’s death was the result of an elaborately planned suicide, they couldn’t prove it and still had to leave their minds open to the theory that the man was killed as the result of a mob hit. To this day, exactly what happened to Ed Baker remains a mystery. Part 2 of 2.

If you have any information about Edward Gerald Baker’s case, please contact Crime Stoppers Houston at 713-222-8477.

Inc. Magazine, The Miami Herald, The Houston Chronicle, and the television series Unsolved Mysteries were used as sources for this episode.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The Gone Cold Podcasts may contain violent or graphic subject matter.
0:04.4	Listener discretion is advised.
0:07.6	This is part two of two of the death or disappearance of Texas Oilman, Ed Baker.
0:14.3	If you haven't listened to Part 1, we highly suggest you do so before listening any further.
0:21.1	That said, here's a brief summary of what we've gone over so far.
0:26.2	At around 9 a.m. on November 8, 1985, just north of the small Texas town, Katie,
0:33.8	rice farmers out to harvest the day's crops noticed smoke.
0:39.0	They drove to the source, found a smoldering car in one of the rice fields there,
0:44.4	and sped away to alert police.
0:47.4	When Harris County Sheriff's deputies arrived,
0:50.4	they found something far grislier than just a burnt vehicle.
0:55.2	In the passenger's seat was a charred human body so disfigured from the blaze
1:00.4	that even identifying whether it was male or female was impossible at the scene.
1:06.8	The car, though, was identified as a 1984 jaguar belonging to a familiar name around Houston,
1:14.4	52-year-old overnight millionaire oilman, Ed Baker.
1:18.8	Inside the vehicle was Ed's sidearm, a 32-caliber revolver in the passenger-side floorboard,
1:25.1	the remnants of his shotgun contorted and in pieces from
1:29.5	the intense fire, and the man's wedding ring, which was not melted or contorted.
1:36.3	Three one-gallon gasoline cans were found in and around the jaguar.
1:42.4	Ed had been reported missing the previous morning when he didn't show up at his
1:46.2	office at the company he owned, Vanguard Groups International. The morning he went missing, in fact,
1:53.7	Ed and his wife Sandy's Gardner discovered a broken window at their northwest Houston home.
	...

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