I used to work for a company owned by a guy who was weirdly obsessed with Princess Di. When she died he immediately cranked out thousands and thousands of Diana tribute dolls. They took orders for them before they had fulfillment properly set up and it ended up being a disaster.

I had heard about this when I went to work for them, but I didn’t see one for years. Then one day while looking for printer toner I opened a door and found a room filled from floor to ceiling with identical little boxes. I opened one up and this face was staring back at me:

You may notice that this doesn’t look a lot like Princess Di. Turns out the dude felt he and Lady Di shared a spirit, so he had the sculptor design the doll to me an amalgamation of the late queen of hearts and him.

Hence the feeling of uncanny valley you get from her dead eyes.

Eventually this guy had to step down from running the company due to issues with his bipolar disorder. There was a two week period where he was running from luxury hotel to luxury hotel because “the CIA was after him”, all because he had discovered the way to end child poverty.

I was called out to set up a new laptop at one of his hotels. I rode up on an elevator to meet him with a hotel driver he’d hired to be his personal driver and assistant and a Mexican actor he’d also hired (for what I don’t know).

When I got up there he was wandering around in a robe that didn’t leave much to the imagination ranting about how the CIA kept bugging his rooms. When he gave me his old laptop he told me to take good care of it because it would be in the Smithsonian one day.

I threw it in the hotel dumpster.

Eventually we didn’t hear anything from him. Either his illness was well managed or his family just kept him out of view. His idiot son ran things well enough, and I didn’t have to deal with his rants or his floppy dick, so hey.

Then suddenly the emails started.

He started sending long, rambling emails asking about financials and details about the company. They came at all hours of the night. His son told me he was in a manic episode and not to tell him anything.

Then suddenly he said he was wrong, his father wasn’t ill.

He told us his father was just mad about the state of the company and would be taking over again. He assured me his father was of sound mind.

And at first he seemed intense but ok. At first.

The first sign of trouble was asking me to install speakers in everyone’s office so he could play his blessed playlist for everyone all day. It was a weird mix of awful songs: Imagine, Fight Song, some Todd Rundgren thing. The same 18 songs over and over again all day.

Then he asked me to put together a presentation using those songs that was going to change the world. He’d send me random photos of things from around his house to add to the slideshow. Things like these:

He flew into rages that I couldn’t make his 2 hour presentation go viral. I knew the company was sunk, but I felt a weird responsibility to try to hold things together long enough to let people find new jobs. I felt like if I left it would all fall apart.

He became increasingly obsessed with his kid’s charity which, to my knowledge, never actually helped any kids. The only thing he ever did was buy three yellow hummers and have the Mexican actor drive some kids whose mom was dying around to look at Christmas lights.

Meanwhile while he talked about saving the world’s children he wasn’t paying his own child support.

He did so many horrible things I don’t know where to start, and frankly a lot of those stories aren’t mine to tell, but he took advantage of people in many ways. The line for me was when he told me he was going to have my family killed after ranting about sending me to hell.

Even then I gave THREE weeks notice because I’m an idiot. I couldn’t escape that feeling that I was the lynchpin holding everything together.

About that: Within a week of me leaving the company was closed and he was dead.

He had a BMW loaner that he just never returned and was reported as stolen. He drove it to his daughter’s house and threatened to drive through her house. Somehow that standoff ended with him taking his ex wife back to his house with him.

Scottsdale and Phoenix police met him there. They found a house filled with altars to princess Diana and tons of lit candles. They tried to talk him down, but as things often do with the police it escalated. They tasered him and it had no effect. So they beat him to death.

I can’t adequately explain how detached from reality the man was. My instinct is to blame the police, but he was sincerely terrifying to be around. I also suspect he was using substances on top of his mania. I have heard the police beat him so severely half his face fell off.

We tried to intervene several times. We tried contacting his family. We had mental health services come out about a week before his death. They said he was clearly manic but he wasn’t a threat to himself or anyone else, so there wasn’t anything they could do.

Call me crazy, but when a man walks around with a street dog that he calls his prophet maybe that’s worth looking more into.

There’s a lot more to this story, but it’s just too much for twitter: a former porn star, a drugging, a Taylor swift concert, Michael Jackson, urine play, his erectile dysfunction…

I really do need to write a book.

Anyways the man was SO awful and traumatized me so badly I was relieved when I found out that he’d died. I know that’s bad, but when someone is threatening to kill you and your family hearing they’re gone finally lets you breathe, you know?

And my way of dealing with traumatic things is humor, especially dark humor, and well… this kind of happened (sorry).

I’ve never shown this to anyone outside my tiny circle of friends for fear of being judged but fuck it.

A couple other notes. Due to this dude’s Diana obsession I find anything related to Di inherently funny. So I bought this plate of eBay and it’s my taco plate.