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Speaker 3: You are now listening to True Murder The most shocking
Speaker 3: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 3: written about them Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Night Stalker DTK
Speaker 3: every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
Speaker 3: and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with
Speaker 3: your journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 5: Good Evening. I got a call. I got a girl
Speaker 5: hung herself in the guesthouse. The call came on the
Speaker 5: morning of July thirteenth, twenty eleven, from the historic Spreckels Mansion,
Speaker 5: a lavish beachfront property in Coronado, California, owned by pharmaceutical
Speaker 5: tycoon and multi millionaire Jonah Shacknai. When authorities arrived, they
Speaker 5: found the naked body of Jonah's girlfriend, Rebecca Zahau, gagged,
Speaker 5: her ankles tied, and her wrist bound behind her. Jonah's
Speaker 5: brother Adam claimed to have found Rebecca hanging from by
Speaker 5: a rope from the second floor balcony on a bedroom door.
Speaker 5: In black paint were the cryptic words, she saved him?
Speaker 5: Can you save her? Was this scrawled message a suicide
Speaker 5: note or a killer's taunt? Rebecca's death came two days
Speaker 5: after Jonas's six year old son, Max, took a devastating
Speaker 5: fall while in Rebecca's care. Authorities deemed Rebecca's death a
Speaker 5: suicide resulting from her guilt, But who would stage either
Speaker 5: a suicide or a murder in such a bizarre, elaborate way.
Speaker 5: Award winning investigative journalist Caitlin Rother we've stunning new details
Speaker 5: into a personal, yet objective examination of the sensational case.
Speaker 5: She explores its many layers, including the civil suit in
Speaker 5: which a jury found Adam Shackknight responsible for Rebecca's death,
Speaker 5: and the San Diego County Sheriff's department bombshell decision to
Speaker 5: re confirm its original findings, telling as it is troubling,
Speaker 5: this controversial real life mystery is a classic American tragedy
Speaker 5: that evokes the same haunting fascination as a John beIN Ay,
Speaker 5: Ramsay and OJ Simpson cases. The book they were featuring
Speaker 5: this evening is Death on Ocean Boulevard inside the Coronado
Speaker 5: Men mentioned case with my special guest journalist and author,
Speaker 5: Caitlin Rother. Thank you so much for this interview and
Speaker 5: welcome back to the program. Caitlyn Roster.
Speaker 4: Thank you. It's good to be back.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much, and it's great to have you
Speaker 5: discussing this incredible new book, Death on Ocean Boulevard. Let's
Speaker 5: start off right as you do in the book, to
Speaker 5: getting to the crime scene where this Adam Shacknay calls
Speaker 5: nine to one one to report a suicide. Someone hung
Speaker 5: herself in the guest house. Take us to this Ocean
Speaker 5: Boulevard in this July and tell us what happened July thirteen,
Speaker 5: twenty eleven. What was that nine one one call?
Speaker 4: Okay, before I get started, I just want to crime
Speaker 4: quote unquote book, But there actually is no criminal case.
Speaker 4: So when we call it a crime scene, it's actually
Speaker 4: a death scene, and I just have to be really
Speaker 4: careful because nobody has been accused of a crime in
Speaker 4: this case in criminal court. So Adam Shackney basically was
Speaker 4: at the guest house of his brother's mansion. It's known
Speaker 4: as the Spreckels Mansion. It's a historic house here in
Speaker 4: San Diego County on on what we call an island.
Speaker 4: It's basically a piece of land that is connected to
Speaker 4: the mainland only by a you know, a strip of land,
Speaker 4: and there's a bridge across it, and there's two active
Speaker 4: military bases there.
Speaker 6: It's largely a.
Speaker 4: Retirement community and there's a lot of very expensive homes there,
Speaker 4: and people like Jonah Shackni who live in hot places
Speaker 4: in the summer, like you know, the Scottsdale Phoenix area
Speaker 4: where he generally was living the rest of the year,
Speaker 4: they buy homes over here and they you know, come
Speaker 4: over here during the summer when it's just too hot
Speaker 4: to be Arizona, Texas, places like that. So Adam Shacknai, though,
Speaker 4: is a tugboat captain, and he flew in from Memphis
Speaker 4: when his nephew Max had that terrible fall from inside
Speaker 4: the mansion and that was less than forty eight hours
Speaker 4: before he called nine one one. The night before he
Speaker 4: woke up and called nine one one. He had flown
Speaker 4: in around four o'clock and he had dinner with Rebecca
Speaker 4: and Jonah, and there was really hardly any conversation because
Speaker 4: they were all very upset about Max because Max was
Speaker 4: in the ICU. When Rebecca had found Max, he was
Speaker 4: not breathing and his heart had stopped. It took him
Speaker 4: twenty five to thirty minutes to get him back, so
Speaker 4: he was in the hospital. Jonah was just having a
Speaker 4: quick meal and then Rebecca drove him back to the hospital,
Speaker 4: drove her and Adam back to the mansion and then
Speaker 4: they you know, drove into the driveway, and Adam told
Speaker 4: me that he offered to talk to Rebecca about what
Speaker 4: had happened in case she felt like she wanted to
Speaker 4: talk because he had flown out to be supportive to
Speaker 4: the family and she was his brother's girlfriend. But she
Speaker 4: didn't want to talk. And according to him, you know,
Speaker 4: he doesn't drink, and Jonah did doesn't drink, Rebecca didn't drink,
Speaker 4: didn't do drugs. They're all health nets. But Adam told
Speaker 4: me that Rebecca said to him, I don't drink, but
Speaker 4: if I did, tonight would be the night essentially. I
Speaker 4: don't know if I'm quoting it exactly, but that was
Speaker 4: in essence what she said. So she went into the
Speaker 4: main house, according to him, and he went into the
Speaker 4: guest house. He called his girlfriend who he'd been seeing
Speaker 4: for you know, a good twenty years, and she her
Speaker 4: name's Mary, and so they chatted for a little bit
Speaker 4: and Adam said he took an ambience, went to sleep.
Speaker 4: So when he came out the next morning he woke up,
Speaker 4: he said he'd kind of slept a little fitfully, and
Speaker 4: he was anxious when he woke up. So he masturbated
Speaker 4: that morning to porn on his phone. Now he admitted this,
Speaker 4: volunteered this to police, okay, which you know some people
Speaker 4: have wondered why did he do that. Took a shower,
Speaker 4: came out, and was on his way to ask Rebecca
Speaker 4: if she wanted to go get some breakfast and coffee.
Speaker 4: But he came out and he saw what he saw.
Speaker 4: It was a mannequin or something hanging in the yard.
Speaker 4: Because you know, Jonah has two teenage kids and he thought, well,
Speaker 4: maybe they did something as a gag. As he looked closer,
Speaker 4: he saw that it was Rebecca hanging there, and she
Speaker 4: was naked, naked, her hands bound behind her back, her
Speaker 4: feet tied together, and there was a gagged in her mouth.
