Original subtitles

[indistinct chatter]

- Oh, they're gonna have a weekend rendezvous, look out.

[laughter]

- One day, a friend of mine, an Englishman,

who lives in Los Angeles, who was in the world of film,

he called me and told me that he had two friends in town,

a filmmaker who was making

an important indie film in London,

and his girlfriend.

I learned that this is Simon Monjack.

He said his grandfather founded British Steel,

something like that, and he's worth $1 billion.

Since I'd never met a billionaire before,

and I'm a very curious person, I decided to host a dinner.

[glasses clink]

So Simon kind of held forth

and he kind of controlled the table.

And he told us a lot of things about himself that night.

He said that he was the largest collector of Vermeer,

the great Dutch painter.

He had more Vermeers than anyone else in the world.

He had dated Elle Macpherson and Madonna.

He said that he had been dying from terminal brain cancer

and that he had bought an experimental treatment

derived from the fins of sharks

and that it had saved his life.

He said that he had a collection of Ferraris,

17 in all.

You know, we laughed and we had a good time,

and, you know, I wondered if he'd ever finance

one of the movies I wanted to make,

and that was it.

The only hint that anything was askew

was that Simon had told me his movie

was getting the best reviews

in the history of independent film in England.

My friend, in London, went to see the movie,

and he came back and he said,

"This is-- it's pretty terrible."

- In this generation of lust,

I never [...] found you, Lucy.

No, I can't hear you, Lucy.

[tires screeching]

[screaming]

- So that was kind of shocking.

Time goes by, I get an email from his girlfriend.

And I find out that every single word

out of his mouth was a lie.

One of the ways that Simon legitimized those lies

was by bringing a lovely girl into the equation.

That was the cloak.

And it was perfect because she believed the lies too.

So he lived off this girl that had worked her heart out

for every penny she had.

And when her money ran out, he was gone.

And very quickly, he became engaged to one of her friends.

I can't stress enough how convincing this man was.

["Die Young" by Sylvan Esso playing]

♪ ♪

- ♪ I had it all planned out before you met me ♪

♪ Was gonna leave early and so swiftly ♪

♪ Maybe in a fire or crash off a ravine ♪

♪ People would weep, how tragic, so early ♪

♪ I was gonna die young ♪

♪ Now I gotta wait for you honey ♪

♪ I was gonna die young ♪

[thunder rumbles]

- I want to talk now about Brittany Murphy,

her controversial husband.

The unemployed British screenwriter Simon Monjack

is being portrayed as the villain,

the drunken bully living off a woman that he married

because his visa had expired.

- I don't think Simon has recovered

from the bad publicity. He was like a Svengali.

- People don't die at home with the husband present

of pneumonia, of anemia.

- "Every story needs a villain,"

Monjack said after his wife's tragic death, concluding,

"And everyone decided it is me."

And on that point, ladies and gentlemen,

I agree with him.

- I'm Linda Monjack, and I am

Simon Monjack's mother.

- And I'm James Monjack, Simon's brother.

- As he was growing up,

Simon was the most incredible guy.

He had an IQ off the scale.

He was able to charm anyone, old ladies, mothers.

He would turn his charm on anyone.

- From early childhood, Simon had that ability

to manipulate the environment

to get what he wanted out of it.

- Simon was 16 when his father died.

It was a terrible, terrible shock.

He never was the same again.

He was still witty and full of life and funny,

but something died in him.

And I think he became more and more...

unreal.

He lived in the now. The now is important.

The now meant everything to him.

In a minute, that's not the now.

The next moment happened,

and there's a new moment to experience.

But he did fall in and out of love very easily.

He was in a very good place when he met Brittany.

They were very much in love.

When you saw them together,

they literally fell into each other's eyes.

I mean, literally drowned in each other.

The one conversation that I remember with her

was just before she died, and I said,

"Oh, Brittany, Simon tells me you're not feeling well.

What's the matter?"

She said, "I'm having trouble breathing.

If I go up the stairs," she was like,

"By the time I get to the top of the stairs,

I can't breathe."

She said, "Do you think I'm dying?"

So I said, "No, of course you're not dying, you're fine.

But you need to go to the doctor."

[siren wails]

I didn't speak to them again until Simon phoned me

on that terrible day.

He was totally devastated,

and he cried for about two hours on the phone.

He just could not get his head around it.

He kept saying, "She's dead. How can--she can't be.

How? How?"

[somber music]

♪ ♪

He was in shock for months.

Nobody could get through to him.

He's too frightened of the paparazzi,

and he was getting increasingly ill.

And you could see it in his face, his hair was wild.

I phoned him, and I couldn't get him for a couple of hours.

And I finally got hold of him, and he said, "I'm alive.

