We guess this makes it official. Today we checked in with both of our favorite Ken Lay Lives conspiracy sites—and neither of them have been updated in ages. KenLayLives.blogspot.com sports a post dating back to July. And plain-old KenLayLives.com is now just blogspam.
So Ken Lay Lives is officially over. Ken Lay is dead. And his ghost has seen his conviction vacated.
Rest in peace.

It seems it’s not just DealBreaker’s Bess Levin who is convinced Ken Lay lives. The analysts Long and Short Capital today gave the theory it’s official rating.

So if you are convicted of the largest financial fraud in history, but die in between conviction and sentencing, the conviction will be vacated by the Gov? And your assets are now fully unemcumbered by any legal claim? So Ken Lay died at the time at which it could confer maximum possible benefit to his name and to his family? I won’t even ask what happens if he turns up on a golf course in his Tommy Bahamas shirt in 2 years because double indeminity will prevent him from being charged again, a free man with millions holed away around the world…
Recommendation: Even more Alive!

We Reiterate Our Long Position on Ken Lay’s Life [LongOrShortCapital.com]

Even the dead have laywers, at least if they were very rich. Attorneys for allegedly dead Ken Lay began the process of expunging his criminal record, according to the people who accord these sort of things.
Let’s take the Law Blog, for instance:

Samuel Buffone of Ropes & Gray in Washington, D.C., whom Lay had retained to represent him on appeal, filed a motion asking Judge Sim Lake to substitute Lay’s estate for the late defendant so he could appear in court on Lay’s behalf.
The motion stated that once the court recognizes him as the attorney for the estate, he will “move to vacate the convictions of Mr. Lay and dismiss the indictment.”
Lay died on July 5, in Aspen, Colo., of heart disease just weeks after his conviction on conspiracy and fraud charges. Because a final judgment wasn’t issued — he had not yet been sentenced or gone through the appeals process — Judge Lake is widely expected to toss both the verdict and indictment, wiping out Lay’s criminal record.

Inquiring minds want to know—why would dead Ken Lay care about whether he went to the next word with a criminal record? There’s a boring answer: it may prevent prosecutors from confiscating Lay’s assets from his heirs, blah, blah, blah. And then there is the batshit-crazy conspiracy answer (preferred by the likes of DealBreaker’s Bess Levin): because Ken Lay is alive and well and living in a chalet somewhere and he wants to keep his stuff out of the hands of the government that let him and God down by convicting him.
The Legal Process to Vacate Lay’s Conviction Begins [WSJ's Law Blog]

The “Ken Lay” who blogs over at KenLayLives.blogspot.com is none too happy with the t-shirt selling site KenLayLives.com.

Some bastards registered a domain name ripping off the clever, catchy name of my blog. What’s more is they are selling t-shirts to profiteer off of my tragedy. Can you imagine somebody viciously making buckets of money at the expense of others? I cannot. Oh, the humanity! But remember, this is the world’s only “official” website giving you updates of my life in exile. Those sycophants at www.kenlaylives.com will NEVER receive my endorsement or help.

Update: KenLayLives.com seems to have died. Or maybe exceeded its bandwidth limits. In any case, rumors are already circulating that KenLayLives.com hasn’t actually died. It’s just in hiding somewhere.
Ken Lay Lives!!! [kenlaylives.blogspot.com]

Despite the autopsy, Ken Lay was recently spotted in a New York area airport.

Don’t check the casket. I know he’s back. When I saw those lights flickering out at La Guardia Airport yesterday and heard the eerie shrieks and moans in the dark, broiling subway tunnels, I just knew it: Ken Lay’s alive! We can see his spirit in every flickering lightbulb from Kansas to Queens as we head into America’s annual Blackout season.

Ken Lay’s Alive! [OpEdNews.Com]

So they cut up the corpse of ex-Enron CEO Ken Lay and discovered that he had serious cardiovascular problems. Two stents were propping open his arteries, three of which were 90 percent blocked anyway.
The most interesting part of the story is the little details about Lay’s last moments.

The report said that Lay had awoken at about 1 a.m. on July 5 at the rented vacation home in Old Snowmass, Colorado, and spoke to his wife, Linda, before going into the bathroom. He was found dead on the bathroom floor.

Autopsy of Enron’s Lay shows severe artery blockage [Reuters]

Editor’s Note: Since Ken Lay’s death (or should we say “death”), we’ve been getting a lot of email from people suggesting he faked his own demise and then perhaps smuggled himself out of the country. As it turns out, you were right, TinFoilHat666@gmail.com! Intern Bess Levin recently received the missive below from Mr. Lay detailing his whereabouts since his supposed death. Ahem. “Death”. (Any resemblance between Mr. Lay and a Jim Cramer bobblehead doll is entirely coincidental.)

So.

Well.

Read more »

By now everyone has heard the theory that Ken Lay’s death might technically mean that Lay went to his grave an innocent man. Even though he had been convicted, since Lay died prior to sentencing and with possible appeals still available, his verdict was not final, the theory goes. But the latest idea is that Lay’s death not only lifts the guilty verdict from Lay himself, but from his co-defendant Jeffrey Skilling.
The Globe and Mail is reporting that:

Mr. Skilling’s legal team will almost certainly invoke Mr. Lay’s demise to try to reverse his own fraud and conspiracy conviction or demand a retrial, legal experts said yesterday.
That’s because Mr. Lay’s death Wednesday of an apparent heart attack effectively voids the entire case against the Enron founder, including the guilty verdict. Mr. Skilling, the former Enron chief executive officer who is appealing his own conviction, could now argue that much of the evidence against him stems from a case that no longer exists, argued lawyer Jacob Frenkel, a former federal prosecutor and white collar crime specialist.

So Ken Lay’s death frees Jeffrey Skilling from paying the price for his crimes? Maybe there is something to the Christ analogy after all.
Lay’s death could set Skilling free [Globe and Mail]

We were a little put off when we first heard that Rev. William A. Lawson, the pastor emeritus of Houston’s Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church who officiated at yesterday’s memorial service for Ken Lay, had said that the service was being held in Aspen rather than Houston, where Lay had lived for years and made his fortune building up Enron, because Houston “broke his heart.”
The man died of a massive heart attack. Saying Houston “broke his heart” comes kind of close to saying Houston killed Lay. But that cannot be what he meant, right? He’s not really saying Houston should feel guilty for what it did to Lay rather than the other way around.
Oh yes he is.

“I plan to tell them this is not the first time somebody good has been falsely accused and even crucified,” Lawson said today in an interview before leaving for Aspen.
“Just like Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy, my hope is that people will view Ken Lay in a much more positive light after his death. Even though people say he’s a robber and a crook and that it’s a good thing he’s dead, we have the right to tell his family we’ve seen this (vilification) before, and history can be kind.”

That’s right. Lay is Jesus, Martin Luther King and JFK all wrapped up into one. And we’re all Roman executioners, racist assassins and stooges-of-a-CIA-Cuban-Mafia conspiracy. That sound you hear is the sudden evacuation from our hearts of whatever contrarian sympathy we had for Lay.

Lay to Be Buried in Colorado After Houston `Broke His Heart’ [Bloomberg]