Simon Con-Jack?

The voice at the end of the line was barely coherent. "I have not slept for more than two days," explained Simon Monjack, when the Daily Mail spoke to him on the phone last week.

He was, he said, utterly disoriented by the way his life had been torn apart in an instant.

Monjack was referring to the moment — "8.30am last Sunday" (December 27) — when his wife, Hollywood actress Brittany Murphy, 32, was found unconscious in the bathroom of their Los Angeles home following a suspected heart attack. She never regained consciousness.

"My world was destroyed," said Monjack. He and Brittany, he revealed, were planning to start a family.

Under different circumstances, it would have been impossible not to take his words at face value: simply those of a grief-stricken husband who had lost the love of his life.

You might wonder, though, why Monjack, 39, decided to return our call in person — within 15 minutes of Miss Murphy's publicist being contacted by the Mail. Or why he agreed to be interviewed on American TV only a matter of hours after Murphy was pronounced dead in hospital before going on to give a major interview to a US magazine. Normally this comes later, much later.

Personal PR campaign

But, then, how many bereaved husbands have to defend themselves against the kind of allegations Monjack is facing?

In fact, he has been nicknamed "Con-Jack" in America. Among the "charges" are allegations of credit card fraud, running up huge debts, visa violations and getting his wife fired from her last film after turning up drunk on set.

"I know I have been called a conman," Monjack said. "I am not perfect. I never said I was. But there has been so much rubbish written about me and Brittany. Most of what you read is made up."

Hence his decision to engage in what some might describe as a personal PR campaign even before Murphy was laid to rest in the same LA memorial park as Michael Jackson.

Nevertheless, despite his public denials of any wrong-doing, the question many in Hollywood are asking is: how did the beautiful and talented Brittany Murphy, best known for her roles in Clueless, 8 Mile and Girl, Interrupted, ever get involved with the overweight Monjack, whose talents as a "screenwriter, director, and producer" are much less discernible?

But Murphy, it seems, fitted into a familiar pattern. She was rich, obviously, but also surprisingly vulnerable (her painfully thin appearance of late led to rumours she was suffering from anorexia).

Before Murphy, we have been told, there was a string of other women who, in one way or another, came to regret ever meeting the charming Simon Monjack.

Among them is a former girlfriend from a wealthy London family, who is alleged to have lost more than £200,000 (Dh1.165 million) after investing in one of his "film" projects. The emotional cost was much higher. "She still hasn't really got over him," said a close friend.

"She is still in a very fragile state. But we're all just relieved he's out of her life. When I heard he had married Brittany Murphy a few years ago I thought: "Poor, poor Brittany.'"

Impressive credentials

This will come as no surprise to 36-year-old Simone Bienne, or Simone Panjwani, as she was when she was swept off her feet by Monjack.

Her suitor had seemingly impressive credentials. Born in Hillingdon, North London, his mother ran her own interior design business while his father died of a brain tumour 15 years ago. Monjack himself had successfully set up a series of companies in London, all involved in film production (all have now been dissolved).

He and Bienne had been seeing each other for just three months when, in November, 2001, they flew to Las Vegas to marry. Five months later, they split up.

Bienne, who has remarried and is now a relationship therapist for British TV show GMTV, declined to speak about her life with Monjack, although one of her closest friends revealed: "She suffered years of hell with that man."

Bienne's reticence is hardly surprising. She had to drag him through the courts in the US where he had subsequently moved to get the divorce settlement he had promised her. Legal papers, filed at the LA Superior Court, show that the outstanding sum - $30,000 (Dh110,200) was finally paid to her in February 2009.

Intriguingly, we have been informed that investigators from the Los Angeles County Coroner's office, who are awaiting the results of toxicology tests on Murphy, are planning to interview Bienne, and have already been in contact with her.

Ten different prescription drugs were found in the Hollywood Hills home of Murphy and Monjack. There was gossip, vehemently denied, that Murphy also took cocaine.

What we do know is that she and Monjack met at a party about three years ago. Again, it was a whirlwind courtship conducted despite the grave concerns of Murphy's friends.

One Hollywood figure, who had dealings with Monjack, warned her not to get involved with him. George Hickenlooper was the director of the 2006 film Factory Girl, based on the life of Andy Warhol's muse Edie Sedgwick. Monjack is given a credit for his work as a screenwriter on Factory Girl on the Internet Movie Database (IMDB).