I'm alive. I went sleep and I'm alive."

Which I couldn't get my head around.

I didn't know why he would say such a thing.

He was confused.

So I think he felt let down by everyone.

[birds cawing]

[clock ticking, bell chimes]

- In May, I had taken a trip to Hawaii

with, like, a significant other at the time.

Simon called me a lot.

And I didn't answer a lot because I was,

like, "No, I'm on vacation."

Some of his messages,

you could sense this growing frustration

that I wasn't there for him.

I certainly never viewed my friendship with Simon

as anything romantic.

And I don't think he did. I mean, I have a wife.

I don't even look at men that way,

so it definitely wasn't something,

but it did cross my mind just because you never know.

That probably was hard for him at the time.

I'll never know because it was

right after I got home from that trip that he died.

[helicopter blades whipping]

[indistinct radio chatter]

[siren wails]

[indistinct chatter]

- Everybody ready? - Yes, sir.

- This evening, Mr. Monjack was found unresponsive.

Paramedics responded to the house.

He was pronounced at 2145 hours.

His death is under investigation

by the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner

with the assistance of LAPD.

I got notified of Simon's death,

and then it's like, "Are you kidding me?"

- I get a call in the night.

Sharon's screaming, "Please, please come here.

"Please come here. It's happening all over again.

I'm living Brittany all over again."

So I get in the car, head up to the house,

and when I get up there, there is media everywhere.

I couldn't get to the gate,

much less get through the gate.

- That's a day I won't forget.

Simon came out, he was sweating.

And he's got a cigar in one hand,

a cognac in the other hand, but he would be talking to me

and he would drift off to sleep.

And then he would just open his eyes

and come back into the conversation

like he was there the whole time.

And when I think back about it,

he's dying in front of me,

and I don't know he's dying in front of me.

- Here's a copy of Simon Monjack's report.

Cause of death is listed as

community acquired acute bronchial pneumonia.

The toxicology study

showed the presence of multiple medications.

The media, they said, "Isn't that strange?

Both died from the same cause of death."

And it'd be like, "Yeah, we don't get a lot of those."

- Just five months after Brittany passed away,

Simon, her husband, passed away in the same bathroom

in the same mansion for almost identical reasons.

- A small, tiny, petite woman and a very large man,

they die of the same thing in the same house.

- People start thinking there's more behind this,

there's something else.

[dark music]

♪ ♪

[wind whistling]

- After Simon died, it was like, "What happened?"

You know?

I think the initial thought was like something

is causing this in the house.

- I've pleaded with Simon to go to the hospital.

He looked terrible.

My husband was very worried because he's a builder,

and he thought it was to do with the mold.

- To me, it was obvious when I went to the house,

in this gorgeous picture window.

I'm looking around the frame of that window

and you visibly see mold on the side,

across the top, across the bottom,

and I look over to the French doors and there's mold there.

I don't think there's any other explanation

for their death.

- All of the symptoms, disorientation,

feeling sick, dreadful headaches,

all these things come from inhaling spores from mold.

- Sharon Murphy claims she discovered

deadly mold hiding in the walls of their mansion.

Just look at what we found at Brittany's home today.

- I know that there were rumors that toxic mold

may have played a role in Brittany's death

and possibly the death of her husband.

But on my autopsy,

I didn't see any evidence of mold in her lungs

or any other organs because you can see the hyphae,

which are little strands of mold or the fruiting bodies.

- I told Sharon I would get somebody from County Health

to come up and they'd check the house.

And then I got a call from her attorney

who said Sharon doesn't want to give any access,

and she's selling the house anyway.

Just stay away.

- New shocking allegations coming from her father,

who says she was poisoned.

And Murphy's father, Angelo Bertolotti, joining us now.

Angelo, do you suspect somebody?

- Yeah, I do really, but I'd rather not speak about that.

I feel she was poisoned.

There's no question about that.

And I feel she was murdered.

- Once the two of them had died of the same cause,

Brittany's dad reached out to me.

He was sure that someone had done it.

- Angelo Bertolotti lived down in Florida

and ran a string of nightclubs.

- Sharon, Brittany's mom, really does not like Angelo.

She said that he only came around

when she started making money.

- He says, "I was involved with the mob.

I wasn't very involved in my marriage."

- Angelo was actually banned from ever seeing his daughter

at the gravesite multiple times until he was able to prove

he was the biological father of Brittany Murphy.

That's horrible.

- Take two.

- I'm Wendy Abrahamson,

and I was a fan of Brittany

and the best friend of her father Angelo.

So her dad, he needed help to find her grave,

and so some of the fans said, "Oh, we're gonna help."

We just became really close.

Of course, that common denominator of Brittany

started it and then we were just best friends.

