Hayden Panettiere's death ruled an accident

The police investigation into Hayden Panettiere's death is closed, 73 days after it began. The case has been classified as an accident and closed without charges, with forensic medicine attributing the death to a combination of fentanyl and various prescription medications. No physical injuries were found.

Panettiere was 36. She was discovered lifeless on August 16 in an apartment in Greenville, South Carolina. Her on-off boyfriend Brian Hickerson and his brother were present in the apartment at the time.

She made her name playing women who survive. As Claire Bennet in Heroes she was the cheerleader whose wounds closed on their own. As Juliette Barnes in Nashville she was a country star who fought her way through an industry built to replace her. The endurance off screen was of another kind: alcohol and drug problems she had discussed publicly for years, set down in the memoir "This Is Me: A Reckoning," published months before her death.

The adult life behind the roles ran through addiction treatment, a relationship with Hickerson that had already been through the courts, and the loss of a younger brother she outlived. The memoir put the addiction in her own words; the rest she had described in interviews over the years, more plainly than the industry around her ever asked anyone to.

Heroes asked its audience to save the cheerleader. The investigation into her death ran 73 days and ended with the file marked accident.