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JuanDeFuca
Big Wall climber
Stoney Point
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You think the guy is really dead. Ha, Ha. He is at the same luxury hotel as Osama.
Ripping off Billions, and then faking your own death.
Priceless
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happiegrrrl
Trad climber
New York, NY
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My first thought was also suicide, but....was the prison he'd have gone to like the prisons regular people go to, or one of those "with ammenities" type of ones, that are more resort-like?
If it was gonna be Rikers or Alcatraz, or something of that nature, I can see a person like him killing himself out of fear. But smehow, i don't think that's where he would be going.
In the town I grew up in, there was a man who ran a wholesale business. He was a friend of my dad's, and my brother-in-law worked for him for several years.
He got busted for illegal sales of cigarettes; something about fraund with the tax supposed to be due. And he was going to be convicted, and was going to go to prison. He killed himself rather than face reality.
He had a wife, and a son who worked at the business. They were devastated.
Also, our smalltown sheriff, Corney, killed himself one night. Blew himself away with his service pistol. The day before this happened......my brother, in a high school prank, snuck into his yard, and attempted to remove the cop lights off his car! Suddenly the porch light went on, and there was Corney in his undies, shining a bright light directly on my brother, who was fairly easy to recognize, being a bit of a local troublemaker.
Corney yelled "Freeze" and Oney(my brother, froze, but only for a second, before running as fast as he could. Corney didn't give chase though.
Oney felt terrible, upon hearing about the death. Like maybe his and the rest of us kids insolent behavior drove him over the top..... Somehow, I think it was something else.
Anyway, there was a young cop who replaced Corney. A few years later, Oney was getting married, and we were having a bachlorette party at my house for his bride to be. Oney, my other brother and some guys were also out having a bachelor's party, but they stopped by my place, d-r-u-n-k.
We told them they had to leave - the bride and bridegrom must not see each other on the night before the wedding!
Eventually, the guys got in a car, and started out the driveway. No sooner had they turned the corner onto the road, but this young pup of a cop flashed his reds and hailed them over.
He walked up to the vehicle, told my brother to get out of the car....
My brother, so drunk he was oblicious to what was occurring, just happened to - at the same time - open the car door. Then promptly bent over, and puked all over the cops shoes.
Believe it or not, the cop came into my house to clean his shoes off, and nobody got in any trouble with the law because of it.
It was a different time, back in the daze.....
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Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
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Is it just me?
Oney? Corney?
(sorry Happie, just had to...)
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yo
climber
I'm so over it
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My position on these sorts of cases goes thusly:
1. The rich whitey (be it Skilling, Lay, Shrub, Cheney, what's his face the Tyco dude, WorldCom chump, etc.) must be first found guilty by a jury of his peers. If no peers can be found, a bunch of regular people will suffice.
2. Upon conviction, an auction is held via eBay--no wait, QVC would be even better--of all the defendant's belongings. And by all, I mean ALL. Bank accounts liquidated, houses, yachts, suits, china, frigging toilet brushes. EVERYTHING. I'd probably spring for a Ken Lay used Kleenex if the price was right.
3. The best step. The defendant is given, free of charge, a Del Taco franchise in maybe Riverside or somewhere. They show up there every single day for the rest of their life and they make minimum wage and they go back home to a one-bedroom apartment at night. And if you don't think the line out that drive-thru wouldn't be like 18 blocks long, you're high.
And yes, I should be running this country.
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Slakkey
Trad climber
From a Quiet Place by the Lake
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I think it was all in his plan. You just do not walk away form somethng like this without a reason. Must have been painful.
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yo
climber
I'm so over it
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Hey Ron,
bwahahahaha!!!
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Fluoride
Trad climber
California somewhere
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The wifey and kids are still going to be living large now that he conveniently died before sentencing:
"In yet another bizarre twist to the Enron saga, the sudden death of Kenneth L. Lay on Wednesday may have spared his survivors financial ruin. Mr. Lay's death effectively voids the guilty verdict against him, temporarily thwarting the federal government's efforts to seize his remaining real estate and financial assets, legal experts say"
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Conrad
climber
MT
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One positive note is that tax payers will not be footing the bill for his incarceration. He would not have been tossed in with the common criminals, as he would have been too soft a target.
Either a dominant cellmate named "Tug Boat" for twenty years or life as a one of the three billion starving humans would have been just. A heart attack seems too easy.
Any cyber sleuths have the W & Ken picture?