And of course, he thought it was really strange

that the mother, his ex-wife, was perfectly fine.

And that the married couple, much younger than her,

were both dead.

These are things that nobody has seen.

We went, of course, to the coroner's office

to obtain the hair samples and have those tested.

- Ed Winter says his office did forward toxicology samples

to a private lab hired by the late actress's father.

The private analysis states Brittany Murphy

had high concentrations of ten heavy metals in her system

and may have been intentionally poison.

- I received a call, an email from Angelo Bertolotti.

I can understand him asking,

"What are you telling me, my 32-year-old daughter,

she just died like that from pneumonia and anemia?"

He then said he had gotten hold of a toxicology report

on a sample of hair,

and it showed heavy levels of heavy metals.

I've had cases like that, fascinating cases,

one with a woman who was repeatedly poisoning

her husband with thallium.

I'm not unfamiliar with that.

- Heavy metals are commonly found

in rat and insect killers.

They can cause the symptoms

Murphy experienced before her death.

- I absolutely, positively thinks she was poisoned, yes.

I'm calling for her to be exhumed.

- You know, Angelo was in the press quite a bit.

And they were putting stuff out there,

like she poisoned them.

She's responsible for their deaths.

So what happens?

You got a grieving mom who now becomes a murder suspect.

That's ridiculous. I mean, it's crazy.

- It was just magazine covers and salacious headlines,

and it became this circus.

So that's when the conspiracy theories go into overdrive.

- Like, maybe her mother could have had something

to do with it, just speculation.

- It was a plan from the beginning for both of them

to take her money after she died.

And the mom got the last laugh.

- I would never put two and two together,

but these days and age, mothers, you know,

they take out their kids all the time.

- Brittany and Sharon were as close as two people could be.

Maybe Sharon made some mistakes.

But I know that she loved that girl wildly.

- Never for a minute did I ever believe

that Sharon Murphy was responsible

for those two young people dying.

I would never believe it.

Not for a millisecond.

- Initially, when I was given this private laboratory report,

I said, "Oh, my God. What is this?"

And then I looked carefully and saw

that this was not a case of poisoning.

The heavy metals were found in the hair, not in the roots.

Heavy metals take a while to be absorbed from the blood.

In order to be in the hair,

they got to be picked up by the hair root,

and then they got to grow out.

These metals had to have come from hairsprays, hair dyes,

and things of that nature.

They are not in her bloodstream.

They are in her hair.

Did she die because someone poisoned her?

No.

- There were elevated levels of things like aluminum

or one or two other things, but it's hair dye.

That's what does it.

And Brittany has dyed her hair many different times.

And I didn't see any evidence of any type of poison.

- There is no question in my mind

about the cause of death.

So this is a 32-year-old woman.

I don't know the bankroll of her and her husband,

but I assume that they had money.

And yet they lived as if they were peasants in squalor.

To develop an anemia of this nature,

she was not eating.

How did all of this develop?

That's the fascinating question.

This is where you got to bring in the forensic psychiatrist

and see if he can dig up enough information about her

and her husband Simon Monjack

to try to answer that question.

- That was during a little dip she was having

that he came along.

And I think that's where her judgment

was muddled and desperate,

and she became prey to things

that she thought would help her.

[tense music]

- I feel like what brought Brittany Murphy's career down

is a perfect storm of getting cast in the wrong movies

and her personal life.

Mid 2000s, the biggest rumors that I was hearing

and not reporting were about drugs.

- Do we read them?

No, we wait. Okay.

- I remember her as a presenter

at the 2003 Independent Spirit Awards,

where her assignment was to read the names

of five nominees,

open an envelope, and read the winner.

She kept trying to read every nominee as the winner.

And when she arrived triumphantly

at the real winner,

she inspired no confidence that she had it right.

- America, just one moment, please.

audience: No!

For crying out stinking loud,

please tell me when you're going to drop it.

Okay. And the winner is...

audience: No!

- Brittany Murphy, around the beginning of my career,

was talked about a lot.

I first started hearing rumors

shortly after her split from Ashton Kutcher,

rumors about her just being impossible to deal with,

whereas Ashton was the golden boy of Hollywood.

Ultimately, you can only keep things quiet for so long.

When it starts to get out there,

then you start to develop a reputation.

- Perez Hilton didn't get to be Perez Hilton

by writing nice stories about celebrities.

He was writing doodles on their photos.

Brittany Murphy, "Is she pill popping?"

"Is she anorexic?" "Is she bulimic?"

- I remember she called me crying and said,

"Can you call my manager?"

Who was a very, very, very big manager at the time.

"He thinks I'm on drugs."

I know that hurt her deeply.

- You were kind of nasty at times.

- I was more than nasty.

