Presley Gerber Was Cremated With the Cause Still Blank

Presley Gerber was cremated on September 25, 2026, five days after he died at 27 in a Santa Monica recovery house, with the cause of death still blank. The death certificate lists him as an entrepreneur who worked in mental health and says his ashes will be kept at Cindy Crawford and Rande Gerber’s Malibu home.

The Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner finished an exam on September 21 and left both cause and manner of death open. Santa Monica police are investigating a suspected overdose and say there is no sign of foul play. A small funeral is being planned.

Cremation Before a Named Cause

The certificate says the cremation was done at Rose Family Funeral Home after the autopsy. That sequence is legal. It is also why the public file is now a name, an age, a time of death, and a blank where the cause should be.

On September 21 the Department of Medical Examiner deferred the cause and manner of death after a deputy examiner’s exam. The office said extra tests were ordered and that it would not say which ones. Deferred cases, it added, can take a few months.

Gerber’s case number is 2026-14977. He was pronounced dead at 9:45 a.m. on September 20 by paramedics. His body was released to a mortuary chosen by next of kin on September 22, so the samples the office needed were already in the lab when the cremation went ahead.

THE DEATH FILE SO FAR

• Age: 27, identified by the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner.
• Time of death: Pronounced at 9:45 a.m. on September 20, 2026, by responding paramedics.
• Police call: Santa Monica officers were sent at 9:35 a.m. to a report of cardiac arrest and overdose.
• Case number: 2026-14977, with cause and manner still deferred.

A family representative said the family is asking for privacy during this very difficult and painful time. People close to them have described a small service, with Forest Lawn and Malibu Presbyterian Church under discussion. No date has been announced.

Hours After Check-In, a Cardiac Arrest Call

Gerber arrived at Resolutions Living, a seven-bedroom house on the 1000 block of Berkeley Street in Santa Monica, on the night of September 19. People familiar with the arrival said he got there around 10 p.m. and did not look sober, and that a friend and a sober coach dropped him off.

Santa Monica police later said detectives are investigating the death as a suspected overdose. Dispatch audio from the morning of September 20 includes both cardiac arrest and overdose. Officers found him unresponsive. He was pronounced dead in the house, not at a hospital.

The property has been described as a $7.7 million, seven-bedroom, nine-bathroom mansion marketed as a mental health recovery residence. Resolutions Living is tied to Resolutions Therapeutic Services, an outpatient program on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica founded by psychologist Reza Nabavi. The house itself is the address in the death investigation.

THE WEEK THE FILE FILLED IN

1. September 19, 2026: Gerber checks into Resolutions Living around 10 p.m.
2. September 20, 2026: Police are called at 9:35 a.m.; paramedics pronounce him dead at 9:45 a.m.
3. September 21, 2026: A deputy medical examiner examines him and defers cause and manner of death.
4. September 22, 2026: The body is released to a mortuary designated by next of kin.
5. September 25, 2026: The death certificate records a cremation; California discloses a license inquiry into the house.

Santa Monica detectives are also trying to trace how any drugs reached the bedroom. No one has been charged. The house had not issued a public statement on the death as of September 25.

California Does Not License Most Sober Homes

The label on the door is doing a lot of work. Resolutions Living has been called a rehab in casual talk. Under California law it sits in a different bucket, as long as the staff stick to housing and peer support.

The California Department of Health Care Services has the sole authority to license adult treatment facilities that offer 24-hour nonmedical recovery or treatment for alcohol and other drugs. A home that only offers a drug-free place to sleep does not need that license. DHCS also does not certify those homes or take ordinary complaints against them.

The line is the service, not the square footage. Detox, group counseling, individual sessions, or a formal treatment plan on site can pull a house into licensed territory. A weekly chore meeting does not. That is why a $7.7 million recovery mansion can operate next to licensed clinics and still sit outside the treatment rulebook.

THREE SETTINGS, THREE RULEBOOKS

Nabavi is listed as founder and executive clinical director of Resolutions Therapeutic Services, which advertises partial hospitalization and intensive outpatient care. California Board of Psychology records show he had two 2002 misdemeanor possession convictions in Alameda County, each with 36 months of probation. The board denied him in 2004 and 2005, then granted a psychological-assistant registration in January 2006, stayed a revocation, and put him on five years of probation. He became a psychologist in December 2006, won an early end to probation in May 2008, and holds a license listed as active through June 30, 2028. He started the treatment company in 2013. Those facts are on the board file. They are not a finding about what happened in the Berkeley Street bedroom.

Why the Medical Examiner Deferred the Case

A deferred death is not a secret finding. It is a holding pattern. The September 21 statement said extra testing was requested and that the office could not disclose which tests. In a suspected overdose, that usually means toxicology, and sometimes extra tissue work, before anyone signs a cause and manner.

Police language and medical-examiner language are not the same thing. Santa Monica police can call a death a suspected overdose while the examiner still has no official cause. Dispatch can log cardiac arrest and overdose on the same morning. None of that substitutes for the lab.

The wait can run a few months. Cremation does not cancel tests already drawn. It does mean there will be no second look at the body if later questions come up. For a health story, that is the hard part: the family is burying ashes while the public still does not know which drug, if any, shut his heart down.

The Ketamine Prescription His Family Already Feared

People close to Gerber say ketamine was a regular problem, and that a doctor kept prescribing it even as his family objected. He had said as much himself. In a December 2025 Instagram video he later deleted, he listed ketamine drips among a stack of drugs that also included buprenorphine, Xanax, Valium, antidepressants, and blood pressure medicine.

