There's More To The Tragedy Of Brittany Murphy Than You Thought

When Brittany Murphy first moved to Hollywood in the early '90s to pursue a career in acting, she quickly charmed casting directors with her charisma and bubbly personality. After appearing in various popular sitcoms in the early '90s, she was cast in the hit 1995 movie "Clueless." After this, Murphy emerged as one of the most talented young actresses in Hollywood.

Throughout her career, she was showered with praise for her roles in films like "Girl, Interrupted," "8 Mile," and "Uptown Girls." However, everything wasn't glitz and glamor for the actress. In the mid-2000s, she faced accusations that she had drug problems, had an eating disorder, and was reportedly difficult to work with. These various controversies, paired with her rocky love life, led to Murphy's sudden death in 2009. Murphy's passing, and the strange circumstances surrounding it, shocked the world and continue to be questioned to this day, so let's delve into the tragedy of the actress.

Brittany Murphy was raised by her mother, Sharon, since her father was sentenced to 12 years in prison on drug charges when she was very young. Brittany grew up in Edison, New Jersey, but she convinced her mom to move to Los Angeles before she started high school. After just four years in Hollywood, Murphy was cast in "Clueless," which was definitely her big break in the movie industry. The coming-of-age teen comedy was a major critical and commercial hit, and Murphy received rave reviews for her role.

After the release of "Clueless," Murphy had a lot of momentum in her career, but she actually had to take a brief break from acting since her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Since it was only the two of them during Murphy's childhood, they had a very close bond. 

Talking about her relationship with her mother in a 2004 interview with PEOPLE, Murphy said, "We're extremely close, extraordinarily close. To say 'best friends' would be to diminish our relationship." Brittany and her mother often referred to each other as "soulmates," so this breast cancer diagnosis was understandably a major blow for the up-and-coming actress. Murphy also had to put her career on hold in 2003 after another diagnosis, but luckily, Sharon survived her battle with breast cancer.

After the release of "Clueless" and several other hit movies early in her career, Brittany Murphy experienced massive success in the early 2000s. She continued to command the screen in films like "8 Mile," "Uptown Girls," and "Just Married," which she starred alongside her ex-boyfriend Ashton Kutcher. For many years, Murphy was viewed as America's sweetheart, but the media turned on her in the mid-2000s.

During this time, many media outlets reported that Murphy was difficult to work with. In 2004, SFGATE even stated she exhibited "erratic" behavior during the press tour for "Uptown Girls," such as rubbing an interviewer's hand until she was told to let go and singing instead of answering questions.

The incident that concerned members of the media the most was when Murphy reportedly covered her face with a napkin while lying down during a press conference after claiming she was tired of being looked at. At the time, Murphy's representatives tried to explain her behavior by claiming she was a friendly person. They said, "Brittany's just a really sweet person. You know how some people have that wall built? She's very warm and welcoming. She's an outgoing person. She's not one of those people who sits there cold in a chair."

On top of reports of her "erratic" behavior and constant scrutiny about her love life in the mid-2000s, rumors also swirled that Brittany Murphy had an eating disorder. Part of the reason Murphy was viewed as such a refreshing new face in Hollywood after the release of "Clueless" is she didn't look like a typical movie star. However, that changed in the early 2000s. As her stardom grew, Murphy decided to dye her hair blond and seemed to lose weight, possibly hoping that this would lead to her getting cast in more prominent movies.

At several public appearances during this time, Murphy looked noticeably thinner than she had when she first emerged on the scene. This caused many media outlets to suggest she may have had an eating disorder such as anorexia or bulimia. Additionally, people suggested that the actress may have been abusing drugs to lose weight, even though Murphy was always quick to deny the drug use allegations. It has never been confirmed that Murphy struggled with an eating disorder, but it's worth noting that a source once told PEOPLE that her mother put pressure on her to look thin. "She was obsessed with her looking slim," the source claimed.

After her breakup with Ashton Kutcher, Brittany Murphy had several failed engagements. However, after dating Simon Monjack for just a few months, Murphy married him in 2007. As reported by news.com.au, in the 2021 docuseries "What Happened, Brittany Murphy?," Murphy's "King of the Hill" co-star Kathy Najimy claimed she was concerned by how quickly her relationship with Monjack progressed. "[People] were scared and freaked out. Like, who was this guy and what was happening? She wanted to marry him, and I said, 'Honey, it's not been long enough.'"

