Britney Spears Says She's 'Curious' About Brittany Murphy's Mysterious 2009 Death: 'Just Saying'

Brittany Murphy died back in 2009 inside her Hollywood Hills home, which she purchased from Britney Spears in 2003

Photo: Phillip Faraone/FilmMagic; Michael Bezjian/WireImage

Britney Spears has questions about the mysterious death of Brittany Murphy.

On Instagram Friday, the "Toxic" singer, 40, shared the October PEOPLE cover story re-examining 32-year-old actress Murphy's Dec. 20, 2009 death 12 years later. Spears wrote that she is "curious" about the tragedy, which was also chronicled in the recent HBO Max documentary What Happened, Brittany Murphy? with chilling new details.

"I saw this online today …. is anybody else curious ??? She died at 32 … HMMMMMMMMMMM 🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧 … JUST SAYING !!!! Psss I know it was a while ago but come on …they are STILL INVESTIGATING !!!!" Spears wrote in the caption.

In February 2010, L.A. County Coroner Asst. Chief Ed Winter concluded that Murphy's death was the result of untreated pneumonia, combined with anemia and drug intoxication from prescription and over-the-counter medications, including painkillers and cold medicine. No illegal drugs were found in her system.

Her husband Simon Monjack, 40, strangely died just five months after her from similar causes.

On May 23, 2010, Murphy's mom Sharon found her son-in-law unresponsive in their home. Monjack was pronounced dead after the LAFD was called to the residence for a medical emergency, PEOPLE reported at the time. Like Murphy, a coroner later determined acute pneumonia and severe anemia as the causes of the screenwriter's death.

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Murphy died in the main bathroom of her Hollywood Hills home — which she moved into in 2003 after purchasing it fully furnished from Spears for $3.85 million.

There was speculation that the couple's deaths could have been related to mold in the home, but that theory was later dismissed by the medical examiner's office in 2010.

Both Spears and Murphy reported that they thought there was something strange about the home — which is located on Rising Glen Road, atop the Sunset Strip — when they each lived there.

Spears, who was dating Justin Timberlake when she lived in the house, apparently claimed to have had an otherworldly encounter that led her to leave the property and never come back. Her former makeup artist, Julianne Kaye, recounted the situation in an episode of Earios's We Need to Talk About Britney podcast in February 2021.

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"[Spears] had that place up on Sunset Plaza — and I'm just gonna say, this is really weird … She calls me … I had my friend do reiki healing on her, he had come up, I guess she'd had a crazy partying weekend and needed to relax. He left, and she swears to God that he opened some spirit portal or something, and these bad spirits had come in … and they were trying to, like, push her down the stairs or something crazy," Kaye explained on the podcast.

She continued: "It was so bad that she left. She went to the Casa Del Mar hotel to stay there and never went back to the house. She goes, 'I know you're gonna think I'm crazy. I'm not crazy. I know what I saw. I know what I felt.'"

Murphy, too, seemed to have a sense that something was off about the home. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter shortly after her death, in January 2010, Monjack shared that his late wife tried to avoid the home at all costs.

"She absolutely hated the Rising Glen house," he said at the time. "Every time we would drive up Sunset, Brit would say, 'Please, can we stay at the Beverly Hills Hotel?' I'd say: 'Honey, you've got to be realistic. We have our house, a 10,000-square-foot home. We're going to stay in it.'"

Monjack told reporters that Murphy thought the property was "unlucky," and was planning to move her, Monjack and her mother to New York in the next year, where they were planning to start a family.

In 2013, the home was torn down and underwent a multi-year rebuild, with developers aiming to create a sprawling, contemporary structure. When it was sold again in 2017 for $14.53 million, the property bore no resemblance to its former incarnation.