Infomercial king Billy Mays seemed to have had a premonition of his death just before he passed away in his sleep, friends say.

"Billy was in bed with his wife Deborah, and suddenly he told her, 'Thank you!' She said, 'For what?' and Billy answered, 'For being you and for being there,'" a source close to the family told The ENQUIRER.

"Deborah said this was very uncharacteristic of Billy, very out-of- the- ordinary. She's convinced he knew he wasn't going to wake up."

Billy, 50, wasn't feeling well when he dozed off a little after 10 p.m. on June 27. "He had talked to a friend and said he was a little groggy," said the source.

Billy had just flown back to his Tampa, Fla., home from Philadelphia, where he'd shot a commercial.

Todd Pezzi,  a Penn State student was on the US Airways flight and snapped a pic of Billy as he left first class and greeted passengers in coach. It is the last-known photo of the famed pitchman.

"I'd seen him when I got on board, and when he came back to my section about halfway through the flight, he shook my hand," said Todd. "He was really nice to all the passengers."

Billy's last flight nearly ended tragically. The plane blew out a front tire on landing in Tampa. Billy, along with some of the other passengers, got clunked on the head when ceiling tiles and luggage from the overhead units toppled down on them, but with no serious injuries Billy picked up his luggage and went home.

On June 29, he was scheduled to have his third hip replacement surgery. "Billy was in a lot of pain and was taking painkillers. He was terrified about the operation," said the source. But the operation never happened.

Deborah found him unconscious, not breathing and cold to the touch when she awakened on June 28. He was rushed to a hospital where he was pronounced dead.

At first, suspicion fell on the head bump he received when the plane blew its tire, but an autopsy at the Hillsborough County Medical Examiner's facility revealed no external or internal head trauma.

Instead, it was discovered that Billy had hypertensive and arteriosclerotic heart disease. The diseases are capable of causing sudden death, according to Dr. Vernard Adams Hillsborough County's medical examiner.   "We see this all the time," Dr. Adams told The ENQUIERER.