A bombshell new report is raising serious questions about the shocking death of Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay and the lack of a full investigation into his final years.
Irsay, 65, was found dead in his sleep this past May, with his death certificate citing heart complications and pneumonia. But according to a Washington Post investigation, the NFL owner’s private struggles with addiction may have been far more severe than publicly acknowledged — and his death may never have been thoroughly examined.
Sources close to Irsay told the Post that the longtime Colts owner suffered at least three overdoses in the final five years of his life, including one in February 2020 and two more in December 2023. During this period, Irsay was also receiving ketamine injections from his longtime friend and private addiction specialist, Dr. Harry Haroutunian, who was staying with Irsay at the Beverly Hills Hotel on the night he died.
Despite Irsay’s well-documented battle with opioid addiction, the report claims Haroutunian continued prescribing him powerful painkillers — at one point allegedly giving him more than 200 pills just days before one of his overdoses.
Adding to the controversy, Haroutunian — who has no known malpractice history — was the same doctor who later signed Irsay’s death certificate, declaring natural causes and effectively bypassing an autopsy and toxicology report.
The report also alleges Irsay’s repeated hospitalizations for overdoses were kept quiet under private agreements with Ascension St. Vincent Hospital in Indianapolis, where he and the Colts organization were major donors.
In December 2023, just months before his death, Irsay reportedly fired a nurse who had tried to hide his medication over concerns about his pill intake. Multiple people in his inner circle had begun to question Haroutunian’s treatment methods, especially the combination of opioids and ketamine for someone with a known history of addiction.
Irsay’s struggles weren’t new. His issues with opioids first surfaced publicly in 2002 when an investigation linked him to a local plastic surgeon accused of overprescribing pills — including allegedly giving Irsay more than 400 pills in a single day. In 2014, he was arrested for driving while intoxicated after police found dozens of pills scattered in his car.
Despite his personal battles, Irsay launched the Kicking the Stigma initiative in 2020, raising more than $25 million to support mental health and addiction recovery. Publicly, he shared his story of resilience and recovery while privately continuing to fight his own demons.
In a statement, Irsay’s daughters — Carlie Irsay-Gordon, Casey Foyt, and Kalen Jackson — who inherited ownership of the Colts, declined to address the report’s claims. “We continue to grieve the loss of our Dad,” they said. “The media is not the place to address inquiries about information which is disputed, lacks essential context, or involves private medical matters.”
Questions remain about why Irsay’s death wasn’t fully investigated and whether his inner circle, medical providers, and the NFL itself knew more about his condition than was ever made public.