| Carpenter began dieting while in high school. Under a doctor's guidance, she began the Stillman diet, eating lean foods, drinking eight glasses of water a day and avoiding fatty foods. She reduced her weight to 120 pounds (54 kg) and stayed approximately at that weight until around 1973 when the Carpenters' career reached its peak. That year, she saw a concert photo of herself and felt that her clothing made her appear heavy. She hired a personal trainer, who advised her to change her diet. The new diet built muscle, which made her feel heavier instead of slimmer. Carpenter fired the trainer and began her own weight-loss program using exercise equipment and counting calories. She lost about 20 pounds (9 kg) and intended to lose another 5 pounds (2.3 kg). Her eating habits also changed around this time; she would try to remove food from her plate by offering tastes to others with whom she was dining.
By September 1975, Carpenter weighed 91 pounds (41 kg). At live performances, fans reacted with gasps to her gaunt appearance, and many wrote to the pair to ask what was wrong. She refused to declare publicly that she was suffering from an eating disorder; in a 1981 Nationwide TV-interview, when asked point blank about anorexia, she simply said she was "pooped". However, she and those around her knew that something was wrong. Dionne Warwick wrote that when meeting Carpenter for lunch in New York in 1981, "It was shocking to see how very thin she was." In an interview after Karen's death, Richard said that he was aware that Karen was unhealthily dieting starting around 1975 but that neither he nor their parents knew how to help her. In 1981, she told Richard that there was a problem and that she needed help with it. Carpenter spoke with Cherry Boone, who had recovered from anorexia, and contacted Boone's doctor for help. She was hoping to find a quick solution to her problem, as she had performing and recording obligations, but the doctor told her that treatment could last from one to three years. She then chose to be treated in New York City by psychotherapist Steven Levenkron.
By late 1981, Carpenter was taking thyroid-replacement medication, which she obtained using the name of Karen Burris, to increase her metabolism. She used the medication in conjunction with increased consumption (as many as 90 tablets per night) of the laxatives upon which she had long relied, which caused food to pass quickly through her digestive tract. Despite Levenkron's treatment, including confiscation of medications that Carpenter had misused, her condition continued to deteriorate, and she lost more weight eventually reaching an all time low of 77 pounds. She told Levenkron that she felt dizzy and that her heart was beating irregularly. In September 1982, she was admitted to Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, where she was placed on intravenous parenteral nutrition. The procedure was successful, and she gained 30 pounds in a relatively short time, but this put a strain on her heart, which was already weak from years of anorexia. She maintained a relatively stable weight for the rest of her life. |
Carpenter returned to California in November 1982, determined to reinvigorate her career, finalize her divorce and begin a new album with Richard. On December 17, 1982, she performed for the last time as she sang Christmas carols for her godchildren, their classmates and other friends at the Buckley School in Sherman Oaks, California. Carpenter's last public appearance occurred on January 11, 1983, at a gathering of past Grammy Award winners who were commemorating the awards show's 25th anniversary. She seemed somewhat frail and fatigued, but according to Warwick, Carpenter was vibrant and outgoing, exclaiming, "Look at me! I've got an ass!" She also began to write songs for the first time after returning to California and told Warwick that she had "a lot of living left to do”.
On February 1, 1983, Carpenter saw her brother for the last time and discussed new plans for the group including touring. On February 4, Carpenter was scheduled to sign papers to finalize her divorce. Shortly after waking up that morning, she collapsed on the floor of a walk-in closet at her parents' home in Downey. Paramedics found her unconscious and in cardiac arrest, with her heart beating once every 10 seconds (6 bpm). She was rushed by ambulance to Downey Community Hospital, where she was pronounced dead at 9:51 a.m., at the age of 32.
Carpenter's funeral was held on February 8, 1983, at Downey United Methodist Church. Approximately 1,000 mourners attended, including her friends Dionne Warwick,Dorothy Hamill, Olivia Newton-John, and Petula Clark. Her estranged husband, Thomas Burris, placed his wedding ring into her casket. Carpenter was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Cypress, California. In 2003, her body was moved, along with those of her parents, to a private mausoleum at the Pierce Brothers Valley Oaks Memorial Park in Westlake Village, California.
An autopsy released on March 11, 1983, discounted drug overdose, attributing Carpenter's death to "emetine cardiotoxicity due to or as a consequence of anorexia nervosa." Her blood sugar level at the time of death was 1,110 milligrams per deciliter (61.6 mmol/L), more than 10 times the average. Two years later, the coroner told colleagues that Carpenter's heart failure was caused by repeated use of ipecac syrup, an over-the-counter drug (emetic) often used to induce vomiting in cases of overdosing or poisoning. This claim was disputed by Levenkron, who said that he had never known her to use ipecac and that he had not seen evidence that she had been vomiting. Carpenter's friends were convinced that she had abused laxatives and thyroid medication to maintain her low body weight and felt that the problem had begun after her marriage began to fail. |