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The Enron Trial
Houston tour guide capitalizes on city's infamous defendants
By Carol Rust
If music isn't enough, Enron trial fans can take the tour. Sandra Lord, a local tour guide who offers bus and walking trips to view Houston's architecture and even its cemeteries, capitalized on the Lay and Skilling trial in planning her most recent tour, which she dubbed "Lifestyles of the Rich and Infamous - the Enron Story." A church group of 27 seniors "snapped up" her first tour on March 4. They visited the former corporate headquarters that had been receiving its finishing touches when the company crashed, as well as some of the brass's favorite hangouts, including the Front Porch Pub and La Griglia, an Italian restaurant in Houston's posh River Oaks section.
Lord's next tour is scheduled for April 22. The $30 tour (up to 50 people can go) will check out the curb appeal of the baronial homes of Lay, Skilling, Fastow and company as well as the HQ and hangouts. A young woman bought the first ticket for that tour as a Valentine's Day present for her boyfriend. "I asked her if he had an Enron connection, and she said he just enjoyed architecture and things like that." Lord has planned post-bust stops, too. She takes her crew to the jail where Lay and Skilling went following their arrests, as well as their lawyers' offices. She plans to stop at Import Warehouse, the former site of Jus' Stuff, an upscale second-hand shop started by Linda Lay to downsize her considerable excess of possessions after the sale of several of the couple's multimillion-dollar vacation homes in Aspen, Colo., and Galveston, Texas. Not all of the Enron-obsessed are locals. A Dutch architect named Stephan Tychon said he became an activist while researching the misdoings big business. He was on hand last week when Ken and Linda Lay made their regular early-morning walk from Lay's attorney's office to the courthouse. Tychon, who plans a three-month stay in Houston, showers at the YMCA and camps at a park on the edge of downtown, stopped the Lays to introduce himself and decorously presented Linda Lay with a gift of a single calla lily. Then Tychon gave Ken Lay an open letter questioning the propriety of a local jury judging what Tychon terms "a global crime." When he tried to persuade Lay to carry a poster promoting Tychon's Website of corporate avarice, Lay politely declined. Watkins was by far the most damning witness yet against Lay, but the crowds of curiosity seekers who crowded the courtroom last week had thinned by Wednesday. It could end up being the corporate trial of the century, but to a media-saturated public, Enron is "so 2001."