Speaker 4: So's a T shirt that was wrapped around her head
Speaker 4: several times, on top of the hanging rope and on
Speaker 4: top of her hair. So women have said, well that
Speaker 4: right away is strange because if you know, when you're
Speaker 4: a woman, you have long hair, you don't want a
Speaker 4: rope or something on top of your hair. You usually
Speaker 4: would pull your hair out. Well, So granted, if you're
Speaker 4: in the kind of shape that the authorities say she was,
Speaker 4: she was going to commit suicide, maybe she wasn't thinking
Speaker 4: about that, but that has raised some questions with a
Speaker 4: lot of women I've talked to. So anyway, he doesn't
Speaker 4: know whether she's dead or alive. So he says he
Speaker 4: runs into the kitchen, grabs a knife out of the drawer,
Speaker 4: and she's too high up, he says, for him to
Speaker 4: reach her. So he's got to bring a table over.
Speaker 4: So there's a wooden table, a three legged table. It's
Speaker 4: three legged because one of the legs is broken. The
Speaker 4: leg falls off when he drags it over, and you
Speaker 4: can actually hear the leg bouncing on the bricks. That
Speaker 4: that that that you know, as she's as he's dragging
Speaker 4: the table over, he says, he gets up on the
Speaker 4: table and stands on the table and pulls her to
Speaker 4: his against him. He cuts the rope above, takes her
Speaker 4: you know, in his arms, and lays her down on
Speaker 4: the grass. Now this is while he's on the nine
Speaker 4: to one one call. So you hear all of this
Speaker 4: on the nine to one one call. You can hear
Speaker 4: him grunting and cussing and panting. And he doesn't know
Speaker 4: the address, so he can't send the paramedics to the
Speaker 4: house without running to the front of the house finding
Speaker 4: out the address and then telling him the number. And
Speaker 4: he says, it's where you came to get the kid. Uh,
Speaker 4: you know yesterday. Well it wasn't yesterday, it was two
Speaker 4: days before. And they don't have the same dispatchers working
Speaker 4: every single day, so they had no idea what he
Speaker 4: was talking about.
Speaker 6: So this took quite a while.
Speaker 4: As he's running around, you can hear hear all of
Speaker 4: this on the tape. So then he gets her on
Speaker 4: the grass, he says, and when you once you see
Speaker 4: the pictures, you can see there's this orange reddish rope.
Speaker 4: It's like a ski rope, you know, like a water
Speaker 4: ski kind of rope, and it's it's it's it's got
Speaker 4: her such that you know, she's in this really kind
Speaker 4: of contorted position, so her hands are behind her back
Speaker 4: and her knees are bent. So the dispatcher says, well,
Speaker 4: you know, is she alive, and he goes, I don't know.
Speaker 4: So at one point he says, I don't know. Another
Speaker 4: point he says, I don't think so, but she she
Speaker 4: has him, you know, tells him to start doing compressions,
Speaker 4: and he tells police later that he had already been
Speaker 4: doing compressions because she says you can count out loud,
Speaker 4: and he starts out twenty seven, twenty eight, twenty nine as.
Speaker 6: They've been talking.
Speaker 4: So, I mean, I didn't hear him doing any breathing.
Speaker 4: I only listened to the tape once or twice in court.
Speaker 4: But anyway, that was a little odd. But like I said,
Speaker 4: if you look at the pictures, it's not a good
Speaker 4: position to be doing compressions on somebody because you can't
Speaker 4: get a proper can't get her lying down properly. So
Speaker 4: the police come and the paramedics, and the paramedic touches
Speaker 4: her jaw and it's cool to the touch, and he
Speaker 4: can tell that rigor mortis has set in, and so
Speaker 4: he says, you know, never mind, they're not going to
Speaker 4: do CPR. So rigor mortis is a tricky thing. There's
Speaker 4: so there's no you know, nobody would give a firm
Speaker 4: Nobody at the Medical Examiner's office anyway, would give a
Speaker 4: firm estimated time of death. So but generally speaking, it
Speaker 4: had to be at least a couple hours, so you know,
Speaker 4: different estimates have put her. The last known contact that
Speaker 4: she had with anybody is on a phone record, and
Speaker 4: it's her boyfriend Jonah, who calls her from his room.
Speaker 4: He's staying at a place that's next door to the
Speaker 4: hospital where the parents get to stay if their kids
Speaker 4: are in ICEU. And he calls her at twelve fifty am,
Speaker 4: and Adam calls nine one one at six forty eight am.
Speaker 4: So that's the general window of time, although she didn't
Speaker 4: answer the phone when Jonah called, so we don't know
Speaker 4: for sure, but that's the last time somebody tried to
Speaker 4: contact her. The last time anyone actually did talk to
Speaker 4: her was her sister, who's also named Mary, which made
Speaker 4: the book hard to write, going back and forth between
Speaker 4: the Adam's girlfriend and the Rebecca's sister.
Speaker 6: But right, they spoke.
Speaker 4: Around I think tennish. So those are the that's the
Speaker 4: time frame.
Speaker 5: Now police talk to Adam soon after, and you talk
Speaker 5: about them them not securing the guest house for about
Speaker 5: three and a half hours. But you talk about Adam
Speaker 5: saying right away that he thought that Rebecca had killed herself,
Speaker 5: and that's what he indicated even in that nine to
Speaker 5: one one call. Right, So what is exactly what do
Speaker 5: police determine from this scene and in their mind what
Speaker 5: would be the reason for Rebecca to commit suicide?
Speaker 6: Well, okay, so the thing that's interesting about this is
Speaker 6: the Coronattle Police are the ones who initially responded, and
Speaker 6: that's the same agency that came two days earlier to
Speaker 6: respond to another nine to one one call from the
Speaker 6: same house when Rebecca found Max on the flour.
Speaker 4: You know, after apparently he you know, we should probably
Speaker 4: go through that because this is related. Okay, So the
Speaker 4: reason the reason they thought that was because there was
Speaker 4: this other incident that came two days earlier, so I'll
Speaker 4: run through that first. So Rebecca and Jonah and Max
Speaker 4: and Rebecca's little sister, she's only thirteen, and she had
Speaker 4: flown out for like a month long visit. Shes the
Speaker 4: rest of the Rebecca's family in Missouri. She came out
Speaker 4: and they were going to go to the zoo after Max,
Speaker 4: you know, cleaned his room and what have you, and
Speaker 4: she took a shower. So Jonah was at the gym
Speaker 4: and Rebecca was downstairs. This is what she told police later.
Speaker 4: She said she was going to the bathroom. Essentially in
Speaker 4: the bathroom downstairs. It says a mansion was like three
Speaker 4: or four stories high, and there's the bedrooms where Max
Speaker 4: and her sister were staying, and were one or two
Speaker 4: floors up there on different levels. And then there's a
Speaker 4: chandelier it's hanging from from above. So you know, it's
Speaker 4: quite a big foyer with a big and a big
Speaker 4: tall space there. And I've never been inside, so I've
Speaker 4: only been able to see pictures. I can't describe it perfectly,
Speaker 4: but that's the best I can do. So anyway, Rebecca's
Speaker 4: in the bathroom and she hears the dog barking. She's
Speaker 4: got a waymran I don't even now pronounce this Waymraner
Speaker 4: fourteen months really big dog, very big enough to apparently
Speaker 4: knock an adult over. And Max is only, you know, six,
Speaker 4: so very boisterous dog, and the dog is barking, and
Speaker 4: she hears a crash. So she comes out and there's
Speaker 4: Max lying on the floor at the bottom of a staircase.