Additionally, filmmaker Allison Burnett wanted to warn Murphy that Monjack was a compulsive liar before their marriage. Burnett described Monjack as a "bottom-feeding sociopath" and knew he was a liar ever since he claimed he survived terminal brain cancer. However, upon trying to reach out to Murphy's team, Burnett was reportedly told that Murphy's manager had gotten fired after trying to warn her about Monjack. Supposedly, Monjack isolated Murphy from some of her closest friends once they were married.

Obviously, Murphy's decision to marry Monjack surprised many people, but not his ex-girlfriend Elizabeth Ragland, with whom he had a secret child before abandoning. "I know why Brittany chose Simon. He worked his spell on her and she fell for it, like I did," Ragland said in the documentary. By most accounts, Murphy became a completely different person after the marriage, suggesting he was a negative influence on her.

Once they started dating, Monjack reportedly told Brittany Murphy he would revive her career, but his presence seemed to only bring misfortune. Page Six reported in 2008 that Murphy was alledgedly creating problems on the set of "Across the Hall." One insider claimed, "She's extremely difficult. When she gets to the set, it comes to a grinding halt. She's so hot and cold, you never know." Additionally, Monjack is described as an "oddball" in the report, which claims the producers were fed up with his constant interjections.

Around this time, Murphy was also reportedly fired from the horror movie "The Caller," which was shooting in Puerto Rico, during the first week. According to reports, Murphy was not at fault in this situation: Monjack's disruptive behavior was. Since she was fired from this film for difficult behavior, Warner Bros. no longer wanted her to return to voice Gloria in "Happy Feet 2," which further suggested she was being blacklisted in Hollywood.

In 2009, Murphy was reportedly in contention to play the lead role in "Black Swan," a movie that could have been a major comeback. However, the role ultimately went to Natalie Portman, who won the Best Actress Oscar. Overall, it's obvious that practically nothing went well in Murphy's career after she married Monjack.

Brittany Murphy was reportedly experiencing flu-like symptoms for several weeks before her death. On December 20, 2009, she was found unresponsive in the bathroom of her home. The actress was transported to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, but was pronounced dead soon after. Since Murphy's sickness was left untreated for multiple weeks, it eventually developed into pneumonia, which Dr. Lisa Scheinin described as "severe" in the docuseries "What Happened, Brittany Murphy?" (via PEOPLE). "If she had gotten to a hospital early enough, you can detect pneumonia on the chest X-ray. It's very easy to do," Scheinin said.

In Murphy's autopsy, pneumonia was listed as the official cause of death. Additionally, iron-deficiency anemia and "multiple drug intoxication" from over-the-counter medical prescriptions were listed as contributing factors. In the docuseries, Dr. Schneinin claimed Murphy was "very anemic" and revealed that blood tests revealed a 3.0 hemoglobin level, which is the iron-rich protein in red blood cells, while most people have a 12 to 15.5. According to the doctor, "The anemia in itself would have been fatal, even without the pneumonia."

After Brittany Murphy's death was announced, fans were quick to theorize that Monjack may have murdered her. This theory became even more plausible when Monjack initially claimed he didn't want an autopsy to be performed. However, a few days after Murphy's death, he changed his mind, stating in an interview with PEOPLE, "My initial reaction to the autopsy was – they're going to cut her open – I couldn't bear it. That would break her mother, but we realized we needed to know. I look forward to getting the results."

Not long after his wife died, Monjack launched The Brittany Murphy Foundation, which encouraged donors to pledge up to $10,000. Unsurprisingly, this was met with criticism, and further fueled theories that Monjack wanted to profit off Murphy's death. Ultimately, Monjack canceled the foundation.

Since Murphy's autopsy revealed that the main cause of death was pneumonia and anemia, the L.A. County Coroner Asst. Chief, Ed Winter, told PEOPLE that Monjack was never considered a suspect. "No one's criminally liable here because this has been ruled an accident."

Just because the LAPD never considered Monjack a suspect doesn't mean he was clear in the eyes of Brittany Murphy's fans. Following the her shocking death, theories suggested that Monjack and Murphy's mom, Sharon, may have conspired with each other to murder her. Many people were perplexed when the two of them held hands and stared longingly into each other's eyes during a January 2010 photo shoot. As an insider points out in "What Happened, Brittany Murphy?" (via Bustle), Monjack and Sharon looked like "parents grieving as opposed to a husband and his mother-in-law."

Furthermore, a report indicated that Monjack and Sharon were sleeping in the same bed in Murphy's Los Angeles mansion Murphy's death. The report doesn't suggest there was sexual contact between the two, but this detail raised the eyebrows of many fans. Sharon responded to the rumors of a romance between her and Monjack in an interview with PEOPLE months after her daughter's death, saying, "That's disgusting. We're close friends and we're family. It's an awful and ridiculous thing to say."

