Brando Says His Daughter Tried to Hang Herself

Marlon Brando says that his despondent daughter, the key witness in his son’s approaching murder trial, tried to hang herself early Sunday and is being maintained on life support systems at a Tahitian hospital.

In an emotional interview with The Times, Brando said late Sunday night that Cheyenne Brando, 20, had attempted suicide at the family compound in Punaauia about 4 a.m., only days after being treated for an overdose of tranquilizers and antidepressant drugs.

“Cheyenne hung herself,” the actor said, adding that she has been placed on a respirator. She is expected to live, he said, “but we don’t know if there’s been brain damage or not.”

Brando has been critical of Los Angeles County prosecutors who want to subpoena Cheyenne to testify at the trial of her half brother, Christian. He is accused of murdering her boyfriend, Dag Drollet. The actor believes the ongoing efforts to return her from Tahiti to testify are contributing to Cheyenne Brando’s mental state.

Los Angeles County district attorney’s spokesman Mike Botula said Monday that prosecutors have no way of verifying Cheyenne Brando’s condition and will continue their legal fight to force her to return.

“We are proceeding with the legal facts at hand,” he said. “If it (her mental condition) presents itself in court, we will deal with it at that time.”

Hospital officials in Tahiti confirmed that Cheyenne Brando again is under their care, but declined to elaborate.

Brando said he desperately wants to be beside his daughter, whom he calls “the most precious thing in the world to me,” but said that he cannot afford to jeopardize his son’s trial, where he is expected to testify.

“The (expletive) judge is going to arrest me,” he said, referring to the French magistrate hearing a civil case against Cheyenne Brando in Tahiti, where she is charged with being an accessory to Drollet’s murder. The magistrate has said that he wants to question the actor.

“They (French authorities) would detain me by taking my passport, and I’m stuck in Tahiti. . . . I could be down there a year,” Brando said.

Instead, he remains in seclusion at his Mulholland Drive estate, where last May 16 Drollet was shot to death by Christian Brando--the beginning of a nightmarish chain of events for the reclusive Brando.

Immediately after the shooting, Christian Brando--the actor’s son by his first wife, actress Anna Kashfi--was jailed for three months, then released on bail secured by his father’s beloved hilltop home.

Christian Brando claims that the shooting occurred accidentally during a struggle between the two men. The fight, he said, began after Cheyenne Brando, who at the time was pregnant with Drollet’s child, had complained that Drollet had beaten her.

Cheyenne Brando flew home to Tahiti after telling police her half brother’s act was no accident. There, she was charged in a complaint filed by the victim’s father. She gave birth to Drollet’s child weeks after his death, and has been hospitalized several times since then.

She has given several conflicting statements to authorities about Drollet’s death, at one point implicating her father and her brother’s girlfriend. The elder Brando was in the house when the shooting occurred.

Cheyenne Brando has been stalked by hordes of tabloid photographers and reporters, telling one flippantly that she would be happy to talk--for $75,000.

Last week, she was hospitalized in intensive care after a drug overdose left her temporarily comatose, and only days after her release she has again tried to take her life, her father said.

“This case is tearing everyone apart,” said Brando, who blames the district attorney’s office--which has been trying for five months to pressure her to come back to testify although French authorities have seized her passport--for her present mental condition.

He asked whether Steven Barshop, the deputy district attorney prosecuting the case, was “going to bring a girl back who one week takes an overdose and one week tries to hang herself.”

Barshop, reached by telephone late Monday, said he had no knowledge of Cheyenne Brando’s most recent suicide attempt and refused comment on whether, if reports of the attempt are true, prosecutors would continue to seek her as a witness.

Los Angeles defense attorney Robert Shapiro, who represents Christian Brando, confirmed late Monday that the young woman has been re-hospitalized.

Dr. Luc Eyrol, director of Mamao hospital in Papeete, told The Times that French law prohibits release of information about a patient’s condition without authorization from the family.

Even if she is hospitalized, Botula, the prosecutor’s spokesman said, “she could be perfectly healthy by the time she is needed to testify. We have no choice but to proceed as we have in trying to secure her return to the U.S. to testify.”

The defense claims her mental state would render her testimony worthless.

Times staff writer Patt Morrison contributed to this story.