BRAZORIA — Tony Baxter was arrested and charged with murdering his brother, Skip Baxter, after a deadly shooting in the Las Playas subdivision in Brazoria on Feb. 11. In an interview with him, he gave his side of the story, sharing events dating back to childhood that led up to that moment. From behind bars, he painted a picture of self-defense. But conversations with the prime witness, neighbors and his daughter tell a different story.
Star Witness
That afternoon, Velma Farr was busy moving her things out of where she was living, carrying boxes of things up and down the stairs to her car. Tony came by and said he just wanted to talk so Farr said sure, but that it would have to be in between her moving her things, she said. Right away, she said she noticed him acting strange.
“He hugged me and I had to push him off because he was being too forward. I didn’t like it,” Farr said.
Tony stayed in the driveway as she continued her trips back and forth. By the third trip down, Skip Baxter had pulled up in his vehicle and was arguing with Tony.
“Skip was not being loud,” Farr said. “Tony pulled that gun out and put it to Skip’s face over $60, a leather jacket that was paid for.”
Days earlier, Tony said Skip pulled up in his gray-green sedan, got out, and immediately started screaming at Tony and getting in his face. That wasn’t even close to the truth, Farr said.
Having known Tony for three years and Skip for one, she said it was uncharacteristic of Skip to remain calm and quiet like he was. Normally, he would be the first one to yell and get aggressive, she said. As she walked over to the car to see what the fighting was about, she realized Skip’s silence was because Tony already had his gun pulled out, pointed right at him.
“He killed his baby brother right in front of my eyes,” Farr said, crying. “I’ve never seen nothing like it in my whole life. I can’t believe it actually happened.”
As soon as she saw the gun, Farr tried to tell him to put it down and take the argument somewhere else, she said. Instead, he pulled the trigger. Then, before she could even process what happened, he turned around and started attacking her, she said.
“He grabbed my necklace, my momma’s necklace, and he ripped it off of me,” Farr said. “I was pushing him, hitting him, saying ‘why did you just do that’. Then, I got in my car, took off, made it to my neighbor’s alive, thank God.”
Farr didn’t go back to that house after that. With the help of her neighbor, they called 9-1-1. Sometime later, she’s not sure exactly how long, Tony came flying by in Skip’s car, she said. As Tony made it to FM 2004, Brazoria County Sheriff’s deputies would try multiple times to block him off and pull him over as they pursued him, authorities said.
His teenage daughter, Morgan, happened to be driving on Highway 288 when he flew past, pursued by several Brazoria County Sheriff’s cars, all flashing their lights and sounding their sirens. She met with a friend at Raising Cane’s for a meal and remembers thinking how crazy it was because things like that don’t happen around here, she said. Then her uncle Eddie called her and said her dad was probably going to jail.
Meanwhile, Tony made it to CHI St. Luke’s Health emergency room. As hospital staff immediately try to save Skip Baxter’s life, Tony lays down on the ground with hands above his head as he’s arrested. Minutes later, Skip Baxter was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Why
Tony was a violent man from the moment she met him, Farr said.
“The first time I ever met Tony, he said he was going to blow my head off,” Farr said. “I was on his property across the street. I didn’t think no big deal about it because that’s how it is in the country, you better be careful.”
After that, he was never violent towards her again and they later became friends, she said. But around August 2017, Tony got a carrying license and a handgun, Farr said.
“No one should have ever given that man a gun. He’s quite scary,” she said.
Tony Baxter’s daughter said her dad had dozens of guns in the house — handguns and shotguns, and more than once she saw him threaten people with them. But she grew up with a different version of her dad. When she was little, she said, he was never violent and generally a good dad.
“We had a good childhood, me and my step-sister,” Morgan said. “It was fun when we were like little, little. Probably until I was about 10 years old. We were a normal family that went to the beach and had dogs.”
