A little more than a year after Brittany Murphy's sudden death, Alex Ben Block of the Hollywood Reporter has written an exhaustive piece on the actress's final days. Among the revelations: that there was no sense of urgency for Murphy to see a doctor about the illness that would lead to her death because she and husband Simon Monjack "practiced their own form of 'holistic' medicine."
Block writes, "They picked and chose among medicines and doctors. They were always afraid the paparazzi would find out if they were seen as sick and that it would hurt their job prospects in Hollywood. That was one reason Brittany didn’t go to an emergency room that night (she died), and it was an excuse for Simon not to call for help when he had seizures or another of his heart problems. It was also why Brittany used false names to hide her identity at the pharmacy."
The piece also sheds light on Monjack's paranoia, which led to a shrinking of Murphy's inner circle. Monjack said he had to, "take extreme security precautions because they were under surveillance by helicopters and their phone was bugged ... (he) created a web of paranoia around Brittany and used it to separate her from anyone who might have challenged his dominance," Brock reports.
As for Murphy's final hours on Dec. 20, 2009, Murphy's mother Sharon told Brock, "She was lying on the patio trying to catch her breath. I said ‘Baby, get up.’ She said: ‘Mommy, I can’t catch my breath. Help me. Help me ... She was always so dramatic. I’ve replayed that so many times. She asked if she could use the oxygen, but Simon said her heart could stop with oxygen, and anyway he then had another seizure, a long, horrific seizure.” Sharon then made her daughter hot tea with ginger and lemon. “Her lips were parched, like she was dehydrated,” Sharon said. “So I made her drink that.”
Pneumonia, anemia and multiple drug intoxication were ruled to be Murphy's primary cause of death. Monjack, eerily, died five months later, also of pneumonia and anemia.
You can read the entire piece by Block here.
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