- Elon Musk said recently that "two homicidal maniacs" had threatened his life.
- Law-enforcement records show Tesla's HQ has had several "terroristic threat" reports.
- One related to an emailed death threat against the carmaker's CFO at the time, Zachary Kirkhorn.
In recent months, "two homicidal maniacs" have threatened to kill Elon Musk, the billionaire tech mogul said at Tesla's latest annual shareholder meeting.
"I probably need to like work out and, you know, and like not get assassinated or something," the CEO of the electric-car company told shareholders June 13 in response to a question about what he's doing to keep himself safe and healthy.
Musk said the two people "aspirationally" tried to kill him and "a bunch of other people" in the past seven months, forcing him to be a bit more "standoffish."
Security is a high priority for Musk. He owns his own security company, which Tesla pays millions of dollars to protect Musk, a recent Securities Exchange Commission filing shows.
Tesla has relatively tight security, and the company increased security at some of its factories during its recent wave of layoffs, several workers told Business Insider. Tesla factory workers have also faced their fair share of scares over the years, including, most recently, an active-shooter report that turned out to be a false alarm.
Law-enforcement records obtained by BI through a public-records request show that Musk has not been the only high-profile target of threats or intimidation at Tesla's sprawling corporate headquarters in Austin.
In March 2023, Tesla's chief financial officer at the time, Zachary Kirkhorn — who board members considered making Musk's successor before he unexpectedly resigned — received a death threat via email, according to 911 records and a sheriff's office incident report viewed by BI. The missive demanded $300,000 in bitcoin not to end his life.
The Travis County Sheriff's Office described the incident as a "terroristic threat" in its report, the documents show, though ultimately law enforcement believed it to be a scam.
Under Texas law, terroristic threats include threats of violence that are intended to put people in fear of imminent bodily injury, cause a reaction by an emergency agency, or interrupt a place of employment.
Other records from the sheriff's office obtained by BI show that at least five other 911 calls were made from Tesla's HQ between the opening of the Austin Gigafactory in April 2022 and January of this year for what law enforcement also categorized as terroristic threats. The sheriff's office is seeking to withhold the records for most of those incidents from BI.
An email sender claimed they were 'hired to kill' Kirkhorn if he didn't step down
In the case of Kirkhorn, a Tesla security officer at the Gigafactory initially called 911 at the time to report the incident, according to the records. The security officer told deputies that the CFO had gotten an email from someone claiming to have been "hired to kill you if you don't step down," the report provided to BI said.
"Wire $300,000 dollars to bitcoin account within 12 hours," the email to Kirkhorn added, according to the incident report.
The Tesla security officer told deputies the email was sent to multiple email addresses with variations of Kirkhorn's name, suggesting that the sender was attempting to guess his email address.
The security officer also said he believed it was the "first threat" that Kirkhorn received by email, according to the report.
In a second interview with deputies, the security officer told authorities his team was able to trace information in the threatening email back to Nigeria.
A Travis County Sheriff's Office spokesperson, Kristen Dark, confirmed to BI that the email was found to have originated from Nigeria and was thought to be spam.
"Based on the spam email mail address it is likely a scam attempt," the incident report read. "This was brought to Kirkhorn's attention and he was ok with just documenting the situation. No further action needed."
The case was ultimately suspended and no arrest was ever made, according to the incident report and Dark.
Tesla and Kirkhorn did not respond to requests for comment.
Kirkhorn left Tesla last August after working at the carmaker for about 13 years. He held the title not only of CFO, but also "Master of Coin."
His departure came as a shock to some. The Wall Street Journal had reported earlier that year that Kirkhorn could be in line to become the next CEO of Tesla.
Other 911 calls related to a threat against Musk and a Tesla employee
One of the other 911 calls that the sheriff's office designated as a "terroristic threat" related to a report by a Tesla employee who said he was threatened in February 2023 by another worker while on the job. The suspect in that case was accused of threatening to pull the man off a forklift and "slap the shit" out of him, according to an incident report.
The employee who made the report told deputies that he had been "advised to allow Tesla Security to work the incident first before attempting to file a police report" but that he got "tired of waiting on Tesla," the documents show.
The case was closed after the accuser told deputies he no longer wished to pursue it, but he sought to get it reopened that July.
Some Tesla workers told BI that tight production deadlines and the intensity of the work could sometimes create a high-pressure environment.
"Every time they ramped up production, I felt like a frog in a boiling pot of water," one former worker from the Austin factory said. "You could just feel the stress level at the factory shoot up, and sometimes that meant people were more likely to pop off or act out."
Another 911 call that was made in January of this year and categorized as a terroristic threat related to a report of a Tesla employee threatening to kill Musk and US President Joe Biden. Travis County deputies responded to Tesla HQ at the time of the call.
A day later, Justin Mathew McCauley of Minnesota was arrested on a felony charge of terroristic threat in connection to the incident. According to an arrest affidavit obtained by BI, security at Tesla alerted the Travis County Sheriff's Office of a threat made on McCauley's account on X, the social-media site owned by Musk.
