New Details Emerge Of Days Leading Up To Tony Hsieh’s Death

New details have emerged about the house fire that killed Tony Hsieh, the visionary business leader and former CEO of Zappos, though it remains unclear how the blaze at a Connecticut home started.

An investigation conducted by the New London fire department presented four theories—one citing a portable propane heater, another discarded cigarettes and marijuana, a third suggesting possible “misuse of candles” and a fourth that posited that “carelessness or even an intentional act by Hsieh could have started this fire.” The report pointed to various burnt items, including “thermally damaged Post-it Notes” as “indicative for a fire setting pattern” on Hsieh’s part, which could have caused the fire. 

The report cites interviews with witnesses who said Hsieh had days earlier buried his dog, Blizzy, in the backyard of the home, and also described a fight with a “significant other” hours before the fire. Witnesses also told investigators that Hsieh and his group of confidants planned to leave for Maui the morning of the fire.

“I am not able to identify the first fuel, the ignition source or how they came together to start this fire,” Vernon Skau, the New London Fire Marshal who conducted the investigation, wrote in his report, released Tuesday.

Hsieh, who was 46, was kept on life support for more than a week before he passed away the day after Thanksgiving. 

A spokesperson for the Hsieh family told Forbes they had no further comment “as they continue to grieve. Right now and for the foreseeable future, they’re focused on their work to continue Tony’s legacy.”

Hsieh, who made his fortune by first selling a software business to Microsoft in 1996 for $265 million, went on to start his own venture capital fund before helping to launch what would become Zappos, the online shoe retailer that came to pioneer many of today’s key functions of e-commerce, including a no-questions-asked returns policy. 

After moving the company from San Francisco to Las Vegas, he sold it to Amazon for $1.2 billion in 2009. He then pledged $350 million of his own money to rebuild Downtown Las Vegas—then a seedy, downtrodden neighborhood—into a vibrant city-as-a-startup. The result was a bustling nerve center of businesses and an Airstream trailer park, where Hsieh lived for a number of years before moving to Park City.

Outside of building companies and communities, Hsieh also had a habit of hard partying, and he was a regular attendee of Burning Man and other music festivals. As the years wore on, this lifestyle overcame his role as a community leader and toward the end of 2019 he left Vegas for Park City, Utah, where he reportedly spent $70 million and bought more than half a dozen properties with the goal of building another startup community, such as the one he had built in Vegas.

But instead, the community turned into a hedonistic enclave, where people on Hsieh’s payroll indulged his every whim— such as conducting a research report on the laughing gas nitrous oxide, which he was consuming daily, to figuring out a way to stop time—and were less willing to curb his increasingly concerning behavior and excessive drug use, Forbes previously reported. During this time, Hsieh resisted attempts by family members and close friends to check him into rehab, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. By the end of July, Hsieh was estranged from his parents and several of his close friends. 

In November, Hsieh left Park City to stay with his longtime friend and former Zappos executive Rachael Brown at her Connecticut home. On November 17, Hsieh, Brown and six other friends staying at the house at 500 Pequot Avenue, were preparing to leave in the early hours of the next day for a trip to Maui, Hawaii. 

Shortly before midnight, Hsieh and Brown got into an argument, and Brown asked Hsieh to leave the home until their flight the following morning, according to the fire report. Instead, Hsieh went to a storage shed attached to the home. Investigators say that Brett Gorman, who was staying at the house, checked on Hsieh throughout the night, but at one point Hsieh appears to have locked the entry door, security footage shows.

At 3:20 a.m., Hsieh’s brother, Andy, checked on Hsieh to tell him that the limo had arrived to take them to the airport. “Five more minutes,” said Hsieh, according to the fire report. A minute later a smoke alarm went off, and fire crews were called to the scene as a blaze took hold of the shed. 

Hsieh was removed from the shed at 3:38 a.m. and was transported to Lawrence + Memorial Hospital. He was then flown in a helicopter to Bridgeport Hospital for “higher level care of burn and smoke injuries,” according to the report. 

After more than two months investigating, the fire department found that it was likely Hsieh was intoxicated when the fire started, as he was surrounded by smoldering cigarettes, a marijuana pipe, a bottle of Fernet and several canisters of WhipIt nitrous oxide, which Hsieh was known to have used in his final months — a factor that they concluded would have reduced his ability to react to the threat of the fire. Another factor the investigators highlighted was the abundance of lit candles in the room, and how one had set alight a blanket in the room earlier in the night. 

Hsieh’s death was met with profound and widespread grief, from Las Vegas to Silicon Valley and across the world. From Jeff Bezos to Jewel, politicians, celebrities and business leaders expressed their sadness over the passing of Hsieh, whose book, Delivering Happiness: A Path To Profits, Passion and Purpose, expounded his belief that happiness is achieved by focusing on spreading joy to friends, employees and customers. Shortly after his death, Forbes reported how Hsieh’s high profile lifestyle had spiralled as he battled mental health issues and drug addiction. 

Investigators wrote that unless new details emerge, the cause of the fire would remain undetermined. In a statement Tuesday, the New London Fire Department said it “would like to express our condolences to the friends and family of Mr. Hsieh.”