Kinkade autopsy results may take five months

Gene Blythe / AP file

By Gael Fashingbauer Cooper

Although an autopsy was performed on painter Thomas Kinkade on Monday, the results may not be known for five months, the San Jose Mercury News reports.

Although autopsy results are often held pending toxicology results, the paper reports that those tests?may take a while?"because of a backup at the county lab."

Kinkade was just 54, but early reports attributed his death to natural causes.

Kinkade's girlfriend, Amy Pinto, told the?newspaper that the painter "died in his sleep, very happy, in the house he built, with the paintings he loved, and the woman he loved."

She said the two had been dating for a year and a half and that Kinkade and his wife Nanette, whose initials are engraved on Kinkade's reproductions,?had been separated for two years. Nanette and the couple's teenage daughters were in Australia when Kinkade passed away on April 6, the paper reports.

Sales of Kinkade's works have reportedly boomed since his death. The Contra Costa Times reports that an original painting of Kinkade's sat unsold for years with a $110,000 price tag. Ater Kinkade's death, the owner raised the price to $150,000, and it it sold?in just hours.

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