Federal narcotics agents have joined the investigation into actress Hayden Panettiere's death at 36, as her mother publicly accused the boyfriend who was present when Panettiere was found unresponsive of enabling years of destructive behavior.
Lesley Vogel, Panettiere's 70-year-old mother, told NBC News on Wednesday that a narcotics investigator had been assigned to the case, and that the Drug Enforcement Administration was now involved. Vogel said the escalation confirmed her own suspicions about the circumstances surrounding her daughter's death at a rented apartment in Greenville, South Carolina.
Fox News reported that the DEA had been contacted and was assisting in parallel death investigations. The agency declined to comment when contacted separately by the Daily Mail. The Greenville Police Department and the Greenville County Coroner's Office are both running their own probes. The coroner's office has said the cause of death remains under investigation.
Panettiere, best known for playing cheerleader Claire Bennet on the NBC drama Heroes and country singer Juliette Barnes on Nashville, was found unresponsive in an armchair at the Judson Mill Lofts apartment complex on a Sunday afternoon. Officers arrived at 1:50 p.m. Paramedics performed CPR for what the police report described as "an extended amount of time." She was declared dead at the scene.
She died five days before her 37th birthday.
Vogel's NBC interview centered on Brian Hickerson, 37, Panettiere's on-and-off boyfriend, who was inside the apartment with his brother Zach when she was found. Vogel did not mince words about the man she blamed for enabling her daughter's worst impulses.
Vogel told NBC News:
"This person in her life that we have been trying to get rid of for quite some time was with her at her death and that was Brian Hickerson."
She added that Hickerson had a long pattern of enabling Panettiere's substance use. "There is a lot of history in the past that Brian has enabled Hayden many times and this is why her father and I had been concerned for a long time about him," she said.
Panettiere had secretly reconnected with Hickerson despite a violent history between them. Court records show Hickerson was arrested in May 2019 and charged with injuring a spouse or girlfriend. He pleaded no contest in April 2021 and was sentenced to 45 days in county jail and four years of probation. In July 2020, Panettiere had filed for a restraining order against him; the outcome does not appear in court records.
In her memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, published roughly three months before her death, Panettiere described the relationship as "a very dark and complicated time in my life." She alleged Hickerson once beat her so severely she had to stay inside for weeks to keep her injuries hidden from the public. She said she tried to keep the alleged abuse from police because she feared it would become public.
Three days before Panettiere died, a judge denied Hickerson's request to reduce his past felony charges. The day before her death, the couple flew together from Los Angeles to South Carolina.
A newly released, heavily redacted Greenville Police Department report filled in details about the scene. Officers found Panettiere as someone "who did not seem to have any obvious physical reasons to be unresponsive." Hickerson showed police a "bag of medication" he said she had been taking at the time of her death.
The police report noted a stark contrast between the two brothers at the scene. Zach Hickerson was described as "very emotional" as he watched paramedics work. Brian Hickerson, by the officer's account, "did not show any emotion until his partner was declared dead."
Dispatch audio captured a 911 dispatcher describing the call as a "cardiac arrest." The dispatcher could also be heard referencing a suspected overdose. Breitbart reported that Narcan, the nasal medication used to reverse opioid overdoses, was found in a mattress at the scene, though it remained unclear whether anyone had used it to try to revive her.
Greenville police issued a statement saying "the preliminary investigation has not indicated any signs of foul play or suspicious circumstances." An autopsy found "no signs of trauma were discovered that would have contributed to the death." But the assignment of a narcotics investigator and the DEA's reported involvement suggest authorities are looking closely at what substances may have been involved.
Vogel told NBC News the timing of the emergency call raised questions. She said it was "not the typical hour of the day that you are partying, generally speaking", a reference to the early-afternoon hour when Panettiere was found.
Panettiere began acting as a small child. She voiced Dot in Pixar's A Bug's Life in 1998 and appeared alongside Denzel Washington in Remember the Titans in 2000. Her breakout came with Heroes, and she later earned two Golden Globe nominations for Nashville, where she starred for six seasons. Her singing on the show produced 11 entries on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts.
