Ex-Lakers Star Lamar Odom Alleges Dennis Hof Tried to Poison Him

Pro basketball champion turned reality TV star Lamar Odom told a whole new story of the most dangerous and traumatic incident in his life on Tuesday, when he claimed that his frightening 2015 drug overdose at the Love Ranch legal brothel just outside of Carson City, Nevada, was not a drug overdose at all. Instead, the 39-year-old Odom now alleges, legendary “pimp” Dennis Hof, owner of the Love Ranch, tried to kill him by poison. Hof is no longer around to defend himself from Odom’s explosive accusation, made on Tuesday’s edition of the ABC-TV talk show The View. The flamboyant brothel entrepreneur, as AVN.com reported, died last year just three weeks before an election in which he was running for state legislature in Nevada—a race that he won despite his death. Hof died on October 16, 2018, at the same Love Ranch brothel where Odom slipped into a coma. In fact, Hof’s death came just three days after the third anniversary of Odom’s October 13 incident. Hof’s death was due to natural causes—specifically, a heart attack—according to a Reno Gazette-Journal report.  Shortly after Odom’s frightening collapse, police said that his coma was due to consuming a mixture of cocaine and 10 doses of a non-prescription erectile dysfunction medication known by the brand name Reload 72-Hour Strong Sexual Performance Enhancer. According to a report by USA Today, many such over-the-counter ED medications are “spiked” with sildenafil, the active, prescription-only ingredient in Viagra. Whether the Reload supplements consumed by Odom secretly contained sildenafil is unknown, but in 2013 the Food and Drug Administration issued a warning about the product, USA Today reported, saying that it did, in fact, contain the medication, which can be dangerous when mixed with certain other drugs or taken in excessively high quantity. Odom last year said that he suffered 12 strokes and six heart attacks during his coma, according to a TMZ report. But on The View on Tuesday, Odom denied taking any drugs at all that night at Love Ranch. “Dennis Hof, I don’t know what he had against me,” Odom told View co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar. “But I didn’t do drugs that night, to be honest with you. So I don’t know if he tried to poison me.” Under questioning from Behar, Odom later said, “He [Hof] tried to kill me.” Though Hof himself is now unable to answer Odom’s charges, porn performer Ron Jeremy—a close friend of Hof’s—denied that the now-deceased, self-described “pimp” had anything to do with Odom’s coma. "Read my lips," Jeremy told TMZ on Tuesday. "NOOOOO!!! Why would Dennis do this? What could he possibly gain?"  Odom, who claimed on The View that his legal team is now investigating his allegation that Hof attempted to murder him, played 14 seasons in the NBA, including playing on two championship teams with the Los Angeles Lakers. Following his retirement, he dated and later married reality TV star Khloe Kardashian, appearing on her show Keeping Up With the Kardashians—as well as on their own show, Khloe and Lamar. The couple filed for divorce in 2013. Photo by Bridget Samuels / Wikimedia Commons