Oh Lauda was the one of the OG's of bitcointalk and he didn't really passed away in real life (at least I don't think he did) but his forum account was terminated by theymos. 
I don't think the account was ever terminated. I think Lauda left voluntarily. All one has to do is change the password to xxxxxxxxxx-some-random-long-password, and no one else will be able to log into it. (obviously, from a secure device.)