Speaker 4: And the staircase is one of those ones that kind
Speaker 4: of dog legs up all the way up to the
Speaker 4: second floor, and I think that's where the chandelier was
Speaker 4: hanging on from the ceiling of the second floor, so
Speaker 4: that's all open in there, and there's this, you know,
Speaker 4: it's a you know, nineteen oh eight house designed by
Speaker 4: John D. Spreckles of the Sugar Fortune. So she comes out.
Speaker 4: She sees Max lying on the floor surrounded by pieces
Speaker 4: of this chandelier which has broken and fallen and is
Speaker 4: lying next to him, and there's a soccer ball and
Speaker 4: a razor scooter lying the razor scooters lying over one
Speaker 4: of his shins. So there's lots of different variants, not
Speaker 4: variants variable, sorry thinking of COVID, A lot of different
Speaker 4: variables of what could have happened but basically she tells
Speaker 4: she says, you know, when they ask her and Jonah
Speaker 4: asks her, and everyone asks her what happened, she says,
Speaker 4: I don't know. I didn't see it. I just don't know,
Speaker 4: and so she thinks, you know, he probably fell from
Speaker 4: the second story landing up where the bedroom is. So
Speaker 4: that's what she says, I don't know, he fell from
Speaker 4: the bedroom. And then they're like, well, well did you
Speaker 4: see it? How do you know that you know? So
Speaker 4: this is where things start getting messy because Max's mother, Dina,
Speaker 4: she doesn't like Rebecca, she doesn't get along with Rebecca,
Speaker 4: she doesn't trust Rebecca. She's had lots of conflicts with Rebecca,
Speaker 4: which has caused a lot of problems and tension in
Speaker 4: the relationship between Rebecca and Jonah. And so after this happens,
Speaker 4: Dina is convinced that Rebecca somehow has something to do
Speaker 4: with this, and so she's complaining to people at the hospital,
Speaker 4: to the doctor. But I know that when the police
Speaker 4: came that first time, there were a number of the
Speaker 4: same officers who responded to the second nine one one call,
Speaker 4: so you know, they already had it in their head
Speaker 4: that she was there when this little boy fell or
Speaker 4: whatever happened, and they had to rush them to the hospital.
Speaker 4: So you have that in their minds that they were
Speaker 4: literally some of the same peace and saw that she
Speaker 4: was upset. Okay, obviously she was the only adult in
Speaker 4: the house. He was in her care, and this terrible
Speaker 4: thing happened to this little boy who she loved so
Speaker 4: much like her own son. She was taking care of him.
Speaker 4: So when they show up the second time, they already
Speaker 4: have it in their head that she was the one
Speaker 4: who called nine to one one, or actually her little
Speaker 4: sister was the one who called. That she was shouting
Speaker 4: out to the dispatcher the entire time, and she said
Speaker 4: she was giving the little boy CPR. But it's actually
Speaker 4: written in one of the reports that none of the
Speaker 4: I think it was a paramedics report that said nobody
Speaker 4: saw her doing CPR when they arrived, So that has
Speaker 4: been also an issue of some contention. So basically they
Speaker 4: have it in their head that she's upset. But there
Speaker 4: was also a psychologist who was doing a ride along
Speaker 4: with one of the police on the day of Max's
Speaker 4: nine one one call, and she later was asked to
Speaker 4: write AP she said, I didn't you know she was upset.
Speaker 4: She was understandably upset this had happened, but she didn't
Speaker 4: seem depressed. She didn't seem suicidal. So to answer your question,
Speaker 4: you know, initially Coronado called in the Sheriff's department because
Speaker 4: they thought it was a suspicious death, and so they
Speaker 4: called out the homicide team. So the homicide team is
Speaker 4: the unit that responded. And so when Adam immediately said
Speaker 4: I got a girl hung herself in the guesthouse, you know,
Speaker 4: I didn't hear them confronting him really about that, and
Speaker 4: I asked questions. You know, this is years later. I
Speaker 4: should also say that I was not allowed to come
Speaker 4: to the news conference that they had when they announced
Speaker 4: that it was a suicide, which was about seven weeks later,
Speaker 4: because I don't have a press pass anymore in San Diego,
Speaker 4: because I am not a member of the working media,
Speaker 4: and even though I write these stories in Fire are
Speaker 4: more depth than any of the actual working media, they
Speaker 4: just don't let me come to these They didn't let
Speaker 4: me come to the two news conferences they've had during
Speaker 4: this case, which at the time I thought was pretty
Speaker 4: strange because I had a previous case. The John Gardner
Speaker 4: case where you've talked to me before the book Lost Girls.
Speaker 4: They let me come to that one, but they didn't
Speaker 4: let me come to this one. So I was suspicious
Speaker 4: about that too. You know, why wouldn't they let me
Speaker 4: come and ask questions? So I couldn't hear you know
Speaker 4: how they answered that. But years later they basically just said, well,
Speaker 4: you know, we don't decide somebody's a suspect and then
Speaker 4: find evidence to fit that scenario. We see where the
Speaker 4: evidence takes us. Okay, Well, seems like though when you
Speaker 4: listen to the interviews with the detectives that they did.
Speaker 4: I have the whole investigative file here that a source
Speaker 4: gave me early on and not the Sheriff's department, some
Speaker 4: other sources, and I could hear, you know, just from
Speaker 4: how the detectives were talking to other suspects that within
Speaker 4: a few days they had pretty much decided that Adam
Speaker 4: was cleared, and so Jonah's whereabouts were pretty much you know,
Speaker 4: they decided Adam was I'm sorry, they decided Jonah was
Speaker 4: where he said he was at the place next door
Speaker 4: is how the Ross McDonald's house, and that Dina who
Speaker 4: did not get along with Rebecca and was upset about
Speaker 4: what happened to Max. That she was at the hospital
Speaker 4: as well, and it says in the nursing notes that
Speaker 4: she and Jonah were talking to the doctor at ten
Speaker 4: thirty eight pm the night before when there was a
Speaker 4: witness who saw someone who he thought was Dina at
Speaker 4: the house the night before. It turned out to be
Speaker 4: her sister, according to the Sheriff's department, and according to
Speaker 4: the woman herself, her name is Nina Romano. So there
Speaker 4: was a lot of suspicion and a lot of it,
Speaker 4: you know, about Rebecca being involved in Max's fall, and
Speaker 4: you know, they were immediately suspicious that she had something
Speaker 4: more to do with it, and maybe that's why she
Speaker 4: committed suicide, because she felt guilty, not just because he failed,
Speaker 4: but because maybe she had something to do with it.
Speaker 4: Now that's never been proven by anybody, but that's just
Speaker 4: you know, the moms and the sisters suspicions. So to
Speaker 4: answer your question, I don't know why they decided that
Speaker 4: Adam was cleared so soon. He took a light detector
Speaker 4: test and it was inconclusive and the examiner decided, however,
Speaker 4: that he was telling the truth. Now, other outside experts
Speaker 4: have since looked at the same results and said, no,
Speaker 4: he was being deceptive. So, you know, there's a lot
Speaker 4: of outside experts who've looked at the evidence in this
Speaker 4: case and who've looked at, you know, the decisions made
Speaker 4: by the sheriff's department, and they just don't agree. But
Speaker 4: the sheriff's department decided that it was suicide.
