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Actor David Carradine - Source: Reuters -
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Thai coroners completed an autopsy on the body of actor David
Carradine a day after the star of the US television show Kung Fu
and film Kill Bill: Vol 1 & 2 was found naked and hanging
dead in 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 and were 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 a natural cause of death," she said.
A maid found Carradine hanging naked by a rope in the closet of his
hotel suite at the plush Swissotel Nai Lert Park hotel on Thursday,
police said.
They said there was no indication other people had been in the
room, where Carradine had stayed during the shooting of a film
called Stretch.
A US embassy official in Bangkok said he had no details of the
police investigation.
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 speculated his death may have been a
suicide, a spokeswoman said neither they nor his family believed
Carradine was capable of killing himself.
Family shocked
"His family is in shock," said Tiffany Smith of Carradine's
management firm, Binder & Associates. "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 worked on Broadway in The Deputy and The Royal Hunt of the Sun
and made his mark on Hollywood in the 1960s in TV westerns such as
Wagon Train, The Virginian and a TV version of the hit western
movie Shane.
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,
which earned him an Emmy nomination.
The role of Caine led to parts in more than 200 productions and his
turn as the villainous Bill in Tarantino's Kill Bill: Vol. 2 led to
his fourth Golden Globe nomination.
Carradine was married five times and had two daughters from
previous marriages.
