Zappos Founder Tony Hsieh Was Found With Flammables, Drugs and Alcohol

A police investigation found no criminality associated with the fire, the New London Police Department said Tuesday.

Mr. Hsieh was 46 years old when he died on Nov. 27, nine days after the fire at his girlfriend’s home in New London, Conn. The Connecticut Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said Mr. Hsieh died of complications of smoke inhalation and ruled the death an accident. The full autopsy report will be completed later this week but won’t be available to the public, the chief medical examiner said Tuesday.

A spokeswoman for the Hsieh family declined to comment, saying the family is “focused on their work to continue Tony’s legacy.”

Investigation details released by New London officials—including video footage, interviews with witnesses and 911 emergency calls—document the tragic night of Mr. Hsieh’s life that started with a fight with his girlfriend and ended with the fire erupting just moments before he was to depart for Hawaii, where he was scheduled to check into a rehabilitation clinic, friends told the Journal. The police and fire reports also offer new insights into Mr. Hsieh’s life, which had become chaotic in the weeks and months before his death.

Mr. Hsieh’s last acts, as described in the reports, match with how friends have described the wealthy tech entrepreneur and author of the book, “Delivering Happiness,” as engaging in increasingly dangerous behaviors after he left his chief executive post at Zappos in August. Friends of Mr. Hsieh told The Wall Street Journal in December that he was always surrounded by an entourage, that he developed a fascination with fire, abused alcohol and drugs and took up a particular taste for inhaling nitrous oxide, which can induce hypoxia.

Mr. Hsieh had relocated last fall to Park City, Utah, from Las Vegas. He bought a 17,350-square-foot mansion with a private lake, and several associates and friends also moved there. He died without a will, which has left his family and associates left to sort out his estate, estimated to be worth about hundreds of millions of dollars.

One of Mr. Hsieh’s assistants told police after the fire that Mr. Hsieh had retired from Amazon.com Inc., which owns Zappos, because of “mental-health concerns and a ‘midlife crisis,’” although he hadn’t been diagnosed with any mental-health disorders, according to the police report.

Vernon Skau, the New London fire marshal, wrote in his report: “It is possible that carelessness or even an intentional act by Hsieh could have started this fire,” adding that Mr. Hsieh might have been unable to recognize or react to a fire if he was intoxicated.

Mr. Hsieh’s beloved dog, Blizzy, had died three days earlier, and Mr. Hsieh was depressed over the loss, according to several witness accounts.The dog was buried on the New London property, according to the reports.

On the night of the fire, Mr. Hsieh had fought with his girlfriend, Rachael Brown, about the cleanliness of the house, according to reports of interviews conducted by New London police. Ms. Brown had told Mr. Hsieh to leave the property, but since the group was planning to depart early the next morning for Hawaii, his brother, Andy Hsieh, and an employee brokered a compromise that Mr. Hsieh would sleep in the attached pool shed, the people interviewed said.

The 300-square-foot shed is unheated, and Mr. Hsieh used a blanket and propane heater to stay warm and asked to be checked on every 10 minutes. Mr. Hsieh’s personal assistant would knock on the door and Mr. Hsieh would often knock back and indicate he was OK. He asked people staying in the house to bring him items including water, a protein shake, pizza, cigarettes and whippets, according to police reports. After a few hours, Mr. Hsieh asked to be checked on every five minutes.

Witnesses didn’t explain exactly why Mr. Hsieh had asked to be checked on. After the fire, the shed was found littered with debris, including bottles of Fernet, whippet canisters for nitrous oxide use, a marijuana pipe, cigarettes, Tiki brand torch fuel and at least one candle, according to the fire department report.

At 3:20 a.m., Mr. Hsieh’s brother, Andy Hsieh, knocked on the door of the shed to let Tony Hsieh know it was time to leave for the airport, according to the fire department’s report, which cited video footage from the home’s security system. Mr. Hsieh asked his brother to come back in five minutes. A minute later, a carbon monoxide alarm could be heard going off, and then “a noise consistent with the relief valve on a propane tank,” the report said.

“The smoke emanating from the shed escalates dramatically at this point,” fire officials noted. Friends and witnesses interviewed said later that the smoke was pouring through the crack in the doors of the shed.

Fire department officials later saw, on the security footage, that at some point between checks, Mr. Hsieh had dragged the propane heater into the shed and closed and locked the door. The camera footage also indicated Mr. Hsieh’s friends realized that there was a fire in the shed relatively quickly, within about 10 minutes of when it probably started, Mr. Skau said.

More than one witness called 911 to report the incident, according to released audio tapes of the calls. In conversations with police and fire department dispatchers, Mr. Hsieh’s friends can be heard screaming his name with the sounds of banging on a door in the background. On one call, a distraught friend shouts, “Hurry up. Hurry up.”

Ms. Brown was shouting in the background of one of the emergency calls what she said was the code to the lock on the shed, “1014! 1014!”

The shed’s electronic keypad could be opened from the outside using a code, but the system would lock for 20 seconds after two failed attempts, Mr. Skau said. He said he believes this might have been part of the reason Mr. Hsieh’s friends were unable to get inside to rescue him. Fire officials tested the lock system after the fire and found it to be working, Mr. Skau said.

Fire officials quickly arrived on the scene, extinguished the fire, removed Mr. Hsieh from the shed and took him to the hospital, according to police. Body-cam footage shows Mr. Hsieh being wheeled out of the shed on a stretcher, and firefighters working to extinguish the flames.

Mr. Hsieh was placed on a ventilator and had brain edema, or swelling of the brain, from the fire’s hot gases and soot, according to the police report. He was later flown to the Connecticut Burn Center in Bridgeport, Conn., where he died. A police report says he was removed from the ventilator “at the request of the family.”

—Kirsten Grind contributed to this article.

Write to Kate King at [email protected] and Katherine Sayre at [email protected]

Corrections & Amplifications
Zappos founder Tony Hsieh died on Nov. 27, nine days after the fire at his girlfriend’s home. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said he died the night of the fire. (Corrected on Jan. 26.)