Hayden Panettiere death twist that is ‘almost too much to bear’: Star’s friends tell ROB SHUTER of devastating final insult… and every toxic detail of relationship with ‘hated’ Brian Hickerson
Hayden Panettiere’s friends did not have mixed feelings about her on-again, off-again boyfriend Brian Hickerson. I’m told they ‘hated him.’
Now, after Panettiere’s death at 36, the people who loved her are carrying something just as painful as grief: regret.
I spoke with people who knew Panettiere, both professionally and personally, who say they were fearful of her nearly decade long, sporadic, abusive relationship with Hickerson, 37, but they could never convince her to walk away from him.
‘He was bad news from the beginning,’ one Hollywood agent tells me. ‘Her friends hated him. They thought he was trouble. They thought she was better than this relationship. We kept waiting for her to see what everyone else could see.’
A heavily redacted Greenville, South Carolina, police report released Tuesday revealed Hickerson and his brother Zach were with Panettiere inside a luxury Greenville apartment complex loft, when officers responded to a 911 call, finding her unresponsive on Sunday afternoon.
There’s no indication Hickerson caused or contributed in any way to Panettiere’s death. The investigation is ongoing.
Hayden Panettiere’s friends did not have mixed feelings about her on-again, off-again boyfriend Brian Hickerson. I’m told they ‘hate him’
A heavily redacted Greenville, South Carolina police report released Tuesday revealed Hickerson (left) and his brother Zach (right) were with Panettiere inside a luxury Greenville apartment complex loft when she died
I spoke with people who knew Panettiere, both professionally and personally, who say they were fearful of her nearly decade long, sporadic, abusive relationship with Hickerson
The police report does state that Zach was ‘very emotional’ as paramedics attempted to revive Panettiere. Brian, the report says, was not visibly affected until Hayden was declared dead. Brian then allegedly showed police a ‘bag of medication’ that Hayden had in the apartment.
The fact that he was at her side when she died, I’m told, is almost too much for her friends to bear.
‘We will replay conversations,’ one well-placed producer tells me. ‘We will remember phone calls and moments when we spoke up or stayed quiet. Could another intervention, another conversation have changed the ending? We will never know.’
Their relationship was marked by domestic violence allegations.
In 2021, Hickerson pleaded no contest to two felony counts of injuring a girlfriend and was sentenced to 45 days in county jail, 52 mandatory domestic violence classes and a five-year restraining order.
Hickerson later acknowledged one incident of becoming physically violent with Panettiere and she wrote about his alleged abuse of her in her 2026 memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning. She described the first time Hickerson allegedly became physically violent, writing about being slapped after he became enraged and how the abuse escalated.
‘The slaps become hits,’ she wrote. ‘One night he busts up my face so badly I don’t leave the house for weeks.’
‘Everyone around her thought she deserved better,’ a music source tells me. ‘Nobody understood why she kept going back to him. We could see the pattern and we were terrified she couldn’t see it herself.’
Panettiere’s mother Lesley Vogel, 70, broke her silence on Tuesday to address her daughter’s relationship.
‘This person in her life that we have been trying to get rid of for quite some time was with her at her death and that was Brian Hickerson,’ she told NBC News.
Panettiere, in fact, reportedly traveled with Hickerson from Los Angeles to South Carolina on Saturday, August 15. Other photos show them frequently traveling together through Los Angeles International airport in recent months.
Sources told TMZ on Monday, Panettiere and Hickerson has been ‘dating consistently for years’ and her team advised her to keep their on-going relationship secret, as she promoted her memoir back in May.
‘Hayden’s camp felt Brian was “bad for business”,’ TMZ reported.
People who have never experienced a toxic relationship often ask the wrong question: Why didn’t she leave?
The better question is: What made leaving difficult?
Panettiere’s mother Lesley Vogel, 70, broke her silence on Tuesday to address her daughter’s relationship
In 2021, Hickerson pleaded no contest to two felony counts of injuring a girlfriend and was sentenced to 45 days in county jail, 52 mandatory domestic violence classes and a five-year restraining order
‘Hayden loved bad boys,’ a family source tells me. ‘She didn’t want to be abused. She didn’t wanted chaos. She was drawn to toxic relationships.’
Another source put it more bluntly: ‘She thought love was supposed to hurt. She confused intensity with intimacy.’
A TV executive who worked with Panettiere tells me the people around her could see that she needed something Hickerson could not give her.
‘She needed stability and he represented the opposite,’ the source says. ‘He was the one person everybody wished she would cut out completely. Yet he kept coming back. And so did she.’
That created, I’m told, a situation that Panettiere’s friends found nearly impossible to navigate.
‘Hayden’s friends tried to remain close to her rather than completely sever contact when Hickerson returned,’ a top celebrity makeup artist tells me. ‘They knew that attacking him too aggressively could push Hayden further away. You wanted to save her, but you couldn’t make the decision for her.’
Panettiere’s death must be investigated carefully. Her cause of death must be established. Questions about her final hours deserve answers.
The cruelest thing for her friends may be knowing they can never answer the question: Could they have done more?