I--I didn't even view Brittany Murphy

or any of the celebrities that I covered as real people.

They were characters to me.

It was almost like a way

to disassociate myself from my actions,

from what I was writing and saying.

"Oh, this isn't real,

and also Perez is a character."

I would tell all these things to myself

to help me sleep at night.

If you're at a point in your life

where your career is struggling,

your personal life is also struggling,

you might be drawn to the wrong people.

[indistinct chatter]

- Hey, hey, hey! Whoa!

- Brittany, can we get a fashion shot?

- She was an open vessel.

If she trusted you, she let you in.

He saw her coming a mile away.

She was pure, trusting,

loving, open, and he saw her coming.

- And got it. Mark.

Great. Thank you.

- My name is Harley Pasternak.

I am a celebrity fitness and nutrition author.

I trained Simon Monjack a number of years ago.

First time I met Simon,

he rolled up in a vintage Ferrari,

and he got out smoking these fancy, I think,

Cohiba cigars, and his girlfriend

had the biggest diamond ring you've ever seen.

They got engaged the night before, and she was happy.

And then he said, "We're both gonna work with you."

And then his balance started to run up a lot more,

and I wouldn't let him book new sessions.

And then he called me one day and he says,

"Hey, I'm dating Brittany Murphy now.

"And I want to bring her in and for us to work out together,

and I'll pay you what I owe you."

And they showed up one day.

Brittany was for sure under the influence of something.

Pills maybe.

She was kind of slurring her words.

She was very sweet and--and--

but kind of all over the place.

And he said, "Brittany's got a big project,

and I want you to get her ready for the role."

"Okay, well, if I'm gonna work with Brittany,

I'll just deal with her team."

And I remember reaching out to her team and saying,

"She fired all of us.

"Simon is her agent, manager, and lawyer and everything now.

You have to go through Simon."

And they said, "We're concerned

"because no one can contact her directly.

You can only go through Simon."

I don't even know if she had a phone.

Simon was the only one who carried the phone.

- She just seemed like she was high.

So I don't--I don't know.

[uneasy music]

♪ ♪

- I would say that Simon Monjack

accelerated the path that Brittany Murphy

was heading down by the time that they got together.

- I couldn't believe that this bottom-feeding sociopath

had actually worked his way up the food chain

to someone who was actually a legitimate artist.

So the first thing I did was I called her agency.

I said, "You need to tell her every word out of his mouth

is a lie and that she's got to get the hell out."

The word coming back was her manager had tried

and gotten fired as a result,

that there was no talking to her.

So I did something I never imagined myself doing,

I called the "National Enquirer."

I called their tip line,

and I said, "I don't want money for this,

because this guy is dangerous."

This big story comes out about Simon and Brittany.

A week later, Perez Hilton came out with a headline

that said "The kook and the crook."

And I thought, "Okay, my work is done here.

I have gotten the word out."

- This is all starting to come out.

Her true friends know that Simon's not good news.

There was this talk of an intervention,

and this intervention took place at Brittany's house.

These friends were showing Brittany

and her mother documentation

that, you know, Simon had trouble with the law,

that Simon had outstayed his visa, which he had.

Brittany and her mom said, "No, we love Simon,

and we believe Simon. Sorry."

And the intervention fails.

- Simon started building a wall around her.

He took charge-- he took charge of finances,

making investments.

He was buying property.

He was buying jewelry, had a tiara made of diamonds

that was a replica of Audrey Hepburn's tiara

in "Breakfast at Tiffany's."

So they could have

all these investments to fall back on.

- He was making all of her decisions.

He was clearly getting her money.

He started driving her to work but waiting.

And every time there was a break,

she would leave and go be in the car with him.

And it got more and more restrictive,

and it got more and more apparent to all of us

that she wasn't hanging out

or having lunch with us or talking.

- One day, her numbers were changed.

No one knew where she was, couldn't find her.

Disappeared. Disappeared.

Simon took her away.

That was it.

He made sure no one could get to her.

♪ ♪

- Action.

- This room is a personal favorite of mine.

You will be joining some very distinguished company.

- Cut.

- My name is Alex Merkin. I'm a director.

I directed Brittany Murphy

in the film "Across the Hall" in 2008.

"Across the Hall" was my first feature film.

When we sat down and we met,

she was incredibly engaged in the material.

She was so enthusiastic, so bright.

There's this energy that's very infectious.

In the meeting, I felt confident in her dedication

to the material and her excitement for it.

- ♪ Shine in my backyard someday ♪

- B15, 66 apple. Take one, mark.

- ♪ I'm going down ♪ - Cut.

- I did start to feel some red flags.

First day, Brittany's coming set,

she's three hours late.

And I went to her trailer,

and Simon Monjack ordered an egg sandwich off of me.

