This Was the Saddest True Crime Story in Netflix's Worst Roommate Ever (2024)

With the documentary Worst Roommate Ever, Netflix captures the attention of true crime lovers and takes them on a journey through different haunting murder stories. Over two seasons and nine episodes, unbelievably shocking and extremely gruesome events are shared by survivors, investigators, and relatives or friends of the victims.

From twisted roommates found on Craigslist to a seemingly caring but murderous grandmother, this show brings the most disturbing stories to the screen and will potentially instill a fear that anyone out there could be a murderer. Each killing or attempted murder revealed in this documentary is vile on its own, but one of the episodes of Worst Roommate Ever recounts the saddest story, and here is why.

Worst Roommate Ever

TV-MA

True Crime

Documentary

Thriller

Where to Watch

*Availability in US

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Not available

Release Date

March 1, 2022

Seasons

2

Number of Episodes

9

Streaming Service(s)

Netflix

The Murder of Rich Fritz in Worst Roommate Ever

True-crime documentaries have become a staple on Netflix, nourishing the troubling fascination of how twisted the mind of a person can be. While any type of murder is absolutely terrifying, living under the same roof with your killer adds a whole new level of terror to it. Season 1 already left viewers shaken to their core, but Worst Roommate Ever Season 2 is even more horrifying. At the center of the saddest episode, Burning Down the House, is the Fritz family, consisting of Tammy, her husband Rich, their son Christian, and Rich's friend, James Bowden.

Richard was a healthy soldier, impressing his colleagues with his leadership skills and treating everyone as a part of his family. When the weekend of Father’s Day approached, he suddenly started to feel sick, and his health rapidly declined. He was diagnosed with strep and given some antibiotics, but on the third day, Father’s Day, he was found dead. The third episode of Season 2 paints a daunting picture, hinting that his death was foul play. Since he died at the young age of 28 and didn’t have any severe health issues, his death caused a big question mark. While any other wife would have wanted to know what took her husband from her, Tammy Fritz pushed to have him cremated. This was a highly suspicious move since Rich always wanted to be buried, and any further chance for investigation was entirely lost.

The cause of Rich's death remains unknown to this day, and even worse, Tammy Fritz has never been charged with his murder due to the lack of proof. Justice will likely never be served in the case of Richard Fritz, but Tammy's time of reckoning did come after all.

Worst Roommate Ever and Murdering for Money

Tammy Fritz is a mastermind in playing games that involve illegally getting money. She always had a bigger plan, using each and every person around her, even her child, to get what she wanted. Right after her husband's death, Tammy immediately sold their house, the boat, and their vehicles and even collected Rich's life insurance policy. Because of his military service, she had already received $150,000, but she also took out another policy for an equal amount only a couple of weeks before his death.

Despite Tammy trying to trick numerous people into believing she was just a poor widow, Richard’s mother had a different opinion of her. She reveals that the very day she met her future daughter-in-law, she already felt that this woman had a dark side to her. Instead of asking questions about Richard’s childhood or family, she was obsessed with discovering his and his parents’ possessions and wealth. Her focus was always on gathering information on their financial status, which puts her being the beneficiary of Richard’s life insurance in case of his death in a very different light. What seemed to be a common decision between a married couple later became a carefully planned scheme.

It is utterly shocking and saddening that a person would murder someone for something as materialistic as money, let alone someone who they have known for a long time. A young boy's life is completely changed, pain and loss thrown upon him at, possibly, the hands of someone who should care for him and show him love.

A Good Deed With Deadly Consequences

After the sudden death of Richard, Tammy contacted James Bowden and invited him to stay at her place rent-free. Since he lost his best friend, regarded Tammy as family by extension, and found himself needing a place to stay, Bo accepted the offer and saw it as a chance to instill the numerous positive traits he learned from Richard in his son. Tammy, who now had access to all of his documents, and Bo were strictly roommates, but to Christian, he became a true brother, taking on the father figure as well. Whether it was taking Christian to school, cooking for him, or simply spending time with him, Bo invested a lot of time and effort in raising Christian the best he could while suffering from depression, PTSD, and drinking.

During Bo's time staying with Tammy and Christian, suspicious and life-threatening events take place. He was admitted to the hospital for alleged drug use, but nothing was found in his system, and he almost died of carbon monoxide poisoning when his room was suddenly on fire. Bo, who wished for nothing more than to be there for his little "brother" and carry out his friend's legacy, is left constantly fighting for his life, starting to put all the blame on himself. Thinking that he is a danger to himself and, in particular, to Christian, he makes the decision to move out. He sees himself as the problem when, in reality, it was Tammy all along.

When he decided to move back home to his parents, he spent one last family evening with Tammy and Christian, but when someone knocked at his door in the middle of the night, his life almost took a detrimental turn. The next day, he was found with severe fractures to his jaw and a traumatic brain injury, which caused temporary memory loss and left him fighting his way back to a normal life. While the police first concluded that he was drinking too much, Bo's father and the previous investigator found suspicious activity at the crime scene. It is later discovered that Tammy's friend Sean burst in and viciously attacked Bo with a baseball bat, attempting to kill him right then and there. The most shocking twist, however, is that, just days before the attempted murder, Tammy took out life insurance on Bo and stated that they were in a partnership, ready to collect all the money.

It certainly is tragic and heartbreaking when someone’s support is answered with harmful consequences or is even connected to malicious intentions. In the case of Tammy, it becomes clear that it was all about money. She merely used Richard and attempted to use Bo as a money-making tool, which feels like something straight out of a horror movie. Tammy Fritz was sentenced to 48 years in prison for first-degree attempted murder and conspiracy. Sean Lagoe received a 26-year sentence for first-degree attempted murder, and Michelle Heaston received a 15-year sentence for first-degree burglary.

Worst Roommate Ever Depicts the Suffering of a Child

One of the most significant reasons why this particular episode qualifies as the saddest is the fact that an innocent child is involved and left suffering from childhood trauma for many years. It should come as no surprise that Christian was helpless during his entire childhood, his father wrongly taken from him, and his mother abandoning him on a daily basis. The person he trusted the most was Bo, but his mother even intended to take that relationship from him. There is no doubt that children should never be put or left in a harmful situation, and Christian had to endure just that. He lived side by side with a monster.

After Bo almost died during the house fire, he decided to move out. To Christian, this meant that he had to fend for himself by learning to cook, clean, and keep himself alive. It was an immensely difficult transition and a period of time during which he felt as though his mother was more like a roommate than a parental figure to him. Especially when Tammy increased her drug use and had two dubious friends, Sean and Michelle, move in with them, Christian often feared for his life. Sean would threaten to kill him, but his mother wouldn't listen to him. Truly scared, he would call his grandma and explain that he felt abandoned. It is clear that Tammy had no motherly instinct whatsoever, neglecting her child and putting him in great danger.

Ultimately, it is not just the death of Richard, and the unimaginable trauma Bo and Christian had to go through that makes this episode a tough watch, but it is also the consequences Christian has to deal with to this day. Instead of cutting his mother out of his life, he continues to have phone calls with her. It is almost chilling how normal their conversations are, how Tammy even casually mentions Richard, and how both seem to ignore the elephant in the room. The truth is, however, that Christian has a specific saying in his head, which Bo taught him. Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. Worst Roommate Ever is streaming on Netflix.