by Pa Rock
Conspiracy Theorist
Scientists and others of the practical persuasion have theorized the existence of phenomena long before being able to actually see what they were talking about. They accomplish that by observing how something behaves, and then coming up with theories as to why it acts as it does. There was scholarly agreement, for instance, that the world was round instead of flat before Magellan's boats ever circumnavigated the globe - and centuries before photos of the big, round planet Earth were taken from space. And the existence of atoms and even sub-atomic particles was theorized long before any were actually observed with powerful microscopes.
Sometimes we literally know something is there, even if we can't detect it with our own limited senses.
Almost fourteen years ago I wrote a piece for this blog in which I speculated about a couple of well known individuals who were thought to be dead but could conceivably have been alive and thriving on some highly secret tropical isle. That posting, which ran on March 18, 2009, was titled "Ken Lay is Alive . . . and so is Dan White!" It was a reworking of a couple of popular conspiracy theories at that time.
In May of 2006 Ken Lay, the former head of Enron Energy, a corporation which had gone defunct and left employees and investors in the lurch, was convicted by a federal jury on six counts of fraud and making false statements. Two months later Lay died unexpectedly of a massive coronary at the family's vacation home in Aspen, Colorado. Local police were called and Lay was transported to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead, and an autopsy was performed. Not long after that he was cremated.
Lay died three months before his sentencing. If he had been sentenced, much of his personal property - bank accounts and eleven family homes - would have been seized by the government and used to help pay back employees and investors who had lost heavily when Enron collapsed. But because he died before sentencing, the case was closed and his family got to keep all of his assets.
Speculation began mounting that perhaps Lay's death had been a charade enabled and supported by certain individuals in the Aspen area who knew him well - and the cremation had ended the possibility of a future examination of the remains and hamper any follow-up investigations. His family had certainly benefitted financially by the timing of his death.
Unlike Ken Lay, Dan White, a former city supervisor in San Francisco, was not a rich man. White had been convicted of the 1978 murders of the mayor of San Francisco and a fellow city supervisor. White, who had once served as a city police officer in San Francisco, was only convicted of manslaughter, thanks in large part to support and testimony of police officers and officials. He was sentenced to seven years in prison and got out in five. In 1985 he died of suicide - carbon monoxide poisoning - and his body was removed from the scene by San Francisco police officers. There were those at the time who felt that White could have faked his own death to escape the continuing public animosity and harrassment that had been directed toward him by people who felt he had gotten away with murder, and that his friends in the police department had aided in the deception.
In my posting, "Ken Lay is Alive . . . and so is Dan White!" I gave voice to both of those fairly well known conspiracy theories, and speculated that Ken Lay might be enjoying tropical drinks somewhere on a private island in the South Pacific, and that Dan White could be running the island's security and tending bar.
Seven years later on March 4, 2016, in a piece entitled "A Little Southeast of Bora Bora," I expanded on the earlier conspiracy theory by adding insights on Aubrey Kerr McClendon, the former head of Chesapeake Energy Company who had died in a fiery, single car crash two days earlier on March 2, 2016. One day before the fatal crash McClendon had been indicted by a federal grand jury for conspiring to rig bids for the purchase of oil and natural gas leases in northwestern Oklahoma. It was a rather bizarre death of an ultra-wealthy individual who had means and a motive to escape a bad situation.
That time I suggested that Lay, whom George Bush used to refer to as "Kenny. Boy," and McClendon might be "sitting under the palms on some warm atoll a little southeast of Bora Bora, telling tales and reliving their glory days, while Dan White rubs sunscreen on their backs and freshens their drinks. Another tongue-in-cheek conspiracy theory.
More than three years after that, on August 13, 2019, I enhanced the growing conspiracy theory tale one more time by adding the pimp for the rich and famous, Jeffrey Epstein, to the mix. That piece was titled: "Fantasy Island Redux." Epstein was a known associate of Donald Trump, who was President at the time, and former President Bill Clinton - as well as many other well known and prominent individuals. Epstein's death by suicide on August 10, 2019, (he was found hanging in his New York City jail cell while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges) before he could be called to testify in court, undoubtedly left many important people breathing easier.
Again, the public knows very little about the Epstein death and follow-up, which was handled expeditiously by the government. I conspiracy-theorized that it would be feasible that he had been relocated to Ken Lay's island where he would ultimately be put in charge of customer relations - and the clientele would be very, very exclusive.
Now, a couple of years on down the road comes word of the disappearance (and supposed death) of another rich dude who was going through a legal crisis. Dr. Marvin Moy, a Manhattan physician who had been charged by federal authorities in what the New York Post referred to as a "massive health fraud scheme," vanished in an "alleged" boating accident off of the coast of Long Island - about twenty miles from Fire Island - in the early morning hours of October 13, 2022. Dr. Moy's private boat, which he was operating, apparently struck a larger vessel and then sank, leaving behind an oil slick and debris on the water. Moy had a friend along for the ride, and that person, who has not been identified to the press, was found and rescued, but an extensive and expensive search has failed to turn up the physician.
And somewhere on an atoll, or perhaps an island, a little southeast of Bora Bora, Dan White is rushing to get the new arrival's luggage to his cabana. Dan is expecting a big tip for his efforts, and he is excited that the island will finally have a clinic!