He seemed--he seemed fairly out of it.

He seemed to not exactly know

who he's talking to or where he was.

And yeah, I was concerned about it.

I was definitely concerned about it.

I say, I say, "He's here. He's at the hotel.

How did he find us? Or how did he--"

- Yea, how did he-- - Set.

- How did he find me here?

- And... - Oh, I'm sorry.

Hold on one second, please. Sorry.

- There would often be times

where she just completely didn't know the lines,

and I'd be feeding her the line

or the actor would have to feed her the line.

- He didn't screw it up at all. - Line.

- I think you get off on fucking him over.

- No, you mean everything in the world to him.

More than I ever could.

We'll take it from here. Keep rolling, please.

- The other thing that I was seeing

was that Brittany would come to set

and she'd be in a really good space.

And then I would see her, you know, go off with Simon

and spend some time, and when she came back,

I felt a stark change in her mood.

- [groaning indistinctly]

[sobs]

- It would be like Jekyll and Hyde

from the moment she had interacted with him.

I mean, I learned that she didn't have access

to her own email address.

I learned she had no access to her own phone.

And if I wanted to reach her, I had to reach her through him.

It felt to me a lot like he was planting this insecurity

and this fear into her.

- That's a cut.

- I'm so sorry.

- Yeah, let's go.

- We had a scene to film with her, they embrace.

There's some short kissing,

and then they fall out of frame, and that's it.

And I had to spend time on the set with her

fighting where she was not gonna do any scenes

that depict any kind of intimacy

with anybody other than her husband.

She sold it to me as this thing that she could not do

because she's evolved into this magical relationship.

This is actually the moment where I was--

I was ready to replace her.

I went outside with one of the producers,

and I saw Simon Monjack.

And I intentionally loudly said,

"We're gonna just have to go with somebody else."

I wanted him to hear it.

And he did.

And he started to panic, and he came up to me.

He said, "Hey, listen, we can-- we can work this out.

"She'll do whatever you want to do.

Let me go speak with her and we'll get this all worked out."

- Hey. - Hey.

[gentle music]

♪ ♪

- I do love him.

I wanted to make sure that it was my love

that I was feeling,

and not--not just his love.

- There was something,

I don't want to say worshiping about their relationship,

but it did feel like it bordered on that.

- [indistinct]

- It's something that felt completely unhealthy,

something that felt delusional on some level,

a manipulative ploy on his part to control her

and to keep his hooks in her.

- This isn't me.

[indistinct chatter, camera shutters clicking]

This--this isn't me.

Jules.

- We heard that he was controlling.

Is that something you would agree with?

- Well, only to say that when I saw them together,

they were very much in love.

It's a very fine line, isn't it,

between controlling somebody

and managing them to have the best career?

I don't know.

- Do you think that how Simon presented himself to Brittany,

he exaggerated things to her?

- Um, I don't know how I can answer that.

- There's a chance.

- I know he wasn't in the market to hurt anybody.

You know, people do believe what they want to believe.

You hear what you want to hear.

You react to what you want to hear from that other person,

and I think that's--you know.

[uneasy music]

♪ ♪

- Less than a week after Simon passes away,

Sharon calls me up to the house

and she brings out this jewelry,

diamond rings, bracelets, necklaces.

And she says, "I need cash.

So I want you to take this and sell it."

I said, "I represent two jewelry designers

on Rodeo Drive."

And so I took everything

and I went to the first jewelry designer client

and I said, "Well, what's it worth?"

And he just took the thing out of his eye and he said,

"None of it's real."

So I take it and I go to my other jewelry client.

I said, "Can you tell me how much this jewelry is worth?"

He takes the thing out, puts in his eye,

and he's looking at it, he's looking at.

He said, "Roger, I'm so sorry, none of this is real."

And I started realizing, "Oh, my gosh.

"He has lied to Sharon. She's gonna be devastated.

"She thinks she's got a million dollars

just in one piece."

So I get back to the house.

And she looked at me like, "What is it?

Why is this jewelry here?"

I said, "I just have to tell you, none of it's real."

And her face,

she didn't have to say anything,

'cause her face said at all.

She said, "Well, I guess

"there's no property either then.

"I guess there's no stocks and bonds,

and I guess there's no real estate."

Simon went through 3 million of Brittany's dollars

in three years,

a million a year in three years.

Sharon thinks she's got financial security.

She has nothing.

All she's left with is the house,

Brittany's pension,

and whatever was in the bank.

She was devastated.

She was devastated.

- He owed me a lot of money for a long time.

It's funny, in Hollywood,

you don't need to threaten violence.

You just need to threaten publicity.

I told him I was going to the press.

And then I got a check for the whole amount.

