How did Brittany Murphy die?
Brittany Murphy
November 10, 1977 — December 20, 2009
Los Angeles, California
Brittany Anne Bertolotti grew up in Edison, New Jersey, with a mother who drove her to auditions and a father who wasn't around, and was on television by thirteen. She was Tai in Clueless at seventeen, the girl who walks into a Beverly Hills high school and gets a makeover, and she spent the next fifteen years being better than most of the movies she was in. She did the voice of Luanne on King of the Hill for thirteen seasons. She was thirty-two when she died.
She could sing, which people forgot, and she was funny in a way that didn't need a script. By 2009 the work had thinned out and the tabloids had decided she was too thin, and she had married a screenwriter named Simon Monjack whom almost nobody around her trusted. She died in the house on Rising Glen Road that she shared with him and her mother. Five months later, in the same house, so did he.
She is buried at Forest Lawn in the Hollywood Hills.
The record
What is established, from the authorities and the people who were there.
Official cause: Pneumonia, with iron-deficiency anemia and multiple drug intoxication as contributing factors. Accident. (Los Angeles County coroner, February 2010)
She collapsed in the bathroom of her home on the morning of December 20, 2009, and was found by her mother, Sharon Murphy. Paramedics took her to Cedars-Sinai, where she was pronounced dead at 10:04 a.m. She was 32.
The coroner's report, released in February 2010, found that she had died of pneumonia, with severe iron-deficiency anemia and intoxication from multiple over-the-counter and prescription drugs listed as contributing factors. The drugs were cold and pain medications, not illegal ones; the report described a picture of someone treating a bad respiratory illness at home with whatever was in the cabinet, while severely anemic, until her body gave out. The manner of death was ruled an accident.
On May 23, 2010, her husband, Simon Monjack, was found dead in the same house. The coroner gave the same cause: pneumonia with severe anemia. Her mother, who had lived in the house with both of them, went on to say in public that she believed toxic mold in the house had killed them. The coroner's office said it had found no evidence of that and that mold had been considered.
In 2013 her father, Angelo Bertolotti, had an independent laboratory test samples of her hair and said the results showed ten heavy metals at elevated levels, consistent with deliberate poisoning. The coroner's office responded that the hair test was unreliable, that heavy metals are commonly found in hair dye and products, and that there was no reason to reopen the case. Bertolotti died in 2019 without the case being reopened.
What happened
The family hasn’t confirmed a cause. These are the community’s theories, in the order the community finds them most likely. Everyone here is anonymous.
A 32-year-old died of pneumonia and anemia in a house in Los Angeles, and five months later her husband died of the same thing in the same house. The coroner says coincidence. Her mother says mold. Her father said poison. What actually happened to her?
The page creator
- Most likely38 of 45 readers find this likely
Pneumonia she treated at home, in a body that had no reserves left
The coroner's finding, taken at face value. She was severely anemic, had been for a while, and was very thin. She got a respiratory infection in December, treated it with over-the-counter cold medicine and some prescription painkillers, didn't see a doctor, and the pneumonia overwhelmed her. People around her said she had been sick for about a week. Nothing exotic required.
Anonymous. Says they are a nurse practitioner.
ReportThe page creator can confirm or correct this. - Also raised24 of 36 readers find this likely
An eating disorder, or something like one, that nobody wanted to name
Severe iron-deficiency anemia in a 32-year-old woman who was visibly very thin, who had been the subject of years of tabloid comment about her weight, and whose husband reportedly controlled what she ate. The coroner doesn't rule on that; it rules on what the body shows, and what the body showed was a person with no reserves. On this view the pneumonia was the last step, not the first.
Anonymous.
- Also raised29 of 45 readers find this likely
Something in that house: mold, or the water, or the air
Two adults dying of pneumonia with anemia in the same house in five months is the fact that won't sit still. Her mother lived there too and said she was ill as well. Toxic mold exposure can cause respiratory illness and, in some people, chronic inflammation; whether it causes this particular picture is contested. The coroner says mold was considered and there was no evidence. The house was reportedly never independently tested before it was sold. Unanswered is not the same as answered no.
Anonymous.
- Unlikely8 of 39 readers find this likely
She was poisoned, and the hair test shows it
Her father's claim: ten heavy metals at elevated levels in her hair, consistent with a rat-poison-type exposure, and an obvious person in the house with motive. The coroner's reply is specific: hair testing for metals is unreliable, most of those metals are in hair dye and cosmetics, and nothing in the autopsy supported it. The husband being dead too cuts both ways. It's the theory a lot of people believe and the one with the least behind it.
Anonymous.
When the family confirms the cause, the confirmed answer moves to the top and gets this mark. Theories stay, but are labeled as what people thought before the family knew.
Pneumonia in a healthy 32-year-old is survivable with treatment, and people die of it at home when they don't get treatment. Severe iron-deficiency anemia makes everything worse: the blood can't carry enough oxygen, so an infection that would be miserable for most people becomes dangerous. Add a stack of cold medicines (several of which contain the same sedating ingredients, so taking two or three at once means a much larger dose than it looks) and you have a plausible way for someone to drift from "very sick" to "unable to breathe" without anyone realizing how bad it was.
Why two people in one house: shared illness is the boring answer (he caught what she had, and he had his own health problems). Environmental causes are the interesting answer, and the one that hasn't been ruled in or out to most people's satisfaction.
Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner, report released February 4, 2010 Los Angeles County coroner statement on Simon Monjack, 2010 LA Times and Hollywood Reporter coverage of the 2013 hair-test claim and the coroner's response Wikipedia, "Brittany Murphy"
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