# The Mysterious Final Years Of Brittany Murphy Life | 190

An episode of [Lazy Chill True Crime](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1815534472), 19 Mar 2026, 13 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO8546012204.mp3

Join me for a discussion of the mysterious final years of Brittany Murphy's life. Episode 190 of the true crime podcast btw. 👇 Youtube links: Lazy Chill History Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillHistory Lazy Chill Zone Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillZone 👇 Support My Work: 🛍️ Merch: https://lazy-chill-zone-shop.fourthwall.com ❤️ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lazychillzone 👇Social Media Links: https://www.instagram.com/lazychillzone/ 👇 Podcast links: ⚡History Video Podcast on Spotify⚡: https://open.spotify.com/show/7km5pLWpYWEj1mrPpEfRUr?si=0FHYnZf-Qs2FY1GyLevfig ⚡True Crime Podcast on Spotify⚡: https://open.spotify.com/show/0klIz08pAr7wR4we0Ia4sk?si=68qZxCeAQkysXzMZrHE0Iw 🍏 True Crime Podcast on Apple 🍎: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lazy-chill-true-crime/id1815534472 Brittany Murphy, Brittany Murphy death, Brittany Murphy mystery, Brittany Murphy cause of death, Brittany Murphy Hollywood case, Brittany Murphy toxic mold theory, Brittany Murphy pneumonia anemia, Brittany Murphy husband death, Simon Monjack death, Brittany Murphy conspiracy, celebrity death mystery, Hollywood tragedy, celebrity true crime, unsolved celebrity deaths, Brittany Murphy autopsy, Brittany Murphy toxicology, Brittany Murphy investigation, Brittany Murphy documentary, Brittany Murphy podcast, Brittany Murphy timeline, Brittany Murphy final days, Brittany Murphy suspicious death, celebrity conspiracy case, true crime Hollywood, celebrity mystery podcast, Brittany Murphy rumors, Brittany Murphy legacy, Brittany Murphy case analysis, Hollywood death investigation, celebrity cold case

