I heard an interview he did with Terri Gross. She mentioned that someone torched his house several years ago. Are there any theories as to who and or why?
He lived hard and died at 66. That’s not an all too uncommon age for someone who lived hard to die.
If anything, all these hard living musicians surviving into their 60s and 70s is a testament to the resiliency of the human body.
I admire your courageousness for going out on a limb like that … 
As is often the case, the real question here is “How is Keith Richards still alive?”
Snorting his Father’s ashes gave him immortality.
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Petty was also a longtime marijuana smoker. I’m not a doctor, nor am I a marijuana expert, so I have no idea if marijuana usage can contribute to heart issues, but if his substance use may have contributed to his death, it might be worth mentioning.
From a widely quoted interview with Rolling Stone in 2013:
Many of the negative effects from smoking are from the smoke itself, and inhaling any sort of smoke will cause similar problems. So, yeah, there are health risks to smoking marijuana. But he probably smoked a lot more tobacco than pot.
One thing not mentioned yet is Tom fractured his hip at some point before(?) the tour. Don’t know if he was taking painkillers or not to get through the gigs. But the injury must have added a non-trivial amount of physical stress to what was already a pretty demanding workload for those 54 shows.
I don’t doubt that years of drug abuse PROBABLY took a bit of a toll on his ticker. So sad… 
Here’s a story about it. It happened in 1987, and no arrests were ever made.
I’m going with “acute cardio-respiratory failure”.
Thanks!
**Tom Petty was almost exactly two months younger than I. I always pay attention to white guys my age dropping dead with no warning. The years of drug abuse always figure in, even if you got off the smack years ago… ooh, ooh, the damage done…
But what I see, and I would really like a report of the autopsy, he hadn’t been to a doctor in forever, and, if he had, was in denial of his BP and cholesterol. He was totally congested and died at an appropriate age for someone in that condition. Again, I’m not saying, but I would really like to know.
Here’s what I really don’t get, Wesley: Do these dopers who despair about Petty dying young not realize that the universe is about 14.5 billion years old? We are all dying young. The real question is, “Was it worth it?”
I would answer, “When my back isn’t killing me, it was definitely worth it.”
IIRC, you have your own health issues to deal with. You know pain. So I would say, “He experienced the gamut of human experience. What more could one want?”
-----don’t answer that. I do wonder if I were the Supreme Being, could I come up with a better system . I don’t know. Enjoy your short life; it’s all you have.
I have no right to an opinion as to what killed Tom Petty.
But whereas twenty years ago, I assumed drugs were the cause whenever a rock star died… well, nowadays, my favorite rockers are plenty old enough to die of prostate cancer, diabetes, heart attacks, strokes and all the usual geriatric issues.
Maybe he just wanted another dance with Mary Jane.
But he’s gone and Kim is still here.
How heartbreaking. 