Matuszak Death Is Accidental : Coroner Reports He Took Overdose of a Painkiller

Former Raider star John Matuszak died of an accidental overdose of Darvocet, a prescription painkiller, the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office reported Tuesday.

The coroner’s office reported it also found “a small amount of a cocaine metabolate” in Matuszak’s blood. Department spokesman Bob Dambacher said it suggests that Matuszak “may have taken some cocaine within 24 hours of his death, or so.”

However, the coroner’s report says that the cocaine had been ruled out by the medical staff as a factor in Matuszak’s death.

Instead, two other factors were determined to have contributed to Matuszak’s death: an enlarged heart, and bronchial pneumonia.

Matuszak, 38, died June 17, shortly after arriving home from a trip to West Germany to promote his movie, “One Man Force.” He was buried four days later in Oak Creek, Wis., his hometown.

His parents, Marv and Audrey, released a statement in Los Angeles Tuesday, saying that in the future they will have “things to say about substance abuse and the scoundrels in the medical profession who recklessly dispense prescription drugs and the parasites in society who distribute illicit drugs from back alleys to fashionable condominiums.”

Did that mean that the Matuszaks believe that the painkiller was improperly prescribed?

“The D.A.’s office would have to answer that question,” said Kathy Pinckert, formerly Matuszak’s publicist, who released the family’s statement.

A spokeswoman for the L.A. County District Attorney’s office said that no complaint has been filed in the case.

The coroner’s office knows the identity of the physician who prescribed the painkiller, Dambacher said, but will release it only if the family wishes.

Matuszak suffered from chronic back pain, having injured it in his last Raider training camp in 1982. In addition, he admitted in his autobiography, “Cruisin’ with the Tooz” that he had had alcohol and cocaine problems.

As a Kansas City Chief in 1976, he wrote of collapsing in a bar after mixing Tuinal, a sleeping pill, with alcohol. He was taken to a hospital in an ambulance with Coach Paul Wiggin riding beside him, pounding his chest in an attempt to keep him alive.

Matuszak wrote that he sought professional help in 1985, that he “fell off the wagon” in the summer of 1986 and sought more help that fall. In his book, published in 1987, he said he was no longer drinking at all and was “taking nothing, not even sleeping pills.”

There had been an assertion, by “One Man Force” producer-director Dale Trevillion and his wife, actress Sharon Ferrell, that Matuszak was upset at the lack of U.S. promotion of their movie.

However, Pinckert said that Matuszak had dinner at her home the night before he left for West Germany and voiced no such complaint, that he was “in good spirits,” and had plenty of work lined up for his return, including a project with Sylvester Stallone.

“In memory of John Matuszak, we are not unmindful of the problems our son had in his battle against chronic pain and his resulting use of drugs, both prescription and otherwise,” Marv and Audrey Matuszak’s statement read.

“At his funeral last week in his hometown, Oak Creek, Wis., and since our arrival in Los Angeles for his memorial service in Oakland, we have received hundreds of calls, cards and letters, celebrating the kind, wonderful and positive things he did in his all-too-short lifetime.

“For now . . . we do not wish the dark side (of this matter) to detract from the celebration of the good and great deeds of this kind and wonderful man, our son.”