Marlon Brando's killer son Christian dies at 49 after failing to come out of 'Aids linked' coma

A long-time drug abuser who served time for killing his sister's lover, his cause of death was given as double pneumonia.

But there were reports in the U.S. that it could have been Aids-related.

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Christian was the eldest of Brando's 11 acknowledged children - eight fathered with four different women and three adopted.

His ex-wife Deborah said he had been in a coma on a respirator since being taken into Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Centre in Los Angeles on January 11.

"His body was totally compromised," she said. "He'd lived so hard - this is just so sad."

For most of his life Christian, a high-school dropout and failed actor, lived off the fortune of his father, who died in 2004 aged 80.

He was the result of Brando's marriage of less than a year to Anna Kashfi, a Welsh actress of Indian descent. The actor described her as "probably the most beautiful woman I've ever known".

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Her brooding, dark-haired son achieved worldwide notoriety in 1990 when he shot dead Dag Drollet, boyfriend of his half-sister Cheyenne, at Brando's Los Angeles mansion.

Christian had always been close to Cheyenne, who was pregnant by Drollet, 26. When she claimed her lover had been beating her, Christian went to confront him.

Although he claimed that his gun went off accidentally during a struggle, Drollet was shot in the back of the head, while holding a packet of cigarettes and a TV remote.

In court Christian pleaded guilty to manslaughter. Prosecutors wanted to charge him with murder, but Cheyenne, their main witness, had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Tahiti, where her father owned a private island.

Marlon Brando made an emotional hour-long plea for mercy, tearfully telling the judge: "I think I perhaps failed him as a father. The tendency is to blame the other parent. But I am certain there were things I could have done differently."

He told the court that Christian had been the subject of a long and bitter custody battle. At one point, he claimed, Miss Kashfi had kidnapped the boy and taken him to Mexico.

When he finally gained permanent custody, Christian was 13 and "a basket case of emotional disorders". Looking across the court, Marlon told the Drollet family: "I'm sorry... If I could trade places with Dag, I would."

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Drollet's father later said he thought Brando was acting and his son was "getting away with murder".

Christian was jailed for ten years - considered a light sentence. He was freed after half the term. A year before his release in 1996, Cheyenne, then 25, hanged herself at her mother's home in Tahiti.

In 2005 Christian pleaded guilty to beating his then-wife, Deborah, and was put on probation.

Unlike his prolific father, he never fathered any children.