Coroner-to-the-stars Michael Baden says David Carradine's death was not a suicide, and was caused by asphyxiation. You don't say?

Baden was hired by Carradine's family to conduct an independent autopsy, which is all the rage in Hollywood these days. He told Reuters that while his complete report won't be available for a week, he'd determined that Carradine did not deliberately kill himself:

"The cause of death was asphyxiation, an inability to breathe, now why that happened is still what we're working on," Baden told Reuters.

[snip]

"He didn't die of natural causes, and he didn't die of suicidal causes from the nature of the ligatures around the body, so that leaves some kind of accidental death," he said.

Well, we guess that rules out ninjas, right? Any other ideas?

The media has suggested Carradine could have died from accidental autoerotic asphyxiation. In response to a question on that topic, Baden did not rule out that possibility, but he also did not say autoerotic asphyxiation was the cause.

Baden also confirmed what was obvious to anyone who saw the photo of Carradine's body after he died—his hands were tied above his head. Which raises a question as to how one autoerotically asphyxiates oneself with one's hands bound out of reach of one's nether parts. He told Reuters that he is waiting for Thai authorities to provide him with "pass keys for the hotel where Carradine died, and security video to ensure no one was in the room with him at the time."

But if no one was in the room with him at the time, what the hell was he doing?

[Via ArtsBeat.]