D.A. Denial
Was a Houston area paramedic ripped off by a fake gay spouse after his death? His family says it’s a true crime story, and they say corrupt Katy fire officials helped in the scheme.
One thing is certain the criminal investigation has been A REAL CLUSTER.
“They have the case. They have the case,” Deputy Lindsey said.
It’s been a year since we detailed evidence the benefits for a dead Harris County paramedic may have been stolen.
“Swiped by a guy claiming to be the gay spouse of the paramedic, even though the benefits were supposed to go to Gordon Baker’s son,” Wayne Dolcefino told the camera.
What’s worse is there’s plenty of evidence that Harris County ESD 48, the taxpayer funded agency that handles fire services out in Katy, helped the guy pull it off.
“I’m trying to pull myself together because it’s very hard for me to come up here and speak, but I’m hurt. You know, I just thought that this department was going to be there for my dad,” Brent Baker Junior said.
Listen to this phone call between the family and the sheriff’s department investigator who was looking at possible criminal activity after the death of Gordon Baker Sr.
“You and I both know there’s some, looks like definitely some corruption going on, but I want to know what they think,” Lindsey said.
It’s been nine months since the sheriff’s department says it turned over the evidence to the DA’s office.
Not only have there been no charges filed, the DA’s office told the family, just a few weeks ago, they never even saw the case.
“No. That’s not in my database at all,” said a Harris County DA representative.
“What in the world is going on here?” Dolcefino asked the camera.
“I have been crushed for the past three years trying to deal with this,” Baker Junior said.
Gordon Brent Baker Jr.’s father was an honored paramedic with ESD 48 in Katy.
He was on the front lines during the COVID-19 pandemic.
It cost him his life.
Harris County put on a great show of respect, all while turning their back on his only son.
A funeral home director had to be the one to warn Brent and his wife, Amanda, that the folks at ESD 48 were probably up to no good.
“She’s the one that told my husband, ‘Listen, something’s going on,’ she said, ‘because they’re trying to put this guy like he’s the next of kin when legally you are. She said, ‘I see all the documentation,’” Amanda Warren said.
That guy is this man, Robert Spears.
At one time, Spears and Gordon Senior did have a relationship, but that was back in the ‘90s.
“It’s painful. I can’t imagine somebody thinking they can go and change beneficiary information to somebody who is a nobody just because of who they thought he was,” Baker Junior said.
Spears didn’t need evidence because inside ESD 48, he found some like-minded folks.
The family said they had a bias in favor of same sex marriage.
Before Gordon’s death, the ESD promoted a GoFundMe page set up to help him, making Spears the beneficiary.
Spears has refused to let us see how much of that money was even spent.
The family actually had to pay for the funeral.
Another ESD employee was even caught on camera trying to keep Gordon’s son and daughter-in-law from even going into his house after he died.
“This is my house,” Baker Junior said.
“This is not your house,” said Kim Schull.
“I’m not going to have a back and forth,” the deputy said.
While the family was being pushed away, the ESD was apparently providing Spears benefit information.
Three months after Gordon’s death, Spears lawyer notified the ESD that he was going to claim he was the surviving spouse, with no evidence they had gotten married.
The ESD lawyer knew better. There was no such documentation or designation in Gordon’s file.
“The family didn’t even learn about that document until the Texas Attorney General had to order the ESD 48 to give us the document. They fought us for months,” Dolcefino told the camera.
But the ESD lawyer still helped Spears by giving him detailed benefit information, even ways to contact the folks who were going to hand out the state and national benefits, retirement benefits, and life insurance.
“How could they give away all that sensitive coverage information to someone they knew was not listed as a beneficiary?” Dolcefino told the camera.
Bank records show Spears drained Gordon’s bank account of thousands of dollars while he lay dying, and the family says he then filed fraudulent disability claims while Gordon was on life support.
Social media evidence shows Spears sold stuff from Gordon’s house.
Spears has since left the state.
“No, I live in North Carolina now. Because of everything that happened with the case that you were talking about,” Robert Spears said on the phone.
“There’s just a bunch of shit, Robert, I need to talk to you about,” Dolcefino told Spears.
Spears told me he would do an interview, but then stood me up. That’s never happened before.
