update DAVID CARRADINE DEAD IN BANGKOK

description

LATEST: Thai police sources NOW say David Carradine died from auto-erotic-asphyxiation "accident"!

The acting legend, 72, was in Thailand shooting film Stretch when he was found dead in his hotel room.

"He was found hanging by a rope in the room’s closet," Lieutenant Colonel Pirom Jantrapirom of the Lumpini police station in Bangkok stated.

“There was a rope tied around his neck and another rope tied to his genitals, and the two ropes were tied together and they hung in the closet,” Lieutenant General Worapong Siewpreecha clarified today. “Under these circumstances we cannot be sure that he committed suicide."

Thai police now believe Carradine’s death was a result of auto-erotic asphyxiation, i.e. pleasuring himself  by self-induced strangulation inducing oxygen deprivation.  An autopsy has been completed but the results have not yet been announced.

"We are investigating from where he got the rope because it does not seem it was from the hotel," a Bangkok official divulged.

Carradine had been staying in the Park Nai Lert Hotel since June 2. Producers became concerned when Carradine failed to show up at a dinner.  A hotel’s maid then discovered a "half naked" Carradine dead in closet June 4 at 10 am

Preliminary police investigation indicated a possible suicide. Cops say he was dead for less than 12 hours prior to discovery with no sign of assault.

Family, friends and fans around the world were in disbelief that the star  might have killed himself.

Carradine, the eldest son of actor John Carradine,  appeared in over 200 movies, TV dramas, and numerous plays. He was also a producer, director, writer, and composer .

Carradine won a National Board of Review award for Best Actor for playing Woody Guthrie in Bound for Glory (1976) and was nominated many times for Golden Globes and Emmys, working for such top directors as Hal Ashby,  Ingmar Bergman (The Serpent’s Egg),  Roger Corman (Death Race 2000) Larry Cohen (Q)Martin Scorsese (Boxcar Bertha) and Quentin Trantino (Kill Bill 1 & 2).  

In his 1995 book Endless Highway  Carradine wrote that he tried to kill himself when he was 5 years old. He also chronicled extensive drug use, from LSD to cocaine, and his efforts in the mid-1990s to get sober.

David is survived by his wife, Annie Bierman, and four children as well as his brothers-in-thesping Keith and Robert Carradine and niece Martha Plimpton.