OK, so let’s stipulate that Lay’s life insurance was 10 million.
How many people murder their family members for 10 million dollars? There are lots of rich people in the world, world-wide millions of people are worth over a million dollars.
Yeah, yeah, anyone might be tempted to commit murder for a million dollars. Except in reality that almost never happens. How many millionaires are murdered for their inheritance/life insurance? Not many.
Example, my wife’s parents supposedly have quite a bit of money. If I killed them we might stand to inherit a million dollars. Note that I really have no idea how much money they really have, I don’t look at their tax returns, this is just guesswork, and lots of people seem to be rich but are really bankrupt (like Ken Lay), they could be wiped out tomorrow by a stock market crash, maybe they live way beyond their means, etc. And I have no idea what’s in their will, they’re just as likely to leave their alleged money to the Smithsonian as to leave it to their kids. But anyway, if I bump off my wife’s parents there’s a pretty good chance we’d be looking at a million dollars. Kill my wife, and the money’s all mine.
And this is true for lots of people. It doesn’t take much to have a million dollar estate, if the parents or grandparents bought the right house at the right time in the right place and paid off the mortgage long ago, Mom and Dad’s house could have appreciated wildly. Bump them off, sell the house, and you’ve got a huge chunk of change.
But how often does this really happen? You’d think we’d see stories in the paper every other day about heiresses that bludgeon grandpa in the observatory with the candlestick. But we don’t. Sure, it happens…but not so often that every time a rich guy drops dead we immediately suspect the heirs. People might SAY they’d kill for a million dollars…but it turns out that they mostly don’t, especially if they have to kill family members.
Five years ago Ken Lay was worth hundreds of millions. Today he’s worth a fraction of that, potentially nothing. Ten million in insurance isn’t that much when you’ve been hyper-rich, especially considering that these murderous heirs likely have their own money. It’s not like they’re living on the street, prostituting themselves for crack, and the only thing between them and their next score is Grampa Lay.
People with estates and insurance worth much more than 10 million die every day, or at least every other day. Why don’t you suspect murder then? Because most people wouldn’t kill their husbands, wives, or parents, even if that would get them a million dollars.