Watch: Former Fox News Staffer Jennifer Eckhart Dead at 36
Content warning: This story discusses suicide.
It was the news story Jennifer Eckhart’s family never wanted to hear.
The former Fox News staff member was found dead inside the bathroom of her Florida home on Sept. 19, according to a report by the Martin County Sheriff’s Office obtained by E! News. She was 36 years old.
During a press conference on Sept. 21, Sheriff John Budensiek said both the sheriff’s office and the medical examiner’s office have ruled Eckhart’s death a suicide. He noted she had been detained six times over the past year and a half under Florida’s Baker Act, which provides crisis services for individuals with mental illness.
“In the last year and a half, she spent a seven-week period in a mental health facility trying to get help for all her suicidal ideology, the issues that she’s been dealing with in her life, and had been out of that facility for one week,” Budensiek said during the press conference reshared by TC Palm. “And unfortunately, when she came out of that facility, it looks like, based on our investigation, that she had gone off her medication that she was on while she was in that facility.”
Based on the sheriff’s office’s investigation and interviews with family and neighbors, he continued, it appears she “was decompensating.”
While Budensiek noted the sheriff’s office doesn’t like to publicly comment on suicides out of respect to the families and the deceased, he felt it was important to clarify Eckhart’s manner of death to avoid “conspiracies” given her media history.
“It’s my understanding that she had made accusations about a Fox News reporter/contributor, somebody high up in the industry,” he said. “And from that time until now, she has been going through different episodes.”
Jennifer Eckhart/Instagram
The accusations Budensiek mentioned stem from a lawsuit Eckhart filed against both Fox News and the network’s former anchor Ed Henry in July 2020, accusing him of sexual harassment and rape. In addition to her assertions that he took naked photos of her as blackmail, she claimed Fox News knew about Henry’s alleged sexual misconduct and retaliated against her for raising concern about her work environment by terminating her employment in June 2020.
Weeks before Eckhart filed her lawsuit, Fox News announced Henry was fired after a former employee alleged he had engaged in “willful sexual misconduct in the workplace years ago”—leading to an investigation.
“Based on investigative findings,” Fox News’ CEO Suzanne Scott and president Jay Wallace continued in a newsroom memo obtained by The New York Times, “Ed has been terminated.”
But Fox News denied the allegations Eckhart presented against the company in her lawsuit, and the organization was dismissed from the case in March 2025.
“We are pleased with the court’s decision, which speaks for itself,” a spokesperson for the network said in a statement obtained by Entertainment Weekly at the time. “Upon learning of Jennifer Eckhart’s allegations in 2020, Fox News promptly conducted an investigation by an outside independent law firm and terminated Ed Henry within six days.”
“Discovery in this matter confirmed that Fox News was not aware of their relationship or of Ms. Eckhart’s allegations until after she left the company,” the statement continued. “The only people who know what happened between Mr. Henry and Ms. Eckhart are the two of them.”
Henry also denied Eckhart’s accusations against him.
“The evidence in this case will demonstrate that Ms. Eckhart initiated and completely encouraged a consensual relationship,” his attorney told E! News after Eckhart’s filing in 2020. “Ed Henry looks forward to presenting actual facts and evidence, which will contradict the fictional accounts contained in the complaint. That evidence includes graphic photos and other aggressively suggestive communications that Ms. Eckhart sent to Mr. Henry.”
Eckhart and Henry settled the lawsuit in June 2025. While the sum of the settlement was not revealed, an attorney for Henry told People, “This matter has been resolved to the mutual satisfaction of the parties, and the parties are moving on with their lives.”
At the time, Eckhart also expressed her readiness to begin a new chapter.
“This has been an exhaustive, re-traumatizing, five-year legal battle with incredible challenges that at times I almost felt was unable to bear,” she told People in June 2025. “With this settlement in place, a weight has now been lifted from my shoulders and my passion to support fellow trauma survivors has been renewed.”
To look back at Eckhart’s life in pictures, read on.
Jennifer Eckhart/Instagram
Jennifer Eckhart/Instagram
Jennifer Eckhart/Instagram
Jennifer Eckhart/Instagram
Jennifer Eckhart/Instagram
Jennifer Eckhart/Instagram
Jennifer Eckhart/Instagram
If you or someone you know needs help, call 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. You can also call the network, previously known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, at 800-273-8255, text HOME to 741741 or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional resources.