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JuanDeFuca
Big Wall climber
Stoney Point
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He lives!
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nature
climber
Flagstaff, AZ
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yo for president!
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Here you are Conrad, at the price of about three minutes searching, and polluting my computer with the picture.
(From www.depresident.com, a site about which I know nothing.)
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JuanDeFuca
Big Wall climber
Stoney Point
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Bush sold me and my kind out a long way back.
Playing by the rules we will never get our fair share of the American Dream.
I see a revolution!
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Bush was the culmination of your revolution.
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TradIsGood
Trad climber
Gunks end of country
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abatement ab initio
Huh?!
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Patrick Sawyer
climber
Originally California now Ireland
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I wonder if Lay's old pal Dubya will show up at the funeral.
Tookie Williams was more popular on this forum than Ken Lay who employed 1000s?
Is that the guy who was on Death Row?
Anyway TradIsGood, so what if he employed thousands, he scammed them of their pensions, he ripped off the energy consumers in California and elsewhere. If you think that is admirable, then so be it. I guess that doesn’t surprise me though. Lay was a scumbag, as I imagine that Tookie bloke was as well.
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happiegrrrl
Trad climber
New York, NY
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Ron - Oney's name was actually Loren, but we mangled it as kids, unable to pronounce it right, and it morphed to Oney, which stuck. Starngely, our next door neighbor was married to a man(who had died early on) whose name really WAS Oney (Oney Kurth).
Corney's real name was Cornelious, but being a smalltown cop, you know that just wasn't going to stick for long. He was known as Corney by everyone, even his peers.
Back to Lay - If you take a higher perspective, as in the belief that all things that go wrong in our bodies are simply manifestations of emotional distress, it is quite "reasonable" that a man who'd had his life pulled out from under him like a magician doing the tablecloth trick, and now was facing what was, in his opinion, the unbearable, would have a heart attack and die.
Of course, the stress was there way before - likely since when he first made that conscious decision to do harm(steal from others), but these things take time to fester to the stage of overt illness....and I believe they can lay fairly dormant so long as the veil of secrecy shrouds the deception. We humans are really very adept at denial, and it is amazing the crap we can pull day after day after day, oblivious to the effect it causes others, until the light of the day is shown on it. Stuff we would be ashamed - if anyone knew - we have at with no remorse, so long as we get away with it.
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TradIsGood
Trad climber
Gunks end of country
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It is true that Enron manipulated the energy market taking advantage of governmental and bureaucratic incompetence. Lay was running the company. He was convicted of a number of Federal charges. That conviction and even his indictment now effectively does not even exist (abatement ab initio due to his death before resolution of his appeal from the conviction).
The value of the pension fund dropped to near zero because the market changed its valuation of the company and the pension fund was overly invested in Enron. One could argue that Enron was over-valued as a result of public statements by Enron officials and analysts using those statements and other information to assign a value to its stock. But at the end of the day, the company is effectively dead, the victim of its poor management and illegal activities by some of its officers.
Compare Williams who was convicted of any number of violent crimes and exhausted all appeals and ended up dead, Lay who likely committed fraud, but did not have even a single appeal heard, and ended up dead, and Arthur Andersen which was bankrupted costing its partners huge amounts of money, but was eventually overturned by the Supreme Court. Its partners lost their entire investments in the company as a result of a prosecution that failed to sustain a conviction.
Is justice blind?
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Gary
climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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But at the end of the day, the company is effectively dead, the victim of its poor management and illegal activities by some of its officers.
I don't think Enron is the victim here. Do you consider Tookie a victim, too?
So how did the wifey off the guy? That's the real question today.
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wootles
climber
Gamma Quadrant
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 6, 2006 - 10:15am PT
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Dubbya claimed Lay was just 'an acquaintence' yet he was flown to his first inauguration on an Enron private jet.
I'm curious if any retirees or others commited suicide over loss of their retirement funds. I did a quick search but only found stuff about Enron execs.
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Gary
climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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While the Republicans like to rag on the Democrats for the California budget crisis, what never seems to get mentioned is the actions of Enron and the other Texas energy companies. California had a substantial budget surplus under Gray Davis. Enron and the others saw their chance to game the system and raid the treasury. And they did.
Gray Davis should have sent the California National Guard into Texas to sieze those crooks.
Rush Limbaugh, of course, with his typically brilliant analysis of current events, blamed the energy shortage on the Sierra Club. Any bets as to whether he recanted later?
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