Speaker 5: What about the idea that Jonah, being this very very
Speaker 5: wealthy person and influential person in this very very quiet community,
Speaker 5: say he had had a murder in twelve years, What
Speaker 5: about the idea that he had some kind of undue
Speaker 5: influence over the investigator's decisions regarding the suicide.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 4: Well, one other thing that I didn't mention what they
Speaker 4: ultimately said was when they came out with this ruling,
Speaker 4: which was seven weeks later, excuse me, was that there
Speaker 4: was no fingerprints or DNA evidence tying Adam to the scene. Now,
Speaker 4: so basically, this rope that was she was hanging from,
Speaker 4: tied around her neck, was actually over the top of
Speaker 4: this exterior of iron railing along a small balcony on
Speaker 4: the second floor from the guest room, and that was
Speaker 4: a guest room where her sister had been saying that
Speaker 4: she had sent her home the day before because she's like, well,
Speaker 4: you know, this is not going to be any fun
Speaker 4: for you. This is not going to be vacation. There's
Speaker 4: too much going on. Max's in the hospital. So she
Speaker 4: sent her home and picked up Adam at the airport
Speaker 4: in the same trip. So that guest room, though, is
Speaker 4: where her hanging rope was anchored to the leg of
Speaker 4: a bed. Okay, And there was a note, a message
Speaker 4: of some kind that was painted in black paint on
Speaker 4: the bedroom door, and the one that you read at
Speaker 4: the beginning she saved him? Can you save her?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 4: I don't know why they decided that was a suicide note.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of debate over that what that means,
Speaker 4: and to this day they still don't want to say
Speaker 4: what they think it means because they don't know. But
Speaker 4: it's in the third person and there's no punctuation, not
Speaker 4: even a question mark, and it's all capital letters. So anyway,
Speaker 4: so the Sheriff's department, and there was a note on
Speaker 4: her phone, two notes on her phone that were sort
Speaker 4: of like they thought, more like journal entries, like when
Speaker 4: you're angry as somebody and you write a letter to them,
Speaker 4: but you don't send it. There's one of those which
Speaker 4: she had apparently written to Jonah. She was upset about
Speaker 4: how he was taking his kid's side. So not only
Speaker 4: did she not get along with Dina, she also didn't
Speaker 4: get along with the mother of his two teenagers. So
Speaker 4: he was married already twice and of course so had
Speaker 4: three kids. Did not get along with the x wives
Speaker 4: and did not get along with the teenagers either, who
Speaker 4: she felt were very disrespectful to her. So there was
Speaker 4: a lot of conflict in the relationship. She was angry
Speaker 4: at Jonah, and Jonah later told me that there were
Speaker 4: there was so much conflict in a relationship that if
Speaker 4: that had not changed, and it didn't look like it
Speaker 4: was going to they were in the throes of breaking
Speaker 4: up at the end of the summer. They'd already talked
Speaker 4: about that, so the sheriff's department said, look, the relationship
Speaker 4: was in trouble. Things were bad. She looks really depressed.
Speaker 4: She's talked about, you know, feeling hopeless. She was crying
Speaker 4: all the time, she couldn't sleep, and these were in
Speaker 4: the notes on her phone, so that was in their
Speaker 4: mind when they decided it was suicide. Now, the other
Speaker 4: interesting thing you met you asked about Jonah Well in
Speaker 4: the first day. They interviewed him twice right away and
Speaker 4: then a couple days later, and he initially said he
Speaker 4: didn't think she committed suicide. Her family. The detectives talk
Speaker 4: to both of two of her older sisters, noahm and Mary,
Speaker 4: and they both said she wouldn't have done this. She
Speaker 4: wouldn't have committed suicide. So there were a number of
Speaker 4: people that they talked to, including her ex husband. They
Speaker 4: all said she wouldn't have committed suicide, and yet they
Speaker 4: still decided that she committed suicide. During these interviews, Jonah
Speaker 4: initially said he didn't think she committed suicide because it
Speaker 4: was just not something that she would do. She was
Speaker 4: so considerate that she wouldn't have done this. When Max
Speaker 4: was in the hospital, when Jonah needed support in his mind,
Speaker 4: he was saying, you know, she's my support system. She
Speaker 4: just wouldn't have done this. She would have more likely
Speaker 4: have driven off in a car someplace, you know, and
Speaker 4: done that, but not like this. So a lot of
Speaker 4: people were saying no, no, no, But at the same
Speaker 4: time he was also saying, can you please make a
Speaker 4: statement because this is really hurting my business. Did you
Speaker 4: make a statement that I'm not a suspect? And they
Speaker 4: kind of were like, well, we can't really, you know,
Speaker 4: I don't know if we can do that. We'll see
Speaker 4: what we can do. But so he was putting quite
Speaker 4: a bit of pressure on the sheriff's department to move
Speaker 4: this along and to you know, announced that he was
Speaker 4: not a suspect because he said, you know, it's really
Speaker 4: hurting his shareholders and blah blah blah. So and that's
Speaker 4: literally on tape. So that's partly where those allegations have
Speaker 4: come from, but a lot of it comes from people
Speaker 4: just don't understand people in the community and as a
Speaker 4: how family in particular don't understand how you could call
Speaker 4: this a suicide under these circumstances, and so they want
Speaker 4: to find a reason and they think, well, it must
Speaker 4: be because Joan is rich, and maybe you know, there
Speaker 4: were you know, there's allegations that have been made. You know,
Speaker 4: maybe you know I've had this. I had this woman
Speaker 4: come up to me in a home depot, a stranger
Speaker 4: and she's like, you have to prove that somebody, you know,
Speaker 4: bribed the sheriff and I'm just like.
Speaker 6: Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Speaker 4: You know, that's a lot of pressure. So but that's
Speaker 4: that's what's out there. People think, people don't. People just
Speaker 4: don't believe that a woman would have done that to
Speaker 4: herself and not Rebecca in particular, and so so that's
Speaker 4: that's been a pretty common allegation, and it has also
Speaker 4: come from this house and their attorney as well. So
Speaker 4: they say, well, at first we thought it was incompetence,
Speaker 4: but now we think it's so obvious that it was
Speaker 4: a murder. And this jury verdict even said that it
Speaker 4: was a murder. In civil court it's called wrongful death.
Speaker 4: But you know that that it must be corruption, it
Speaker 4: must be something else is going on.
Speaker 5: So let me let me ask this question about Rebecca's
Speaker 5: state of mind? Was crucial to say that she contemplated
Speaker 5: and decided to commit suicide, and that was the Sheriff's
Speaker 5: department's conclusion. But what about the phone call that Jonah
Speaker 5: made while getting reports from the doctor at at the
Speaker 5: at the hospital. What about that last phone call to
Speaker 5: Rebecca the night before? What of that and its content?
Speaker 4: So we have phone records that show that Jonah did,
Speaker 4: in fact cal Rebecca at twelve fifty am, and he said,
Speaker 4: you know, they also found some footage, some video surveillance
Speaker 4: footage at the hospital itself where you can see him
Speaker 4: leaving the hospital entrance and walking to this building next door.
Speaker 4: There was an issue, however, with the card reader going
Speaker 4: into the other building wasn't working, and there were certain
Speaker 4: cameras that weren't working with the route that he went,
Speaker 4: so there's no nobody saw him going into his room,
Speaker 4: which some people have raised questions about, but the Sheriff's
Speaker 4: department was satisfied by looking at the video footage and
Speaker 4: looking at him in the hallway I think of the
Speaker 4: other building that they were satisfied that that's where he was.
