Case Closed?
Worst Roommate Ever S2E3: Burning Down the House
Up on this week’s review is a single episode of Netflix’s Worst Roommate Ever Season 2, Episode 3, titled “Burning Down the House.” In case you’re not familiar with this show, the premise is roommates who typically commit murder or attempt murder on their roommates. This episode in particular is extra creepy because we don’t actually know what happened to one of her potential victims…
The Death of Rich
Tammy Fritz married her husband Rich in 1994, and they had their son, Christian, in 1996. Rich had just retired from the Army and was now an active veteran. In May of 2001, the family was planning a trip to visit relatives in Utah when Rich got sick. He came down with what they called strep, and they gave him antibiotics. After three days, Rich died.
So Rich dies at 28 years old randomly and was extremely healthy. They try to determine the cause of death, and it comes back that he got a strain of the plague that can only come from prairie dogs. This is extremely weird, right? Like, we’re all suspicious immediately.
Tammy goes and plays the grieving widow part, and after his funeral, they say they’re moving him later that day to be cremated. Rich’s mom Paula is extremely confused because they had all had a conversation together where Rich insisted that he did NOT want to be cremated, he wanted to be buried. Tammy is insistent, and Rich gets cremated!
Additionally, we discover Tammy had taken out an extra life insurance policy of $150,000 on Rich four months before he died. Rich already had a life insurance policy through the military for $150,000, so she doubled it. At this point, we’re all already like, “Okay, so Tammy murdered him, took all the money, and then had his body cremated so he can never be looked into.” So immediately, like 15 minutes into the episode, I’m already deriving that Tammy is a psychopath and a murderer. But that’s not the end.
Enter Bo: Rich’s Best Friend
After this, Rich’s best friend James (nickname is Bo) is moving to the area, and Tammy invites him to move in with her and Christian. This is actually a normal thing because the military is a family, and Bo wanted to do this as a thank you and a kindness to Rich, to take care of his wife and son.
So after Bo moves in, him and Tammy go out drinking quite a bit. But he’s kind of realizing that this isn’t really good for him as he’s still suffering from depression, alcoholism, and PTSD.
One night, him and Tammy are having a beer. He doesn’t even finish his singular beer and he’s extremely unwell. He basically blacks out in his room, wakes up in the middle of the night, and his room is on fire. It’s violently smoking and he barely makes it out. He crawls down the stairs and almost dies of carbon monoxide poisoning.
After this, he realizes that wow, he needs to get his life in check. He just almost killed the people who he was supposed to be helping. He decides that he’s going to move out and move back to Alaska where his family lives, so they can help him.
The Setup
Bo heads over to Tammy and Christian’s condo and tells them that he’s going to be moving back to Alaska the next week. At this point, he meets Tammy’s “friends,” Sean and his girlfriend Michelle, as they have moved into the condo and taken over Christian’s room. The three of them are kind of pissed, and Tammy is acting very weird. Bo notices but overlooks it.
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A few days later, Tammy and Christian help Bo pack up all of his stuff, and then they offer to drive him to the airport the next day. The plan is that they’re going to pick Bo up in the morning, go have breakfast at their favorite spot, and then head up to Denver to drop him off at the airport.
The Attack
On the night of August 2nd, 2009, Bo is falling asleep in bed when he hears knocking on his door. He gets up, opens the door, and has no recollection of what happens next.
At 8:00 AM on August 3rd, Christian knocks on the door relentlessly to say goodbye to Bo, but nobody is answering. Tammy is being suspicious, but Christian is so upset and worried about Bo her overlooks it. By 4:00 PM on August 3rd, Bo’s mother hadn’t heard from him, so she called the apartment manager to check on him. The police found him bludgeoned, soaked in his own blood, with blood covering the apartment everywhere.
So of course, we’re all immediately like, “Okay, what the hell did Tammy do this time?”
Tammy is Insane.
Right after this, Tammy actually gets arrested for multiple different counts of fraud because she’s been casually committing fraud through credit cards, insurance, and also her job. So, Rich’s mother Paula gets custody of Christian and gets to go into Tammy’s condo to pick up all of Christian’s things. When she does, she finds proof that Tammy took out a life insurance policy of $150,000 on Bo.
Sean and Michelle were actually not her friends — they were homeless people who Tammy recruited, and they were giving her drugs in exchange for her paying for them. Tammy recruited them to kill Bo and was getting her drug fix on the side. Tammy was freaking out because she didn’t want Bo to move away forever without her collecting the life insurance policy. So, Sean showed up with a baseball bat and bludgeoned him with what he thought was to death.
The Sentences
Of course, Tammy gets charged for attempted murder, and all of her other fraud charges add up to her getting 48 years in prison. Sean pled guilty to first-degree attempted murder as well and received a 26-year sentence, and Michelle pled guilty to first-degree burglary because she was committing other crimes as well and received a 15-year sentence.
Justice for Rich Fritz
The worst part for me is the lack of justice for Rich. There is not a doubt in my mind that Tammy also killed him. But because of her insistence on the cremation, there is no evidence and will never be any. I cannot begin to imagine what Paula and Christian Fritz feel, but they do know she will be locked up most likely until she dies.
How do you think Tammy was able to murder Rich? Did she ever have any regard for Christian?
