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Pastimes : Whodunit? Two Stockbrokers Murdered in Jersey; Reference -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jeffrey S. Mitchell who wrote (23)	11/2/1999 10:18:00 PM
From: Jeffrey S. Mitchell	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 79

Re: 11/2/99 - Killings Fascinate Stock Investors NOVEMBER 02, 00:28 EST Killings Fascinate Stock Investors By WAYNE PARRY Associated Press Writer TRENTON, N.J. (AP) ? Investors who normally use the Internet to find out which stocks are hot are now tracking the hottest leads in a murder mystery. A group of amateur investors from around the world are poring over evidence and speculating on the shooting deaths of two Internet stock promoters in a New Jersey mansion last week. By Monday ? six days after the bodies of Albert Alain Chalem and Maier Lehmann were found in a Colts Neck, N.J., mansion ? the subject had become the most popular discussion topic on the SiliconInvestor.com Web site. There were 325 messages posted on the site by midday Monday. ``This is fantastic stuff,' said Janice Shell, an art historian in Italy who created the discussion group Thursday about the murders on the Web site. ``You have to follow it like an investor to understand it. We're really into this kind of thing.' People have used the forum to obsess over details such as whether Lehmann had rented a Dodge found at the mansion, just how a suitcase fit in, and why Chalem's girlfriend and her son weren't home when the murders took place. ``Some people read a mystery novel and are happy to know the answer is on the last page,' said Jeff Mitchell, a participant in the Silicon Investor group. ``When we do this, we're making up the novel as we go along.' Chalem and Lehmann, who promoted penny stocks over an Internet site called www.stockinvestor.com, were found dead in a mansion on 16 acres in Monmouth County, N.J., home to some of the country's top horse breeders, many Wall Street executives and even two members of the rock band Bon Jovi. Authorities said the execution-style killings probably took place sometime late the night of Oct. 25. The Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office, the FBI and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission are all working to unravel the victims' complex web of financial dealings. The case took a new turn with the recent revelation that the two men had served as informants for government regulators investigating stock frauds, even as they encountered their own legal troubles relating to their trading activities. That had the online amateur detectives working overtime. Silicon Investor subscribers, many of them small-time investors who use the popular Web site to speculate about good and bad technology stocks, have been devouring press accounts of the murders, analyzing them for the slightest clues, then searching various business databases for their own theories. The steady trickle of details and revelations clearly has these folks hooked. ``This is getting very intriguing, like an Agatha Christie mystery,' wrote an investor dubbed Sarkie Bug. ``I will anxiously await the next chapter.' A spokesman for Silicon Investor said any of the 120,000 subscribers to the site can create discussion groups. The discussion of the killings was posted in an area devoted to news that does not directly concern stocks but is of interest to the investment community. ``We do not condone this sort of discussion in the context of talking about a particular stock,' said Mark Peterson, a spokesman for Go2Net, the Seattle-based parent company of the site. wire.ap.org