Speaker 4: And his phone records show that he did make this
Speaker 4: call and it was a voicemail, and they had Rebecca's phone,
Speaker 4: but unfortunately they could not get into Rebecca's phone. So
Speaker 4: I'm not sure if it was a newer phone, but
Speaker 4: they just did not have the technology to get into
Speaker 4: the phone. So they were never able to listen to
Speaker 4: that voicemail, partly because it had been deleted. Now we
Speaker 4: don't know who deleted it. They assumed Rebecca deleted it
Speaker 4: because there were no other delete. There were no other
Speaker 4: voicemails on the phone, and so they being detectives, said, well,
Speaker 4: this must be a habit of hers to just delete voicemails,
Speaker 4: and that's why she listened to it and deleted it,
Speaker 4: because that was the habit that she had. We don't
Speaker 4: know that though, so so we've never actually heard this voicemail,
Speaker 4: but we do know he did call and leave a voicemail. Okay,
Speaker 4: they didn't really examine the phone because they assumed that
Speaker 4: it was Rebecca's phone and therefore her fingerprints were going
Speaker 4: to be on it. They didn't. They didn't look to
Speaker 4: see if anybody else's fingerprints were on it, which I
Speaker 4: think they probably should have. So what Jonah said, and
Speaker 4: what Jonah told the police was that he called her
Speaker 4: to let her know that he had talked to the doctor.
Speaker 4: This is doctor Peterson, the doctor had said to Dina
Speaker 4: and to Jonah, And that's right around the same time
Speaker 4: where the nursing notes say that they were talking to
Speaker 4: the doctor. This is a different doctor. They had talked
Speaker 4: to this doctor first, and he was very blunt, apparently,
Speaker 4: and really upset Dina. According to Jonah, she went into
Speaker 4: kind of hysterics which she denies, but that's a whole
Speaker 4: other issue. But anyway, the doctor and what the doctor
Speaker 4: said is unclear. The doctor can't even really remember. But
Speaker 4: basically what Jonah said was he said the best scenario
Speaker 4: was that Max would never walk or talk again, and
Speaker 4: so Dina didn't want to hear that. Dina didn't have
Speaker 4: any idea that the injuries were as bad as they were,
Speaker 4: and she was convinced he was going to recover. I
Speaker 4: just couldn't hear that, so I guess she got really upset.
Speaker 4: Jonah went and got another doctor, and that's the doctor
Speaker 4: who is recorded in the notes that they were talking
Speaker 4: to at ten thirty eight. But apparently it was you know,
Speaker 4: clearly bad news, right, And so Jonah told me that
Speaker 4: he called Rebecca. I know, I have the records as well,
Speaker 4: and it said it was sixty two second phone call
Speaker 4: that he left for her, and he said he was crying,
Speaker 4: basically just reporting the bad news and not He said
Speaker 4: he wasn't blaming her, he wasn't angry at her. He
Speaker 4: was just really upset about getting this news. So we
Speaker 4: have no proof of that. We don't know exactly what
Speaker 4: he said, but that is consistent with what he told
Speaker 4: the authorities, but he told me he was crying. He
Speaker 4: didn't tell them that. He told me that Jonah doesn't
Speaker 4: want to be seen as a weak person and doesn't
Speaker 4: want people to know he's crying, And we kind of
Speaker 4: talked about that during the interviews. I spoke with him
Speaker 4: eight times. Right towards the very end of putting the
Speaker 4: book together, I thought I was done writing it, and
Speaker 4: then I ended up getting a hold of him. Finally
Speaker 4: I had to redo a huge portion of the book
Speaker 4: and rewrite it and add new sections right on deadline
Speaker 4: at the very end. But I felt it was very
Speaker 4: important to put in things like that because we hadn't
Speaker 4: heard anything from Jonah before, and there are a lot
Speaker 4: of allegations that, like we just talked about about him
Speaker 4: and having undue influence in the sheriff, you know, being
Speaker 4: you know, somehow in collusion with the the shack Knives
Speaker 4: because Jonah had all this money. So I wanted to
Speaker 4: give them a fair shot to respond to those allegations,
Speaker 4: which they vehemently denied. But Jonah basically said that the
Speaker 4: doctor was just you know, really just really want and
Speaker 4: so we don't know, we don't know, but that's that's
Speaker 4: what we do know.
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Speaker 5: dot com. Now, Caitlin, we were talking about the Zahaus
Speaker 5: now and then after the seven week investigation by San
Speaker 5: Diego Sheriff's Department that somebody was watching that press conference.
Speaker 5: Somebody a forensic pathologist, a famed forensic pathologist Curo Weck
Speaker 5: tell us about Sir Weck and what's the next step
Speaker 5: for the Zauhau family was considering that the Sheriff's department
Speaker 5: still considered this a suicide.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm not really sure how he got involved.
Speaker 4: I don't think he was watching the news conference. I
Speaker 4: think what happened is Ann Bremner. She's an attorney up
Speaker 4: in Seattle. She gets involved in these high profile cases
Speaker 4: and she worked sometimes pro bono. She helped out the
Speaker 4: the house. She also helped out Amanda Knox, if you
Speaker 4: remember that case, right, So, I think you know she
Speaker 4: I think she's the one who got zero week involved.
Speaker 4: Or it's possible that a reporter from one of the
Speaker 4: news stations called him and asked for his opinion because
Speaker 4: they they didn't televise that news conference, and so because
Speaker 4: I couldn't watch it, I tried, and you know, I
Speaker 4: couldn't get access to it. They posted it later. They
Speaker 4: also did not release the autopsy report to the reporters
Speaker 4: at that before that news conference. They had to ask
Speaker 4: for it, I think, and so I know that once
Speaker 4: they got that, you know, they didn't get a chance
Speaker 4: to compare what was in the autopsy report with what
Speaker 4: the Sheriff's detectives said at that news conference, So it
Speaker 4: looks like it was later that same day that this happened,
Speaker 4: and it was kind of an over you know, the
Speaker 4: course of a couple of news cycles within a day.
Speaker 4: But sorrow Weck somehow weighed in and he got involved
Speaker 4: with the house and Anne Bremner, and they ended up
Speaker 4: on the Doctor Phil Show because they basically Doctor Phil
Speaker 4: decided to get involved and he helped pay for curo
Speaker 4: Weck's services. They exhumed Rebecca's body, and this is a
Speaker 4: big deal too, because you know, there's a house that
Speaker 4: actually did not want an autopsy in the first place.
Speaker 4: They wanted you know, they're a very religious family, and
Speaker 4: they said, we still have a chance. I think they
Speaker 4: actually said we still have a chance to save her.
Speaker 4: And I think that was what they said, which I
Speaker 4: thought was in an interesting choice of words, but I
Speaker 4: might be misquoting it. I think that's what they said.
Speaker 4: But my point was they wanted her body intact, okay,
Speaker 4: for reasons, religious reasons, and they told Jonah that, but
Speaker 4: it didn't in the In the end, the Sheriff's Department
Speaker 4: sent the body over to the medical Examiner's office. The
Speaker 4: medical examiner's office never even I notified the family officially
Speaker 4: that Rebecca was dead, which was another thing that made
Speaker 4: the how family mistrust the authorities and the Sheriff's department
Speaker 4: in particular, even though it wasn't the sheriff's department's duty.
