Personal Life
Skilling was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and was the second of four children. He grew up in New Jersey and Aurora, Illinois. When he was 16 years old, he worked at WLXT (channel 60), a UHF television station in Aurora.
After graduating from West Aurora High School, Skilling received his Bachelor of Science degree in applied science at Southern Methodist University during 1975, where he was a member of Beta Theta Pi (Kenneth Lay was also a member of the fraternity). During his admissions interview for Harvard Business School, he stated that he was asked if he was smart, to which he supposedly replied, "I'm fucking smart." Skilling earned his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School during 1979. He became a consultant at McKinsey & Company in the energy and chemical consulting practices. Skilling became one of the youngest partners in the history of McKinsey.
Skilling had a daughter and two sons (ages 22, 20, and 16 at the time of his conviction) from his first marriage, which ended in divorce during 1997. His youngest child, John Taylor "JT" Skilling, aged 20, was found dead in his Santa Ana, California, apartment on February 3, 2011, by what police have determined preliminarily was the result of a drug overdose. In March 2002, Skilling married Rebecca Carter, a former vice president for board communications and board secretary at Enron. He is the younger brother of Tom Skilling, the chief meteorologist at CW affiliate/cable superstation WGN-TV in Chicago, Illinois.
Jeffrey Skilling was arrested in New York City on April 9, 2004, for public intoxication, during which he harassed several passersby and accused them of being undercover FBI agents. Police responding to the 911 telephone calls found him uncooperative and concluded that he needed to become sober in a local jail.
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