In late December 1998 or early January 1999, Johnny Bacolas went over to Saunders’s home. He remembers Saunders being stressed over his financial situation because the second Mad Season album wasn’t happening. That was the last time he saw him.2
On the morning of January 15, 1999, Saunders drove De Baere to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Though she had originally planned to stay for six months, De Baere decided to go back to Belgium to finish her dissertation. The relationship was ambiguous, but De Baere said they had not broken up. “I don’t know if he believed me, but the plan was definitely like, ‘See you soon,’” De Baere said.
De Baere noticed he had instruments in the trunk, not knowing of his plans for later. She had an eerie feeling at the airport. “I knew when we said good-bye … When I got on the plane, I almost got out because—I don’t know—something got me very worried the way he walked. I will always have that vision in my head of him going down the automatic stairs, our last kind of look.” That was the last time she saw him.
Later that day, Saunders went to Bass Northwest to pawn a black Fender jazz bass guitar, which he told Evan Sheeley had been given to him by his parents when he was a teenager. “He said that he had to sell it because he needed money for rent, or else he was more or less going to be evicted, which is kind of the same story he gave me every time,” Sheeley said. He wrote Saunders a check for $800 to $850. The bank that the store kept its account with was a block away. Saunders walked over and cashed the check. This was the last time Sheeley saw him.
Barrett Martin, who lived close to Saunders, would often have him over for breakfast. That evening, Martin called him to suggest that they meet for breakfast or lunch the next day at a restaurant instead of at his house. Saunders agreed. Martin said he was the last person to speak with him.3
According to the medical examiner’s report, Saunders spent “the majority of his day with his friend, Mr. Christopher Williams.” They had been drinking beers, and at approximately 9:00 P.M. they shot up. Williams described Saunders to authorities as being very high, and Williams noted that Saunders had “quit using drugs for a long time until this incident.” Saunders became “lethargic and unresponsive” before collapsing on the kitchen floor. Williams tried reviving him by pouring cold water and placing ice cubes on him before calling 911. Medics arrived on the scene and declared him dead on arrival. He was forty-four years old.4
Dan Gallagher had been worried about Saunders because he had been very withdrawn and because he was taking De Baere to the airport that day. At the same time, he had a four-month-old daughter who had a severe cold or flu. “I wanted to go check on him that night, but I literally was [with] two sick kids, and I was trying to keep the baby alive, basically.” He kept walking to the back door to check on Saunders’s house and noticed flashing lights from police cars and an ambulance. He walked over. The EMTs eventually filed out, unsuccessful in their efforts. Knowing they were there for Saunders, Gallagher asked if he had made it. They told him he hadn’t. Gallagher was on the porch when Williams came out. “Here he was on the porch and he looked pretty upset, kind of strung out as you might expect. I actually told the cops, ‘You should arrest that guy. He’s the one that brought the shit over there.’
“Then we went back and forth. I was yelling at him, and he was yelling at me. A lot of fuck-yous and accusations.”
Police asked Gallagher to identify the body. “He was laying on his back on the kitchen floor with a mask from a respirator … still on. He was gone at that point. I looked at him and it was Baker but it wasn’t Baker. He was gone.”
At about three or four o’clock in the morning, Florida time, Joseph H. Saunders woke up to a phone call from Gallagher informing him of the bad news. Joseph called his mother and sister to tell them. “It was shocking and heartbreaking and it made sense, because he had not been communicative, and I know that when he wasn’t communicative, that meant something was wrong,” his sister, Henrietta Saunders, said of her reaction.
She had normally spoken with her brother about once a month, but noted that in the final months of his life, he had become more difficult to get ahold of. “He was very unhappy in the last few months of his life, and he was casting about for meaning, in my view,” she recalled. The last time they spoke was during the Christmas holiday of 1998.
“I think there’s an aspect of suicide in Baker’s death,” Henrietta said, citing the uncertainty of his relationship with De Baere, the financial pressures, and Mad Season’s being on hiatus. She noted that at some point in the early 1990s, he had told her, “If I use heroin again, I will die.” There is no evidence Saunders intentionally committed suicide. He had plans to meet Barrett Martin the next day. His sister acknowledges there was an element of self-destruction in his decision to use heroin again.
Kim De Baere was at home in Brussels when Dan Gallagher called. De Baere had occasionally worked as a nanny for Gallagher’s children. Because, in her words, “I’m not good at good-byes,” and because she had every intention of returning to Seattle, she had not said her farewell to Gallagher before she left town. When he got her on the phone, the first thing he told her was “Hey, you didn’t say good-bye.” After some lighthearted conversation, he told her Saunders had died. De Baere was shocked. “My first reaction was disbelief and anger. Shortly after, I realized it had to be true, because no one in the world would make a sick joke like that, especially not Dan,” she wrote. “[I] did stay angry, first at Baker but mostly at myself, for not seeing that coming and feeling like my departure was the main trigger (of several other triggers) for what he did, not that I think he wanted to die. I think he just wanted some relief.” In the days after getting the news, she was hoping to get a letter from Baker. No letter ever came.
Evan Sheeley was at his store when he got a phone call from somebody asking, “Have you heard about Baker?” Sheeley didn’t even know he had a drug problem and thought back to the events of the previous day. “It was the money, unfortunately, and I’ve always carried this a little bit heavy on myself. It was the money that I supplied to him that ended up paying for the heroin overdose that killed him,” he said.
Barrett Martin went to the restaurant the next day to meet Saunders as planned, but he never came. “When Baker died, that was it. The band was done,” he told Mark Yarm.5 His brother, Joseph, and his mother went to Seattle. Joseph assumed responsibility for taking inventory of Baker’s things and clearing out his house. He and his mother also met with Williams.
“We tracked down the guy that he was shooting heroin with and met with him to find out about what happened. The guy was kind of a younger guy and he said, ‘Oh my God.’ The guy called 911, so they came, but the guy said, ‘Baker was like the most experienced amateur pharmacologist I’d ever seen, so I totally trusted him with the dosages, quality, and everything, and I couldn’t believe that this happened,’” Joseph recalled. He and his mother wanted to talk to him because he had been with Saunders at the end. He described Williams as a “misguided young kid” who may have “idolized” Baker as a musician.
A memorial service was held in Seattle, attended by approximately two to three hundred people. Representing the family were his brother, mother, and stepfather. Joseph spoke first, followed by Mike McCready, who wrote an editorial for The Rocket in his friend’s memory.6 Dan Gallagher spoke next. Barrett Martin was the final speaker. According to Gallagher, Martin lamented the demise of Mad Season in his speech. Layne did not attend the service.