Billionaire Rausing Heir Arrested on Suspicion of Wife’s Death

The son of milk carton billionaire Hans Rausing, Sweden’s third-richest man, has been arrested on suspicion of murdering his wife, London police confirmed today. Detective Inspector Sharon Marman told a preliminary coroner’s inquest today that the 49-year-old man arrested on July 10 in connection with the death of Eva Kemeny, 48, was Hans Kristian Rausing, a spokesman from the Metropolitan Police Service said today. Rausing was arrested July 10 “on suspicion of possession of drugs” and “was further arrested in connection with the death whilst at a south London police station,” police said earlier this week. When law enforcement authorities inspected the couple’s West London home, they discovered Kemeny’s body. An autopsy Tuesday failed to find the cause of death, police said, and Rausing is now receiving medical attention. He hasn’t been charged in the investigation. “During her short lifetime, [Eva] made a huge philanthropic impact, supporting a large number of charitable causes, not only financially, but using her own personal experiences,” the Kemeny family said in a statement on July 10. “She bravely fought her health issues for many years.” “Hans and Marit Rausing and their family are deeply shocked and saddened to hear of the tragic death of their daughter-in-law,” the billionaire’s family said in a statement. “They ask that their privacy be respected at this sad time.” The Associated Press reported on the coroner’s inquest earlier today. Cardboard Cartons The couple was arrested and charged with possession of narcotics after trying to take cocaine, crack cocaine and heroin into the U.S. embassy in London in 2008, according to police. They confessed to the charges and were not sentenced to prison. Hans Krisitian Rausing is one of three heirs to his father’s fortune, which is worth more than $6 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His grandfather, Ruben, founded Swedish packaging company Tetra Pak in 1951. Ruben’s sons, Hans and Gad, joined the firm thereafter. The company’s most successful product was the folded and laminated cardboard carton for packaging liquids. Invented in 1952, the product became the standard for milk and juice cartons in most of the world. The company was able to manufacture one billion cartons a year by 1959. Hans Rausing fled Sweden with his family in the early 1980s, in protest of the country’s high tax rates, while continuing to run the company with Gad. In 1993, Hans Rausing stepped down from his management role at Tetra Laval Group, the family’s holding company. Two years later, he sold his half of the family business to his brother for an estimated $7 billion. Jorgen Haglind, a spokesman for Tetra Laval, said in an e- mail that it would “fully inappropriate” for the company to comment on Rausing’s death.

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The best insights in my report didn’t emerge in my office, during conference calls, or at meetings. They somehow appeared in the bathroom.

Not too long ago, as I was putting the final touches on a client presentation, I stumbled across a surprising observation. The best insights in my report didn’t emerge in my office, during conference calls, or at meetings. They somehow appeared in the bathroom.

Research on the nature of creativity suggests my experience isn’t all that unique. Often, the most effective way of solving a difficult problem is simply walking away. The moment we allow ourselves to disengage from the individual pieces of a puzzle is the moment a solution appears. It’s why Albert Einstein regularly went sailing and why Charles Darwin planned his day around a countryside stroll. Thomas Edison simply napped.

In many ways, problem solvers are like artists. Taking a few steps back provides painters with a fresh perspective on their subject, lending them a new angle for approaching their work. Problem solving follows a similar recipe, but it’s not always the physical distance that we need. It’s psychological distance; mental space for new insights to bloom.

In a world where finding solutions makes up the crux of a typical workday, we are all artists. Cognitive artists. And to deliver our best work, we need revitalizing breaks. Distancing ourselves from our work grants us a broader view, activating a global perspective that precedes breakthrough.

So, why the bathroom?

If you’re like most office employees, access to sailboats, the countryside and a relaxing couch is in short supply. A walk to the bathroom is one of the few opportunities you have for disengaging, letting go of trivial details and refocusing on the bigger picture--even Steve Jobs recognized the bathroom's potential, insisting that Pixar only build two in its studios, to provide employees with maximum enforced mixing. Neurologically, it is during these moments away from your desk the right hemisphere of your brain comes to life, making you more appreciative of the forest and less sensitive to the trees.

While most of us give little thought to our workplace bathroom, there’s good reason to believe it can have an impact on the quality of the work we produce -- especially in organizations that rely on creativity and problem solving to stand out. Over the past decade, studies have shown that both our thoughts and behaviors are heavily influenced by our surroundings, in ways we often fail to recognize.

A few examples:

• The sound of classical music makes consumers spend more money
• The smell of cookies makes shoppers more likely to help a stranger
• The sight of red hurts intellectual performance but improves physical performance

Psychological findings like these are now commonplace, pointing to one irrefutable fact: Our environment shapes our thinking in powerful ways.

Which brings up some intriguing questions: How can we make the most of our time away from our desks? Is there a way of designing bathrooms to make them more inspiring? And what can organizations do to maximize the insights its employees get out of each bathroom visit?

