David Carradine Went Out Like That INXS Dude

According to a forensic scientist who has seen the morbid “death photo” of David Carradine, the actor died of erotic asphyxiation – or the deliberate withholding of oxygen to the brain for the purposes of sexual arousal.

The Kung Fu and Kill Bill star was found dead in his Bangkok, Thailand hotel room last week with a rope tied around his neck and shoelaces tied around his genitals. His hands were also found bound together near his head, which according to people familiar with this dangerous sexual practice is, for lack of a better term, a “dead giveaway.”

From TMZ:

Brent Turvey, a forensic scientist and criminal profiler who has studied auto-erotic asphyxiation, has examined the photo of Carradine’s body published in a Thai newspaper. The photo shows the body with a rope around his neck hanging in a closet … Carradine’s hands were tied about his head.

Turvey says it’s simple for someone to tie rope around his/her hands, by loosely tying the hands in front — then raising them up to tighten.

Turvey says undoing the knot is easy as well, allowing for a quick escape.

It’s known as bondage “breathplay” in the BDSM community, although there is no evidence that anyone was in the hotel room with Carradine at the time of his death – which is why Thai authorities are referring to his death as an accidental suicide.

Basically, people who like this sort of thing set it up so that they can wriggle themselves free and remove the rope around their neck right before they pass out … at the last moment.

Carradine apparently missed his window.

A dozen years ago, this sexual practice (which is technically classified as a disorder) rose to international prominence after it was widely-rumored to have caused the death of INXS singer Michael Hutchence.