## Transcript

[0:02] On the morning of December 20th, 2009, paramedics rushed to a
[0:06] mansion on Rising Glen Rd. in the Hollywood Hills.
[0:10] Inside the bathroom, 32 year old actress Brittany Murphy lay
[0:14] unconscious. Her mother Sharon and husband
[0:17] Simon Manjak had found her collapsed and called 911.
[0:22] Firefighters attempted to revive her on the way to Cedars Sinai
[0:25] Medical Center, but it was too late.
[0:29] The woman who charmed audiences in King of the Hill, Clueless
[0:33] and Eight Mile was gone, and the circumstances surrounding her
[0:37] death would only grow stranger with time.
[0:41] A Los Angeles coroner initially told The Associated Press that
[0:44] Murphy's death appeared natural, but that assessment barely
[0:48] scratched the surface when the updated coroner's report arrived
[0:53] on February 4th, 2010. The official cause of death was
[0:58] listed as community acquired pneumonia.
[1:01] Secondary factors included iron deficiency anemia and multiple
[1:05] drug intoxication, the latter despite no illegal substances
[1:10] found in her system. The drugs present were all
[1:13] prescription or over the counter medications, including elevated
[1:17] levels of hydrocodone, acetaminophen, and
[1:21] chlorfeniramine. Due to the combination of
[1:24] medications in her weakened state, Murphy's death was
[1:28] classified as an accident. In the weeks before she died,
[1:32] Murphy had been battling A staph infection that hit her hard.
[1:36] She developed severe laryngitis and was experiencing her second
[1:40] period in a single month, worsening her anemia.
[1:44] For roughly 6 weeks. She tried to push through the
[1:47] illness without seeing a physician, a fact that will
[1:50] become very suspicious given the context I'm about to discuss.
[1:56] She finally called to schedule a doctor's appointment on a
[1:59] Friday, setting it for the following Monday.
[2:01] But she didn't survive the weekend.
[2:04] The question that haunts this case isn't just how she died,
[2:08] but why nobody in her household got her to a hospital sooner.
[2:14] The circumstances of Brittany Murphy's death are completely
[2:17] baffling without a full understanding of the situation
[2:20] she found herself in at the time of her passing, Enter Simon
[2:24] Manjak. Manjak was a British
[2:27] screenwriter and director whose credits were thin and whose
[2:31] reputation, once examined, was devastating.
[2:35] Born in 1970 in Hillingdon, England, Manjak had a troubled
[2:39] history that predated his arrival in Hollywood by years.
[2:43] He'd been evicted from multiple homes, had outstanding warrants
[2:47] in Virginia for alleged credit card fraud, and was successfully
[2:51] sued by a bank for nearly half, $1,000,000.
[2:55] In February 2007, he was arrested and jailed for 9 days
[3:00] over an expired visa. He told people he was a
[3:03] billionaire, that he dated Madonna and Elle Macpherson,
[3:08] that he owned Ferraris. He claimed that he possessed the
[3:11] largest private collection of Vermeer paintings in the world.
[3:15] There was just a little wee problem with Simon's debonair
[3:18] billionaire persona. None of it was true.
[3:23] Before meeting Murphy, Monjak had been engaged to a woman
[3:26] named Elizabeth Ragsdale. He'd proposed with a Tiffany's
[3:31] ring just two weeks after they met and told her he was dying of
[3:34] spinal cancer, claiming he needed experimental treatments
[3:38] derived from shark cartilage. There's something so
[3:42] disturbingly poetic about him choosing a shark as the animal
[3:46] he would allegedly be receiving this treatment from.
[3:49] Much like the common shark. If the allegations are true,
[3:53] Monjak sensed weakness and struck upon it with ruthless
[3:57] efficiency. When Ragsdale became pregnant,
[4:01] Monjak abandoned her, leaving her absolutely devastated.
[4:06] She later contacted his mother about the situation, expecting
[4:10] to perhaps find out that Simon had passed and discovered the
[4:14] entire cancer story was fabricated to manipulate her.
[4:18] Years afterward, when Ragsdale saw a magazine photo of Mon Jack
[4:22] alongside Murphy, she said her first reaction wasn't jealousy,
[4:27] it was pity for Murphy. She tried to write a warning
[4:30] letter but never sent it, fearing it would seem like a
[4:33] ploy by a bitter ex lover. While she may have been bitter
[4:37] about her time with Mon Jack, if her treatment was anything like
[4:41] what happened with Murphy, that was quite honestly the only
[4:45] rational response to her interaction with him.
[4:50] Murphy and Mon Jack met in 2006 and married in a private
[4:54] ceremony in April 2007. The relationship moved fast, and
[4:59] the changes in Murphy's life were immediate.
[5:02] According to multiple friends and colleagues who later spoke
[5:05] in documentaries, Mon Jack systematically isolated Murphy
[5:10] from everyone around her. He convinced her to fire her
[5:13] agents, managers, lawyers and accountants, claiming that they
[5:18] were all scheming against her in some way.
[5:21] He became her sole representative in all
[5:24] professional matters, even serving as her makeup artist on
[5:27] some final projects. Her phone numbers were changed
[5:31] and friends who tried to reach her we're told they had to go
[5:34] through Mon Jack actress Lisa Rifle.
[5:38] A close friend later described it as though Murphy had simply
[5:42] disappeared. Actress Kathy Najimi recalled
[5:46] that everyone in Murphy's circle was frightened and bewildered by
[5:49] the situation. Celebrity trainer Harley
[5:52] Pasternak, best known for his Kanye interactions, tried to
[5:56] contact Murphy's team about a role and was told Monjak had
[6:00] taken over every function. There was no way to reach her
[6:04] directly and she was completely isolated from everyone she knew
[6:09] while being under his complete control.
[6:13] Under Monjak's management, Murphy's career deteriorated
[6:17] sharply. She went from starring in major
[6:19] studio films to working in low budget indie productions.
[6:23] In November 2009, the couple travelled to Puerto Rico for a
[6:27] film called The Caller, but Monjak allegedly showed up on
