The Sudden Death Of Brittany Murphy — And The Conspiracies Behind It
Jeff Kravitz/Getty ImagesConspiracies around Brittany Murphy’s death include a government-led assassination and poisoning.
After her massive success as the innocent ingénue in 1995’s Clueless, Brittany Murphy’s career took off. Blonde, beautiful, and talented, she had all of the staples of a Hollywood “It Girl” and landed roles in cult classics like Girl, Interrupted, Riding In Cars With Boys, and Uptown Girl before Brittany Murphy suddenly died in 2009.
But her success never quite took her to the A-List. The tabloids did a number on her, purporting rumors that she was late to set, unfocused, and unable to remember her lines due to a drug habit.
Her husband, Simon Monjack, vehemently claimed that the rumors of Murphy’s drug abuse had been started by embittered former managers and agents to sabotage her career.
The couple considered moving from Los Angeles to New York in order to get a fresh start, perhaps even start a family, but sadly, they never made it.
In November 2009, Britanny Murphy, Simon Monjack, and Murphy’s mother, Sharon, flew to Puerto Rico to begin production on a low-budget thriller called Caller. Then, Murphy found out that what she had believed to be a thriller film was actually a horror — a huge turn-off for the actress, Monjack later said in subsequent interviews.
However, producers have claimed that Murphy quit the film after they had banned her husband from the set when he allegedly showed up drunk in the middle of production. In either case, Murphy was no longer attached to the film, though the family stayed in Puerto Rico.
But on their flight back home, Sharon Murphy and Simon Monjack fell ill with Staphylococcus aureus, the bacteria responsible for staph infections. Reportedly, Monjack was so sick that the plane had to make an emergency landing so he could be taken to the hospital.
After arriving back at their home in the Hollywood Hills, Brittany Murphy and Monjack remained ill, needing to be treated for pneumonia. Brittany Murphy remained sick for six weeks. Then, on Dec. 20, 2009, she collapsed on her mansion’s balcony.
Sharon Murphy urged her daughter to get up, but Brittany continued to lay on the balcony, saying to her, “Mommy, I can’t catch my breath. Help me. Help me.”
Her mother claimed she didn’t take her daughter’s words seriously since she had been sick for so long and, as an actress, had a flair for the dramatic. Monjack recalled Brittany saying to her mother, “I’m dying. I’m going to die. Mommy, I love you.”
Later that day, Brittany Murphy collapsed once again, this time in her bathroom. She was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where she died at the age of 32.
Several conspiracy theories have since cropped up around the death of Brittany Murphy. One suggests that she had been murdered by the government because of her friendship with a whistleblower and filmmaker in Hollywood.
Other theories have painted either her mother, her husband, or perhaps both working in tandem, as Brittany Murphy’s murderers. Monjack’s eerily similar death five months later only fueled the conspiratorial fires.
Officially, though, the coroner determined her death was likely the result of a lethal combination of pneumonia, an iron deficiency, and “multiple drug intoxication.”
