The Tragically Similar Fates of Bobbi Kristina Brown & Whitney Houston

Bobby Brown Pays Tribute to Late Daughter Bobbi Kristina

Whitney Houston's death on the eve of the Grammys in 2012 was a terrible shock, if not entirely out of the blue.

The platinum-selling singer and actress had been in possession of one of the all-time great voices, but her career wasn't close to what it was at her peak and years of hard living had tarnished those once-perfect pipes. She had survived a lot, including a tumultuous marriage and a highly public divorce, but her family worried about her.

And yet she was still a musical icon who was supposed to attend Clive Davis' annual Pre-Grammy Gala at the Beverly Hilton hotel on Feb. 11, 2012.

Instead, the 48-year-old accidentally drowned in a bathtub in a suite upstairs hours beforehand, and the party became an impromptu memorial. Losing an artist who breathed so much life into every note, who gave so much of herself with every performance, was an unequivocal tragedy— and Davis was devastated, having known Houston since she was 19.

When her only daughter, Bobbi Kristina Brown, died three years later at the age of 22, there couldn't have been a more heartbreaking coda to Houston's story.

Over the course of Houston's 15-year marriage to Bobby Brown, the last two of which occurred in the perception-skewing shadow of their at-times surreal reality show Being Bobby Brown, it became harder to discern who led whom down what road. The world had pretty much assumed that her decline was her husband's fault, but she had admittedly used drugs before she was with Brown, including at the height of her success.

So, it turned out they had struggled together, hand in hand.

"Not many people knew what was going on," Brown said in the 2022 A&E documentary Biography: Bobby Brown, per Fox News. "Not many people knew how [those accusations] affected me. Not many people knew what they were talking about. They weren’t living, breathing, or waking up with us. They just took it to the outer limits of expressing what they thought was going on. But the truth is, they really didn’t know what was going on."

Still, though cocaine was cited as a contributing factor to her death by drowning, Brown—a father of five surviving children who lost son Bobby Brown Jr. to an accidental overdose in 2020—rejected the notion that drugs killed her.

"She was really working hard on herself to try to be a sober person," he told Rolling Stone in 2018. Asked what he thought did hasten her death, the New Edition singer replied, "Just being brokenhearted."

The L.A. County coroner's office noted in its postmortem findings that a "white crystal like substance" was found in Houston's hotel suite, along with an open bottle of champagne, food and other personal items.

An autopsy determined the official cause of death to be accidental drowning, with atherosclerotic heart disease and cocaine use "just probably immediately prior" to drowning listed as contributing factors. Toxicology screens turned up traces of Benadryl, Xanax, traces of marijuana and Flexeril, a muscle relaxant, in her system.

Bobbi Kristina was 18 when her mother died, and was briefly hospitalized late that night after mixing wine and Xanax in a fit of despair. 

She, too, was an aspiring singer, born to a showbiz family as Whitney was and trying to make it in the shadow of her mother's enormous talent. Instead, she ended up robbed of the seven-time Grammy winner's support and guidance.

Also like mom, Bobbi Kristina turned to drugs at some point along the way, and ended up in a toxic relationship. Just how toxic would be a matter of debate, with her family firmly of the believe that it ultimately killed her.

Gordon, who was in and out of treatment before dying of a heroin overdose on Jan. 1, 2020, at the age of 30, denied being anything other than devastated by Bobbi Kristina's death. A friend of his stated in a deposition, filed as part of the legal proceedings against him, that Bobbi Kristina "smoked marijuana, she probably smoked crack often, and also did heroin."

Alex Reid, a close friend of Bobbi Kristina's, told E! News in 2015 that the young woman had been living in fear of Nick, who, she alleged, was abusive and controlling.

"Krissy felt isolated from the whole family and that left her completely dependent on Nick for everything," Alex said. "It was just her and Nick and that was it."

She was in a coma or otherwise unresponsive for nearly six months and died at a hospice facility on July 26, 2015.

The autopsy results remained sealed for a year until a local news station successfully petitioned to have them made public, after which it was learned that Houston and Brown's only child together had died of a combination of drowning and drug intoxication. Traces of marijuana, alcohol, a cocaine byproduct, morphine and a sedative/anxiety treatment medication were found in her body.

The Fulton County medical examiner couldn't rule on whether her death was an accident or not, or whether the trace of morphine meant she had been a regular heroin user.

"I blame myself for not getting to Krissy quick enough that day," he also said. "I can't blame myself for another addict's addiction but I feel like I failed her. She didn't make it. I wish she got help...I wish she got my spot [in rehab]. I did not protect her the way that I was supposed to, even if it was from herself."

Gordon further claimed that, the night before Houston died at the Beverly Hilton, Bobbi Kristina had fallen asleep in the tub in her room, with the water running. It was her mother who saved her from something bad happening.

"Whitney found her, pulled her out and slept in her bed that night," he said.

In September 2016, Gordon was found liable in Bobbi Kristina's death (a judge ruled for the plaintiffs after the defendant missed multiple court dates) and two months later was ordered to pay her estate $36 million in damages. But it was to remain a largely symbolic—and hollow—victory.