Police Probe Finds Nothing to Suggest Aubrey McClendon Committed Suicide
Friends of shale pioneer said they saw no signs of trouble before he died in fiery crash on March 2
OKLAHOMA CITY—When Aubrey McClendon drove his Chevy Tahoe into a bridge the day after he was indicted for allegedly rigging the price of oil and gas leases, suspicions arose that the shale-energy pioneer had killed himself.
But a two-month investigation by the Oklahoma City Police Department has found nothing to suggest Mr. McClendon committed suicide.
“We were unable to find any evidence or information that would lead us to believe it was anything other than a vehicular accident,” said Oklahoma City Police spokesman Capt. Paco Balderrama.
The conclusions of the probe, which haven’t been previously made public, don’t rule out suicide, or describe the manner of Mr. McClendon’s death, and thus are unlikely to end the intrigue about the final hours of one of America’s most charismatic and controversial modern business figures.
But investigators, who included crime detectives as well as accident experts, didn’t uncover anything in interviews with Mr. McClendon’s friends and associates—or in the fiery wreckage of the March 2 crash itself—to lead them to believe he was seeking to end his life.
“We may never know one-hundred percent what happened,” Capt. Balderrama said.
It is unclear what, if any, impact the police probe will have in the probate case just starting to unfold in an Oklahoma City court. Creditors with claims totaling hundreds of millions of dollars have appeared in that case, although few details about Mr. McClendon’s estate have been made public....MORE
