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Alicia Witt breaks silence about the sudden death of her parents

The "Walking Dead" actor wrote a moving tribute to her mother and father, who were found dead in their Massachusetts home last month.
Alicia Witt with her parents.
Alicia Witt with her parents.@aliciawitty / Twitter
/ Source: TODAY

Alicia Witt, known for her roles in 1984's “Dune” and “The Walking Dead,” has broken her silence about the sudden death of her parents.

Diane Witt, 75, and Robert Witt, 87, were found deceased by a relative at their home in Worcester, Massachusetts, on Dec. 20.

"It still doesn’t feel real," Witt, 46, began an Instagram post on Tuesday. "It’s been a month since i got scared, not having heard back from them, and called to have them checked on. waiting, phone in hand, praying fervently that the next call would be from them, angry i’d gotten someone else involved."

But when the phone rang, the voice on the other other belonged to a detective. Witt said she knew instantly that her mom and dad were gone.

Diane Witt, a former reading specialist, made the Guinness World Records in the 1980s for her hair, which measured 12 feet, 8 inches, according to her obituary. Robert Witt was a retired science teacher.

In her post, Witt addressed the mysterious circumstances surrounding her parents' death. Kathleen Daly-Shea, director of media relations for the Worcester Police Department, previously told  TODAY Parents that "there were no signs of foul play."

Worcester Fire Deputy Chief Adam Roche said there were no signs of carbon monoxide at the residence.

"I hadn’t been allowed inside my parents’ home for well over a decade; every 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, tried to convince them to let me help them move — but 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," Witt wrote. "It was not for a lack of trying on my part, or the part of other people who loved them."

Witt described her parents as "brilliant educators, deeply kind, curious, intuitive, wise, young at heart, funny," and also "fiercely stubborn."

"I struggle, as much as i helped, with what else could i have done — short of petitioning the court system for taking control of two otherwise very sharp, very independent, very capable adults. they were a united, intertwined, indivisible force, determined to do things their own way," the actor wrote. "Knowing they had each other — battling them the way i would have had to in order to do this truly felt like it would have destroyed them."

Witt did not share their cause of death, but said that the heat had gone out in their home.

"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," she wrote. "And even if i could have had a crystal ball and looked into the future — if i could have said to them ‘you are going to break my heart and the hearts of all who love you with a worst-case-scenario ending if you don’t let us help you’ — i still think they would have made the same choices. they weren’t willing to make different ones.

"Our last words to each other were ‘i love you’. that part was simple; never in doubt. they loved me so. i loved them so."