Day after being indicted, former CEO of Chesapeake Energy dies in car crash

Stacy Summary: Wow. I think we should expect to see more of this over the next few months as things fall apart in the shale sector. We similarly saw a string of suicides and suspicious deaths in the banking sector a few years ago. McClendon was only indicted yesterday on conspiracy to rig markets (because that’s what all ‘barons’ weather of shale or finance do).

Aubrey McClendon, 56, Shale Gas Baron, Dies in Crash a Day After Indictment

Aubrey McClendon, who built a fortune in shale gas by buying up fields across the United States, was killed on Wednesday when his car ran off a highway into a bridge in Oklahoma, the authorities said. His death, at 56, came a day after he was indicted on federal charges of conspiring to suppress prices paid for oil and natural gas leases.

Scene of the car crash:

Report from police:

Make of it what you will, but seems a silly suicide to commit when you have the kind of money he has to hire the lawyers to get him the sort of sentence Mike Milken got . . . though Milken was charged before the American population demanded increasingly vindictive prison terms (think mandatory minimums in the decades for what used to get a year or two, etc), the guy would have at least been free on bail for years before any sentence.