Internet legend behind famous HowStuffWorks website found dead hours after email

A businessman behind one of the world's most popular websites was found dead in his office - moments after he sent an email claiming officials at the university he worked at were trying to sabotage him.

Marshall Brian II, 63, an academic who founded HowStuffWorks, was discovered at his North Carolina State University office on November 20 after his wife, Leigh Ann, called for a welfare check. Police have yet to clarify his cause of death.

Around three hours before he was found, at roughly 4.30am, Brian sent an email to his colleagues at the university claiming two department heads hit back at him after he filed a series of ethics complaints.

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“If you are receiving this email, you are a friend and colleague of mine. Today, I would like to ask for a few minutes of your time so that I can tell you a story”, he wrote, the News & Observer reports.

Brian was found dead at North Carolina State University

Brian claimed he was not actually planning to retire, despite Stephen Markham, the executive director of NC State Innovation and Entrepreneurship, saying so in a November 6 internal email.

He continued: "I have just been through one of the most demoralizing, depressing, humiliating, unjust processes possible with the University. The fact is that I am not "retiring." Instead, NC State terminated me on October 29.”

He then said that he submitted an ethics complaints about Veena Misra, the head of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, but Misra retaliated against him.

“What came back was a sickening nuclear bomb of retaliation, the likes of which could not be believed. [Misra] ex-communicated me from my department for reporting my concerns to her”, he wrote.

Marshall's wife, Leigh Ann, called for a welfare check before he was discovered

His former student, Brandon Kashani, one of the recipients of the email, said he submitted a number of complaints through the university's EthicsPoint system, and that tensions in the department were high as Brian didn't "play the political game."

“Marshall was caught in an imbalanced group of people with more power than him and they didn't like him calling them out," Kashani told the student newspaper. "He was keeping people accountable. He didn't understand that political aspect of it and they just wanted to get rid of him.”

Kevin Barry, another alumnae of Brian's programme, said: “Marshall was a cornerstone of entrepreneurship at NC State, and a very key person who dedicated himself and was a real entrepreneur, and really dedicated himself to the students,' he said.

“And he, through and through, down to the bone, had the love and desire to help students. So to see what's going on with him is just absolutely devastating and disgusting.”

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