Philip Seymour Hoffman dead at 46: Actor had 70 bags of heroin, prescription drugs in home

Philip Seymour Hoffman turned his West Village apartment into a drug den.

Seventy glassine baggies of heroin packed for individual sale — at least 50 of them unopened — were discovered in the $10,000-a-month rental where the Oscar-winning actor was found dead Sunday with a needle stuck in his left arm, sources said.

Some of the envelopes had the words “Ace of Spades” written on them, and others were stamped with the name “Ace of Hearts.” Both are brands of heroin that are often cut with a powerful pain reliever called fentanyl, and have become a plague in Pennsylvania, where they were used in 22 overdose deaths.

Police said they haven’t seen heroin with the Ace of Hearts stamp in New York City since 2012.

Cops also removed from Hoffman’s Bethune St. apartment several bags brimming with about 20 hypodermic needles.

Hoffman’s remains were autopsied on Monday to determine the cause of death, and the heroin is being analyzed to try to determine whether it came from a particular batch currently being hawked on the street. Police, however, are pretty certain they know what killed the supremely talented but drug-addicted actor.

“We still think it’s going to be an overdose,” one NYPD source said.

Hoffman, dressed in boxers and a T-shirt, was found dead at 11:30 a.m. Sunday in a bathroom of the fourth-floor apartment by a pal, screenwriter David Katz, and personal assistant Isabella Wing-Davey. Katz had gone to check up on Hoffman after the actor had failed that morning to pick up his three kids from the care of their mother, his estranged girlfriend, Mimi O’Donnell.

Not far from Hoffman’s stone-cold body authorities discovered a charred spoon that the 46-year-old appeared to have used to heat up his last high, sources said. The door was double-locked, and there was no indication that anyone other than Hoffman had been inside his pad, the sources added.

Now police are checking Hoffman’s cell phone records and computer, and checking for security video footage of his recent visitors, in an effort to identify his drug dealer. According to Hoffman’s phone records, at 8 p.m. Saturday he talked to O’Donnell, sources said. Then, at 9 p.m., he spoke to Katz.

“The direction of the investigation is going to depend, in large part, on the findings of the medical examiner and the findings of the lab tests on the drugs,” said Deputy Police Commissioner Stephen Davis, the NYPD’s top spokesman.

Police will use a database to try to determine the origin of the heroin, a law enforcement source said. A source said investigators face a challenging task.

“No one’s got a trademark registered on Ace of Hearts” — meaning any dealer can use that name and that because it has that name doesn’t necessarily indicate it came from a batch by the same name found elsewhere, the source said.

Hoffman, who won the 2005 Best Actor Oscar for playing the title role in “Capote,” admitted last year to falling off the wagon after two decades of being drug-free and returning to the heroin habit that sent him to rehab.

Police found five different prescription drugs in the Bethune St. apartment, which was outfitted like a shooting gallery. One of the five was buprenorphine, which heroin addicts take to help kick the habit, sources said.

As investigators worked the case on Monday, Hoffman’s celebrity friends and supporters stopped by the West Village apartment on Jane St., where Hoffman had lived with O’Donnell, 46, and their three children — Cooper, 10, Tallulah 7, and Willa, 5 — until his relapse. O’Donnell reportedly booted the actor after he started using again.

Cate Blanchett, with whom Hoffman acted in the 1999 thriller “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” came bearing gifts for the three kids. She had tears in her eyes.

A short time later, the Rev. James Martin arrived. Martin is a Jesuit priest who met Hoffman in 2005 when the actor was directing “The Last Days of Judas Iscariot.”

Actor Justin Theroux, a close friend of Hoffman’s, was also seen leaving O’Donnell’s apartment. O’Donnell did not speak to media gathered outside the residence. Neighbors described her as too distraught over Hoffman’s passing to make a public statement.

“Just a lost, wonderful soul,” Barbara Meyers, 73, who lives next door, said of Hoffman. “A great guy. A doll. Always looked like a schlepper, baseball cap and hair this way and that, riding around on his bike.”

In Los Angeles, actor John Leguizamo told the Daily News he saw Hoffman a week ago at the swanky Chateau Marmont hotel, and they were “talking about theater and how tough it is.”

Leguizamo chuckled sadly when he recalled how Hoffman had quoted famed artist Pablo Picasso. “It’s like Picasso said, ‘I do the impossible ’cause everybody else does the possible,’ ” Hoffman said, according to Leguizamo. “I’m not saying I’m Picasso, but theater is like doing the impossible.”

Leguizamo, 49, said he and Hoffman “laughed, agreed and went our separate L.A. ways.”

Mayor de Blasio called the tragic actor a “quintessential New Yorker, in the sense of just everything we love about this place, his creativity and his amazing ability to portray the human condition.”

“It’s absolutely tragic,” he said on Brian Lehrer’s radio show on WNYC. “What I can say about his life is even someone of that extraordinary achievement grapples with the demon of substance abuse.”

Hoffman was also a Tony Award-nominated stage actor who got rave reviews for his portrayal of Willy Loman in the 2012 revival of “Death of a Salesman.”

In his memory, Broadway’s theaters will dim the lights on their marquees for a minute at 7:45 p.m. Wednesday.

In his brown Carhartt coat, ever-present baseball cap and rumpled slacks, Hoffman was a familiar and friendly presence in his neighborhood.

Neighbors said they saw the actor as recently as Saturday and he seemed just fine. “He looked like he had just come from California or Florida, he was looking really good,” said 74-year-old Avri Ohana, who lives down the block.

Hoffman had in fact been in the South — he was spotted in Atlanta last Thursday at a restaurant near the Hyatt hotel in downtown, according to TMZ.com.

Witnesses told the outlet Hoffman had made “multiple trips” to the bathroom and later appeared “drunk and disheveled” at the airport.

At the Bethune St. building on Monday, a dozen bouquets of flowers, including roses and orchids, mingled with single flowers on the front steps. There were also two pictures of Hoffman and a handful of candles that were lit until they were doused by a steady snowfall.

“He’s the only celebrity we ever cared about,” said 34-year-old Nathan Driver, who lives a couple of blocks away and walked over with wife Tara and their 2-year-old daughter, Scarlett, to pay their respects.

With Nancy Dillon, Caitlin Nolan, Erin Durkin, Chelsia Rose Marcius, Joe Dziemianowicz and Dale W. Eisinger

tmoore@nydailynews.com