In the summer of 1976, one of the most beloved child stars in American television history was found dead at a friend's house in Oceanside, California. She was eighteen years old. Her name was Anissa Jones, and millions of families knew her as Buffy Davis on the CBS sitcom Family Affair, one of the most watched shows on television in the late 1960s. For years, the story people told about her was simple: she grew up, she lost her way, she made bad choices, and she died of a drug overdose. That story was true. But it was not the whole story. Underneath it was something darker, something that involved a licensed physician, a prescription, and a death that a California court would later find was not entirely her fault.Anissa Jones started on Family Affair at age eight. The show ran for five seasons and made her one of the most recognizable faces on television. When it ended in 1971, she was thirteen and could not shake the image of the little girl from TV. She lost roles, her parents divorced, and by her mid-teens she was shoplifting and falling in with a crowd that was not helping. Her family found her a psychiatrist to manage the anxiety that had been building since the show ended. He seemed calm and trustworthy. Her family felt like she was finally getting real help.That same summer, police had been quietly watching a doctor's office in Torrance, California since July 16th. Neighbors were calling because of what they saw outside: teenagers and young adults lined up around the block for hours in the heat. This was not a regular medical practice. The doctor was writing over a hundred prescriptions every single day. Anyone over eighteen with five dollars and an ID could walk out with Quaaludes, Seconal, or whatever they wanted. In less than a year he made close to half a million dollars running a licensed pill mill.On the night of August 27th, 1976, Anissa went to a party in Oceanside. She was drinking. She had barbiturates and cocaine and she mixed them. She was found the next morning. The coroner said it was one of the most massive overdoses he had ever seen.When detectives worked the scene they found an envelope among her belongings. It was from a doctor's office. Inside was a prescription for Seconal, fifty pills at one and a half grains, written to a patient named Jones. That address led investigators directly to the Torrance pill mill they had already been watching for six weeks. A licensed physician had written Anissa Jones a prescription for the exact drug that helped kill her.Six days after her death, police arrested the doctor. He was charged with eleven offenses and prosecutors added a count of second-degree murder. His name was Dr. Don Carlos Moshos. He was already sick, diabetes and high blood pressure, and deteriorated quickly. By December he was hospitalized with hepatitis, the murder charge was dropped, and on December 27th, 1976, he died. He never spent a single day in prison.Her family sued his estate. In July of 1979 a civil court found Dr. Don Carlos Moshos thirty percent responsible for the death of Anissa Jones and awarded the family just under eighty thousand dollars. The man her family trusted to help her had been writing mass prescriptions for cash while she was in his care. He knew he was sick. He knew he might never face a courtroom. And he was almost right.The story that followed her for decades was that she threw her life away. The fuller story is that someone she trusted handed her the means to end it, and the legal system never made him answer for it.

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