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4 Famous Deaths That Were Stranger Than You Thought

But a number of strange details call into question the coroner’s ruling of “apparent suicide.” Williams was found with the gun in his right hand, but his fatal wound was on the left side of his head, requiring a feat of frankly unnecessary acrobatics to make suicide plausible. The gun also had fired two bullets, only one of which made its way inside Williams, and a shattered glass bottle was found near his left hand, as if he’d dropped it in surprise. He also hadn’t bothered to get fully dressed before driving off in anger just a few blocks down the street, which points to an alternative theory: a boyfriend or husband who may have caught Williams with his (their?) girlfriend. After all, she was his side piece. Perhaps she also had a main … piece? What are we calling those now?

Brittany Murphy

Unlike most sudden celebrity deaths, no one saw Brittany Murphy’s coming. She was young, apparently healthy, and didn’t seem to have many problems at all. After she collapsed in her bathroom and subsequently died in 2009, the word on the street was a secret drug problem, but it turned out to have been pneumonia, of all things, complicated by anemia (seemingly due to heavy periods) and, yes, several drugs, but the kind that make you stop coughing, not the fun-yet-dangerous kind.

That was weird enough — what otherwise healthy 32-year-old dies of pneumonia? — but it got weirder after a Hollywood Reporter editor and family friend wrote that Murphy’s husband, Simon Monjack, had tried to convince him to write a book claiming that Murphy “literally died of a broken heart caused by the shoddy way she had been treated in Hollywood,” realizing later “that much of what Simon told me — about his family, education, marriage and career—was exaggerated or simply fabricated.” Murphy’s mother, Sharon, who lived with the couple, denounced the Hollywood Reporter article, but she was also photographed with Monjack looking very sad but also very cuddly. If you were an old-timey noir detective, you would absolutely start thinking the husband did it.

Brittany Murphy celebrating Brittany's birthday)

Luisa Pisani/Wiki Commons

Somehow, uh, with pneumonia?

But then, just six months later, Monjack also died of pneumonia and anemia, so the coroner (and the public) began considering outside factors. After toxic mold in the home was dismissed as a potential cause of the occupants’ respiratory troubles, Murphy’s father requested samples of her hair for independent testing and claims that the resulting lab report shows evidence of heavy metal poisoning.

You might be starting to think this is a black widow/mother situation, but despite general shadiness, Sharon Murphy sure is acting the opposite, up to and including arguing publicly with the coroner who keeps saying the couple’s deaths aren’t suspicious. (Oh yeah, he also insists the lab results cited by Murphy’s father don’t show evidence of poisoning.) She was also identified as the probable anonymous person in the coroner’s report of Monjack’s death who pointed out “her side” of the bed where he died, but even TMZ acknowledged that sharing a bed doesn’t necessitate sexual activity, and that would be a really dumb thing for a vengeful lover to draw attention to. These days, she believes it was mold, and it’s probably the best answer we’re going to get. The home had previously belonged to Britney and Justin, and it would be nice to have something to blame for all that.

Top image: Universal Pictures

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