Report: 'Bunch' of Pills Found Near Burrell's Body

Per TMZ, NYT, probe into Food Network chef's death is turning to possible drug overdose
Posted Jun 21, 2025 9:30 AM CDT
Report: Burrell Probe Focusing on Possible Drug OD
Chef Anne Burrell is seen on June 24, 2019, in New York.   (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)

As the tributes continue to pour in for Anne Burrell, who died suddenly Tuesday at her New York home at the age of 55, law enforcement sources tell TMZ that the NYPD probe around the Food Network star's death may be centering on a possible drug overdose. Those sources say that police found "a bunch" of pills near the top chef's body, discovered by husband Stuart Claxton in the shower. The New York Times backs up TMZ's reporting, citing an internal police document that read that Burrell was "discovered in the shower unconscious and unresponsive surrounded by approximately (100) assorted pills."

On Friday, a spokesperson for New York City's medical examiner said that they've finished an autopsy on Burrell, but that any discoveries on her cause of death or the manner in which she'd died were still to come. People, meanwhile, dives more into some life changes Burrell had been making before her death, including taking improv classes and "a few other things that ... I'm not quite ready to share yet." "I can cook, yes, I can do TV, but also, like, what else?" she told actor Tori Spelling during a March podcast. "I've got more to do in my life, I feel like." (More celebrity chef stories.)

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