That prescription, if the accounts hold, sat in a gray zone the FDA has been flagging for years. Racemic ketamine is a Schedule III anesthetic, first approved in 1970. It is not approved for any psychiatric disorder. The approved cousin is esketamine, sold as Spravato, a nasal spray for treatment-resistant depression that can be given only in a certified clinic with a two-hour watch.

Brian Barnett, a Cleveland Clinic psychiatrist, has warned that off-label ketamine has raced ahead of those guardrails. His group has pointed to a 5.5-fold rise in ketamine prescriptions since 2017 and to the absence of a ketamine-specific Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy. A study of 1,148 people on esketamine, he noted, found no reports of patients seeking, misusing, or overdosing on esketamine or ketamine under that tighter system.

It’s imperative for clinicians to consider the risks of addiction and unintentional overdose, particularly when prescribing sublingual and intranasal formulations for at-home use.

Brian Barnett, MD, Psychiatric Treatment-Resistance Program, Cleveland Clinic Lutheran Hospital

On October 10, 2023, the FDA warned patients and clinicians about compounded ketamine products for psychiatric disorders, including oral forms. The agency said ketamine is not approved for psychiatric use, that compounded products are not FDA-approved, and that taking them without a clinician on site can hide sedation, dissociation, and breathing problems. It cited an April 2023 case of respiratory depression after compounded oral ketamine taken outside a clinic for PTSD.

WHAT THE 2023 FDA ALERT PUT ON THE RECORD

• No psychiatric approval: Ketamine is not FDA-approved to treat depression, anxiety, PTSD, or OCD.
• Compounded is unreviewed: Those products are not checked for safety, effect, or quality before they are sold.
• Home use adds risk: No clinician is there to watch for sedation, dissociation, or breathing trouble.
• No proof it is better: The FDA said it was not aware of evidence that compounded ketamine is safer, more effective, or faster than approved psychiatric drugs.

Attorney Mark Geragos, speaking generally about a possible case against a prescribing doctor, said the legal jump would be a hard one if the drug was given in a controlled medical setting. Toxicology has not shown what was in Gerber’s system. Ketamine is one thread in the file. It is not the cause of death until the examiner says it is.

Fifteen Psychiatrists and an Ibogaine Dose in Mexico

Gerber had spent years putting the messy parts on camera. He signed with IMG at 15, debuted for Moschino, and by 17 was in Calvin Klein work and on Dolce & Gabbana runways. In 2019, at 19, he was arrested for DUI in Beverly Hills and sentenced to three years of probation and a court DUI program. Later he ran “Mental Health Mondays” on Instagram and talked about depression and addiction in a tone most celebrity kids never risk.

The December 2025 video is the closest thing to a chart. He said he had seen as many as 15 psychiatrists and did not feel he had a clear plan for the mix of drugs he was on.

All these doctors say a lot of different things, so it’s kind of scary, but hopefully between my research and their research and God, we can figure this out.

Presley Gerber, Instagram video, December 2025

In March 2026 he posted from Mexico before an ibogaine flood dose, a treatment used for opioid and other substance problems that is not legal in the United States. That post is not a cause of death either. It shows how far he was willing to go when ordinary psychiatry felt like a pile of conflicting advice.

Ketamine sits in the same pile with a special problem. Addiction doctors at UCHealth note that ketamine can become addictive with other drug problems, including alcohol, and that blood pressure spikes from the drug can help set off cardiac arrest. Barnett has made the same point another way: many ketamine trials exclude people with substance use disorders, so the patients who most need caution are the ones the studies know least about.

A paid recovery house that takes a man who does not look sober, then logs a suspected overdose before noon, is the practical version of that gap. Self-placement is how a lot of adult treatment starts. It is also how an addicted person can walk into the lowest-oversight bed available on a Saturday night.

DHCS Is Checking Whether the House Needed a License

On Friday, September 25, the same day the cremation hit the certificate, the California Department of Health Care Services said it had opened an inquiry into Resolutions Living. Spokesman Anthony Cava said the review was prompted by a complaint and would ask whether the sober home was illegally providing services that required a state license.

“DHCS does not oversee sober living homes, and would only investigate sober living homes to determine if they are operating as an unlicensed treatment facility in violation of state law,” Cava said. He said no further information was available.

The complaint came from Jennifer Turner, a treatment-reform advocate. She wrote that a 27-year-old man entered the house seeking help and was dead the following morning, and that the circumstances warrant a thorough regulatory investigation into the facility, whatever the final cause of death.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The death: Presley Gerber, 27, was pronounced dead at 9:45 a.m. on September 20, 2026, at Resolutions Living in Santa Monica.
• The official cause: Still deferred by the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner pending further tests.
• The police posture: Suspected overdose, no indication of foul play, supplier trail still being worked.
• The house: Not licensed by DHCS as a substance-use treatment facility; now under a license inquiry.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The drug: Whether ketamine, another prescribed medicine, an illicit drug, or a mix caused the death.
• The house’s services: Whether Resolutions Living crossed from housing into unlicensed treatment.
• The funeral: Date and venue have not been announced by the family.

The ashes are in Malibu. The tests are still running. DHCS is asking a narrower question than the one the family is living with, which is how a 27-year-old who spent years asking for help died before lunch in a house sold as the place to get it.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis for general information only. It is not medical advice, a diagnosis, or a guide to ketamine, esketamine, ibogaine, or addiction treatment, and it is not legal advice about any pending death investigation or license review. Readers who are considering ketamine or other psychiatric drugs, or who are seeking care for depression or substance use, should talk with a licensed physician or addiction specialist who can review their full history before they act. Figures, case statuses, and funeral plans reflect the public record as dated in the piece and can change when the medical examiner, police, or DHCS release new findings.