Speaker 4: The way that they found out that was Rebecca was
Speaker 4: dead was that Jonah called Rebecca's sister's husband, who was
Speaker 4: a police officer, because he wanted, you know, he didn't
Speaker 4: know how to deliver that news and thought it better
Speaker 4: becoming from a family member. So you know, that's how
Speaker 4: that went. And HM. So so anyway, there's the house
Speaker 4: or upset and they were like, no way, no way this.
Speaker 4: She never would done it. So after they officially said,
Speaker 4: after the Sheriff's Department officially said that it was a suicide,
Speaker 4: an Bremner gun involved, they got through elect involved, they
Speaker 4: got to conductor film involved, They exhumed the body. He
Speaker 4: did a second autopsy, but parts of her body were missing.
Speaker 4: So he did the best he could and he used
Speaker 4: the first autopsy report to you know, analyze, and what
Speaker 4: he said initially was that he thought, you know, there
Speaker 4: were certain things that looked suspicious enough, and he didn't
Speaker 4: say it was a murderer. He said he thought it
Speaker 4: needed to be it needed more investigation because he just
Speaker 4: thought maybe it should be changed undetermined at least, because
Speaker 4: he thought it looked more like she had been strangled
Speaker 4: because of the injuries in her neck. So if similar
Speaker 4: to the Jeffrey Epstein case, you know, there are certain
Speaker 4: parts of your neck that you see or broke or
Speaker 4: more severely injured when somebody hangs themselves versus when somebody
Speaker 4: strangles them Okay, so there are certain so you know,
Speaker 4: in Rebecca's case, she if she threw herself over that balcony,
Speaker 4: which is what they say, you know, Cyril whacked later
Speaker 4: was asked to testify for the How To Hear is
Speaker 4: the Howe family, and they had another expert as well.
Speaker 4: And by this point this was years later, like twenty eighteen,
Speaker 4: that was seven years later. He was then saying that
Speaker 4: she was murdered, but there were he said, there were
Speaker 4: four subgalial hemorrhages on her scalps where he thought it
Speaker 4: she'd been hit over the head with a blunt instrument.
Speaker 4: And then you know, her neck was not broken and
Speaker 4: she falling from nine feet nine feet and two inches.
Speaker 4: He said, you know, why wasn't she decapitated partially or
Speaker 4: completely decapitated? And there was another expert who testified who
Speaker 4: said the same thing. I mean, that's a long way
Speaker 4: to fall, because normally it's called a long fall. So
Speaker 4: a short fall for most hangings is like one or
Speaker 4: two feet, where somebody will you know, hang themselves over
Speaker 4: a door knob and put the rope over the top
Speaker 4: of the door and use a sheet or a cord
Speaker 4: or something, or you know, step off a chair or whatever.
Speaker 4: So but that's only one to two feet, and so
Speaker 4: you'll see different injuries than if you're going to fall
Speaker 4: nine feet. So so anyway, Sir Wacked when they did
Speaker 4: the second autopsy, brought these things out and the Sheriff's
Speaker 4: department just still said, no, no, we're not doing we're
Speaker 4: not changing anything. So Swacked, you know, he's he's a
Speaker 4: renowned guy, gets involved in controversial cases. And by the
Speaker 4: time he testified in the in the trial in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 4: I think he was eighty eight years old, and he
Speaker 4: was still sharp as a whip.
Speaker 5: Yeah, when you talk about the civil lawsuit, there was
Speaker 5: amendments made along the way. You talk about the attorney
Speaker 5: career making these amendments, what was the final amendment and
Speaker 5: when did this civil lawsuit actually take place?
Speaker 4: Okay, so first of all, there were many changes and
Speaker 4: this took years, by the way. So I mean when
Speaker 4: people used to ask me about this case, initially, I
Speaker 4: was like, I can't write about this case because the
Speaker 4: Sheriff's department said there wasn't even a crime. How I
Speaker 4: couldn't write no arrest, let me own conviction, let alone
Speaker 4: a criminal trial or a criminal case. Even these the
Speaker 4: house were really determined. So they went through a number
Speaker 4: of attorneys they tried to get and they tried to
Speaker 4: get the Attorney General's office to open up reopen the
Speaker 4: criminal case. They tried everything. They you know, they worked
Speaker 4: with Ambremner. Am Bremner was not in California, so she
Speaker 4: had to team up with some California attorneys because she
Speaker 4: wasn't licensed to practice here. So you know, they went
Speaker 4: to a series of teams of attorneys to try to
Speaker 4: do to get the case reopen. Made a bunch of
Speaker 4: allegations nobody was listening. DIA's office didn't listen, Attorney General's
Speaker 4: office didn't listen. So finally there was a civil suit
Speaker 4: filed that it was filed in federal court at first,
Speaker 4: and the federal court said, you know, they didn't have jurisdiction,
Speaker 4: and initially the allegations were pretty vague. Initially it was
Speaker 4: Dina Shackney and her sister Nina Romano, and Adam Shacknight.
Speaker 4: All three of them were named as conspiring and scheming
Speaker 4: to kill Rebecca the how although they still didn't really
Speaker 4: know how they did it. So every eventually the lawsuit
Speaker 4: was moved into state court and then it was amended,
Speaker 4: you know, a good four times, if not more. I
Speaker 4: can't remember if the four times include the federal initial filings,
Speaker 4: but there were.
Speaker 6: Four or six.
Speaker 4: Versions of this lawsuit. And in twenty seventeen, Keith Greer,
Speaker 4: the House attorney, said he held a news conference and he said,
Speaker 4: I apologize. I am dismissing Dina and Nina from this
Speaker 4: lawsuit because I you know, it turns out that Dina
Speaker 4: was at the hospital like she said she was, so
Speaker 4: I guess he had this video surveillance stuff, tape or whatever,
Speaker 4: but he didn't look at it. I don't know, I
Speaker 4: don't know if there's a lot of hours I guess
Speaker 4: that were on there, and he didn't sit down and
Speaker 4: look at it until then. But also Nina's insurance company
Speaker 4: settled with this house against her wishes, and so he
Speaker 4: dismissed both of them, and so then there was just Adam.
Speaker 4: So by the time the case finally went to trial,
Speaker 4: it was just Adam, and it was Adam who killed
Speaker 4: Rebecca's the house, strangled her, put her over the balcony,
Speaker 4: and once we got to trial, he changed it yet again.
Speaker 4: And now during the trial he said that Adam Shackni
Speaker 4: sexually assaulted Rebecca with the wooden handle of a knife
Speaker 4: that was found on the floor in that guest room,
Speaker 4: next to the bed where the hanging rope was anchored.
Speaker 4: And he said that came from one of his experts
Speaker 4: was looking at the photos. And I don't know if
Speaker 4: she actually had the knife itself in her hand. I
Speaker 4: don't think you're allowed touch evidence like that, but she
Speaker 4: said she saw some whiteish discharge and there was red
Speaker 4: stain on the metal rivets up to the second rivet,
Speaker 4: and that she thought that that meant that he stuck
Speaker 4: that handle inside Rebecca's vagina. Because Rebecca the only source
Speaker 4: of blood. There was no wound on the body that
Speaker 4: was bleeding profusely, but she was having her period. And
Speaker 4: the curious thing was there were several drops of blood
Speaker 4: in the hallway as if she were standing there either,
Speaker 4: you know. They said, well, that's where she was standing
Speaker 4: having a confrontation with Adam, and then he grabbed her.