But behind the career milestones, Panettiere struggled with alcohol and opiates for years. She was open about it. In a 2023 interview, she said: "I was the one who put myself in the first treatment center. I was drowning," AP News reported.
Her memoir laid bare a lifetime of pain. She wrote about her mother pushing her too hard and serving as her manager, saying she got "brutally honest" about the dynamic. In the book, Panettiere said she "was so scared of her that approaching her and being honest about my feelings [back then] was not going to get me any positive reaction. This is my way of doing it."
The family fractures ran deep. Vogel told the Daily Mail in May that she had cut off contact with her daughter. "After 20 years of trauma, chaos, addictions [and] accusations, I felt I had no other option but to choose no contact," she said. She placed the estrangement's start around "mid-September" of 2025 and said she last spoke to Panettiere by phone in October.
Panettiere's younger brother Jansen died in 2023 at age 28 from an enlarged heart and aortic valve complications. He had also struggled with substance abuse, including crack and heroin, according to his sister. Panettiere wrote that she blamed herself: "I should have understood better than anybody what he was going through. And of all the people that could have saved him from passing away, it should have been me."
Vogel told NBC News she found comfort in one thought: "I just feel that she's with her brother and they're at peace."
Panettiere signed full custody of her daughter Kaya, now 11, to ex-fiancé Wladimir Klitschko, the former heavyweight boxing champion turned Ukrainian government official, in 2018 after their split. Panettiere later explained the decision: "By the time I finally got healthy, I felt like it would have been unfair of me to, and selfish of me to try to pull her out of this life that she had been creating." Kaya lives in Ukraine with her father.
Panettiere had spoken warmly of her father, Alan Lee "Skip" Panettiere, and stepmother Mekdem, saying she lived with them for a time in Rockland County, New York. "Being around family reminded me of who I am at my core," she said. Her father's statement after her death called her "an incredible light and a force of nature," the Washington Examiner reported.
Hickerson, for his part, had lashed out at Vogel publicly. In May, he told TMZ: "Hayden's mother is, by far, one of the worst people I've ever met in my life. I just can't with her, she's terrible." Vogel, in the same period, questioned the timing of Panettiere's public disclosure of her bisexuality, telling the Daily Mail: "I do not believe it was being hidden, but there is no historic proof that this is the case."
The dysfunction between the people closest to Panettiere, a mother who chose no contact, a boyfriend with a felony domestic violence record, a daughter living on another continent, paints a picture of an actress who was surrounded by conflict even as she tried, publicly, to get well. Her story echoes those of other child stars who grew up under the industry's pressures and never fully escaped them.
Vogel herself acknowledged the pattern. "I think young people who grow up in the entertainment industry, it is a struggle and it's a very challenging industry and it's not unusual for them to sadly find the wrong path," she told NBC News. "I think Hayden sadly lost her way, and I wish it were different."
Just The News noted that no cause of death has been officially provided. The coroner's investigation continues. The DEA's involvement, an agency that handles narcotics trafficking and distribution, not routine overdose calls, raises the question of whether investigators are looking beyond Panettiere herself to the source of whatever substances may have been involved.
Vogel said she had "very little information" because the investigation was ongoing, but that she planned to speak with a detective. She told NBC News the assignment of a narcotics investigator spoke for itself: "It leads me to believe they have questions, which of course they all do, but they are instigating this."
Panettiere battled severe back pain and mobility problems in her final months, struggles that often drive opioid dependence. The bag of medication Hickerson handed to police, the Narcan found at the scene, the dispatcher's reference to a suspected overdose, none of it has been officially confirmed as the cause of death. But none of it has been explained away, either.
When the DEA shows up, the questions get harder. Hayden Panettiere's family and the public deserve answers that match the seriousness of what happened in that Greenville apartment.
