Conspiracy theorists on social media are claiming that Anne Heche was murdered because of the films she’s been in, a claim for which there is no evidence.
On August 5, the out actor crashed her blue Mini Cooper into a home in the Mar Vista neighborhood of LA, setting the house ablaze. The fire engulfed both Heche’s car and the one-story house she crashed into. Heche was trapped for 65 minutes before she could be safely pulled from the wreckage. She was reportedly able to communicate at the time but lost consciousness shortly after.
Heche was pronounced legally dead on August 12 but was kept on life support until Sunday in order to donate her organs. Heche was reportedly high on cocaine when she crashed.
However, some social media users have been peddling conspiracy theories that the actor was murdered because some of her films deal with the pandemic and child trafficking. According to Vice News, four of TikTok’s top six video recommendations when you search the 53-year-old actor’s name deal with conspiracy theories around her death.
The misinformation seems to stem from video of the aftermath of the crash captured by a news helicopter. The video shows a person, assumed to be Heche, sitting up and struggling with EMTs as she is loaded into an ambulance. There is no proof that this video clip is of Heche.
Conspiracy theorists insist that Heche, who sustained burns and a severe anoxic brain injury but had not been declared dead at the time, was trying to escape from a body bag.
“Popular actress Anne Heche was alive and tried to escape body bag after fiery crash. She was later pronounced dead she was currently working on movie titled ‘The Girl in Room 13’ about the Jeffrey Epstein ring,” reads the caption on one video, according to PolitiFact.
The theory posits that Heche was killed because of her recently completed Lifetime movie, which deals with human trafficking, thought to be inspired by Jeffrey Epstein. Another film mentioned in social media posts is 2008’s Toxic Skies, which depicted a fake pandemic meant to purge the world’s population.
PolitiFact, which evaluates the truthfulness of claims and statements by and about public figures, gave the theories a “pants on fire” rating on it’s “Truth-O-Meter.”
“We found no evidence to support the claim that she was murdered, much less because she was working on a movie about sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes,” the site’s editors wrote.
