Law&Crime Sidebar - Charges Coming in Hayden Panettiere's Death?

Episode Date: September 16, 2026

Federal agents are reportedly now zeroing in on years of text messages exchanged between actress Hayden Panettiere and an alleged drug dealer prior to her death at an apartment in Greenville, South Carolina. As investigators search for evidence following reports that Panettiere may have taken a pill laced with fentanyl, prosecutors are pointing to federal statutes that carry severe penalties—including potential murder or mandatory minimum charges—for dealers whose drugs cause fatal overdoses. Law&Crime's Jesse Weber breaks down the developing investigation with forensic chemist Bethany Pridgen, who explains what is really inside these illicit street pills and why so many are deadly.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: Go to http://opus.pro/SIDEBAR to get a week free then 50% off for the next 3 months!HOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger, Christina O'Shea, & Jay CruzScript Writing & Producing - Savannah Williamson, Heather Berzak & Juliana BattagliaGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrimeTwitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Years of text messages, reportedly right up until the weak actress Hayden Penitier died, were allegedly exchanged with this apparent drug dealer. And now, according to TMZ, the DEA is focusing on those apparent messages. And with the toxicology results still pending, but this report that the actress may have ingested an oxycodone pill that was laced with fentanyl, we are bringing on a forensic chemist to answer all our questions. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber.

Oh, by the way, if you're putting things out on social media, if you're into content creation, you might be wondering, how do we get all of our long crime clips out there so quickly? Well, we use something called Opus Clip. Opus Clip is an all-in-one AI editor that makes it so easy to cut, create, and upload videos across any platform. Because Opus Clip, it generates B-roll, it reframes footage, and it even cleans up audio through AI.

They find the best moments from your content. You just visit opus.com. sidebar. You sign up, you upload in a minutes, you'll have perfectly edited clips that your audience is going to love. Use Opusclip as your source for TikTok, shorts, reels. This is the most powerful tool to edit like a professional. Go to opus.com slash sidebar to get a free week, then 50% off for the next three months. That's opus.combeau slash sidebar. We're back with a new development in the investigation into Hayden Panetteer's death. So TMZ is reporting that the DEA is now zeroing in on text messages, these apparent messages between Hayden and an alleged drug dealer.

And I should also tell you that there's a counterstatement to this, a counter narrative to this. I'll read it to you in a minute. But according to this reporting, those apparent messages are now central to this investigation. And this is important because there have been other cases, right? High profile cases like that of Matthew Perry were messages surfaced that helped put people behind bars. Remember the infamous? I wonder how much this moron will pay. text. But we have more to cover here because according to TMZ, the DEA was reportedly looking

for evidence of pills just nine days after her death. As the outlet reported, and we covered here in a previous sidebar, sources are telling them that Hayden may have taken an oxycodone pill that was laced with fentanyl right before she died. And we're also going to be speaking with a forensic chemist to explain what's really in these pills, why she thinks more than half of the illicit pills on the market contain fentanyl or fentanyl analogs to really distinguish. disturbing situation that's out there and just going to help answer some questions we have about this. But look, what do we know? We know that Hayden Panetteer was found unresponsive and in cardiac arrest on Sunday, August 16th. She was at an apartment where she was temporarily staying in Greenville,

South Carolina. EMS responded to a 911 call that afternoon, attempted to resuscitate her, but she was pronounced dead at the scene. This was shocking. We've talked about the outpouring of support and heartache from this. And there's so much mystery. There's a mystery here as to what happened here because look, we're still waiting for the coroner's office to release the official cause a manner of death. And with reportedly no visible signs of trauma or injury, there becomes a question of what happened here. But now, according to TMZ, the DEA is focused on these apparent text messages between Hayden and an alleged drug dealer. And TMZ claims that a source described them as a, quote, slew of messages about drugs and that the conversations reportedly

went on for years, right up until the week that you. she died. And that brings us to another development because TMZ is also reporting that federal agents searched Hayden's Los Angeles home on August 25th. So that's nine days after her death, testing pills to see if they were laced with fentanyl, looking for drug paraphernalia, prescription meds, recreational drugs. And then there's this. Attorney General Todd Blanche was asked directly about the case at a press briefing on Tuesday. Now, he didn't comment on Hayden's case in depth, but he did speak broadly about fentanyl. He did talk about the law. Listen to this. So when it comes to fentanyl, they're not fake pills, they're death pills, right?

