Robert and Diane Witt, the parents of actor Alicia Witt, were found dead in their home on Dec. 20. The cause of death was hypothermia and in a statement Witt wrote that 'I had no idea that their heat had gone out.'
, actor Alicia Witt took to Facebook Tuesday to detail how the preventable tragedy has left her reeling and struggling with what she could have done to save them.star wrote that “i had no idea that their heat had gone out. i will never understand how or why they made the choice not to tell me this, not to let me help them with this. my heart is broken.”
The sudden and mysterious nature of the deaths thrust Witt’s previously private parents into the spotlight and the actor herself into a painful type of notoriety. She wrote, “I never imagined i would have to talk about this publicly—much less, amidst overwhelming floods of grief.” “[E]very time i offered to have something repaired for them, they refused to allow workers into their house. i begged, cried, tried to reason with them,” she wrote. “[B]ut every time, they became furious with me, telling me i had no right to tell them how to live their lives and that they had it all under control.”
“[B]attling them the way i would have had to in order to do this truly felt like it would have destroyed them,” she said, as she described her parents as “fiercely stubborn,” “very independent,” and “very capable” people who “were not penniless.”