Monjack faced a lot of criticism after Brittany Murphy's death, but he also passed away just five months later. On May 23, 2010, Sharon found Monjack unresponsive in their home and called 911. Monjack was pronounced dead at the scene, and the coroner later claimed that the causes of his death were pneumonia and anemia. Monjack died in the exact manner as Murphy, which raised a lot of questions.

Following Monjack's passing, it was suspected that mold may have played a factor in both of their deaths. However, according to Winter, mold wasn't present in their toxicology reports. Despite this, the assistant coroner agreed that there was something strange about Monjack and Murphy's eerily similar deaths. Speaking with ABC News, Winter said, "It is unusual to have two people die of similar circumstances with pneumonia. We've been looking at it and saying, 'Something isn't right." Winter claimed that their home had been reported to the Department of Public Health after their deaths..

Brittany Murphy and Simon Monjackher dying five months apart in the exact same manner is so strange that some people believe that their Los Angeles mansion was haunted. Murphy bought the home fully furnished from Britney Spears for $3.85 million in 2003. As it turns out, before Murphy moved in, Spears had a terrifying experience in the home.

Spears' former makeup artist, Julianne Kaye, delved into the singer's haunting experience during her appearance on the podcast "We Need to Talk About Britney" in 2021. Kaye explained she had a friend who performed reiki healing on the singer. After one session, Spears was seemingly in a living nightmare. She said, "He left, and she swears to God that he opened some spirit portal or something, and these bad spirits had come in ... and they were trying to, like, push her down the stairs or something crazy." Kaye claimed that Spears left the home after this experience and never returned.

Interestingly, Monjack once revealed to The Hollywood Reporter that Murphy "hated" her Los Angeles home and thought it was "unlucky." He said, "Every time we would drive up Sunset, Brit would say, 'Please, can we stay at the Beverly Hills Hotel?' I'd say: 'Honey, you've got to be realistic. We have our house, a 10,000-square-foot home. We're going to stay in it."

Even after getting out of prison, Brittany Murphy's father, Angelo Bertolotti, didn't play a major role in her life. Sharon described him as "a man who may be her biological father but was never a real father to her in her lifetime" (via CNN). However, Bertolotti insisted that he had a healthy and normal relationship with his daughter when she was an adult, which led to him eventually speaking out about the mysterious cause of her death.

At one point, her father suggested Sharon may have killed both Murphy and Monjack. "Let her explain why she had my daughter execute a will, leaving everything to her mother and specifically excluding Simon," he said in a 2014 interview with the Examiner (via Jezebel). "Let Sharon explain why she decided to do this right after Brittany and Simon told her of their plan to move to New York and have a baby ... Let her talk about auctioning off Brittany's underwear, passport, SAG card and clothes ... Out of three people living together in the same house, only one survives and benefits financially."

In 2014, Bertolotti sued the coroner's office and the Los Angeles Police Department for determining the wrong cause of death. Throughout the 2010s, he argued that Murphy was poisoned. However, due to his failing health, he gave up his investigation into his daughter's death in 2017, claiming he had lost hope. Bertolotti later died in 2019 at the age of 92.

Bertolotti's claims that Brittany Murphy may have been poisoned are not completely unfounded. In 2013, Bertolotti sent Murphy's hair samples to a lab. The results of the tests showed the presence of heavy metals in her hair, which could suggest she was poisoned. While Bertolotti once accused Sharon of potentially murdering her daughter, another suspect arose in the 2010s: the Department of Homeland Security.

The 2012 documentary "Top Priority: The Terror Within" revealed that Murphy was supposedly close friends with Julia Davis, who was labeled a domestic terrorist after she accused government officials of letting 23 people with potential ties to Al Qaeda into the United States. After she told her supervisors about the potential security breach, Davis was reportedly falsely imprisoned twice and a raid her home that included a Black Hawk helicopter. Additionally, Davis' family and friends were targeted by the Department of Homeland Security, which led to both Murphy and Monjack being placed on their watch list.

Because of Murphy's ties to Davis, theories have suggested that she and Monjack may have been poisoned by DHS. These theories were further fueled by Bertolotti, who actually teamed up with Davis and the documentary's director, Asif Akbar, to produce a biopic about his daughter (which was never released). Further evidence about Homeland Security's potential involvement in Murphy's death has never been uncovered, but this proves how truly bizarre the circumstances around her passing are.