So there are pills that kill people, and there's a federal statute that allows us to go after, assuming we can prove who the dealer is to go after them and put them in prison for murder. In the cases where we know who the dealer was and we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that that the person sold the death pill to the victim who then dies, that's a federal crime, and that's something that we will readily prosecute as often as we can. Now, I want to get into what I believe is this statute that he referenced. We'll get more into that in a second. Actually, I think there's several areas of law that come to play here.

But to understand why these text messages or these apparent messages matter so much, again, you just have to look at the Matthew Perry case because Perry died in October of 2023, And this was from a ketamine overdose. And since then, five people have been prosecuted, sentenced in connection with his death. His living assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, a drug counselor named Eric Fleming. You have one physician, Salvador Placencia. You have another person, Mark Chavez, though he only received eight months of home detention. And then, of course, Jasveen Senga, the woman who supplied the ketamine that was used in the fatal injections, received 15 years in prison.

Remember, she was coined the ketamine queen? She pleaded guilty to federal drug charges, including distributing ketamine resulting in death or serious bodily injury. And that investigation in a similar way involved the trail of text messages that helped connect the suppliers to Perry. It was used by the prosecution. And this also happened in another high-profile case, Mac Miller. So Mac Miller died from what authorities claimed were fentanyl-laced pills. He apparently texted his dealer asking for bars of Xanax, a bar. of cocaine. It was those messages that became part of the evidence against a man accused of supplying

Miller with the drugs. A dealer in that case was sentenced to 17 and a half years in prison. And so that brings me somewhere else, okay? The charges, the potential charges in this case that are on the table. Now, I look at this as both federal and state. So if you talk about federal, there is a federal statute we got to talk about. It is 21 USC 841. It's punishing the distribution of a controlled substance that results in death. death or serious bodily injury is involved in this distribution, that charge can carry a mandatory minimum of 20 years in prison and a maximum of life in prison. Again, that was used against Jasveen Sanger. Also, I have to say, 21 U.S.C. 846, that's conspiracy to distribute. So if you

have more people involved, a legal criminal agreement, that's where you see that. And we've seen this play out recently. I mean, just this month, there was a man in Minnesota who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute fentanyl resulting in death. He's facing at least 20 years in prison out in Kentucky. Man got 25 years for the same kind of charge. And not to mention, you also have to make the case from a state charge, a state level, manslaughter, a homicide charge. Give you an example, last year, Delaware made history with its first successful conviction for manslaughter, a homicide charge against a fentanyl dealer who caused an overdose. In other words, recklessly caused the death of another. Now, we don't know

all the circumstances surrounding Hayn and Penitier's death, but this is something that has to be part of the conversation. That if perhaps she was supplied a pill that was laced with fentanyl, it could fit into these categories. We did even more research into this, and this is something that you have to pay attention to.

There are actually efforts in Congress right now to make fentanyl distribution a death penalty eligible offense. A bill was introduced in Congress earlier this year. It's called the deal death, face It was introduced by Representative Chip Roy, a Republican from Texas. It was in May of 2026, and essentially it would provide the death penalty as punishment for those who knowingly

distribute fentanyl or any drug that's mixed with it that results in death. Roy said, quote, fentanyl is killing hundreds of Americans every single day, and the people trafficking this poison should face the harshest penalties available. If a dealer distributes fentanyl or fentanyl lays drugs and someone dies as a result, that dealer has effectively signed that person's death The deal death face death act closes a dangerous loophole and gives prosecutors the ability to pursue capital punishment against the worst offenders who are profiting off the deaths of Americans. Congress must stand with the families devastated by this crisis and send a clear message.

If you deal death, you will face the full weight of justice. Now, it hasn't passed yet, but this is one you've got to keep your eye on because this could seriously change the criminal justice system, okay? This could seriously provide an effect in a number of different ways. But when you think about this, the New York Post reported that in the last decade, almost 490,000 Americans have died from fentanyl. This is according to CDC data. That is one in every 700.

