PERSPECTIVES
In August 2018, McHenry, a promising woman from a prominent
family, was FOUND DEAD OF AN OVERDOSE, secretly 20
weeks pregnant. An arrest has been made, but her loved ones are
STILL SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS. By Jessica Testa
yric McHenry celebrated her twenty-sixth birth-
day last year as any other exceedingly social Leo
from Los Angeles would: by stretching one day of
celebration into one exuberant week.
She began the affair in New York City, spending
two days and nights meeting up with old friends and
colleagues, crashing at her younger sister Maya’s apart-
ment on the Upper East Side. Sitting on Maya’s bed, the
sisters—three years apart—talked until they couldn’t
keep their eyes open.
On McHenry’s actual birthday, August 6, about a
dozen friends threw her a dinner party at Lucien, a ca-
sually glamorous bistro in the East Village. Her L.A. crew
coalesced with her New York crew, bookended by her
classmates from Stanford, where she’d earned a degree in
comparative studies in race and ethnicity in 2014.
One of those classmates, Rob Franklin, sat across the
table from McHenry. She looked well, he thought—like
the same dazzling woman he’d shared an apartment with
in Chinatown after graduation. Franklin thought about
how almost every Friday night, when he came home from
his robotic corporate job, McHenry would turn up the
music in their living room, drawing him in with her long,
graceful arms to dance out his frustration. But that was a
few years ago. McHenry had since moved back home to
L.A. to try to make it as a filmmaker. She was the daughter
of a well-known Hollywood director and producer, Doug
McHenry, but she was still hustling, working on screen-
plays and pilots, juggling five projects at once, living in a
permanent state of “taking meetings.”
Now, back together again, the ex-roommates laughed
and drew Picasso-like caricatures of each other in crayon
on the restaurant’s white paper tablecloths. It was a good
time, Franklin recalled. It was also their last time together.
In a week, McHenry—who made the dinner table vibrate
with life that night—would be dead from a drug overdose
that made national news and fueled Hollywood gossip,
challenging the perception of who could fall victim to the
U.S.’s opioid epidemic and raising questions about who
should be held responsible.
The day after the dinner party, McHenry left New
York for Martha’s Vineyard, where she’d grown up
vacationing with her family. She stayed there with a
friend for a few days, riding horses and bikes around the
affluent island. On August 11, she posted a picture of herself on Instagram standing
on a dock, holding onto a bike, smiling in a cropped white T-shirt, khaki shorts, and
a navy hat—an idyllic summer scene.
Maya smiled when she scrolled past the photo on her phone. The two sisters had
always been close. As kids in Beverly Hills, McHenry used her popularity to protect
Maya from girls who teased her for being chubby. And as they grew older, she invited
Maya to hang out with her and her cool friends—the highest and rarest honor bestowed
on a little sister. When McHenry’s best friend, EJ Johnson, got his own E! reality show
in 2016 after starring in Rich Kids of Beverly Hills, both sisters appeared in his entourage.
Maya idolized her sister, who seemed to be everything at once. She was an effort-
lessly beautiful, stylish party girl, but also a debate nerd and social justice activist who
volunteered on the Obama campaigns. Yet Maya knew McHenry’s myriad interests
also caused her some stress. As she entered the second half of her twenties, McHenry
found herself at a crossroads. Applying to Harvard Law School was on the table. So was
continuing to try to produce films. So was an upcoming job interview at Apple Music.
Everyone knew she was going places, but she was struggling to know which place to go.
So when Maya saw her sister looking light and relaxed in New England utopia, even
if just on Instagram, she felt happy, too. She was excited about the last leg of McHenry’s
birthday trip—two days back in New York, ending with a sisters’ night out. “I wanted to
plan something cute and small for her,” she said, which for Maya meant a private table
at PH-D Lounge, an exclusive rooftop club at the Dream Downtown hotel in Chelsea.
It was a Monday night. The sisters got dressed together. McHenry was torn between
two slipdresses passed down from their stylist mom, Jennifer. One was blue, and the
other was bright pink; Maya voted for the latter, then picked out a pair of pink Gucci
sneakers—which had also once belonged to their mom—to match. In her pink-on-pink
outfit, no-makeup makeup, and long, curly hair parted down the middle, McHenry went
out first with friends, then met up with Maya at the Dream sometime before midnight.
Their table came with food: pizza and chicken fingers and French fries, which they
devoured before getting up to dance. Drake and Travis Scott songs played as the crowd
swelled around the sisters. A few of their friends showed up, including McHenry’s
ex-boyfriend. Everyone was drinking, but Maya tried to drink a little less, she said, while
McHenry drank more. Maya wanted to do her sisterly duty—checking in on her, keeping
her hydrated, but letting her have fun. It was a role she said she’d played before while
partying with her sister.
A few hours later, McHenry announced she was going downstairs to help a friend
get into the club. Maya didn’t want her to go. Getting back upstairs would be needlessly
difficult—the rooftop was like a fortress, protected by bouncers and elevators, with other
people’s elbows knocking your drink over as you fought your way through the crowd—
and McHenry was already drunk. Her friends urged her to stay, too, Maya recalled,
but she headed toward the hotel lobby anyway. Not long after, Maya got the phone call
she’d predicted.
“They’re not letting me back upstairs,” McHenry told her sister. “They don’t wanna
let my friend in.”
L
WHAT HAPPENED TO
LYRIC MCHENRY?