He had been running for a long time.

There was things he did in other states,

used fake names, stole money, bounced checks.

And then when he became this public figure because

he was with Brittany Murphy now, people could find him.

So all the people that he screwed over all of a sudden,

"Oh, I know where he is." Very simple.

- Once I was told certain things,

everything else made sense to me.

I was putting a puzzle together,

a jigsaw puzzle, very complicated puzzle.

And the more information I got,

the more everything else that happened made sense.

He had all these secrets.

None of--nobody knew about, all these little secrets.

And if something started come to the surface,

"It's absurd. It's crazy."

He would, "No, they're lying. It's not true."

Brittany and Sharon believed him.

And what we find out later, we find out that he had a child

that Brittany didn't know about,

that none of us knew that he had a child.

He was putting that child through private school

in England.

So I'm sure quite a bit of money of Brittany's

went to the child.

- The interesting thing about Simon's personal life

is how little I think Brittany really knew about it.

When he died, it started coming out.

So he had a daughter in England,

by then she was a teenager.

But what people didn't know was that through my reporting,

I had gotten in touch with a woman who lived in France,

and she had had a son with him.

He had a child that nobody was talking about

and nobody really knew about.

- Excuse me?

- There's a second child. - I didn't know that.

Uh-uh. I only know about one child.

There was a second child? Wow.

- My name is Elizabeth Ragsdale.

I knew Simon.

I was engaged to him, and I have his child.

And so it's time now to tell my story.

[mellow guitar music]

♪ ♪

So the night that I met Simon, it was, like,

probably one of the strongest times in my life.

I'd financed myself an apartment in Paris.

I was gonna write my book.

A friend, she called me up and said,

"You gotta meet this guy."

I'm like, "Okay, I'll come."

So he had a car come and get me.

I just immediately was intrigued

with his dark chocolate eyes.

I just felt like he could see all the way down into my soul.

He wanted to see me the next night.

And I stayed the next night, so...

I never left him again.

He proposed to me in Harrods department store,

and he called me on the phone.

And I answered it, and he said, "Look behind you."

And I turned around, and he was on one knee.

And he had a Tiffany's bag.

He took a box out of it and a crowd gathered around,

and he--he said,

"Elizabeth Ragsdale, will you marry me?"

And, um...

and I said, "Yes, yes, I will."

Simon tearfully told me one night

after I would not make love with him

that he had spinal cancer

and that he was gonna have to go

to have this shark cartilage treatment in Monaco.

So of course, I break down

because the love of my life has cancer,

I find out all of a sudden,

and, you know, so everything changes,

and then we have sex

after that.

- So he got what he wanted? - He got what he wanted.

He was very rough.

It wasn't always when I wanted to.

[gentle music]

♪ ♪

He said that we had to get pregnant

if we were gonna have our own children

because the shark cartilage treatments

would make him sterile.

I was really sick in Monaco

in the beginning of the pregnancy.

It was just severe nausea,

where I couldn't raise my head.

So I wanted to fly my sister and everybody over.

"No, no, no, no, I don't want any people around right now."

Then my friend who,

she's not the type to take no for an answer

and she was also very worried about me

'cause I'd been cut off from everybody,

and she showed up at the villa, and she said, you know,

"You look like you've just come out of a concentration camp."

And she tells Simon, "If you do not get her to a doctor,

then I'm taking her now."

And he said, "I will."

But I believe that my friend saved my life.

He said, "I want for you to have the baby on U.S. soil."

So Simon got me to New York, and he was in Monaco.

You know, he got my ticket and everything,

and I got there and I got up into my little studio,

and I called him to tell him I was there.

And I said, "Simon, I've made it, I'm here in--"

Click, he hung up on me.

And then trying to call him back a million times

and realizing he's just not picking up

or something's happened to him or something's wrong.

And I started looking for ways

to get in touch with his mother.

And I found his mother, and she told me

that he didn't have spinal cancer

and that he had been using her money for that.

But she was furious with him.

The owner of the villa told me

that he was already with somebody else.

I thought about, um...

killing myself

because I didn't--

Who does that? I mean--

And then the reason I didn't is because of the baby.

[light music]

♪ ♪

After not being in touch for a long time,

I worked in Paris and lived outside Paris.

And so I was on the train coming home from work,

reading a magazine, there was a little picture that said,

"Brittany Murphy has married."

And it was Simon. He got in touch with me.

He offered, at that point, to buy me a house,

and we talked for a little while,

and that one ended with him

threatening to come and get my son.

So I was quiet.

That, I believe, was his intention

was to try to keep me quiet

because the stakes were a lot higher with him

being married to Brittany.

He didn't need anybody to know

that I was out there with his son.

I know why Brittany chose Simon.

