Actually, as I recall, his character name was "I am an hero," and the unit name was frequently simply along the lines of "Kill me".
I don't know who the player was, but to the best of my knowledge, there was not, in fact, anyone besides Tom who was an official tester during significant portions of the life of the character.
I think he even survived long enough to see my character (Alanna, the ruler of first-SEI Ikalak for a long time) leave the island, thus once again proving that you can't get a hero killed if you're trying to do it.