Kriti Mehrotra
On August 3, 2009, army veteran James “Bo” Bowden was found nearly dead in his home. While it was initially considered to be from an accident following a night of heavy drinking. However, as explored in Netflix’s ‘Worst Roommate Ever: Burning the House Down,’ it eventually came to light he’d actually been attacked at the behest of his former roommate Tammy Fritz because she wanted to collect on the life insurance policy she’d secretly taken out on him in 2005. However, instead of doing the dirty work herself, this mother of one had enlisted the help of her then-roommates, Sean Richard Lagoe and Michelle Kay Heaston, who were dating at the time.
Sean and Michelle Didn’t Lead an Ordinary Life
According to the aforementioned episode, it was apparently around the early summer of 2009 when Tammy first came across Sean and Michelle on the streets of Colorado Springs, Colorado. This couple had no car, no home, no job, and no money to their names, so when she reportedly offered them a place in her abode in exchange for them essentially being her “henchmen” as she committed financial fraud by writing bad checks at her workplace or identity theft, they agreed. Yet, per the former’s then-seventh-grader son Christian Fritz, the trio also spent a lot of their time allegedly doing drugs in the bedroom he’d been kicked out of just so they could stay for good.
Moreover, Christian still vividly remembers, “Michelle often would play with me. She had two children [of her own]. She was very nice. Sean, on the other hand, a very angry, aggressive man.” In fact, according to his accounts, there were times the latter went as far as to threaten his life over the littlest things, yet his mother never really seemed to pay attention or even care. “I knew Sean had his own firearm,” he continued. “One time, I hit the car alarm while he was looking through something [in the trunk]. He panicked and hit his head.”
Christian added, “He pulled out a golf club and said he’d beat me to death. He [once] threatened to cut my throat from ear to ear too.” Then came Tammy’s former roommate/friend Bo’s decision to relocate to be near his parents in Alaska, driving her to orchestrate a plan to kill him so as to cash out from his life insurance policy. The truth is she was the one who’d filled out the application for it in the first place back when they still lived together, only to then also pay all the premiums after having named herself the sole beneficiary in case anything happened under the false claim they were romantically involved.
Therefore, Tammy had purportedly unsuccessfully tried to kill Bo several times since 2005, only to grow desperate by early August as he was set to catch his flight on the morning of the third. She, hence, enlisted Sean and Michelle’s help for the job. Apparently, all three of them had broken into Bo’s apartment mere hours before his flight, following a night of them — minus Sean — drinking together as a farewell, but just one of them used a baseball bat to hurt him in the worst way.
Sean Lagoe and Michelle Heaston Are Both Out of Prison
Since the injuries Bo had sustained were initially considered accidental, it took a while for officials to even begin looking into the matter — thankfully, though, once they did, they were quickly able to identify their suspects as Tammy, Sean, and Michelle, thanks to the life insurance policy. As a result, in May 2014, they were indicted on charges of attempted first-degree murder plus conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, with Tammy additionally facing solicitation counts.
In the end, while 41-year-old Michelle was allowed to plead guilty to the lesser charge of first-degree burglary owing to her limited involvement, 43-year-old Sean pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree murder on March 12, 2015. Then, with the help of their testimonies, 49-year-old Tammy was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, two counts of attempted first-degree murder, plus two counts of solicitation of first-degree murder on May 13, 2015. Thus, Michelle was handed down a 15-year suspended sentence with five years of mandatory parole, whereas Sean received a 26-year prison term with similar parole requirements.
On the other hand, Tammy was given a total of 48 years, so today, at the age of 48, she remains incarcerated at the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility while her accomplices are free. From what we can tell, 50-year-old Michelle is currently free and leading a quiet life away from the limelight, but 52-year-old Sean is still under supervision as an early release out of Colorado parolee. Per Department of Correction records, his parole sentence will conclude on July 9, 2028, indicating he was released around that same time in 2023.
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