Specula-tacular

BREAKING NEWS: KEN LAY SPOTTED IN ANTIGUA? (AP)

Reporters and law enforcement officials are scrambling tonight to confirm or deny damning evidence that Kenneth Lay did not in fact die on on July 6, 2005, but perhaps slipped away to South America, where he's apparently been living for the last eleven years.

A young blogger, Travis Fartheart, armed with his laptop on a beach vacation in Antigua, happened upon a man on the beach whose biometrics perfectly matched the "late" Kenneth Lay. The blogger claims he was on vacation when he ran into Ken Lay on a beach in Antigua. Because he had his laptop with him, he was able to record the pictures and audio from what may well be one of last decade's most famous characters.

The official story, of course, is that Kenneth Lay died of an "apparent" heart attack after being convicted on numerous counts of embezzling millions of dollars from the failing Enron corporation. His "body" was cremated before any autopsy could be performed, the ashes spread over a secluded site in central Colorado.

At the time of Lay's "death," David Irwin, a former federal prosecutor who is now a white-collar defense attorney in Towson, Maryland said, "Prior to his death, the government could just say: `Hand over $40 million.' Prosecutors are now going to have to show that individual assets they want to seize were bought with funds illegally received from Enron. It's going to be a lot more work for them now.''

Indeed, that was work that federal prosecutors found overwhelming and soon abandoned as the terrorist attacks in the midwest ramped up in the early 2010s (such as the Toledo, Ohio, cafe bombing, and the St. Louis Mall explosion, both perpetrated by homegrown fundamentalists). The Enron case was soon forgotten

But remember, at the time, Enron's implosion from accounting fraud had wiped out more than 5,000 jobs and $1 billion in employee pensions virtually overnight. Shareholders claimed more than $25 billion in losses as a result of the crime. Lay and Skilling were convicted of lying to investors about Enron's debt and losses, much of which were hidden in off-the-books partnerships.

Lay had become the face of Enron through his enthusiastic public statements about the company, which he helped build into the seventh-largest U.S. company by sales. In August 2000, it reached its market value high of $68 billion. By the time it filed the second-largest bankruptcy in U.S. history in 2001, its shares were worth just pennies each.

A young Fartheart confronted the aging man on the tropical beach yesterday, calling out "Kenny Boy! Kenny Boy!" he reported on his blog. As he writes, the man turned to him with total revulsion, and said "Don't call me that, I always hated it when that cocksucker Georgie called me that."

After apologizing, Fartheart said the man was surprisingly friendly and willing to engage in chitchat about his past. A sunburnt Lay told him he'd been holing up at a "pretty sweet" mansion and "just taking it easy."

Fartheart, a political science major at Arkansas State University, recorded the sixty-eight minute conversation on his laptop. Among the questions Fartheart asked where "Why did you fake your death?"

"Man, they had it out for me. I knew too much, if I didn't fake it, they would make sure it happened for real," the voice answers.

"It wasn't the 25 to 40 you were looking at spending in the clink?" Fartheart asks.

"Oh man, that would've been easy to slip out of. It was Rove. He would've left me in a ditch, bro. Hey, check out that seagull."

Throughout, the man identifying himself as Kenneth Lay seemed to be a changed man.

Fartheart also asked him what he had been doing since his disappearance.

"Oh, just hanging out. George Will used to come down here in the summer, and we'd talk about how stupid people in America were, but that got old, you know? Blah, blah, blah, stupid masses, buy anything, you know? That guy's a real prick. You really have to die to appreciate living. Have you ever heard of ayuhusca? That shit'll blow your mind.

About his "death:"

"So how'd you do it?" Fartheart asked early in the interview.

"You really need to check up on some Serpent and the Rainbow, shit man."

"Yeah, so whose body did they cremate?"

"I don't want to talk about that," Lay responded.

About his legal troubles:

"Man, I could walk back into the US if I wanted to, probably be a hero, too. I just don't want to deal with all
that man. I measure happiness in starfish and margaritas, now, not money."

He's got a point. Joel Androphy, partner at Houston-based law firm Berg & Androphy, said that if a defendant is officially listed as deceased, civil claimants can't seek punitive damages. Any civil lawsuits would have to be limited to compensatory damages, or those losses that were actually incurred by an individual, he said.

"Am I worried about extradition? No. Am I worried about the heat that might come down because of our little talk? Well, yeah. But I've still got thirty million dollars. I'll be on another continent by the time you get back into cell phone coverage."

The biometric analysis on Fartheart's laptop that initially identified the man has been confiscated by the Federal government, and remains under review.