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NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
BY Joe Kemp, Rocco Parascandola
Wednesday, April 4, 2012, 4:27 PM
Bebeto Matthews/AP
French scholar Richard Descoings was found dead inside The Michelangelo Hotel on W. 51st St.
Autopsy results for a French scholar found dead in a midtown hotel room were inconclusive, officials said Wednesday.
Richard Descoings’ cause of death was still unclear pending further study that includes toxicology testing, according to a spokeswoman for the city’s medical examiner.
The naked body of Descoings, director of the prestigious Institute of Political Studies in Paris, was found on a bed in his seventh-floor room at the Michelangelo Hotel about 1 p.m. Tuesday, cops said.
Investigators initially treated the 52-year-old political scientist’s death as suspicious after finding his cell and laptop computer phone on a third-floor landing as if it were chucked out the window, sources said.
But there is still no evidence that Descoings was murdered, sources said, and detectives suspect he may have accidentally overdosed on a combination of alcohol and anti-depressants.
Nonetheless, sources said, detectives have been trying to retrace Descoings’ steps to determine if he had a fight with anyone while in New York or communicated by phone or email with someone who can provide any clues about what happened.
Jacques Witt/AFP/Getty Images