A Warranted Conspiracy Theory: Ken Lay's Convenient Death

Flirting with the possibility of creating a conspiracy theory, I can't help myself but indulge and call the death of Ken Lay a convenient event. At 64, Ken Lay, the founder and CEO of Enron (yeah, remember that company), died yesterday from a heart attack. Although the usual suspects have made Lay's death a result of stress and nothing more, it is hard to believe that only after his conviction and before being sentenced in October did Ken Lay die of an ailment he might have never suffered of before. I will not be surprised if only vague details, if any, are shared with the public about his autopsy. Unlike Gore's movie, this is a convenient lie for Mr. Lay.

What does this do now for the trial against him and Enron? Halt it. According to the New York Times, Ken and Co. are off the hook for now. A "dead" man cannot be sentenced, and seeing that his counterparts are in the same boat as he is, they have found a martyr savior in Lay. The assets that the government was going to take away from Ken Lay's hands are no longer attainable, and only the civil trial might take some of the riches away from the Lay family. As for the other big fish that needs to be fried, Skilling, he is hoping that his wealth stays untouched:

Mr. Skilling has more assets open to federal seizure than Mr. Lay had, including more than $50 million in cash and securities in a Charles Schwab account, $4.6 million in value at his 9,000-square-foot home in Houston and a condominium worth nearly $580,000 in Dallas, according to the government's forfeiture documents.

Lay, the king of few (rich).