HOUSTON

HOUSTON (AP) -- A former Enron Corp. executive who committed suicide reportedly had challenged the company's accounting practices almost a year before it plunged into bankruptcy.

J. Clifford Baxter, who resigned as vice chairman in May, was named in an explosive warning that another Enron executive sent to company Chairman and Chief Executive Kenneth Lay in August about questionable financial practices.

"Cliff Baxter complained mightily to (then-CEO Jeff) Skilling and all who would listen about the inappropriateness of our transactions with LJM," Sherron Watkins wrote. LJM is one of the partnerships apparently used to keep a half-billion dollars in losses off Enron's books.

The same letter warned, "We will implode in a wave of accounting scandals" unless Enron changes its practices.

On Friday, Baxter was found dead in a Mercedes-Benz parked on a median not far from his home in the affluent Houston suburb of Sugar Land. He had been shot in the head.

Police found a suicide note and said a .38-caliber revolver was at his side. The contents of the note were not disclosed.

A justice of the peace initially ruled the death a suicide but ordered an autopsy because of the intense interest in the case. On Saturday, results of that autopsy showed Baxter took his own life.

Baxter, 43, left Enron several months before the company collapsed in the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history.

Enron's sudden downfall and financial practices are under investigation by federal prosecutors, the FBI, securities regulators and 11 congressional committees. Lay, a focus of the investigations and one of President Bush's strongest supporters, resigned this week.

Even though Watkins' note showed that Baxter had questioned Enron's accounting practices, he still faced questions in the investigation and was named in a shareholder lawsuit.

The lawsuit alleges that 29 people made $1.1 billion by selling Enron stock between October 1998 and November 2001. It says Baxter had sold 577,436 shares for $35.2 million before the company's collapse.

Thousands of Enron workers lost their jobs and watched their retirement savings all but evaporate after the company disclosed its losses, and the value of Enron stock plummeted.

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