The fire that killed Tony Hsieh is as mysterious and tragic as his last
few months of life seem to have been. On November. 18th,
firefighters were called to a Connecticut home owned by long time
Zappos employee and Tony's rumored girlfriend. According to various reports,
on the day of the fire,
Tony allegedly told his girlfriend and his brother that he was going into the
shed and that they should check on him every five minutes.
According to reports and people.com at 3:30 AM a
fire started in the shed. Now, when firefighters broke in,
they pulled his unconscious body out,
but the fire was limited to that area.
There was no damage to the rest of the house.
What was Tony doing the day before? How did that fire start?
And why was he locked in that shed at that hour of the morning? Nine days later,
Tony died. Now the coroner quickly ruled his death an accident,
but the cause of the fire is still unknown.
And the circumstances surrounding the death of this 46 year old
multimillionaire, who lived to make people happy are just so strange,
I want to get your take on it. Let's get into it.
I'm Chris with True Crime Recaps.
Friends told the Wall Street Journal that one day before the fire,
Tony was making plans to check into a rehab clinic in Hawaii.
In less than three months after stepping down as CEO of Zappos in August, 2020,
he'd spiraled into madness, pushing away, longtime friends,
he escaped into drugs and alcohol and even more dangerously he became obsessed
with what he called 'hacking his body's physical needs',
like sleep and oxygen.
He even tried not to urinate and experimented with how little food he could eat
to survive. At one point he weighed less than a hundred pounds.
Tony's longtime friends, including singer Jewel,
worried about his safety, but their attempts to intervene were ignored.
According to Forbes,
in August she performed at a party he hosted at his house in Park City.
She was supposed to be his guest for the week, but she left after only one day.
Now Tony had sworn off all forms of digital communication,
so she FedExed him a letter. And here's part of what it said,
as reported in Forbes. "I'm going to be blunt.
I need to tell you that I don't think you are well and in your right mind.
I think you're taking too many drugs that cause you to disassociate.
The people you are surrounding yourself with are either ignorant or willing to
be complicit in you killing yourself." Many of those people were part of a
select group of employees he brought with him to Park City from Zappos,
Vegas headquarters. In a bizarre move,
he offered to double their salary if they would relocate with him and just
quote, 'be happy.' On June 30th, according to Business Insider,
an unnamed man called 911 to say that Tony was breaking things in his Park City
mansion and threatening to hurt himself.
When emergency services took him in for psychiatric care,
another anonymous man called 911 to quote,
"make sure the hospital staff understood the situation fully and that Tony
shouldn't be released." Then in mid August,
another man called 911 to say that his high profile friend was very
paranoid and using a dangerous amount of nitrous oxide.
According to Business Insider,
his use of the drug had gotten so bad that a friend who was with him told Forbes
that Tony went on a hike barefoot,
inhaling nitrous the entire time.
But when he was being temporarily treated over the summer,
according to the dispatch logs reported by the New York Post,
one of his relatives insisted everything was under control and he could be
released.
He had also developed a fascination with fire and he had more than 1000 candles
on display at his house. According to the Wall Street Journal, to him,
they were a symbol of what life was like in simpler times. And he should know.
He helped create a tiny house community in downtown Las Vegas to encourage
revitalization in the arts.
For a while he lived there in a 240 square foot Airstream
with two alpacas, all the while serving as CEO of Zappos.
Now, despite his apparent mental illness and struggles with addiction,
his friends and family don't believe his death was a suicide,
especially after discovering that he hadn't left behind a will with an estimated
worth of more than half a billion in assets.
Tony Hsieh was known as the most unconventional boss in America.
As the CEO of Zappos, he helped revolutionize customer service,
fast delivery,
and he blurred the line between work and play for his employees.
When the company was bought out by Amazon in 2009,
Tony stayed on as CEO.
In 2010 he wrote the New York times bestseller 'Delivering
Happiness'. And by all accounts,
he did just that for millions of people directly and indirectly.
Jewel remembers her friend with such a great quote,
I wanted you guys to hear it before you leave.
"Tony was very visionary. Tony was very fearless.
I remember he asked me what was my definition of success?
His answer was the willingness to lose it all
believing in an idea so much that you're just willing
to be wrong.".
What a tragedy that his own happiness seemed just out of reach.
Investigators are trying to answer the questions we started this episode with.
What was he doing? Why was he in that shed?
And how did that fire start?
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And while you're here,
why not stay with us and check out this other True Crime Recap. All right,
that's it for me. I'll see you soon.