Speaker 4: She screamed for help. A neighbor heard it, because a
Speaker 4: neighbor reported to the police that she heard a woman
Speaker 4: crying for help around eleven thirty that night, and she
Speaker 4: tried to get away. Adam hid her over the head,
Speaker 4: tied her up. She tried to free herself by cutting
Speaker 4: trying to cut the rope with another knife that was
Speaker 4: on the floor. Also, and this is the same expert
Speaker 4: who said, if you look at the pattern of fingerprints
Speaker 4: on the handle or no, especially the blade of that
Speaker 4: knife facing the other way away from her, as if
Speaker 4: she were trying to saw her way out of these ropes,
Speaker 4: except she admitted there was no cut marks on the
Speaker 4: rope itself. So these are just theoretical interpretations of the
Speaker 4: fingerprint of positioning on the blade of the big knife
Speaker 4: and on the red stain on the rivets of the
Speaker 4: knife handle, because the medical examiner said she did not
Speaker 4: have any signs of being sexually assaulted. But they, you know,
Speaker 4: this is the house, said well, this is a steak
Speaker 4: knife handle. This is like the size of a tampon.
Speaker 4: You're not going to have trauma from that. It's not
Speaker 4: the blade itself, it's the handle. So they're not gonna
Speaker 4: it's not gonna cut her. So they basically painted Adam
Speaker 4: Shacknye as this sexual deviant who was watching her take
Speaker 4: a shower. And you know, he admitted to watching for
Speaker 4: in the next morning, and so Keith Greer basically just
Speaker 4: said he was a perverb he you know, was masturbating
Speaker 4: the next morning because he was finally you know, basically
Speaker 4: pleasuring himself with thinking about what he had done to her.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 4: So that was the case against Adam Shack nine Adam
Speaker 4: shack and I said absolutely not. I never touched her.
Speaker 4: I did not assault her. I did not hit her.
Speaker 4: I did not even go into the house. I was
Speaker 4: just I called nine to one one because I was,
Speaker 4: you know, trying to get her help.
Speaker 5: What did the prosecution or for our parton me Zahau's
Speaker 5: attorney use as a prop to dramatically demonstrate some of
Speaker 5: the injuries to Rebecca at this supposed suicide.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so this, this was quite the spectacle.
Speaker 6: This was.
Speaker 4: A sext doll essentially that Keith Ger had made. I
Speaker 4: think it caused something like, I don't know, outs dollars
Speaker 4: something like that. Did you say eight thousand, right, yes,
Speaker 4: outs dollars. I like it when you remember my book
Speaker 4: better than me. Well, you know, I got a lot
Speaker 4: crammed in here anyway. So yeah, he basically had it
Speaker 4: made to look like her, so with the same long
Speaker 4: black hair, just literally the same painted colors on her
Speaker 4: fingernails and on her toenails, which were two different colors,
Speaker 4: by the way. And then there were certain you know,
Speaker 4: bruising ligature marks around her neck, and curiously there were two.
Speaker 4: So that was another question. Why would she have two
Speaker 4: deep ligature you know, bruising, like linear bruising on her neck.
Speaker 4: Why not just one if she was just hanging there
Speaker 4: and there was you know, other abrasions, and there was
Speaker 4: you know, some other stuff that they found on her body.
Speaker 4: And I didn't look closely at the mannequin just to
Speaker 4: compare exactly, you know, exactly all of the markings because there.
Speaker 4: The defense was arguing against using this thing at all
Speaker 4: because they just said it was so prejudicial, and so
Speaker 4: they fought, and they fought. They fought in pre in
Speaker 4: limiting motions pre trial, which are basically, you know where
Speaker 4: we're trying to they try to prevent certain evidence from
Speaker 4: being presented, and Keith Squer just kept fighting to use
Speaker 4: this mannequin. So they they would argue about this before
Speaker 4: the jury was brought in and he was allowed to
Speaker 4: use it for his expert who was doing the not
Speaker 4: tying that a demonstration on the mannequins. But the agreement
Speaker 4: was you have to cover the entire thing with a
Speaker 4: white sheet, and all is they can be exposed is
Speaker 4: just the limb that he's doing the demonstration on. So
Speaker 4: the ankles were tied together and the wrists were tied together,
Speaker 4: so he was only allowed to reveal that portion of
Speaker 4: the box at one at a time until the closing argument. Again,
Speaker 4: the defense is fighting, fighting, fighting against letting him use this.
Speaker 4: But I walked into court that morning and Greer calls
Speaker 4: me into this little side conference room and I'm like okay.
Speaker 4: He goes, what do you think should I use it?
Speaker 4: And I'm like, oh, my god, I can't have this
Speaker 4: conversation right now. I'm covering this pace. Yeah, so I
Speaker 4: just said, well, it's very dramatic, and that's all I said,
Speaker 4: which was true. And so he was trying to decide
Speaker 4: whether it would be good dramatic and work with the
Speaker 4: jury or bad dramatic and not work with the jury.
Speaker 6: So he decided to use it.
Speaker 4: And I have to tell you it was he was
Speaker 4: able to have her up on this. He rigged it
Speaker 4: up so that she was literally hanging and he had
Speaker 4: a blue surgical robe that was around her body, and
Speaker 4: then he had the white sheet on top of that.
Speaker 4: He pulls the white sheet off and then he pulls
Speaker 4: off the I'm trying to remember. I think he did
Speaker 4: take the blue surgical robe off as well. But anyway,
Speaker 4: Jonah was sitting right in front of me and we
Speaker 4: didn't we had not met each other at that time,
Speaker 4: but he was literally sitting right in front of me,
Speaker 4: and I saw him shaking his head. He was just like,
Speaker 4: I can't believe this is happening kind of thing, and
Speaker 4: so we talked about that later. I mean, even I gasped.
Speaker 4: I was just like, I was pretty horrified because it
Speaker 4: was so lifelike. You could not imagine that that wasn't her.
Speaker 4: You know, you couldn't help it. It was very dramatic,
Speaker 4: and so it worked. You know, the jury did ultimately
Speaker 4: vote nine to three that it was a murder. So,
Speaker 4: you know, Jonah was horrified and upset, basically saying he
Speaker 4: thought that was so disrespectful to the the Holle family
Speaker 4: and you know, to him and and to Rebecca. But
Speaker 4: it worked, you know, it did convey what, you know,
Speaker 4: what she looked like at that point. And part of
Speaker 4: the reason he said, he you know, part of the
Speaker 4: reason he he made use of that was to he
Speaker 4: his argument was that Adam didn't need the table to
Speaker 4: cut her down. That you know, was measuring how far
Speaker 4: her feet were off the ground and how tall she was.
Speaker 4: He said, look, I can cut right that like this.
Speaker 4: I didn't need to get up on a table. It
Speaker 4: was just to document this whole show that Adam wanted
Speaker 4: to have on tape of you know, him cutting her down,
Speaker 4: so that would be all documented that his story of
Speaker 4: what how things happened. So Adam says, well, I thought
Speaker 4: she was too high and I needed a table to
Speaker 4: cut her down. So that's two different stories, but you know,
Speaker 4: it was it was pretty dramatic.