While Tony described childhood trauma as an influence on his behavior, Morgan said she disagreed. His dad, step-mom and grandpa were extremely abusive but her dad still turned out okay, she said. The real catalyst was when his dad, grandpa and best friend all died around the same time in 2015, she said.
“My dad started doing drugs and drinking more and got very violent with us,” Morgan said. “It was probably around Hurricane Harvey when he hit rock bottom.”
Following those deaths, Morgan said it became hard to live with him. He would shove, hit and scream at her, her mom and her sister, leaving bruises and scrapes on their bodies, she said. Cops were called several times but they told her mom there was nothing they could do unless he broke their bones, she said.
Either high on drugs or drunk, he would push her to the ground, sit on top of her, and start punching her, Morgan said. Family Services started an investigation but never followed up, she said. Finally, she said she couldn’t take it anymore and moved in with a friend for a while but she came back because she thought maybe her dad was better. It turned out, he’d gotten worse, she said.
Her dad was paranoid now and using a lot more drugs and dealing, too, she said. Regularly, he would go to the doctor, lie about pain from scoliosis and an old spinal injury from when a car fell on him when he was a mechanic, lie about an anxiety disorder, and then sell Xanax and hydrocodone to random people in the house, right in front of her, Morgan said.
Through his paranoia, he fabricated stories about her mom cheating on him with random people in town or all three of her uncles, which Morgan said isn’t true. After she moved out a year ago, she tried to visit him but every time, he was high and would insist she was covering up for her mom and betraying him, she said.
“Every time I tried to talk to him, all he wanted to do was talk about her and if she was cheating on him and why was I hiding her lies,” Morgan said. “It wasn’t about how I am or how I’m doing in sports or school. It wasn’t about trying to connect with me. It hurt my feelings that he didn’t want to be there for us.”
Tony said he had degenerative disc disease, anxiety and an ulcer. He talked about his wife cheating on him and his daughter covering up for her mom. He said he quit drinking years ago and never did drugs. And he said all of the prescription medications he was on the day Skip Baxter died, he needed to treat his various conditions.
Morgan and her mom found out he was on more serious drugs than just the prescription pills, the 17-year-old said. He let his friends move into the trailer on his property and would buy meth from them, she said. She could smell it on him, too, and he would be more violent than with the other drugs, she said.
“I was just a kid, I couldn’t do anything,” Morgan said. “But I’m not stupid. I know what it is to hand someone a bag with pills, just like with the crack I saw him pay for.”
Several neighbors said they were certain Tony does drugs, namely meth, and deals drugs, too, including Velma Farr. But when asked how they knew this, they either didn’t answer or said “he must have been to do something like that”.
One time, as she and her mom cleaned house, they found used needles and bags of cocaine, she said. This was around the time they realized things were really bad and moved out. But Tony was getting violent towards other family members, too, Morgan said, to the point where his younger brothers, Eddie and Chris, stopped talking to him all together. But not her uncle Skip.
When Tony became beneficiary of his dad’s house, Morgan said he was really proud, but his brothers didn’t want the financial burden — it was rotted, old and falling apart. Skip and his girlfriend moved in since he was recently released from prison but he didn’t plan on staying there, she said. Her dad was angry no one would help him pay the mortgage on the house and started arguing with Skip more and more.
Her uncles and her dad fought a lot when she was growing up, even shoved each other around, but they never got into full-on fist fights, she said. In fact, the whole family was really close when she was a kid, except her uncle Eddie who was in prison at the time, she said.
“I love my uncles,” Morgan said, laughing as she talked about fights they got into over baseball games. “But unfortunately, I guess he shot my uncle Skip. He was my favorite. I was the closest with him I guess because he lived right there.”
When news of what happened broke, Morgan’s phone began to blow up with dozens of messages over Facebook from complete strangers, she said. Each one calling her dad a murderer and evil, demanding to know why he did what he did, she said.
“We are still mourning and seeing that stuff didn’t make it any easier,” Morgan said with tears in her eyes.
Tony Baxter remains in the Brazoria County jail in lieu of a $200,000 bond.