Highlights
- Lesley Vogel gave NBC News and Daily Mail interviews questioning Brian Hickerson’s account of her daughter’s death.
- Vogel told police she believes Hickerson is “culpable,” citing gaps in his timeline the day Panettiere died.
- The family had long worried about Hickerson, citing a 2019 arrest and Panettiere’s 2020 restraining order.
Hayden Panettiere‘s mother is speaking out again following the death of her daughter.
The actress died on August 16 at age 36, and in the days since, her mother, Lesley Vogel, has given two extensive interviews confronting her daughter’s final hours. Vogel spoke with NBC News about her family’s concerns regarding Panettiere’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, Brian Hickerson.
Her words were direct. Vogel said the family had been trying to get rid of someone in her daughter’s life for a long time, and “was with her at her death and that was Brian Hickerson.”
A heavily redacted police report from the Greenville Police Department showed that Hickerson and his brother, Zach, were with Panettiere at the Judson Mill Lofts apartment complex when she died. The report noted Zach appeared visibly emotional, while Brian remained composed until EMS pronounced Panettiere dead.
Brian reportedly showed police a bag of medication he said Panettiere had been taking. Panettiere’s cause of death remains under investigation by the Greenville County Coroner’s Office.
Vogel didn’t stop at NBC. In a separate, two-hour conversation with the Daily Mail, she pressed further, questioning the timeline Brian gave police and calling his account something with real gaps.
She revealed that when an officer asked directly about Brian, she told him, “I think he’s culpable.” TMZ reported that the DEA later joined the investigation as well.
Vogel questioned how someone could nap near a person who was dying without realizing something was wrong, noting that people in cardiac arrest typically aren’t silent. It’s the kind of question a grieving parent asks when the official story doesn’t sit right.
This isn’t a new concern for the family. Panettiere began dating Hickerson after a 2018 stint in rehab, and in her memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, she wrote that he’d beat her badly enough that she didn’t leave the house for weeks.
Hickerson was arrested in 2019 on a domestic abuse allegation, pleaded no contest in 2021, and was sentenced to four years of probation. Panettiere had also filed a restraining order against him in 2020.
Vogel told NBC News there was a long history of Brian enabling Hayden, which is why she and Panettiere’s father had been worried about him and his family for years.
Vogel has also spoken about her daughter’s struggles more broadly, describing addiction as something that had taken hold of her life. She said she’s grateful that her daughter’s estate will likely go to Kaya, Panettiere’s daughter.
None of this restores what was lost. But Vogel’s decision to speak, in detail and on the record, reads less like spectacle and more like a mother trying to make sense of a death that still doesn’t add up to her. As she put it, this isn’t a time she can afford to be weak.
That’s not sensational. That’s grief with somewhere to put itself.
