Three months after Katherine Hartley Short died by suicide at her Hollywood Hills home on February 23, 2026, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner has released the autopsy report, and the new details it contains are the reason her name is trending again today.
The report, obtained by TMZ and reported by multiple outlets on May 26, reveals that it was Martin Short himself who set off the chain of events that led to Katherine being found.
The comedian and Only Murders in the Building star had not heard from his daughter in over 24 hours and called a friend and asked them to go to her home to check on her.
That friend arrived, found a note on Katherine’s locked bedroom door and was unable to access the room. The LAPD and fire department responded, and Katherine was found deceased.
A separate report published by In Touch using the medical examiner’s documentation reveals that Katherine had a prior suicide attempt in 2017, when she overdosed on medication.
She was 42 years old when she died in February. She was a licensed clinical social worker who worked with Bring Change 2 Mind, the organization founded to advocate for breaking down mental health stigmas.
She had spent years working in exactly the space that her own private struggle occupied.
Martin Short spoke publicly about his daughter’s death for the first time in a CBS interview that aired approximately May 11 and in a New York Times profile published May 15.
His words in those interviews have become as significant as the autopsy details in how people are understanding what the Short family has been through.
How Katherine Was Found
The sequence that ended in Katherine’s discovery began with the absence of contact, a father who had not heard from his daughter and whose concern turned into action. Martin Short called a friend and asked them to go to Katherine’s home in the Hollywood Hills.
The friend arrived and found a note on the bedroom door, which was locked. The friend was unable to get through the door and called for help. The LAPD and Los Angeles Fire Department responded to the radio call at approximately 6:41 to 6:43 PM on February 23.
Officers and firefighters found Katherine deceased. Foul play was ruled out by homicide detectives. A gun was found near her body along with the note.
The medical examiner’s report confirms the cause of death as a gunshot wound to the head. Her death was ruled a suicide. She was cremated, according to her death certificate obtained by TMZ.
The In Touch report based on the same ME documentation adds a dimension of the story that speaks to how long Katherine had been struggling.
She had a prior suicide attempt in 2017, when she overdosed on medication. In the years between that attempt and her death in 2026, she had struggled with mental health issues and had been in and out of treatment.
A neighbor who spoke to reporters at the time of her death described her as a “private person” but “friendly and quite outgoing,” someone who showed no “indications” that she was suffering before she died.
The public face of a person in private pain is one of the most specific and most difficult things about mental illness, the capacity to appear entirely functional to the people around you while carrying something that only the people closest to you might partially see.
Who Was Katherine Short?
Katherine Hartley Short was the eldest of three children adopted by Martin Short and his wife Nancy Dolman, who died in 2010 from ovarian cancer.
Her brothers Oliver and Henry Short round out the family that Martin has been parenting alone since Nancy’s death, a family that the Only Murders in the Building star has spoken about with consistent love and specificity in the public interviews he has given across the years.
Katherine legally changed her name to Katherine Hartley in 2012, keeping the middle name she shared with her mother as her surname, a private gesture that was not widely noted publicly until after her death.
She worked as a licensed clinical social worker in Los Angeles and devoted professional energy to Bring Change 2 Mind, the mental health advocacy organization that works to reduce the stigma around mental illness through education and public campaigns.
She was working, in her professional capacity, to make the world safer for people who struggle the way she struggled, a fact that carries the specific weight of those parallel truths that sometimes coexist inside a single life.
A representative for Enrique “Horatio” Sanz, a longtime friend of the Short family, said something that was widely noted at the time of Katherine’s death:
“I just wish I could have apologized to Katherine. Before anyone, I’m the first to blame. I had no idea she was in such anguish.”
The statement reflects the specific helplessness that the people who loved someone with serious mental illness sometimes feel after a loss, the wish that they had seen what was there to be seen.
Martin Short’s Words
Martin Short had not spoken publicly about his daughter’s death from February until the spring, when two separate appearances gave him the opportunity to speak about what had happened and what it had meant for the family.
In a CBS interview, Short called the period since Katherine’s death a “nightmare for the family.”
He said that losing her had given him a specific clarity about the nature of mental illness, that it is a disease, with the same terminal potential that cancer carries. “Mental health and cancer are both diseases,” he said, “and sometimes with diseases they are terminal.”
The New York Times profile published May 15 added a dimension that has been widely shared.
Short recalled that when his wife Nancy was dying of ovarian cancer in 2010, she told him at the end, “Martin, let me go.”
He carried that phrase for sixteen years. And then Katherine, in her own way and at the end of her own struggle, communicated the same thing. He said:
“Katherine was saying: ‘Dad, let me go,'” Short told the Times. “I don’t see any difference between mental illness as a disease and cancer as a disease. In some cases, both are terminal. And in some cases, both are survivable.”
He said that Katherine “fought for a long time with extreme mental health, borderline personality disorder, other things.” He said, “This is your child.” He said he is “trying to head toward the light.”
The Netflix documentary Marty, Life Is Short premiered in Los Angeles on May 6, 2026, a project that had been in production and that arrived in the immediate aftermath of the most difficult period of Short’s life. Whether the documentary addresses Katherine’s death or was completed before it is not specified in the available reporting.
The Grief That Is Still Recent
Katherine Short died on February 23, 2026. As of today, three months have passed. The autopsy report’s release brings the story back into the public conversation at the same moment that Martin Short has been speaking, for the first time, about what it has been like to lose both his wife and his daughter to diseases that he now describes in the same terms, progressive, sometimes fatal, completely real.
The Bring Change 2 Mind organization that Katherine worked with exists to do exactly what her father is now doing publicly, reduce the stigma around mental illness by speaking honestly about it, by treating it as a medical reality rather than a character failure and by making it easier for people who are struggling to seek help rather than hide.
She was 42 years old. She worked to help others navigate the illness that ultimately took her life. Her father is trying to head toward the light.
If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide or a mental health crisis, please contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988. The Crisis Text Line is also available — text HOME to 741741. You are not alone and help is available.
