What happened to Brittany Murphy Foundation? Just like the actress's death, it was surrounded by suspicion
Brittany Murphy died under suspicious circumstances in December 2009 at the age of 32 and her death still continues to haunt us. With feuds between Murphy's mother, Sharon Murphy, and her father, Angelo Bertolotti, the case never went away from the headlines.
In January 2010, Murphy's mother, Sharon, and her widower, Simon Monjack, established the Brittany Murphy Foundation, a charitable fund for children's arts education, as well as supporting the USO and cancer research. However, even the foundation was not free of scandal. After it was launched in February 2010 at a fundraising event at the Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills, a records search showed that the foundation's not-for-profit status had not been filed.
The site for the foundation then briefly shut down and then relaunched a few days later with a message that stated it would no longer accept donations "until we have our non-profit status approved before proceeding to ensure that we can truly honor Brittany's charitable desires."
In an official letter on the foundation's website, they stated that in an effort to get the foundation set up as quickly as possible, they had established it as a private foundation with plans to apply for nonprofit status later.
At the time of the foundation's launch, Monjack was deemed "tacky" after asking supporters for $1,000 and $10,000 donations to attend the foundation's launch party. The event was eventually canceled "due to an illness in the family."
While much of the criticism has been directed at Brittany’s widower, her mother said the foundation was all her idea in an interview with People. “The foundation has nothing to do with Simon – it was me,” said Sharon Murphy. “My daughter and I always talked about doing that. It wasn’t Simon. I wanted to be clear about that.”
“Right after [Brittany] died, someone had come here to the house, who runs the biggest foundations, and I was just in such an awful way,” Murphy said. “We thought at first we were going to have the memorial right away, because people were here, and that turned out not to be a good idea.”
When Simon Monjack died in the Hollywood Hills residence he had shared with Brittany Murphy and her mother just five months after the actress's death, things got even murkier, especially as it was discovered that his autopsy report revealed a similar cause of death as his late wife.
In November 2013, the Brittany Murphy Foundation was officially relaunched by her father, Angelo Bertolotti, according to a press release posted on the foundation's website. However, by September 2018, the Brittany Murphy Foundation appeared to be defunct.
GuideStar USA, Inc, an information service specializing in reporting on US nonprofit companies, reported that the Brittany Murphy Foundation has not appeared on the IRS Business Master File in a number of months, which may indicate that it has ceased operations or merged with other operations.
After Murphy's father, Angelo Bertolotti, passed away in January 2019 at the age of 92, no news of the foundation has come up. Meanwhile, Murphy's mother had disappeared from the limelight after Monjack's death.
'Brittany Murphy: An ID Mystery' airs on Investigation Discovery on May 26 at 9/8c.