Yet within hours of Murphy's death, Hickenlooper posted the following account on a Hollywood website. It would be difficult to imagine a more damaging critique.

Bogus claims

"Simon Monjack had nothing to do with Factory Girl," he wrote. "He filed a frivolous lawsuit against us... making bogus claims that we had stolen his script. He held us literally to hostage and we were forced to settle with him as he held our production over a barrel.

"I posted this information on IMDB two years ago in order to warn other people because Monjack was using his Factory Girl ‘credit' to solicit money.

"Then, one night at 3am, Brittany Murphy (who was a good friend and a girl I had come close to casting as Edie Sedgwick) called me in tears, begging me to take this posting down. It was going to ruin Monjack. I told Brittany it was the truth, and warned her, as many others did, about Monjack, who had a long, long list of legal complaints against him.

"In the end, I told Brittany I would do it for her and remove the post because I really cared for her as a friend. The last thing I told Brittany is: ‘Do you know this guy? I mean do you really know him? Do you know what you are doing by marrying him?'

"At this point, Brittany became angry and told me she knew Monjack better than anyone and then hung up on me. A few months later I tried to phone her to see if she was all right and Monjack would not let me speak to her."

Murphy ignored her friend's advice and, in May 2007, she and Simon Monjack were married. Even this event was marred by controversy.

It has been reported in the American media that, only a month earlier, Monjack was arrested by customs agents and faced deportation after overstaying his US work visa, leading to speculation that his marriage was a convenient way of overcoming his visa problems.

When he spoke to the Mail, Monjack flatly denied this. He already had a Green Card, he said, which allowed him permanent residency. Indeed, Monjack brushed aside every allegation. And, as Hickenlooper pointed out, it is a "long, long list" indeed.

The £400,000 (Dh2.3 million) he owed Coutts bank? The debt was over a business deal in London "that had gone sour" but had now been repaid in full. "Coutts would not deal with me if I was a conman," he said.

The court papers list another debt of $66,000 (Dh242,424), that was owed over a deal in LA that had not worked out. "All that money has been repaid, too," Monjack said. What about the two outstanding warrants for his arrest in Virginia for alleged credit card fraud? Well, people were jealous that he had married a famous actress.

"My problem is that I do not look like Ashton Kutcher [a former boyfriend of Murphy's now married to Demi Moore]. Nor do they like the fact that she [Brittany] married someone who was not famous. Here, stars like stars to marry other stars.'"

For the record, in case there was the slightest doubt, Monjack also dismissed the claims of Hickenlooper, whom he insists he never even met. "I wanted to make Factory Girl many years ago,' he added. "What is being said is not true. I guess everyone deals with their grief in a different way — his is expressing his anger."

‘Made up stories'

Sadly, Monjack has something of a talent for attracting this emotion. Another example came in Puerto Rico a few weeks ago, where Murphy was working on what turned out to be her final film.

Journalist Roger Friedman, writing in the respected trade newspaper Hollywood Reporter, claimed Monjack turned up on set the worse the wear. When producers asked the star to keep her husband away, she refused and was fired.

"These are all made-up stories," Monjack said — like many others about him that have flooded US websites over the past weeks, presumably.

One, perhaps, is worthy of mention. It was from someone who claimed to be a relative of another of Monjack's old flames.

The girlfriend, apparently, was delighted to get a diamond ring from Monjack only to discover it was made from cubic zirconia a worthless stone which, at one time, could be purchased from UK supermarket Tesco for the princely sum of £6 (Dh35).

The day before Murphy died, Monjack and his wife relaxed in bed, watching movies. They ordered her favourite "takeout" Thai food and ate soup prepared by Murphy's mother, who lived with the couple in LA.

"Brittany was tired and a little sad because she was sick," said Monjack. His wife suffered from a heart murmur which causes fatigue, dizziness and irregular heartbeats but was not life threatening and was taking only herbal remedies.

"I know what the inference is by all those pills," he told us. "That she was some kind of addict, but addicts hide away their pills. They do not leave them on the nightstand like Brittany.

"Some of them were old and date back to when Brittany had some ailment or other. You know how people accumulate things and never throw them away."

Perhaps. But, as with so much in his life, it would be much easier to believe Monjack if his nickname wasn't Simon "Con-Jack".