Quentin Griffiths, the 58-year-old British cofounder of the fashion giant ASOS, was found dead on February 9 at the foot of a luxury hotel in the seaside resort city of Pattaya, Thailand, after plummeting from the 18-story building.
A BBC report revealed the death on Friday, and there has been no official ruling on the manner of death. The speculations are accidental, suicide, or homicide. A ruling from a medical examiner could take weeks.
Police told news outlets they found no signs of foul play. But a source close to his family offered a starkly different tone. "It's a real mystery."
The same insider added that "the phrase 'suspicious circumstances' has been used, but we just don't know yet." That gap between the official police line and the family's understanding is where the story sits right now, unresolved and unsettling.
Griffiths cofounded ASOS in London in 2000 with three other partners. The company grew into a global phenomenon, described by the Sun as a £3 billion (or $4 billion) brand whose own-label designs were worn by figures including the Princess of Wales and Michelle Obama. Griffiths served as marketing director before leaving the company four years after its founding.
According to Breitbart, he reportedly made well over $20 million from his ASOS holdings over the years. By around 2007, he had moved to Thailand, where he had been living in a 17th-floor suite at the luxury hotel at the time of his death.
He was a father of three. After splitting from his first wife, he married a Thai woman, with whom he had a son and a daughter.
Griffiths was not simply living a quiet expatriate life in Pattaya. Authorities told the BBC he was involved in ongoing legal disputes that may have caused him stress. The most serious: his second wife, a Thai national, accused him of stealing more than $673,000 from a company they ran together.
Her claims resulted in police detaining Griffiths and questioning him about documents he allegedly forged to sell land shares from the firm without her knowledge, according to the Sun. The investigation was still ongoing at the time of his death.
A man who once helped build a multi-billion-dollar brand was detained by Thai police over allegations of forgery and theft from his own wife's business. Whatever the final ruling on his death, the trajectory that preceded it tells its own grim story.
The British government has acknowledged the death. A Foreign Office spokesman said:
"We are supporting the family of a British national who has died in Thailand and are in contact with the local authorities."
That is the standard diplomatic formula, offering nothing in the way of urgency or independent inquiry. Whether the Foreign Office presses for a thorough investigation or simply processes paperwork will say a great deal about how seriously London takes the death of one of its citizens abroad under murky circumstances.
The facts as they stand raise more questions than they answer. A wealthy British national, entangled in criminal allegations brought by his own spouse, living alone in a high-rise hotel suite, falls to his death. Police say no foul play. The family says it's a mystery. No official cause of death has been determined.
Cases like this have a way of disappearing from the news cycle. A foreign jurisdiction, a complicated personal life, no immediate political constituency demanding answers. The story gets filed under "tragic" and forgotten.
But the details matter. A man under active criminal investigation dies in a fall from the building where he lived. The investigation into the financial allegations was still open. The people closest to him are using words like "mystery" and "suspicious circumstances." And the only official determination so far is that there isn't one yet.
Griffiths helped create something that reshaped how millions of people buy clothes. He made a fortune doing it. He died alone in a Thai resort town, 17 floors above where they found him.
The medical examiner's ruling, whenever it comes, will carry weight. Whether it carries the full truth is a different question entirely.
