COVER STORY

A year after she drowned while celebrating Jennifer Aniston’s marriage to Justin Theroux, Carmel Musgrove’s family are still no closer to understanding how she died. Now, friends are urging the power couple to help…

Jen’s honeymoon death scandal

IT’S BEEN MORE THAN a year since news broke that Jennifer Aniston’s friend Carmel Musgrove had tragically drowned while she attended the actor’s group honeymoon in Bora Bora.

The day after her 5 August wedding, Jennifer and Justin flew to the island in French Polynesia, where they were joined by A-list friends – including Courteney Cox, Chelsea Handler, Jason Bateman and Tobey Maguire – who were pictured doing beachside yoga at the lavish Four Seasons resort. But the unconventional celebration turned to tragedy when Carmel, who worked as the renowned Hollywood film producer Joel Silver’s personal assistant, vanished on the evening of 19 August. Friends searched 

for the 28-year-old into the night, and alerted police when they were unable to find her. The next day her naked body was found floating in a lagoon, and a coroner recorded a verdict of accidental drowning, noting ‘no signs of violence, injury or bleeding’. Jennifer and Justin weren’t present when Carmel disappeared, having returned home two days earlier, but some guests – including Joel and his family – decided to stay on.

An autopsy showed Carmel had died with cocaine, marijuana and alcohol in her system. A search of her hotel room reportedly uncovered alcohol, marijuana and what seemed to be drugs paraphernalia, along with her wet bathing suit abandoned on the floor. But friends insist that this sounds nothing like the devout Jehovah’s Witness – and strong swimmer – they knew.

Immediately after her death, Carmel’s devastated family, suspecting foul play, flew to the island to recover her body.

Now, those close to her have urged Jennifer and Justin, who have remained largely silent about the incident, to help them resolve unanswered questions.

Last week, close friend Lori Hartman, who was living at the Musgrove family property when Joel broke the news to Carmel’s parents, told Australia’s New

Idea magazine, ‘Carmel was very athletic. There’s no way she drowned in that water. When I told [my daughter] she had drowned, she just said, “Mom, no. There’s no way she was found naked on a beach.”’

After Carmel’s death, the only response from Jennifer’s camp was a brief statement from her representative Stephen Huvane, who said, ‘Her honeymoon was well over, and she was already back in LA when this horrible tragedy occurred.’ It was in stark contrast to the statement by Joel Silver, which read, ‘Joel, his family and staff are devastated by the passing of Carmel Musgrove. Carmel was a dear friend and respected colleague with a very bright future ahead of her. They will miss her dearly.’

Grazia understands Jennifer didn’t attend Carmel’s memorial and is yet to contact her heartbroken parents, Ronnie and Ann. Suspecting a cover-up, the family hired renowned pathologist Dr Michael Baden – who has been involved in investigations into the deaths of Martin Luther King and JF Kennedy – to try and explain how their clean-living daughter drowned with drugs in her system. His findings are yet to be made public.

Jennifer and Justin were reportedly named in an investigation into her death last October, as authorities sought to establish where the drugs had come from. They are thought to have wanted to distance themselves from the case to avoid being wrongfully implicated in any illegal activity. But Lori added, ‘Why didn’t they send a card? Or flowers? It’s a mother’s nightmare to never know.’

Compounding the family’s unease is the fact that Justin later joked that he had nearly drowned in Bora Bora. Speaking on Live With Regis And Kelly last December, Justin told how he had run out of oxygen while scuba-diving on the honeymoon, adding ‘Your brain goes to a crazy place. [I thought] This is some plot to kill me!’

According to sources, friends of the family see the couple’s actions as ‘heartless’ and feel they should be doing more to help. Among them is Carmel’s former professor Laura Casteñeda, from San Diego City College, where Carmel studied for a degree in communications in 2005 before she left to work for Joel. ‘Jennifer’s statement was kind of callous,’ she told reporters last week. ‘Her family deserve answers. I looked over her autopsy and I don’t believe what I read. I’ve been a teacher here for 16 years. I have a keen sense of people… I know who the partiers are. She was not involved in any of those things. Knowing what I know about her and who she was, I find it hard to believe that it was an accident.

‘Carmel was one of my special ones, she was top of most classes, except audio, which is very technical. I once found a test from her audio class that had a D-minus on it. I said, “I’m gonna save this so someday when you’re a big famous person in Hollywood I’ll show it to everybody.” We laughed about it. I never did get the chance to show her.’

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KNOWING WHAT I KNOW ABOUT CARMEL AND WHO SHE WAS, I FIND IT HARD TO BELIEVE IT WAS AN ACCIDENT