"I will arrive in Texas, where the war has began on many fronts @X, @Tesla," one post said, according to the court documents. Another said, "@JoeBiden @X @Tesla @Elonmusk, I am planning to Kill all of you."
According to the court papers, McCauley's wife notified deputies in Minnesota after he told her he was going to Texas and never coming back.
McCauley was eventually stopped and arrested by Travis County deputies in Austin on January 28. He told them that he planned to go to the Gigafactory "to try and contact Elon Musk," the arrest affidavit says.
"Everything I did was completely insane. It seems like a bad dream," McCauley later told FOX 7 Austin in an on-camera interview. The 32-year-old former Tesla worker said he was in a state of "psychosis."
McCauley was jailed for roughly four weeks before he was released on bond March 1. His next court hearing in the case is scheduled for July 3. Attempts to reach McCauley on Monday and Tuesday were unsuccessful.
The details surrounding the other three 911 calls from Tesla's headquarters — which records show were made in November 2022, March 2023, and November 2023 — and the dispositions of those calls, were not provided to BI. The sheriff's office said in a letter sent to BI that the records fell under privacy and open-investigation exemptions to the public-records law and has asked the Office of the Attorney General of Texas to weigh in.
Dark, the Travis County Sheriff's Office spokesperson, told BI that the agency did not provide additional security services for the Tesla factory but would respond to emergencies there as it would any other location in the county.
"The Gigafactory is in our agency's jurisdiction and we respond to 911 calls for service," Dark said.
Tesla employees say security is thorough
Last July, the Travis County Sheriff's Office responded to a 911 call reporting an active shooter at the Austin Gigafactory. At the time, workers who were at the factory received a memo from Tesla telling them to take cover because of an "Active Attacker," two employees told BI.
"It was unsettling because no one really knew what was going on. We were just standing outside the building waiting to go back to work," one worker, who was there during the ordeal, told BI. The employee asked that they not be identified in this story, as they are not authorized to speak to the press, but BI has verified their employment.
The sheriff's office told local news at the time that the building was cleared and there was "nothing to substantiate the presence of a shooter at all."
The false alarm wasn't the first scare at a Tesla factory.
In 2021, a Tesla worker was fatally shot in the parking lot of the company's Fremont, California, factory after an altercation with a coworker who was later charged with murder.
In April, Tesla appeared to tighten security at some of its factories after Musk told the staff he planned to eliminate more than 10% of the workforce.
The day after the memo was sent out, some staff at Tesla's factory in Sparks, Nevada, waited in hours-long lines to get through a series of badge checks, and some workers found out they'd been laid off after security scanned their badges and sent them back home on shuttle buses, five current and former employees previously told BI.
Several Tesla workers told BI it would be difficult for anyone to bring in a weapon or unauthorized personnel to access the company's factories.
Factory workers in both Nevada and Texas go through at least three security checkpoints to enter their workplace, with badge checks on the shuttles in, and at the gate for those who drive into work, as well as at two separate points once they enter the building, four workers said.
Musk has previously indicated his worries about personal safety
Musk has expressed concern about his personal safety multiple times over the years and even talked about dying "under mysterious circumstances."
The billionaire has also repeatedly attempted to take down a social-media account that tracked his private jet travels, even threatening to sue the college student who ran the account after Musk said his son X had been followed by a "crazy stalker" because of the jet-tracking account.
BI previously reported that Musk secretly bought a house in 2022 after the address of a house he'd been renting became public knowledge and Musk found it to be "no longer private and secure for my family." A neighbor told BI earlier this year that the home had around-the-clock security.
From December 2023 to February, Tesla shelled out about $3 million to Musk's security company, which represented only "a portion of the total cost of security services concerning Elon Musk," according to an SEC filing.
Security costs can include measures as varied as personal bodyguards or private planes, and Musk is one of many prominent executives spending millions over security concerns.
In 2023, Meta approved a $14 million security allowance for its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. The company spent over $24 million on expenses associated with Zuckerberg, including security and private travel, an SEC filing shows.
Meta said in the filing that Zuckerberg had become "one of the most recognized executives in the world" and needed to be protected as a result. The company's longtime chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg was also given a security budget.
Tesla and Musk's other companies seem to have taken a similar approach. Last year, an engineer at Twitter, the social-media site that became known as X, told the BBC that Musk was followed around the company's headquarters by at least two bodyguards at all times.
"It is getting a little crazy these days," Musk said at the June 13 Tesla shareholder meeting. "To first approximation, the probability that a homicidal maniac will try to kill you is proportionate to how many homicidal maniacs hear your name."
"So they hear my name a lot — I'm like, OK, I'm on the list, you know," Musk said, laughing.
"Think of John Lennon who was singing about, 'Hey, can't we all just be nice to each other,' and then he got shot by one of his fans," Musk said. "Like, OK, we'll try to avoid that."