Recent research on the science of creativity provides some helpful suggestions.

Rethink Muzak

One of the ways we become more creative is by exposing our minds to a broad variety of stimuli. The wider the selection of information you mentally digest--whether it be foreign movies, experimental novels or exotic travel--the more remote associations you’ll have in your arsenal. Or, in laymen’s terms, the more creative you’ll be.

Hearing unusual music primes us to think different--inspiring ideas, emotions and experiences that increase the associations active in our brain.

Surprise The Senses

 Another creativity nugget: We tend to find more insightful solutions to a problem when we're in a good mood. One method experimentally proven for improving people’s moods is enjoyable scents. Positive scents don’t just make us feel better--they lead us to set higher goals for ourselves and experience a greater sense of self-efficacy.

Now, if you’re like most people, the restroom isn’t the first place that comes to mind when you think of positive scents, and partly that’s because of how hard custodians work to mask negative smells, leaving most bathrooms feeling like an assault on the senses. But in our case, that’s a good thing. It means the bar for surprising people with positive scents is that much more accessible. A few opportunities for enhancing the scent of a workplace bathroom: unusual soaps, exotic candles, and the hallway outside a bathroom, boosting people’s mood before and after a visit.

Encourage Mental Stimulation

Part of what makes bathroom visits a boon to creativity is that they represent one of the few times during the workday when our physiological attention is directed inward, mimicking the psychological experience of insight. But it’s not just inward attention that’s needed--it’s inward attention in the context of fresh ideas.

Think about the last time you saw graffiti in the bathroom. Chances are, not only did you read it, you probably thought about the person who wrote it, perhaps wondering what (the hell) was going through their mind. We can’t help but think about the things we see, but we can choose what we look at. Providing a diet of mentally stimulating material in workplace bathrooms can be done in a number of ways: posting unusual artwork, leaving out thought provoking magazines or using digital picture frames to keep the imagery fresh. The key is for the material to be stimulating and indirectly related to work you do.

Once upon a time, going to the bathroom was a distraction. Something that kept us from work; an unfortunate bodily shortcoming that compromised efficiency. But that world doesn’t exist anymore. Today, our economy is powered by an engine of insight. Creativity in the workplace isn’t a “nice to have”—it’s what keeps companies in business. Which is why it’s ironic that most office bathrooms offer a bleak and unwelcoming environment. One that discourages insight and implicitly chides us to get back to our desks.

There’s just one problem. Creativity doesn’t work that way.

And if the science has taught us anything about the creative process it’s this: Finding unexpected solutions often requires an unexpected approach. Why not start in the bathroom? 

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A young face. A suburbanite. A heroin addict.

When the doorbell rings these days at the free detox center near downtown, staffers know what to expect.

A young face. A suburbanite. A heroin addict.

More young people from middle- and upper-class neighborhoods are getting hooked on the cheap, powerful opiate, staffers say, mirroring a national trend.

"If they ring the bell, I know immediately what they're on," said Angie Vente-Garcia, a detox technician at WestCare Nevada's Community Triage Center for adults. "It used to be crystal meth. Now it's heroin."

Young heroin addicts, ages 18 to 25, began turning up at the center with increasing frequency in recent years, desperate to kick the habit.

"How are you getting this drug?" Vente-Garcia asked. "You live in Green Valley. You live in Summerlin."

Drug dealers "are driving up to the neighborhoods," she said.

Federal drug enforcement officials say heroin dealers across the country are targeting middle America, a lucrative market.

Young drug users choose heroin because prescription opiates such as OxyContin are harder to get and expensive.

"It's $10 to $15 a pill," said Jose Hernandez, a Las Vegas police spokesman.

A bag of heroin goes for about $10.

Narcotics officers in Las Vegas have noticed a dramatic increase in heroin sales, Hernandez said. Police in Henderson and North Las Vegas reported the same trend.

Heroin had waned in popularity as more people turned to methamphetamine, said Keith Paul, a Henderson police spokesman.

"Then, as more people starting mis­using prescription pills, and those pills became harder to get and more expensive, people moved on to heroin."

Some young people get hooked on opiates after taking their parents' prescription pills.

"It's important to make sure you don't have extra prescription drugs in your medicine cabinet," Paul said, adding they can be dropped off for disposal at any Henderson police substation.

UNINSURED AND DESPERATE

Almost 800 people came to WestCare in each of the last two years looking to detox from heroin. More than 60 percent of them were under 30 years old.

A young heroin addict who's no longer under her parents' health insurance and has exhausted her family's patience often winds up at WestCare's door. Staffers say it's the only place in the Las Vegas Valley where the uninsured and destitute can undergo free, medically supervised detoxification.