He worked his spell on her.

And she fell for it like I did.

- Everything is a lie?

Everything is a lie.

[static crackling]

Every--every--everything-- everything is a lie.

- Don't take it personally, Mare.

Mare Bear.

- Don't touch me.

- The man you fell in love with is not real.

[somber music]

♪ ♪

- So, you know, we did speak to Elizabeth Ragsdale,

Elijah's mom.

- Well, he never acknowledged--

you do know that he never acknowledged his existence.

When you look at Elijah,

you can see there's a likeness,

but what I'm saying is that it's very difficult

to acknowledge something that you don't know.

- There's this story about the shark fin treatments.

Was there any truth to any of that?

- He was terribly fearful that his father got cancer at 29.

I certainly don't think he went out to tell people,

"I have cancer." I think he believed it.

- We heard that Simon had actually

swindled money off of you.

- He never swindled money from me.

I gave him money, copious amounts of money,

but I just gave it willingly and freely, probably foolishly.

But nevertheless, he didn't-- he didn't cheat me.

[gentle music]

♪ ♪

- Simon and Brittany

were basically locked up in that house.

They did these really weird photoshoots

in the middle of the night

where he would dress her like a doll.

He encouraged her to become addicted to plastic surgery.

He would tell her, "Your teeth aren't right.

"Your nose isn't right.

We might need to do something with your chin."

And she became increasingly insecure about her appearance,

increasingly paranoid about people being out to get her.

Simon had the landlines disconnected.

So the only way you could reach Sharon or Brittany

was through Simon.

Simon and Brittany would stay up late nights

and take downers and then chug coffee

and take uppers to come back up.

And, you know, they rarely left the house.

- I remember I was at some show,

like 40 minutes into it,

she shows up scooting through the seats with Simon

with, like, bleary eyes,

and I just didn't recognize her anymore.

Brittany was just cloudy and gone.

- It was alarming to see how thin she had gotten.

Emaciated.

She was so frail.

- When I saw Brittany Murphy getting really thin,

I knew that he had something to do with that.

He loved anorexic women.

He would look at me from behind in my jeans and he would go,

"Do you really think you need to wear those jeans?

Because, you know, you look kind of--"

- He was everything.

He was the agent. He was the manager.

He was the makeup artist.

Nobody touched her. Nobody got close to her.

It was all him.

When the offers are drying up

because you got going around town,

"Don't deal with Brittany

because her husband's a lunatic,"

he took what he could get.

- If you look at someone who just a few years ago

was in really iconic movies,

I mean, "Eight Mile," "Clueless."

These are movies that will stand the test of time,

to then be in thrillers and slashers

that are going straight to video,

it looks like failure.

- Mark.

- I'm Trista Jordan.

I am a celebrity makeup artist.

And I was the last one to film with Brittany.

When I got to that set, I was told her husband

was gonna be her makeup artist.

So it's day one.

I rushed to set just to find a makeup disaster.

[chuckles]

Simon had taken a red tube of lipstick

and had drawn lips

outside her natural lip line like a clown.

Her blush was lopsided. Her hair was greasy.

Your job as a makeup artist

is you're looking behind the monitor

to see if things are changing.

And watching Simon, he wasn't looking in the monitor.

He was looking straight ahead.

He was in a catatonic state,

and I snapped my fingers in front of his face

to see if he'd react, and he didn't even flinch.

I've been around thousands of actors

and never seen someone that thin.

Her elbows.

And getting out of a chair, she looked like Bambi.

She just seemed like she was in pain,

especially when she moved.

I think she was sick.

She didn't care if her hair was messed up.

She didn't ask for a mirror.

And that's unusual in Hollywood.

I just think she lost the ability to care.

She was a disaster in her heart,

and she was a disaster emotionally and physically.

[thunder rumbles]

- We found that, evidently, Simon got involved.

I don't know if he slapped somebody or hit somebody,

and she got fired.

And that's why they came back early.

- It was reported this week that actress Brittany Murphy

was fired from her upcoming film "The Caller"

for being a detriment to production and--oh, no.

- Seth... [laughter]

- Brittany Murphy.

- Yeah.

They fired me.

[chuckles] Yeah.

[laughter]

- In Puerto Rico, they became ill with flu-like symptoms.

They had flown back.

Brittany started showing signs of not feeling good,

but they were treating her sickness

with over-the-counter medications.

And, you know, after a few days,

if the over-the-counter medications aren't working,

you know, seek a professional diagnosis on what's going on.

According to the information that we got,

it was kind of a habit that Simon,

he'd keep her up late, they would order food in

at 2:00 and 3:00 in the morning,

and stay up and watch television.

She'd be exhausted the next day

and she wasn't getting enough rest

and her immune system was dropping.

