Death
Hughes was reported to have died on April 5, 1976, at 1:27 pm on board an aircraft owned by Robert Graf and piloted by Jeff Abrams, en route from his penthouse at the Acapulco Fairmont Princess Hotel in Mexico to The Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas. Alternatively, other accounts indicate that he died in the flight from Freeport Grand Bahamas to Houston. His reclusive activities (and possibly his drug use) made him practically unrecognizable; his hair, beard, fingernails, and toenails were long (possibly due to allodynia making him averse to touch), his tall 6 ft 4 in (193 cm) frame now weighed barely 90 lb (41 kg), and the FBI had to resort to fingerprints to identify the body. Howard Hughes' alias, John T. Conover, was used upon the arrival of his body at a morgue in Houston on the day of his death. There, his body was received by Dr. Jack Titus.
A subsequent autopsy noted kidney failure as the cause of death. Hughes was in extremely poor physical condition at the time of his death. He suffered from malnutrition. While his kidneys were damaged, his other internal organs, including his brain, were deemed perfectly healthy. X-rays revealed five broken-off hypodermic needles in the flesh of his arms. To inject codeine into his muscles, Hughes used glass syringes with metal needles that easily became detached. Phenacetin, a nonopioid acetaminophen prodrug that was used for chronic pain, may have been the cause of his kidney failure.
Hughes is buried in the Glenwood Cemetery in Houston, Texas, next to his parents.
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