[6:31] set intoxicated and caused disruptions.
[6:35] Murphy was let go on the first day after she refused to
[6:38] dissociate herself from what everyone assumed was simply an O
[6:41] Fish husband disturbing the set. She'd also been dropped from
[6:45] happy feet to a major studio film that she was planning on
[6:49] lending her voice acting abilities to.
[6:53] The woman who'd once been one of Hollywood's most in demand young
[6:56] talents was struggling to find work, and the man controlling
[7:00] her professional life appeared to be the reason.
[7:03] Monjak also took control of Murphy's finances.
[7:07] It's been estimated that he spent approximately $3,000,000
[7:10] of her money over the course of their three-year marriage.
[7:14] Meanwhile, Murphy was the sole breadwinner, supporting not only
[7:18] her husband but also her mother Sharon, who suffered from
[7:22] neuropathy after battling breast cancer.
[7:26] The household on Rising Glen Rd. had become a pressure cooker.
[7:30] Murphy was sick, overworked, probably broke and cut off from
[7:35] the support systems that might have saved her life.
[7:38] She was caring for everyone around her, while nobody, it
[7:41] seemed, was caring for her. If Murphy's death raised
[7:46] eyebrows, what happened next sent conspiracy theories into
[7:50] OverDrive. On May 23rd, 2010, just five
[7:55] months after his wife's passing, Simon Monjak was found dead in
[7:59] the same Hollywood Hills mansion.
[8:02] Sharon Murphy discovered him unconscious in the master
[8:05] bedroom around 9:20 PM and called 911.
[8:10] Paramedics arrived but couldn't revive him, and he was
[8:13] pronounced dead at 9:45 PM at the age of 40.
[8:18] The coroner's report on Monjak's death was eerily familiar.
[8:22] His cause of death was listed as acute pneumonia and severe
[8:25] anemia, nearly identical to Murphy's case.
[8:30] Unlike Murphy, the medications in Monjak's system were at
[8:34] therapeutic levels and were not considered a contributing
[8:38] factor. The fact that two people living
[8:41] in the same house had died months apart from what appeared
[8:45] to be the same ailment was deeply unsettling to the public
[8:49] and to investigators. The Los Angeles County
[8:53] Department of Public Health investigated whether toxic mold
[8:56] in the home might have contributed.
[8:59] This fatal mold story took over news headlines at the time, but
[9:03] the coroner stated there were no indicators that it played any
[9:06] role. In January 2012, Murphy's
[9:11] estranged father, Angelo Bertolotti, filed a petition in
[9:14] the Superior Court of California.
[9:17] He requested that the coroner's office release hair samples from
[9:21] his daughter for independent testing.
[9:24] The initial suit was dismissed after Bertolotti failed to
[9:27] appear at 2 hearings, but he eventually obtained samples of
[9:31] Murphy's hair, blood and tissue. He sent them to a private
[9:36] laboratory called the Carlson Company in Colorado, which
[9:39] reported finding elevated concentrations of 10 heavy
[9:42] metals in Murphy's system. These included antimony and
[9:46] barium, A substance commonly associated with rat poison,
[9:51] suggesting something much more sinister had happened.
[9:54] Bertolotti went public in November 2013, claiming the
[9:58] results were proof his daughter had been deliberately poisoned.
[10:03] The poisoning theory made national headlines, but it
[10:06] didn't hold up under expert scrutiny from forensic
[10:09] scientists. Toxicologist Bruce Goldberger,
[10:14] who served as president of the American Board of Forensic
[10:17] Toxicology, reviewed the lab report and raised serious
[10:21] objections. He noted that Murphy lacked A
[10:24] telltale sign of heavy metal poisoning at the time of death,
[10:28] specifically the distinctive horizontal lines across the
[10:31] fingernails. Without that marker, he
[10:34] concluded it was unlikely heavy metals contributed to her death.
[10:39] Another toxicologist pointed out that hair dye alone could
[10:43] account for heavy metals in a hair sample.
[10:47] Murphy had, in fact, prepared a will.
[10:49] In it, she left her entire estate to her mother and
[10:53] included a pointed statement declaring that she'd
[10:55] intentionally excluded her husband.
[10:58] It appears that she had significant insight into
[11:00] Monjak's nefarious nature, but ultimately, for whatever reason,
[11:05] she didn't leave him. From the evidence, I believe she
[11:10] may have been scared to leave him, worried about what
[11:13] consequences she would face if she fled.
[11:16] By the time the spell was broken and she evidently saw Monjak for
[11:20] what he really was, he had already fully isolated her from
[11:25] the entire world. She may have been slowly making
[11:28] moves so that she could extricate herself from the
[11:31] situation safely when she unfortunately passed away.
[11:36] Ultimately, it's not precisely clear to me what caused Brittany
[11:39] Murphy's death, and the answers don't appear to be satisfactory
[11:43] at all. The official record says
[11:45] Brittany Murphy died of pneumonia, anemia, and
[11:49] prescription drug intoxication. That said, this seems like a
[11:54] situation where she needed to be rushed to hospital urgently, and
[11:58] if she had been, it seems like she might have survived.
[12:02] That makes me question if perhaps Simon Monjak didn't want
[12:05] her going to the hospital for fear that she would use it as a
[12:09] way to escape the prison he had built for her.
[12:12] Of course, that's speculation on my part, and I can't say with
[12:16] any certainty that there's any veracity to the allegation.
[12:20] Interestingly, Monjak's ex fiance Elizabeth Ragsdale may
[12:25] have offered the most incisive assessment of the entire
[12:28] tragedy. She stated her belief that even
[12:31] if Mon Jack didn't directly cause Murphy's death, but for
[12:35] his influence, she would almost certainly be alive.
[12:39] And it's hard to disagree with this assessment, since the
[12:41] entire trajectory of her life went off the rails the moment
[12:45] she met this individual.

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