I had this thought, but I figured he might do it himself so that his family would be spared the “embarrassment” of being poor. Is it true that the feds can’t touch the $140+ million they were supposed to sieze now?
Yes, because modern medicine can do that. Look, everyone knows there are 5 Dick Cheney’s - 2 are clones of the original Cheney who died in 1956 fighting the Nazis (yes, that’s right), two are robots and one is an alien replicant. Ironically, they are all very reclusive.
Nice comment, but everybody knows Elvis is too cool to hang out with the likes of Hoffa, Hitler, etc.
In fact, I know where Elvis is: Just a few weeks ago I was hangin’ out at the Flori-Bama Bar, down on the gulf coast, and about 4:00 AM Elvis and Natalie Wood stopped in for a drink. Swear to shit!
Of course, I didn’t want to waste much time talkin’ to Elvis when Natalie was available, so I chatted her up some. She even invited me over to their place on Perdido Key. She said they’ve been chillin’ out at the condo they bought after Bill Gates sent her $10 million for forwarding emails to 23 people.
The tell all book will make a fortune, especially if enough thinly veiled gossip is included. The family can get/keep all that profit.
That Nazi Moon Base Battle is still classified, msmith537. You are guilty of TREASON!
I think it was suicide, either self-directed or encouraged by his family. Both Lay and his family knew he was going down, and knew that the best solution for the family’s money problems would be if he died. There are a number of drugs you can take that would cause a heart attack and would be untraceable. This way they can inherit a good percentage of his estate as well as the insurance money and they won’t be subject to the same criminal allegations. Problem solved, and his family still gets to live the high life.
I just think the timing is too perfect for it to be a natural death. If that makes me a crazy conspiracy theorist so be it, but at least I don’t think he’s alive.
Except that’s ridiculous. It’s just as easy to sue Lay’s estate as it would be to sue Lay. The only disadvantage is that now any plaintiffs aren’t going to be able to use Lay’s conviction as part of their civil suit.
And Lay didn’t have that much money left. Certainly not enough to pay off the billions of dollars that he defrauded people out of. Since all judgements against him have to be paid before the heirs get anything, Lay’s estate is underwater, nothing will be left. The heirs get nothing. The only thing that the plaintiffs won’t be able to touch is life insurance. I don’t know how much life insurance Lay had, but it’s not going to be a gigantic fortune for his heirs. And I image the life insurance company is going to do a little quiet investigation before they pay off any policies.
Body of Enron’s Lay to be Cremated to hide the evidence of course.
Damn, people who try to argue “What could he possibly know?” piss me off. Well he wouldn’t have gotten killed for it if we already knew, would we? But he might not actually be dead, either. This could be an example of the big boys taking care of their own kind. Then the other guy who hired body guards commits suicide? Damn, you people sure can recognize a coincidence when you see one.
Powell Hospitalized Briefly In Aspen Hospital Where Ken Lay Was Admitted
Coincidence? Of course it is, everything on the straightdope is.
Maybe he was killed to hide the truth about the electric sun.
The timing is convenient, the players ethically challenged enough, but taken together, it just doesn’t add up. If they were going to whack him, they’d have done it before the trial. On the other hand, he was a 64-year-old who had lived the high life for a long time and who had been under tremendous stress for the last five or six years, and was about to be sentenced to spend the rest of his life in jail. Occam’s Razor suggests his old ticker just flat gave out. As conspiracy theories go, this one is as crappy as Jim Morrison faking his own death so he could work for the CIA.
Okay, so he’s undoubtably either been murdered to prevent him from revealing secrets so devastating that we don’t know and can’t even guess at what they might be, or he’s alive and faked his own death? Miiiiight want to do a little more investigating before you take that one to the grand jury.
Gasp! That’s the same hospital where Hunter S. Thompson’s autopsy was performed!! What did he know?!? What did he know?!?!?
Somehow I don’t see Jerry Falwell selling videos touting “The Shocking Truth Behind Ken Lay’s ‘Death’” any time soon.
Cite please.
The timing isn’t perfect. And if he died in prison, which was very likely, some people would still be suspicious (“he was going to write a book” or something). So I think there would have been a wide window for this allegedly perfect timing.
That’s a heck of a disadvantage, and a very good motive.
Or so we are told. Do you believe OJ is broke?
Or, behind door number three, we have suicide, to protect his fortune, and thus his family, from civil lawsuits.
Lay’s estate is somewhere in the 10s of millions range. But he’s spent a lot on legal bills lately (your lawyer always gets paid first). By the time Feds and the employees and the creditors get done with his estate, it’s going to be worth negative one billion, even with the stockholders dropping out. And they’re only dropping out because the stockholders get paid LAST, so they have no chance of getting anything…the employees and creditors and Uncle Sam get their share first.
Lay’s heirs get NOTHING except the insurance payments.
Ask Jimmy Hoffa if he is with him?
Hiding out in dark Detroit bars?
Were you referring to this? :
That is a rather self-serving statement which I am not incline to place much stock in. It will take a lot more to convince me that a man with the business acumen of Kenneth Lay didn’t know how to hide a sizable chunk of his fortune offshore.
And the annuity. I wonder how much that is?
Ok? So forget about his fortune. Think about the billions he stole.
But those billions never existed! Enron never stole billions of dollars and put it in a swimming pool ala Scrooge McDuck, any more than the guy who racks up thousands of dollars in credit card debt. They paid off their creditors in phoney money, and when that bounced they used more phoney money to pay again. They reported that their company was worth billions but it was bankrupt. The people who bought Enron stock were buying wastepaper. The company didn’t quite steal billions, rather the company LOST billions and pretended to be solvent.
And anyhow, how does killing Lay allow the heirs to get their hands on his secret slush funds? If they could steal the secret funds when he was dead, why couldn’t they steal the secret funds when he was alive? It’s not like those secret slush funds show up in the will. It’s not like they can show up in the Cayman Islands and say they’re the next of kin and the money laundering bank hands the money over. If there are secret flush funds that the heirs could get their hands on after Ken Lay’s death they could get their hands on it while he was alive.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, this does not make sense.