Yeah someone i know reminded me about Coinversation recently too.
I told him that this project had a "red flag" from start on my side unfortunately.
And time proved i was quite right 😅. 

The thing is "code is law".
How do you implement a condition based on "CTO IS dead. No team, no GitHub, no events, no marketing, no rewards" ?
How do you determine a project is "dead" so that it can trigger the end of a lease period and the release of locked DOT ?
-> I think this is where the difficulty is. 

Coretime has been thought to mitigate the events you describe i think.

Remember your DOT are SAFU in th ecrowdloan module, you just lose the opportunity cost by locking your DOT in a crowdloan.

Maybe a gov vote could end a lease slot and release DOT, that's the only option i see currently.