Hayden Panettiere Death: New Details Surface in DEA Investigation

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Branson Quirk (0:38)

Hey, welcome to the TMZ Podcast. I'm Branson Quirk.

Tony Smith (0:41)

And I'm Tony Smith.

Branson Quirk (0:41)

Good morning.

Tony Smith (0:42)

Good morning. We got a quick episode for you guys today. We do have a lot going on in the newsroom as we always do, but we do have some new details that law enforcement sources are telling us potentially what happened to Hayden Panettiere.

Branson Quirk (0:54)

Right. This death investigation is potentially coming to a close here pretty soon. As we know, the toxicology report on Hayden Panettiere. Typically, these things take around 8 to 10 weeks. So we are approaching that mark here very soon. But now we're being told exclusively by sources close by law enforcement, what they believe killed Hayden Panettiere. I know this is a hard subject to talk about, but we do have these new details. So multiple law enforcement sources connected to the investigation believe that Hayden died after taking a single oxycodone pill laced with fentanyl. Sources with direct knowledge tell us that Hayden had, quote, a long-time drug dealer in Los Angeles who allegedly supplied her with several black market prescription drugs, including oxycodone. What the most important part of this case or this new information is that the official toxicology reports are still pending. So, it's important to put it out there that this is not official information yet, but this is what law enforcement that are involved in the investigation believe. They believe that the fentanyl-laced oxycodone explanation is the working theory currently, but it's not a finalized cause of death. So, don't get the two mixed up. According to these sources, Hayden purchased multiple drugs from her alleged drug dealer before traveling from Los Angeles to South Carolina. She apparently took several of those drugs during her flight from LA to South Carolina on the day before she died.

Tony Smith (2:26)

So, authorities believe that on the morning of her death, that Hayden took that oxycodone pill, and that's the working theory is that the pill had been laced with fentanyl and proved to be unfortunately fatal.

Again, also, the DEA in Los Angeles, they're actively looking into this alleged long time dealer that Hayden was dealing with. And it's sort of similar to, it makes you wonder, like I was saying this the other day, like what happened to Mac Miller and then Matthew Perry, how if this is the case, they're definitely gonna try to see who this dealer is and hopefully they get them.

Branson Quirk (3:06)

And these black market drugs, I mean, when you look into the day to day of when these drugs are distributed to the public and the stats, I don't have the exact number, but I do know that a lot of these black market drugs are laced with lethal fentanyl and they use that to make it cheaper when they're making it, et cetera. I'm not gonna go into the details because I don't know, but I do know that fentanyl is common when you're buying drugs off of the black market and that's why it's so dangerous and that's why you see these massive sentences for people like drug dealers. Look at the Ketamine Queen for Matthew Perry. She had a network of Ketamine customers, people that were coming to her for this time and time again. And what they found was that this is just a dangerous thing. I mean, Ketamine is so different from oxycodone, but it's all dangerous when it's being administered illegally and yeah. And this is unfortunately what happens in the end, and we also did over the weekend, by the way, we got footage of, because her boyfriend, Brian Hickerson, a lot of focus has been on him as well. And potentially, if he had anything to do with this, we know that at the scene, he had given law enforcement a bag of prescription drugs that she was taking. And the DEA has been speaking with him and he has been speaking with them. So he's been apparently cooperating with law enforcement.

Not any details about that. But over the weekend, he got in trouble himself.

Tony Smith (4:42)

Yeah, he got into a massive bar fight. We're playing the video right now. So him and his brother, Zach... So the reason for this, you're seeing when I first played this, he threw a chair immediately. And the reason for that, we got some details. So him and his brother may allegedly have been heckled about Hayden Panettiere's death before that fight scene.