"We are the safety net," said Amy Roukie, regional vice president for WestCare Nevada and Arizona. "We take those others don't want and give them the best treatment we can."

The low-slung building, near Washington Avenue and the north Strip, was constructed decades ago. By now, it's cramped and run-down.

Hospitals, police and social service providers refer people to WestCare. Others wander in off the streets. Many are homeless, or would be if they hadn't shown up here.

Young people accustomed to living in comparative luxury usually seek out WestCare quickly after becoming homeless, Vente-Garcia said.

"To go from that to living in the streets - they're not having it," she said. "They don't like what they see."

On a recent afternoon at WestCare, strung-out men and women were sleeping or tossing and turning on their single beds. They ranged in age from about 19 to 60.

Some people, further along in the detox process, haunted the halls or slouched on their beds, reading and writing. One pregnant woman quietly wept. Another, who looked to be in her late teens or early 20s, her hair neatly braided, was nursing a lollipop.

"You crave sugar when you're coming off opiates," said Erin Kinard, interim director of the center.

The men and women were detoxing from a variety of substances, including alcohol, methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin.

"When I first started, it was more older males with drinking problems," said Pat Palmer, a nurse practitioner at WestCare for the past six years.

WestCare administrators asked the Review-Journal not to print the names of anyone undergoing detox or give specific information about their identities.

Privacy laws prevented staffers from discussing individual cases.

HOW DETOX WORKS

Those who arrive for detox undergo an initial assessment with a case manager and see a certified nursing assistant. They get medication to ease withdrawal symptoms that vary according to their addiction, but may include tremors or twitching, anxiety, nausea, vomiting and even seizures.

"I feel dizzy and it's hard to go to the bathroom," said a bearded man around 50 as he lay on his back in bed. It was his third day of detox from methamphetamine and alcohol. "I'm so sick I don't want to get out of bed."

He added that he was "willing to do whatever it takes" to get sober. He sought treatment after an intervention by his family: "They love me so much."

A doctor or nurse practitioner examines each person entering detox within 24 hours. Those in the first stages are closely monitored.

At first, they sleep a lot. Over the course of a few days, staffers taper off their medication. As they begin to feel better, people in detox attend on-site recovery meetings, eat communal meals, watch movies, play games and help with chores. A psychiatrist visits the center regularly and makes referrals for those who need further mental health treatment.

One newly sober woman in her mid-30s was helping with the laundry. She decided to try detox after years of using methamphetamine and crack cocaine, in part because one of her now-grown children re-established contact with her. She lost custody of him and several other children because of her addictions.

"I didn't want them to see me living in a storm drain, sticking needles in my arm."

If she hadn't gotten sober, she "would have shot some bad dope and died."

Ideally, when an individual is ready, they will be placed in a longer-term rehab program, a sober living home or shelter. But that doesn't always happen, because the community is "really lacking in state-funded residential beds," Kinard said.

Roughly a third of those who complete detox either refuse placement or have no place to go. They're released to the street.

In better times, the center had 50 beds. Because of budget cuts, that number has shrunk to 36. Funding for the center's nearly $2 million yearly budget comes mainly from the state, local jurisdictions and hospitals.

The beds are typically full, and people stay an average of three days. About 300 people each month come to the center seeking services.

The community's need for free detox exceeds what the center is able to offer, Roukie said.

"We could double the amount of beds and fill them."

Detox services are voluntary, and people may simply walk away if they choose. Many do, some within hours.

REPEAT CUSTOMERS

A high percentage of those in detox are repeat customers. Some have been through the process a dozen times or more.

Vente-Garcia, the WestCare tech, tried detox 15 times before finally getting clean for good. Like many staffers, she's a recovering addict.

Like a growing number of young people, her drug of choice was heroin. She began using at 15 after an extended family member introduced her to the drug. At 18, her mother dropped her off at WestCare. She didn't stay long.

"When I tried to stop I got the sweats," she said. "I couldn't sleep; my body was shaking. I had anxiety and aches."

Vente-Garcia's mother kicked her out of the house. At one point she lived with her drug dealer.

"Everything got worse," she said. "I had abscesses on my skin, as many drugs as I wanted. I don't know why I didn't die."

At the time, Vente-Garcia was among the few young people she knew who used heroin. Now 31, she's been clean eight years.

"I got sick of being sick," she said. "I thought, 'This is ridiculous, disgusting.' My family was over it."

When she was using, heroin was available mainly in the urban core of Las Vegas, she said. No one imagined you could one day easily buy it in the suburbs.

When young people ring the bell at WestCare, Vente-Garcia is often the first person they see. She welcomes them warmly, fills out their paperwork, and shares a bit of her own story if she thinks it will help.

She offers them "a little food, a little hope and a shower."

"I tell them they're not alone. There's a purpose for their lives. Otherwise, they'd be dead."

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