BREAKING: Hayden Panettiere’s Official Cause of Death Revealed!

Hayden Panettiere's official cause of death revealed. Experts determined she died from the toxic effects of five different substances. But was her death an accident? Or is there something more sinister at play? Could charges arise from this tragedy? We're breaking down the corner's report with an expert and looking ahead to what's next. This is Scandal, presented by Law & Crime. I'm Ciara Gillespie. In the one month since Hayden Panettiere was found dead in a South Carolina apartment, questions have arisen about her cause of death. How could a 36-year-old star die so suddenly? Is something nefarious at play here? What really happened? These are all questions we've asked over the past few weeks, and now we have an answer. At least in part. In a report released just today by the Greenville County Coroner's Office, Hayden stated, And this comes after weeks of speculation that perhaps Hayden's boyfriend, Brian Hickerson, could have been involved. And previous reports that it was allegedly a pill laced with fentanyl that led to Hayden's death. Those were all complete rumors and allegations until today, when the report was released and experts revealed five different substances were found in Hayden's toxicology reports that together proved to be lethal. The 36-year-old star, known for her, roles in Remember the Titans, Nashville, and Heroes, was found unresponsive in a Greenville, South Carolina apartment on August 16th. At 1.51 that day, a 911 call came in reporting Hayden had lost consciousness. When medics arrived, they found her in cardiac arrest and were unable to resuscitate her. This is an actual portion of dispatch audio. Hey everyone, this is your son from cardiac arrest. Hayden was then pronounced dead at 2.32 p.m. that day. Now, at first, details were scarce about what exactly happened. We did previously report that there were no signs of trauma when an autopsy was performed, which we're going to talk about more in our interview. But now that we have the toxicology report back, we have more information. According to experts, Hayden had five different substances, in her system at the time of her death. So here's how they break down. The first is fentanyl. This is a powerful synthetic opioid. Law and Crime's sidebar with Jesse Weber previously reported the possibility that fentanyl contributed to Hayden's death. Though, it's still unclear how. Could something have been laced with fentanyl? It's a possibility. We still don't have 100% confirmation. But we do know something else was in her system. It's the chemical byproduct 4-ANPP. Basically, this. based on my research. is a chemical building block used to create fentanyl and other synthetic painkillers. Alone, it doesn't do much. But combined with other chemicals, it can create fentanyl. And here's the kicker. It's usually found in illicit fentanyl, meaning it's used to create the drug on the street. And again, we're going to talk more about that in our interview, because I'm wondering if that piece of the puzzle could lead to criminal charges. But according to the autopsy report, there were a few other prescription medications found in Hayden's system. Three more, in fact. The first was Alprazolam, known commonly as Xanax. Then there was Methocarbamol. And lastly, Cutiopine, which is known as Seroquel. Now, Xanax is pretty common. It's an anti-anxiety medication. And so too is Seroquel, which is usually used to treat depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. Methocarbamol is a prescription muscle relaxant. And according to the coroner's report, these five substances are used to treat depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. And so too is Seroquel, which is known commonly as Xanax. there were names of things that i knew like xanax or saraquel those are things that are pretty common right but then there was one thing that really stood out to me it was called 4-a-n-p-p and i was like wait what is this and when i did a little bit more research it was talking about how it's usually used almost as a building block to create fentanyl on the street is that right so it's just a breakdown product that you would see in toxicology from fentanyl so she shouldn't have had that in the pill that she was taking so what happens is i always say it's like a fake gucci purse right it kind of looks like the real thing you buy these pills they look exactly like the ones that you would get from the pharmacy and part of the problem with this whole fentanyl crisis and these overdose deaths or these accidental overdose deaths in america is because people like she had an injury right at some point so she was given these pain medications and then she goes to the doctor and then she gets addicted and then the doctors cut you off right but that doesn't make your addiction go away so she goes to the street and buys these drugs that are now they're fake so what they do with these pills is they put fentanyl in them because fentanyl is like 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine so when you're making illegal drugs it could stretch your product so they could make so many more pills with so much of that product and she could have been taking these because when you have a person that's mixing them that's not that's not a chemist and not a pharmacist you don't know how much of the concentration is in one pill versus the next and this is the same exact way prince died this when you're talking about that it's it's just chilling to me because there is an opioid epidemic across our country there are people who are prescribed by doctors and then to your point they're cut off and then it's like well what do we do now where do we go and they're reaching out on the street and then this is what happens i mean again there are a lot of things that we still don't know we just know her cause of death at this point and i guess i wanted to ask you about that part too so it was ruled an accident but how is that exactly determined so if a per the only thing that you would have in these particular situation well i guess technically it could be a homicide too if you're intentionally poisoning someone but yeah when someone is intentionally trying to overdose on drugs you you would know that they had a history of suicidal ideation so there's a lot of the investigation goes along with it too but also you would see multiple undigested pills in the stomach still i mean no one's taking two pills to kill themselves right so they're going to take 50 and you would see that at autopsy so it's that along with the investigation and just them from what we've heard so far she's been buying particular person, black market for a while. So, and a lot of