He just was blanketed around her

and yet didn't remove that blanket

and seek medical attention when she needed it.

- She was a tiny girl.

Your body can only take so much.

[static crackling]

[light music]

♪ ♪

[indistinct chatter]

- Don't move, ma'am. Don't move.

♪ ♪

- The premiere of our film was at the end of 2009.

When I saw her there, she was extremely sweet,

she was extremely proud.

But she was also, felt to me, extremely frail.

- She embraced my hands and her hands were shaky.

She looked very, very, very thin,

like she had lost a lot of weight.

Outside of that, she wasn't acting strangely.

She actually talked to me about children that she was

planning on having, things that were very sweet.

It felt really a lot more like the person that I had met

when we were going into this whole process.

- Thank goodness everyone was kind.

No one generally tends to be in a--

on a set that's an independent film,

that has a short schedule unless they really want to be.

- What do you think--

- Everyone wanted to be there,

and that was a pleasure.

♪ ♪

- Obviously, the shoot experience

was crazy and chaotic and volatile at times.

But I saw the person that I had originally met with.

It almost felt like it came full circle.

If we were like, let's do another one,

I probably would have been in this weird sort of,

you know, euphoric space with like,

"Oh, this is great, everything's good,

and she's proud and she's here to support."

It turned out to be two weeks before she passed away.

- Thank you. - Thank you.

- On a radio interview in 2009,

somebody asked me to make a prediction of who would die,

what celebrity would pass away.

And I said Brittany Murphy.

And all these years later now, I just--

I regret saying that, just putting that energy out there.

It's gross.

Gross of the interviewer

and gross of me for giving a response.

But that's definitely telling of the time.

2009, in many ways, was a very gross time.

- [indistinct] 197.

What's the address of the emergency?

- 1895 Rising Glen Road.

- Tell me exactly what happened.

- My daughter's passed out.

She's--they're doing mouth to mouth.

Please get here. Please, please.

[wind howling]

- My husband came in, he said I have bad news.

And I said, "Did Brittany die?"

And he said, "Yes."

And I just felt so-- I felt bad for her.

But I also felt,

why didn't I just go over there

and knock on the door all day long?

And just have her hate me or call the police

but just knock on that door and take her away.

[uneasy music]

♪ ♪

- You know, I ofttimes think about Sharon too,

just hoping she's okay,

'cause when I had been to the house,

she would walk by Brittany's clothes

and she would smell the clothes.

But I remember when she finally

got all of Brittany's clothes together

and it filled up a whole room and she had a sale.

She sold them all.

It took her about a year to be able to do that,

to come to terms with that.

The last I heard about Sharon,

she was living in Southern California,

but very reclusive.

She won't return emails or phone calls.

Sharon was just heartbroken.

- I had to accept

there were no answers for me to find in this.

So I had to kind of step away from it.

That was difficult for me to do,

but for a mother to accept

that she might not fully understand

what happened to her son can be quite devastating.

- I can't say why or what happened in that house.

It became a really awful tragedy

that should never have happened.

But the reason why it happened is very difficult to state.

- I believe that Simon Monjack,

even if he did not kill Brittany Murphy,

he allowed her to die

because he did not get her to the doctor and get her help,

and I believe that he did the same thing to himself.

Knowing that he needed medical treatment,

he didn't get it and he died.

He would rather be dead than to be discovered

as the con artist he was.

- I think if it wasn't for Simon Monjack,

there's every chance Brittany Murphy

would still be alive.

It ultimately is like a very banal story.

It's just--it really isn't a huge mystery.

It's just very simple, a predator targeting someone

at their most vulnerable.

It was the perfect storm.

- The cause of death is not a mystery.

The mystery is why didn't somebody catch it.

Had they taken her to the doctor a few days before,

she'd still be alive.

There are some people that they're not satisfied.

You know, they think maybe there's more.

You just have to go on the facts.

- Why do you just want to settle for,

"She died of pneumonia, oh, well"?

It just doesn't make sense.

- Her death was not accidental,

and her husband's was not accidental.

I believe they both were targeted.

- I think that their autopsies were forged.

- Something happened.

Someone must have bribed someone.

- No, it just--it just doesn't sound right.

It doesn't even sound like it adds up.

It just--I'm sorry. It don't add up.

[gentle music]

[indistinct radio chatter]

♪ ♪

- Please. Why can't you just let me die?

♪ ♪

- We're gonna get out of here.

- Where are we gonna go?

- I don't know, someplace where there's trees and sky,

we can breathe the fucking air.

Some place that's not so fucked up.

♪ ♪

Hi, my name is Brittany Murphy,

and I go to Herbert Hoover Middle School.

♪ ♪

[light dramatic music]

♪ ♪