"I wanna see the body," wrote a commenter at Metafilter.com. Another simply wrote, "$."

Indeed, alongside a broad mixture of lampoon and good riddance - perhaps to be expected - was a wide lack of credulity at the idea that the man had died at all. "Word on the street is that he's actually chillin' in the Dominican Republic, fanning himself with his offshore money he squirreled away and sharing a pitcher of sangria with Tupac," wrote NemesisBecoming, a New York City blogger, on Thursday. "It's too [expletive] convenient, people."

From one corner of the Web to another (and with varying degrees of tongue in cheek), Mr. Lay was imagined skulking about the shadows (or getting the party started at one island resort or another), with nearly every fugitive or famous person whose death remains, at least for some people, a matter of debate - from the rapper Tupac Shakur and the comedian Andy Kaufman to the mobster Whitey Bulger.

At 10:09 a.m., it said "no further details have been officially released" about the death.

Two minutes later, it said: "The guilt of ruining so many lives finally led him to his suicide."

At 10:12 a.m., this was replaced by: "According to Lay's pastor the cause was a 'massive coronary' heart attack."

By 10:39 a.m., Lay's entry said: "Speculation as to the cause of the heart attack lead many people to believe it was due to the amount of stress put on him by the Enron trial." This statement was later dropped.