There was no will, so probate will likely be required and since no one had logins or passwords for the servers, even if people take ownership of the hardware, once they are turned off, there is no guarantee they'll successfully boot again. I'm guessing that's probably what happened. The people trying to take possession probably tried to move the servers and after they lost power, they haven't been able to get them back up. But, who knows? Maybe it's just a temporary technical interruption. That's the risk when privacy and security are high priorities and there's no succession plan because the admin didn't expect to die suddenly.