A very passing look into the topic led me to the wiki page, where it basically explains that it operated by pressurizing and heating the gasoline, causing it to be much more powerful. The problem with that is that it turns fender-bender car-accidents into fireballs.

There's a good reason we don't do that in modern cars.

And the link OP uses does not say he "mysteriously died". Here's what it says:

Continuing in his spiraling downfall from quick success and media attention in 1981, Monica, Tom’s wife left him and took along their five-year-old daughter Sherry. Then on April 14th he was shot in the street by someone who ‘got away’ yet he survived the incident.

On August 18th a broken and forgotten Tom Ogle, drunk, left The Smuggler’s Inn, the same place that I’d first met him. That night he went to a friend’s apartment and collapsed.

He was declared dead at El Paso’s Eastwood Hospital. His death, which involved a combination of Darvon, a prescribed pain killer, and alcohol, was ruled accidental or suicide. Many believed it was a cover-up for murder.

Sounds to me like the dude committed unintentional suicide, which is not at all uncommon. People who attach that to his inventions are just ignorant to the details.