people argue, well, she was doing drugs. She had what was coming to her kind of, right. And I, I say it like, listen, when you go, when you go to the bar and you're drinking alcohol, you're taking a certain risk drinking alcohol because it is a toxin, but you're, you're, it's a low risk and you, you take it. If you went and they were substituting it out with methanol and you were drinking what you thought was cranberry and vodka, but that vodka was, had some methanol in it and you dropped dead that wouldn't, you know, you, you were poisoned. That's what you would say. You were poisoned. And that's exactly what happened with her too. She, you know, when you take a pill, you're taking a risk, but taking pills to get high is not the same as taking fentanyl. And if she knew it was in there, she likely wouldn't have taken it. And I have to ask you too, because there are a couple of things that are the names that I recognize. Seroquel, for instance, I'd been prescribed Seroquel. Or Xanax. These are things that we see kind of commonly, but it wouldn't be those things. It's more the fentanyl we think, right? Well, so the fentanyl is, is a central nervous system depressant. So what happens is your, the, your central nervous system is what controls how your breathing occurs, right? So when you take a drug that depresses it, it causes the nerves that are innervating the diaphragm and the ribs that contract and expand your lungs and help you inhale and exhale. They don't work as well. And they get slower and slower to the point where it could cause death, right? So in that particular situation, that's exactly what happened with her. So yeah, that's, that's pretty much what I think about that. So I guess my question to you is, and this is terrible to think, but how long would it take? I mean, we know the timeframe that 911 was called and she was pronounced dead. I don't know, 40 minutes later, but how long from the time she ingests these pills, does she go into cardiac arrest? Would you assume? Well, I would say just based upon what I was saying earlier, that it's a central nervous system depressant. It depends when she took all of the other things as well. But as you know, as a person who has taken Seroquel, I actually have taken it before too. As soon as you take it, you have about a half hour before you pass out at night, right? It just makes Seroquel is an anti-psychotic drug. It's given for all different kinds of reasons, but that also can slow. It could slow down your breathing a little bit. And then she was taking a muscle relaxer, which could, which is also a central nervous system depressant. So what I'm trying to get is maybe when she took these pills, her, her nervous system was already depressed. And then she takes the fentanyl on top of it. And it just, it just totally shuts things off for her. And, um, it could happen fairly quickly. It likely just as a thing that happened in her sleep, but if it happened during the day and someone let's say was near her and she was awake, a person that was completely sober, she, she might've been able to be revived at that point. But if she took it at night and was found in the morning, let's say they did say they gave her Narcan, but it was our, it was already too late at that point. And so the timeline for this, to your point, I was thinking through this and it makes sense why a lot of people, they say die in their sleep because they go to sleep and it feels like they're just going to sleep. And then they die with the combination of all of these drugs. But for her, it was in the afternoon. I don't know if she had a weird sleep schedule or what, but to me that indicates that she wasn't trying to go to sleep. I don't know exactly what happened, but you mentioned the Narcan of it all. Her boyfriend, her boyfriend's brother have kind of been brought up in all of this, that they had been there called 911. They've talked to different people and investigators. So I guess I'm wondering what comes next. I mean, I know that they've spoken to investigators already, but is it possible that charges could then be filed? Well, it is, it is possible for sure. I know nothing really came of what happened with Prince, but that was back in, that was kind of, he was like a trendsetter with that basically. Like that was back in 2016, I think. And nothing, but, but now it's like, how many people have died from this since then? I mean, we, we could just, and this isn't just people who are famous, this is your brother, your sister, your cousin, things like this. We hear about it all the time. So there is a possibility because they have the pills that she was purchasing, that they're going to be able to trace it back. They could, so there's toxicology that you would do on blood and body tissues. And then there's toxicology you do on the actual drugs. And then they could be able to potentially trace it back to where it came from based on then to see, you know, the remainder of the pills in the bottle that she bought from, this guy, if they're the same composition, then she would, you know, they would be able to make a connection there. And I mean, we've seen other cases, even most recently, Matthew Perry, I know it wasn't fentanyl, it was ketamine, but that too was ruled an accident that he accidentally overdosed, but then people were prosecuted after it because it, it wasn't right. And so I wonder if something like that could happen in this case. And I guess I have to ask, so the entire toxicology has been completed as far as everything with Hayden, but you mentioned the drugs that would have been used to treat the disease. And I guess I have to ask, so the entire toxicology has been collected at her apartment, in her home, whatever she had, what would they have to do to link those two things, kind of go through the pills and you said, check their composition? Well, I know that at least I could just say how things happen in Philadelphia, for example, that they would go to, there's a, there's a completely different group of, of chemists that work in a lab that just deal with the drugs themselves, not the tox, the toxicology is done at another lab. So I don't know exactly what their timeline is. Because, you know, toxicology is so backed up because they do it on so many autopsies around the country. And they're sending it to a central lab that is processing thousands, if not millions of specimens a year. So I don't know what the timeline would be for the particular crime lab that would be analyzing those pills, but I'm sure that they can make a connection for sure. And that's, that's how they, they do that in different cases. You brought up something so huge, which is when there's a case like this, people want answers immediately. And