It's pretty scared to be thinking about. Now before we go any further into this, there is something I have to read to you. There's been a lot of reporting, as we said from TMZ about what this investigation may look like, about the text messages, about the search warrant, about how she may have died. Well, Penitiers' representative released a statement yesterday, and I want to read it to you. As reported yesterday by the Greenville County Coroner's Office, Hayden's death remains under investigation pending the completion of toxicology results, despite reports from some outlets stating otherwise. Recent reports attributed to unnamed sources are unverified hearsay and have attributed to conflicting information that continues to circulate. While we are all eager to find closure and better understand the circumstances surrounding her passing, we must remain patient.

and allow the investigative process to unfold, the answers we are all seeking will come. Totally fair because you don't want conflicting information. We don't have the full picture. We're basing this on the reporting that we're seeing. We'll see what officials ultimately determine. But I want to get into this. I want to understand if we're talking about a potential lace drug,

how it works. Okay, so now I want to bring on forensic chemist Bethany Pridgen to talk about this. Bethany, we're so lucky to have you. I'm going to be completely honest with you. I know what I know. I know what I don't know. I don't know anything about this.

So I'm going to ask you questions that might sound juvenile, but I also have a feeling that our audience might not have all the answers either. Let's just start here. When we say illicit pills, which by the way, you and I were just talking about right before we came on, what do you mean by illicit pills? What are we talking about when we say illicit pills? So what we're talking about are pills that are not prescribed and from a pharmacy that is regulated and they're not prescribed to the person.

So in the past, when we talked about illicit pills, usually we were talking about actual pharmaceutical pills that were made by pharmaceutical companies that were being sold illegally. So outside of the prescription and pharmacy world. Now we see most of the illicit pills that we're looking at are pills that are being manufactured essentially on the illicit market. So they're people that are kind of, they're acting as chemist on their own. They're producing these products. They're using synthetic compounds. and then they're mass-producing pills that look like the prescription pills that are that are given legally. But they are illicit because, number one, they're not the actual pharmaceutical product,

and they're also sold without any control behind them. How many people can do something like this? In other words, if there's an investigation to track a pill or pills, what kind of tool, supplies, resources would you need to do something like this? Well, unfortunately, a lot of the illicit pills that are seen on the market were initially created through scientific discovery, you know, some of them as far back as, you know, the 60s, 70s, and then determined that they were not great products to be used, like, as a prescription medication. But the research is out there, the information is out there on how you would develop these products. So a lot of these synthetic compounds is relatively easy, especially in other countries. So even though the U.S. may control the cell of some precursor, what we call products that would help you make different illicit substances, other countries don't necessarily have all of those same controls. So they're not that hard to produce.

If you get access to the precursor products that you need, so the compounds you need to make the product, the chemistry behind it's relatively simple. And then to make the pills look like pharmaceutical, the actual pharmaceuticals, there's down. databases online where you can see what those pills look like. It's very easy to buy pill presses that are manufactured with the same markings that like real pharmaceutical manufactured pills have. And then they just have to make sure that they provide the right color dyes to make the pills look the same color, same shape, same markings. So it's relatively easy.

And unfortunately, that's why this is such a problem because it's It's not, there's not difficult science behind the production of these compounds. Let's talk about this for a minute. So if you're talking about potentially an oxy pill laced with fentanyl, how do you detect that? How do you test that? How do you determine that that's the case? So in the actual lab, how we tested, we would actually crush the pill or a portion of the pill, and you actually analyze it against the essentially the structural fingerprint of known compounds.

