Enron widow hits out at documentary

The widow of a former Enron top executive who killed himself after the company fell apart last night challenged how her husband was portrayed in a new documentary.

The film, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, opens with a dramatisation of the company's former vice-chairman J Clifford Baxter's suicide in 2002. Later, Fortune Magazine reporter Bethany McLean, co-author of the 2003 book that inspired the film, says Baxter was a manic depressive.

"He was never diagnosed with that illness," an emotional Carol Baxter told McLean and film director Alex Gibney after a two-hour screening before a packed house of ex-Enron employees.

J Clifford Baxter, who was vice-chairman of the company, fatally shot himself on January 25, 2002. He left a note on the dashboard of his wife's car that said, in part, "Where once there was great pride, now it's gone". He had resigned from Enron in May 2001; the energy giant collapsed in an accounting scandal in December 2001.

Director Gibney told reporters Carol Baxter had also asked that the reference to her husband's suicide be removed, but he decided to retain it because it was a "fair reflection of the highs and the lows".

The documentary was shown at a cinema near the wealthy Houston, Texas, neighbourhood which is home to Enron founder Kenneth Lay and former CEO Jeffrey Skilling. Lay, Skilling and chief accounting officer Richard Causey are scheduled to be tried early next year on fraud and conspiracy charges.

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