we saw, I mean, she died more than a month ago. It took this long for us to have the toxicology report, but there are so many cases that are backlogged and backed up because there's just case after case after case. And so I guess I just urge people to be patient in this case because there's definitely a lot ahead. And I guess I do have another question about all of this. We talked about the toxicology, but from what I've seen of the autopsy, there were no signs of trauma to her body. I mean, I do a lot of murder cases that I cover. So I see a lot of, you know, or stab wounds or things of the like. According to the autopsy, there were no obvious signs of blunt force trauma or any injuries. What do you make of that? So I think that that's completely what we should expect to see in her autopsy. Let's say she was just sitting on the couch and watching movies and decided to take these pills. I mean, she literally fell asleep on the couch. There wouldn't be any kind of trauma associated with that. There shouldn't be. I mean, she could have potentially fell off the couch or the bed or wherever she ended up being, and then you would see signs of trauma. But one thing that you would see on an autopsy like this, which they likely saw, I'm sure the report will come out at some point, was that her lungs were really, really heavy and wet. She could have had some foam in her lungs or in her airway. And that just happens when your breath gets so suppressed that you're breathing so shallow and so quietly that the fluid that's inside of the lungs starts to mix with that little bit of air and it bubbles up and it actually looks like foam that would be inside of the trachea. Sometimes you could see it to the point where it's coming out of the person's mouth. So that's potentially something that they saw at autopsy. And then when you cut the surface of the lung, you could also see some of that foam and bubbles coming out of the lungs because they're really, really wet because that fentanyl damages the lining of the lung where oxygen exchange happens and it causes blood and fluid to start leaking into the lungs and it just makes them really, really heavy. Oh my God. You're painting such a vivid picture that is so depressing and terrifying because I mean, so many of us know Hayden Panettiere, whether, I mean, my mom loved Remember the Titans. I've seen it a hundred times. People watched Heroes, Nashville, Scream. I mean, people had her in their homes with them. And so to picture someone who's so beloved to have to die in such a tragic way, it's so upsetting and hard. And I know one of the things that you mentioned to the Narcan, it was, it was too late, but if somebody had been there, could this have been prevented? Do you think she could have been saved? I think it's a possibility. It just, I don't really know what the levels were in her blood, if it was just insane, but in theory, I mean, that, that could, that could have helped her if it was recognized quickly. It really is a shame to see anybody going through this. I do like the portion of the, with celebrities, you know, I don't know if you know, I'm writing a celebrity death book right now. I think it's good. I think it's really good because it brings awareness to things that, because honestly, nobody cares about the rest of the population and this is happening to people all the time. And it's, you know, people, people aren't getting the investigations like this because they're, they're nobodies and it's just, it's just really sad. So I'm glad at least her pain can bring some awareness to this. I absolutely agree. I mean, you mentioned it could be your brother, your sister, whoever addiction runs in my family. My parents aren't celebrities. It wouldn't get the same amount of coverage if something like this happened in my family. And so I guess at the very least, hopefully it's raising awareness too, but at the same time, it's so devastating because these celebrities, we feel so close to them. We have them in our homes. And so it's heartbreaking for us. And I can't imagine her family. I know that she's a mom. There's so much happening here. And I guess I have to ask you before we leave, what do you anticipate moving forward? I know we touched on charges. Do you hypothesize that charges could be brought? Yes, I think so. I think exactly with her, with her level of fame, you saw them go above and beyond with Matthew Perry and, and listen, that, that same kind of stuff happened. I mean, it's a little bit different with him because he was, he was having treatment that the average person wouldn't have what I call the celebrity VIP treatment because they get things that normal people don't get. But at the same time, they really investigated those people and brought charges against multiple people involved with that to set an example. And I think they're going to do the same thing in this case. Oh, wow. Yeah. It would, it would be interesting to see, because if you look at the timeline of things way back when, I mean, I'm thinking river Phoenix, 1993, I don't recall that charges were brought there, but then most recently Matthew Perry, we saw Michael Jackson, Mac Miller. It has, there have been changes. So if there is somebody who's responsible for this, I guess we'll see if the charges are brought, what happens looking ahead. And I do want to ask you before we let you go, Nicole, can you tell us about your book? What is it called? When's it set to premiere so people can check it out? So it's called celebrity death dissection. It is coming out next summer. So I've been writing it for over a year now, um, and I've been writing it for over a year now, um, and I've been writing it for over a year now, I just finally submitted the first version of the manuscript and I'm working on the photos for the book. So, um, there's going to be over a hundred celebrities mentioned in the book. And I do what I call a dissection on several, maybe 70, I think it is where I really break down their, what disease they were living with or what their cause of death was. And I go through their autopsy reports and just describe to you exactly how they died and, and the circumstances surrounding their death as well. Wow. You were the right person to talk to you for this story. All of them are tragedies and it's really tough to talk about, but thank you so much for giving us some insight because this toxicology report, I wouldn't have been able to make sense of it. So thank you so much, Nicole, for coming on scandal with us today. Thanks for having me. We're going to keep a careful eye on what happens next in Hayden's case and bring you all of that information right here on Law and Crime. And that is where today's episode of We'll see you next time.