And there are still no charges filed against him or anyone else involved in the case.
“Every Harris County agency kept kind of sweeping things under the rug or just telling me, ‘Oh no, you just have to keep going back to the detective,’” Warren said.
Amanda supplied evidence to Deputy William Lindsey. He has ignored our phone calls.
Last September, Lindsey told the family he gave the case to an assistant D.A. named Elizabeth Hayes. We have the recording.
“These were exact words: ‘Let me look more into it.’ She said, ‘I promise I’m going to look more into it, and if you don’t mind, I’ll keep the package,’” Lindsey said in a phone call.
Lindsey told Amanda he did all he could.
The ball was now in the Sean Teare’s court.
“And I don’t want it to come back on me saying that I didn’t do my due diligence,” Lindsey said.
Lindsey’s words turned out to be an ominous warning of what was about to come.
The investigative records show Lindsey had to keep checking in with the DA’s office back in December and again in January.
In March, the DA told Lindsey they saw no criminal activity.
It was a civil matter. The case had been dropped.
“I want to say I was shocked, but with this whole process that we’ve been going through, that very much felt like obstruction. I wasn’t too surprised,” Warren said.
Amanda worried all along that Harris County wouldn’t investigate anything that would make the ESD 48 folks look bad.
So she did her own investigation to find out what happened, why the case was declined.
There’s even a form you can fill out to get that kind of information on the DA’s website.
The response she was given was this: “We have no records of this case being presented to this office for charges.”
Amanda followed up with a phone call.
“Okay, so one of them is 220305890, and that was for like fraud, identity theft,” said Warren.
“No. That’s not in my database at all. It’s not going to be in unless there’s a charge,” replied the DA’s office representative.
“Then what’s the point of having a declined case review form in the first place?” Dolcefino asked the camera.
“You know, you call the DA’s office and they pretend to be dumbfounded, they can’t say that because I have a witness,” Lindesy said.
“I’ve questioned the integrity of this investigation since day one,” Warren said.
It does add insult to injury to Brant and Amanda.
“It was alarming, concerning not only for myself, but for other people out there that are really putting their trust in the system to do what you know, they’re supposed to do,” Warren said.
“It was time for Dolcefino Media to get back into action. We called the DA, and Amanda doesn’t give up,” Dolcefino told the camera.
She reached out to the attorney general for help.
We’ve now learned that the district attorney’s office will look again at this case, but the assistant D.A. claims Deputy Lindsay now doesn’t even work in financial crimes anymore.
She’s now asking Amanda to supply her documentation all over again, claiming she doesn’t even have the records.
“The new D.A. simply hasn’t shown any evidence that he wants to fight the kind of public corruption that we’re seeing in Harris County,” Dolcefino told the camera.
“Oh, you are waking up to some big changes in Harris County. One minute after midnight, District attorney elect Sean Teare was sworn into office,” a news anchor said.
Six months into office, Sean Teare’s memorable moments aren’t really good ones –being sworn in without a license to even practice law, then dropping what we think was a clear case of public corruption after a county official had been indicted.
“Today, charges have been dropped against the former head of the Harris County Public Health Department,” a news anchor said.
The Barbie Robinson case is a great example of the kind of alleged multimillion dollar bid-rigging that state lawmakers were talking about when they stiffened the penalties for public corruption this year.
Something the DA said back then stuck with us. It was about the way new cases are handled.
“Number one, it starts with the intake. We are going to accept charges differently than has been done in the past. We’re going to get the cases disposed of much quicker,” Sean Teare said.
Tell that to Gordon Baker’s family. They’ve waited years for justice.
This didn’t make us feel any better.
“I think the biggest challenge looking forward is going to be around the World Cup and preparing for that,” Teare said in an interview.
“You can kick the ball down the street, so to speak, but here at Dolcefino Media, we’re ready to fight public corruption if the DA won’t,” Dolcefino told the camera.
This family was wronged.
It’s clear the folks at ESD 48 simply didn’t care, even when Gordon’s grandson pled for help more than a year ago.
“I’m upset that I didn’t get to live through three years of my childhood because I’ve been having to fly for three years. I hate it. I hate it,” Gordon Baker’s grandson said.
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