like fentanyl and oxycodone. As an individual, you know, just like a person who doesn't have access to analytical testing equipment, just looking at the pill, there's really no way to know for sure. And so the assumption should always be made that if it's not received from a pharmacy through a prescription, then it's most likely contains fentanyl. How much fentanyl has to be in an oxy pill for it to be deadly? Well, it doesn't take much. Fentanyl is about 50 to 100. hundred times more potent than oxycodone. And so it takes relatively small amounts. So the other thing that I should note is, though, that these oxy pills that are sold typically

don't have any oxycodone in them. They're just excipients or other powders and products to make the pill look like a pill, and there's a little bit of fentanyl added to it. And so that stretches the overall fentanyl product further because you are able to create these kind of larger-sized pills that look like a pill. a pharmaceutical and you just need you know just a very small I mean trying to think how I could give you an example but it's kind of like if you just poured maybe quarter or an eighth pack of sugar little sugar packet into your hand that might be enough the problem with fentanyl is that each

person has their own tolerance so if they're used to opioids some people can have a high they could take the same pill that another person could take and it could be fatal to one person and not to the other. Can it brush up against fentanyl that's out in the open or touch it or have contact with it that creates a toxic drug? It could for a specific individual who is essentially naive to the drug. So for example, if a little bit of fentanyl was on a pill that wasn't pressed into it or was on a substance and a child consumed it, that could potentially cause fatal or serious interaction. Just breathing or around fentanyl or fentanyl powder or touching it would not necessarily cause that but if there's any type of ingestion that could

potentially create a negative reaction is it possible that dealers wouldn't know that they're selling products that are laced with fentanyl I mean it's possible that the the lowest level street dealers may not know exactly what's in the compound I know when fentanyl first hit the markets at least in on the East Coast where I was in 2012 the products were being sold exactly like heroin was being sold but then suddenly in the the lab, we started seeing fentanyl instead of heroin on our analytical results. But a lot of the street level, you know, drug dealers were not aware that it was something

different. It was packaged the same. So they were buying it already pre-packaged to sell. So it's possible that they wouldn't know. But it's pretty common this day and age for, it's pretty common knowledge in the forensics world and in the world of illicit drugs, obtaining illicit substances outside of pharmaceuticals. It's pretty well known that the oxycodone pills on the market are not oxycodone, and that they will likely contain fentanyl. I recently spoke to a colleague of mine in Southern California who runs a Seas Drug Testing Lab, and she said that more than 50% of the illicit pills that they were seeing come into the lab had fentanyl in them.

If someone's purchasing drugs on the market like this, right, right? Is there any tell-tale signs they can see that there's fentanyl in the product or is there any tests they can do? I'm not encouraging people to go onto the black market and buy drugs, but I'm just curious. Is there any way you'd be able to tell? I mean, there's no easy tests. And again, because, I mean, even the DEA says some, their, their percentages are 79 to 90 percent of these illicit oxycodone pills on the market contain fentanyl. So really what people should assume is that they're not obtaining these pills legally. they most likely will have fentanyl in them.

If someone thinks they're getting an oxy pill, what are the odds that they're actually getting just that? I mean, I think what the percentages we're seeing, 50, 70, 90% of them not having oxycodone and containing fentanyl, I mean, I would say that they're most likely not going to get an oxycodone pill. Wow. That's so scary. That's so crazy. What does it do to the body for people who don't know?

And I imagine it depends upon the dosage. But just generally, what does fentanyl do to your body? Right. So fentanyl is meant to be a very, I mean, medically is given for very severe pain. People get fentanyl usually right after a surgical procedure during surgical procedures. So there is a positive use for fentanyl in the medical world. But it has to be closely monitored when it's given. And so what fentanyl does is essentially depresses the central nervous system. Ventinal is very what we call lipid soluble, so it likes the fat and tissue.

So fentanyl is able to cross into what we call the blood brain barrier. So the brain controls all of our functions in the body. And so fentanyl is able to get into the brain tissue very quickly. And then it can start acting on the receptors that allow us to breathe properly, our heartbeat to be at the speed that it should be. And it depresses those natural functions of the body. So it slows down breathing. It slows down the heart rate.

And so if you have more than you can handle, so if you're not monitored, it can slow those processes down to where you stop breathing. And you go into cardiac arrest. And you go into cardiac arrest, yes. How long does that take? Depending on the dose and also the person's exposure, but again, fentanyl moves very rapidly into the blood brain through the blood brain barrier. And so it can happen relatively quickly depending on what we usually call the root of administration. So through a pill, it might take more time, like maybe 30 minutes or more for it to start acting on the body. If it's injected, it could be almost immediate.

