Ty Pickens died on Jan. 29, 2013.
Family photo from Star-Telegram archives
In January 2013, when they were TCU students, Brennan Rodriguez loaded a syringe with heroin and injected it into Thomas “Ty” Boone Pickens’ arm, inadvertently killing the grandson of late billionaire oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens.
When he asked Rodriguez to give him just enough heroin to make him doze off, Ty Pickens was upset that Pickens and a former girlfriend were not getting back together, Rodriguez’s cousin, who was present, told a Fort Worth police homicide detective.
Rodriguez was indicted on felony murder. In a plea agreement with the Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office, Rodriguez was sentenced in November 2014 to 10 years deferred-adjudication probation when he pleaded guilty to a charge of delivery of a controlled substance causing death.
As part of the probation, Rodriguez served four months in jail.
He was released in early 2015.
With about three months remaining in his probation period, Rodriguez was in August 2024 charged with stalking a woman. He also possessed a rifle with an installed drop-in auto sear, a machinegun conversion device.
In the stalking case, Rodriguez mentioned in text messages to the woman places where she had been and what she was wearing, indicating that he had been following her, according to the indictment in that case. He went at night to her home’s front door, unscrewed the bulbs of security lights and tried to pry open the door with a tool. He followed the woman to two stores.
The district attorney’s office filed a petition to revoke Rodriguez’s probation in the overdose case.
On Thursday, in Criminal District Court No. 3 in Tarrant County, Judge Doug Allen revoked Rodriguez’s probation and, in line with another plea agreement, sentenced Rodriguez to 10 years in prison.
Rodriguez, who is 34, will become eligible for parole when he has served five years.
T. Boone Pickens died in 2019 at 91.
Tom and Jennifer Pickens alleged that Rodriguez on Jan. 29, 2013, injected their 21-year-old son with heroin to steal his ATM card. Comerica Bank records included in the case file show Rodriguez on Jan. 29 recorded by a camera at a Sundance Square ATM, apparently withdrawing $60 from Pickens’ account.
Defense attorney Greg Westfall, who, with Bruce Ashworth, represents Rodriguez, has said Rodriguez’s cousin told the detective that Ty Pickens had used heroin several times before his Jan. 29, 2013, overdose and freely gave his ATM card and PIN number to Rodriguez.
Rodriguez’s cousin told the detective that Rodriguez and Pickens used heroin and Xanax on Jan. 28, 2013, according to an arrest warrant affidavit. Pickens returned to Rodriguez’s apartment late that night and asked Rodriguez to inject him with more heroin, according to the affidavit.
The apartment is at 1800 Rogers Road in Fort Worth.
The cousin told police that he and Rodriguez then left the apartment. When they returned, they found Pickens passed out and sweating profusely, prompting them to shake him awake and give him water and an ice pack.
When they could not wake Pickens in the morning, the men carried him to a car. The cousin drove Pickens to a hospital.
The Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office determined that beyond heroin, Pickens had the anti-anxiety drug alprazolam in his body when he died.
In the machinegun possession case, Rodriguez was sentenced in U.S. District Court to four years and three months in prison, a term that will run at the same time as the 10-year overdose death case sentence.
This story was originally published March 19, 2026 at 5:53 PM.
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Emerson Clarridge covers crime and other breaking news for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He works days and reports on law enforcement affairs in Tarrant County. He previously was a reporter at the Omaha World-Herald and the Observer-Dispatch in Utica, New York.