Brittany Murphy’s Father Searching For Answers In Daughter’s Death; Claims She Was Poisoned

Friday marks the fourth anniversary of the death of actress Brittany Murphy.

The official cause of her death at age 32 was attributed to pneumonia, anemia and multiple drug intoxication — the kinds of drugs used for treating a cold.

In an eerie twist of fate, five months after Murphy’s death, her husband, Simon Monjack, died of similar causes. Murphy’s father, Angelo Bertolotti is not satisfied with the investigation, taking matters into his own hands, including new toxicology tests that he claims show his daughter was poisoned.

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“All we want is justice and we’re not getting it at this point and that’s what we want and that’s what we’re going to get,” Bertolotti told Access Hollywood in an exclusive interview on Friday.

Rejecting the findings from the LA Coroner — that Murphy and Monjack died of natural causes — her father, along with his friend and investigative journalist Julia Davis, ordered two toxicology tests on Murphy’s hair. They claim both labs found abnormally high levels of barium, sulfur and other heavy metals — ingredients also common in rodenticides and pesticides.

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“There have been so many suspicious symptoms for both of them, identical symptoms that point towards poisoning, and definitely not pneumonia and anemia, because, I’ve never heard of anyone with pneumonia and anemia having severe abdominal cramps and vomiting before they died,” Davis said as she sat alongside Bertolotti on Friday, when both spoke with Access. “There’s a number of symptoms that just don’t add up.”

While Bertolotti and Davis will not speculate on who could have poisoned the late star, one theory which has come up explaining the presence of heavy metals was that Murphy’s hair samples were dyed. Bertolotti and Davis claim to have consulted with experts who disagree.

“When they mentioned the certain heavy metals that may be associated with hair dyes, they failed to mention that it wouldn’t be found in [these] quantities and also not all of the heavy metals could be linked to anything remotely related to hair dye,” Davis claimed.

At the time of her death, Murphy and Monjack lived with her mother, Sharon Murphy.

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Sharon Murphy has called Bertolotti’s poison theory, “absurd,” in an open letter in The Hollywood Reporter. And, when it comes to what killed her daughter, she has said, “we will never know for sure.”

“We have tried to get information from Sharon and she has been not responding to any of our inquiries,” Davis claimed. “We were stunned that any mother would say we’ll never know what killed them and be OK with that.”

Bertolotti’s ultimate goal is that his daughter and her husband’s bodies will be exhumed by the LA Coroner’s Office and given additional tests.

A spokesperson from the Coroner’s Office told Access, “Because of pending legal issues, we cannot comment at this time.”

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