the cautious life.

Update: Apparently, he faked it: “Authorities began to suspect Mr. Israel was on the run when a body failed to turn up and the message turned out to be the theme song of the film “M*A*S*H.”

The M.A.S.H. angle seemed a little … hokey.

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The NY Daily News reports that a former Long Island hedge fund manager who swindled hundreds-of-millions from investors likely leaped from a bridge rather than report to federal prison.

“State police said they found a 2006 GMC Envoy registered to Samuel Israel III of Armonk abandoned on the Bear Mountain Bridge, about 40 miles north of New York City.

The phrase “Suicide is Painless” – the famous theme song of the TV show “MASH” – was scrawled in the dust on the hood.”

What’s the appropriate way to react to that news? You can’t be happy about it and still feel good about yourself at the end of the day — at least I can’t anyway. Yet, what sympathy does this guy deserve? He was apparently completely capable of living with his crime — just not the punishment.

The problem is, there’s something fundamentally more offensive about thieves who are already rich. Maybe because it’s harder to understand what motivates them. Maybe it’s because gluttony and greed have been taboo since the dawn of taboo. Or maybe it’s because the narrative requires the bad guy to end up in the pokey to seem complete, or balanced, or satisfying.

It’s a similar situation with former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay, who died weeks after being convicted of fraud and months before he was sentenced. A convicted criminal, awaiting sentencing for presiding over a landmark corporate collapse that devastated the private finances of countless people far less wealthy than him, dies without ever serving a day in prison.

 And he dies in Aspen.