Medical investigator still puzzled by Brittany's Murphy death

A forensic pathologist has revealed he is still ‘puzzled’ by the mysterious circumstances around Brittany Murphy’s death.

The star died of ‘natural causes’ back in 2009 when she was 32, but new Investigation Discovery documentary titled Brittany Murphy: An ID Mystery is revisiting the rumours about her death.

And Dr Cyril Wecht has admitted that many questions he had about the way she died ‘were never truly answered’.

Officials declared her death was caused by pneumonia, anaemia and excessive use of prescription medications.

While her husband, screenwriter Simon Monjack, was found dead of the same cause five months later.

But in the documentary, forensic pathologist Dr Cyril Wecht – who was hired by Murphy’s father Angelo Bertolotti to investigate his daughter’s death – is interviewed about his suspicions.

Speaking to Fox News about the documentary, Wecht said about the original investigation: ‘What stood out to me was that here’s a young woman of 32 years old. How could she have developed such an advanced state pneumonia and such an incredible state of iron deficiency?

‘Where in the world was her mother, her husband? Why didn’t she receive proper medical care? I was just puzzled by all of it.’

He continued: ‘She had the financial means to see a doctor. And then she had prescriptions to strong opiates. It was very perplexing.’

A lab report commissioned by Bertolotti showed 10 potentially toxic heavy metals were present in a hair strand sample, which some think shows Murphy may have been poisoned.

Wecht claimed it is ‘impossible’ to rule out that Murphy was murdered.

He added: ‘I can only say what I’ve said before – it’s not possible to completely rule out things. But you have to deal with the questions – questions that I feel were never truly answered.’

However a toxicology expert who examined the results from the tests later told CNN that this theory was ridiculous, explaining that the different metals could have come from her hair dye.

Brittany’s mother Sharon also dismissed the claims, accusing her ex of trying to profit from their daughter’s death.

‘I have no choice now but to come forward in the face of inexcusable efforts to smear my daughter’s memory by a man who may be her biological father but was never a real father to her in her lifetime,’ she wrote in a piece for the Hollywood Reporter back in 2013.

She went on to say that the accusations were ‘based on the most flimsy of evidence and are more of an insult than an insight into what really happened.’

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