Lesley Vogel, the estranged mother of actress Hayden Panettiere, is publicly disputing the story told by the man who was with her daughter when she died, and pressing South Carolina law enforcement to dig deeper.
Panettiere, the 36-year-old Golden Globe nominee known for her roles in Heroes and Nashville, was found unresponsive on August 16 at an Airbnb in Greenville, South Carolina, where she had been staying with Brian Hickerson. EMTs responded for a cardiac arrest. They administered Narcan, the drug used to reverse opioid overdoses, and performed CPR. Panettiere was pronounced dead at the scene.
Now Vogel, 70, says the account Hickerson and his brother have given about that day is "full of holes." In interviews with the Daily Mail and on Good Morning America, she laid out a series of questions about the timeline, the presence of Narcan at the scene, and what Hickerson claims he was doing while her daughter lay dying.
Brian Hickerson's version of August 16, as Vogel relayed it to the Page Six, goes like this: he left the Airbnb at 10:30 a.m. while Panettiere was doing her makeup. He ran an errand, came back, and took a nap, without, he told police, any further interaction with Panettiere.
His brother, Zach Hickerson, gave a separate account to TMZ. Zach said he arrived and knocked loudly, waking Brian from a nap on a pull-out couch bed in the living room. When they went to wake Panettiere for lunch, they found her unconscious. Zach said he called 911 while Brian administered Narcan, and the two performed CPR together until paramedics arrived.
But TMZ's initial report told a different version: that Zach discovered Panettiere's body while Brian slept in another room. The discrepancy, were Brian and Panettiere napping together on the pull-out couch, or was Brian asleep somewhere else entirely?, has not been resolved publicly.
Vogel zeroed in on two points. First, the Narcan. She told the Daily Mail she does not believe Hickerson simply happened to have the overdose-reversal drug on hand:
"I do not believe he happened to have two bottles of Narcan on him, like he carried them around in his back pocket. I think there will be a discrepancy in the timeline, meaning Brian had to go out and buy the Narcan while he left her there."
Breitbart reported that Narcan was found in a mattress at the scene, though it remained unclear whether it had been used to revive Panettiere. The 911 audio described her as suffering cardiac arrest during a suspected overdose.
Second, Vogel questioned how anyone could sleep through what was happening beside them. She told the Daily Mail:
"I don't know how you can take a nap near someone who's dying and not realize something's wrong. When the EMTs came it [was for a cardiac arrest]. People in cardiac arrest aren't just lying still. They make noise."
Panettiere had secretly reconnected with Hickerson in the months before her death, a decision that alarmed those close to her.
The questions Vogel is raising do not exist in a vacuum. Brian Hickerson pleaded no contest in 2021 to two felony counts of injuring a spouse or girlfriend in incidents involving Panettiere. Panettiere herself documented what she called an abusive romance with Hickerson in her memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, published earlier in 2026.
Vogel said the estrangement from her daughter was not born of indifference. It was the result of an ultimatum. Fox News reported that Vogel had traveled to California to help Panettiere leave Hickerson, but Panettiere eventually returned to the relationship.
In their final phone conversation, the date of which has not been disclosed, Panettiere reportedly told her mother she was going to "be with the person [she] love[d]." Vogel described her reaction on Good Morning America:
"I just lost it. I could not believe she had gone that far back, that he had been successful in reeling her back in with all the things he had done to her."
In a separate statement, Vogel framed the estrangement plainly: "Although my daughter and I were estranged, it was not for lack of care or love. It was due to the involvement of a toxic individual who I believe led to her death."
Panettiere had also hired security to keep Hickerson away in the months before she died, a fact that makes the reunion in Greenville all the more difficult for her family to accept.
The death remains under active investigation. The Greenville City Police Department is the lead agency, and the Drug Enforcement Administration has joined the probe, a step that signals possible drug-related circumstances.
AP News reported that an autopsy found no signs of trauma and police saw no signs of foul play. No official cause of death has been determined.
Sloan Ellis, Brian Hickerson's lawyer, released a statement emphasizing that point: "Hayden's death remains under investigation and it is important to allow that investigation to proceed. As has been publicly reported, police confirmed there were no signs of foul play." Ellis told Page Six there would be no further comment.
Vogel is not satisfied with that posture. She said she has pressured South Carolina law enforcement to investigate further. She recounted a conversation with a police officer who, she said, asked her directly: "Well, what do you think about Brian Hickerson?" That exchange, unverified beyond Vogel's own account, suggests at least some openness within law enforcement to the questions she is raising.
The DEA's entry into the case adds federal weight to an investigation that began as a local police matter.
Panettiere began acting as a child and built a career that earned her a Golden Globe nomination. But her public life was shadowed by struggles she did not hide. She spoke openly about alcoholism, depression, and substance abuse. In a 2023 interview with Women's Health, she said: "I was the one who put myself in the first treatment center. I was drowning."
Her memoir laid bare a lifetime of addiction and abuse, physical pain, mental health battles, and the emotional toll of giving up custody of her daughter. Fox News reported that Vogel believed the loss of custody was a key catalyst in Panettiere's decline.
Her father, Skip Panettiere, said in a statement: "She was an incredible light and a force of nature who brought immeasurable love and joy to all who knew her."
Vogel's public campaign may or may not change the trajectory of the investigation. The timeline has gaps. The accounts from the people inside that Airbnb contradict each other on basic facts, where Brian Hickerson was sleeping, whether Panettiere was beside him, how Narcan came to be at the scene. Those are not rhetorical questions. They are the kind of questions investigators exist to answer.
A mother who gave her daughter an ultimatum and lost is now asking the state of South Carolina to do what she could not: hold the man beside Hayden Panettiere accountable for what happened in that room.
