John Clifford "Cliff" Baxter (September 27, 1958 – January 25, 2002) was an Enron Corporation executive who resigned in May 2001 before committing suicide the following year.
He worked in investment banking briefly before he joined Enron in 1991 where he rose to the executive position of chief strategy officer before his resignation.
Fortune magazine writer Bethany McLean described Baxter in Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room as being a good deal-maker but also being a manic depressive.
On January 25, 2002, after agreeing to testify before Congressional committees in February 2002 after being subpoenaed regarding his knowledge and evidence of the scandal at Enron, Baxter was found dead in his black Mercedes-Benz S500 in Sugar Land, Texas, with a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
[2][3] Baxter's suicide was partly dramatized during the opening credits of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.