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Police probe David Carradine's death
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Thai police are investigating the mysterious death of Hollywood actor David Carradine. Coroners have completed an autopsy on his body, a day after the Kill Bill star was found naked and hanging from a rope in a wardrobe at his luxury Bangkok hotel room.
Coroners at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn hospital said they had not yet determined the cause of the 72-year-old's death at the plush Swissotel Nai Lert Park and are waiting for the results of a toxicology screen. "We are now running tests and then we will decide the cause of death,' the hospital's chief coroner Nantana Sirisap said.
"This certainly was not death by natural causes." Police said there was no indication other people had been in the room, where Carradine had stayed during shooting of the film Stretch.
Carradine, from a family of performers and the eldest son of character actor John Carradine, enjoyed a long career on Broadway, television and in movies such as director Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill: Vol 1 and Kill Bill: Vol 2.
While some media reports have speculated his death may have been a suicide, a spokeswoman said neither they nor his family believed Carradine was capable of killing himself. "His family is in shock," said Carradine's spokeswoman Tiffany Smith. "They have the same belief we have. There was no way David did this to himself."
Carradine wrote in his 1995 autobiography Endless Highway that he had tried to kill himself when he was five-years-old. The book also documented his alcoholism and extensive use of drugs, from LSD to cocaine.
He was made most famous by his role in the US series Kung Fu, where he played Kwai Chang Caine, a half-Asian martial arts specialist. Carradine was married five times and had two daughters from previous marriages.
© Independent Television News Limited 2009. All rights reserved.