As I'm sure you know, everybody's waiting for the toxicology report from the Hayden case. What do you expect to find there? What are you going to be looking out for? What should we expect in that? Well, I mean, I think we're all kind of anticipating with the past history, the potential for there to be some type of opioid in the system that caused the early death. which is super unfortunate. One of the things that I will be also looking for is there's a new family of opioids on the

market that are even more potent than fentanyl, about 10 times more potent. They're called orphans. And they are starting to be seen in drug overdose deaths. There was actually a story in New York Times two days ago about a 16-year-old first case in San Francisco with an overdose found from an orphan. And so I am interested to see if that is the best. potential compound this there as well. Again, it's a different type of synthetic opioid than fentanyl, much more powerful, but it's becoming more and more common in the illicit market.

Where's that coming from? How did that come out of it? Again, it's a synthetic opioid. I believe that one was produced initially by scientific research back in the 60s or 70s. It was not, you know, a compound that was really selected for mass use in the medical or scientific world, not that difficult to make. And again, you know, people who are trying to make money off the illicit market are always looking for more powerful compounds. Again, people build tolerances. So if you're used to taking these types of drugs, you're looking for something that's stronger that's going to give you that effect that you had when you initially started using it. So a lot of our illicit substances come from China. That's a big country that we see a lot of those compounds

come in from. But again, when there's less control in different countries, a lot of times these pills and products are being produced and then they're coming into the U.S. through different avenues. And then people were able to, again, produce these, you know, illicit pills that look like a normal pharmaceutical. And going back to something I mentioned earlier, there's reports that authorities have been searching Hayden Penitiers' home in Los Angeles. Now, again, there was a kind of pushback from her representative saying, just wait for the investigation. to take its course. I know there's a lot of hearsay out there on verified reports. But just thinking for a moment, if this is true, that there was a search warrant and they're looking

for drug paraphernalia, recreational drugs, what have you. What do you think exactly they're looking for there and how are they testing whatever they find? I mean, I imagine that they're, I mean, they're looking for, you know, just what, maybe if they can get an idea of what types of compounds were or were not being used in the home, they may be looking for any type of manufacturer. There's been no talk of that, but maybe looking to see if there's prescription pill bottles, if there were, you know, pills present.

And I think that they're, you know, essentially trying to just find, unfortunately in these situations, it's hard to trace the pill back to a specific manufacturer because there's no real tracing, you know, there's no like... There's no label. There's no label. Right, right.

And so, and there's no real quality control. in the illicit market. So they're having to use that kind of, you know, base level investigation. What can they find? Is there anything that would point them to anyone who would have information about where, you know, these illicit services were coming from? You know, is there any, like, specific markings like you've seen on the packaging, on the product itself, the potency, how pure it is, where you could say it's traced to a

particular dealer or organization, or is that just something in the movies? I mean, it's, it's not done typically. The DEA has the ability to like test purities and try to find source products. I think the market's so massive right now with these illicit substances and with the compounds coming from all over the world, that it is really difficult to find a way to trace. And then in terms of the marking, the markings, the markings. are made intentionally to look like an actual pharmaceutical pill.

So what you typically see with these oxycodone pills, most commonly they're round, they're blue, they have a square, kind of a rounded corner square around the capital letter M. And then the back usually has the number 30. So they're like M30s, blue M30 pills. And that's what the illicit oxycodone pills tend to look like. I mean, there are other varieties,

but that's the most common. And they look almost. just like the pharmaceutical. So scary. So scary. All right. Listen, we're so happy to have you on, Bethany, to talk about this. I don't think we've had a conversation like this before on Sidebar, but obviously with what's going on in this case, and as I laid out before, how many lives this is affected, how many lives have been taken.

It's an important conversation. It's important education. Bethany and Pridgin, thank you so much for coming on. And thank you for the work that you do. Really appreciate it. Thank you, Jesse. It was great being on. That's all we have for right now here on Sidebar, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. Like, subscribe. and I'll see you next time.