Speaker 5: What did Adam have to say and what did the
Speaker 5: media have to say after this civil lawsuit?
Speaker 4: Well, the jury came back pretty fast. It was a
Speaker 4: little over four hours, and in a civil case, that
Speaker 4: often means that the defense won, just like in a
Speaker 4: criminal case it means that the prosecution one. So it's
Speaker 4: kind of weird. That's people were thinking, well, they came
Speaker 4: back so fast, they must have cleared Adam, right, But
Speaker 4: it turns out that they didn't. So they basically voted
Speaker 4: nine to three, and that's that's what they need in
Speaker 4: civil courts, so they don't need a twelve It don't
Speaker 4: need a unanimous vote.
Speaker 5: From that decision. What does the How family do as
Speaker 5: a result? What do they want as a result of
Speaker 5: this civil lawsuit? They certainly not interested in money so much.
Speaker 4: Well that's a matter of some debate if you ask
Speaker 4: Jonah and Adam. Adam is literally called the the How
Speaker 4: family grifters, which I thought was very intensive and not
Speaker 4: very smart on his part for his own, you know,
Speaker 4: for appearance's sake. But he doesn't seem to have a filter,
Speaker 4: so does the Hows. After the verdict were came held
Speaker 4: a news conference outside on the steps, and Mary just said,
Speaker 4: you know, I'm so relieved. I'm just so relieved that
Speaker 4: the jury. You know, I'm not crazy she was murdered.
Speaker 4: I really believe she was murdered. But what what we
Speaker 4: really want is for the Sheriff's Department to reopen the
Speaker 4: criminal case because we want justice for Rebecca and we
Speaker 4: you know, we just don't think that the Sheriff's department
Speaker 4: did a good enough job and they want it reopened.
Speaker 4: So within a matter of maybe an hour, two hours top,
Speaker 4: the Sheriff's Department came out right away with the statement saying, no, no,
Speaker 4: think about this. This is a criminal justice agency that
Speaker 4: arrests people and puts them on trial, right, I mean
Speaker 4: they're not the ones trying them, but they prepare the
Speaker 4: case for the prosecution and work together to prepare a
Speaker 4: case to present to a jury, and they want you
Speaker 4: to respect the jury's verdict. But in this case, they said,
Speaker 4: we are sticking to our findings. So that did not
Speaker 4: play well. And Sheriff Core was in a re election
Speaker 4: campaign and right away his opponent said, well, you know,
Speaker 4: if I'm elected, I'm going to reopen this criminal case,
Speaker 4: because this just isn't right. You know, there's a jury finding,
Speaker 4: there's obviously something there. This is just pride, you know.
Speaker 4: And this is one of his lieutenants too, by the way,
Speaker 4: who's running against the sheriff. So under the political pressure
Speaker 4: of a reelection campaign, the sheriff decides that he's going
Speaker 4: to do a quote review. Now, this is not He
Speaker 4: makes it very clear though that he is not reopening
Speaker 4: the criminal case. He is conducting a review of the
Speaker 4: original investigation and a new team of detectives will take
Speaker 4: a look at whatever series were presented during the trial.
Speaker 4: And he says, well, have that done in four months.
Speaker 4: So this was before the election, but it wasn't. So
Speaker 4: it was nine months before they finally came out with
Speaker 4: their their finding. This is after not reinterviewing anybody, not
Speaker 4: interviewing anybody new, not using new DNA technology to retest
Speaker 4: certain items that had insufficient amounts at the time to register,
Speaker 4: you know, as belonging to anybody in particular. There were
Speaker 4: some items, several items that had mixed profiles and one
Speaker 4: of them was not Adam Shakne. Adam Shaknight was ruled
Speaker 4: out from all DNA and fingerprints okay, but there were
Speaker 4: some items where Adam was excluded, but there was still
Speaker 4: an unknown profile on there that it wasn't Rebecca's. So
Speaker 4: you know, that was a question that people, Why didn't
Speaker 4: you retest that? I asked them that too, and they said, well,
Speaker 4: we just we talked to the crime lab and we
Speaker 4: determined that it wouldn't have made a difference. Didn't play
Speaker 4: well with some people though, so yeah, so nine months
Speaker 4: later they came out again and said still suicide.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so what can the family do is I know
Speaker 5: that you conducted your own investigation, You spoke to players
Speaker 5: after this decision in civil court, and you provide some
Speaker 5: very very interesting information in this book, and we won't
Speaker 5: give that away. There's so much to talk about in
Speaker 5: that investigation and all the players that you eventually got
Speaker 5: to speak to, including Adam himself and Jonah and again
Speaker 5: players like Gore and Greer. This story you got involved
Speaker 5: right from the very beginning, you said, because it resonated
Speaker 5: with so many people in the story went global. Tell
Speaker 5: us a little bit about how big a story this
Speaker 5: is and how engaged people are about this issue even today.
Speaker 4: How much time do we have left?
Speaker 5: Got a couple of minutes.
Speaker 4: Okay, because what we didn't talk about is why it
Speaker 4: resonated with me, which I'd like, Yes, yes, it really
Speaker 4: resonated with the public because they didn't a lot of
Speaker 4: people didn't believe that that a woman in Rebecca in particular,
Speaker 4: would have would have killed herself or killed herself like this.
Speaker 4: So I think we've discussed this on your show before.
Speaker 4: It's not a secret. But my husband I was not
Speaker 4: married for that long because my husband had a lot
Speaker 4: of problems. He was diagnosed after we were married, while
Speaker 4: we were in marriage counseling by our marriage counselor, who
Speaker 4: did not tell my husband, only told me that she
Speaker 4: had diagnosed him with borderline personality disorder, which is a
Speaker 4: huge That was not fun that day. I remember getting
Speaker 4: hearing that people steal, people act out, you know, with
Speaker 4: addictive behavior, substance abuse, they lie, they have sex with people,
Speaker 4: they do all kinds of stuff. So now my husband
Speaker 4: was also an alcoholic, and again didn't know that before
Speaker 4: I married him either. And in the end, you know,
Speaker 4: he also picked up a bat and threatened wing with it,
Speaker 4: and that I called nine one one and we were
Speaker 4: kind of going around the couch. He was trying to
Speaker 4: get the phone away from me, and I was trying
Speaker 4: to I was on the phone with the nine one
Speaker 4: one dispatcher. I had to call nine one one from
Speaker 4: my newsroom when I worked at the paper because he
Speaker 4: was threatening to kill himself over the phone with a gun,
Speaker 4: and I had to have the police come to the
Speaker 4: house and they chased him. And it was just like
Speaker 4: it was a roller coaster marriage. It was. It was
Speaker 4: just it was hard. So but in the end he
Speaker 4: drank again. After being in recovery for a year, he
Speaker 4: relapsed and I just said, I've got to end this relationship.
Speaker 4: You drink again, And I said, if you did that again,
Speaker 4: we're done. And several days later he hung himself in
Speaker 4: a motel room in Mexico. And the last time I
Speaker 4: talked to him, you know, he was calling me. I
Speaker 4: was worried about him. I mean I still cared about him.
Speaker 4: I still worried about him because he had threatened to
Speaker 4: commit suicide before. And I said to him, are you
Speaker 4: do you feel like hurting yourself right now? And he
Speaker 4: said not right now. And so that was the last
Speaker 4: time we talked. And then a few days later he
Speaker 4: was found and he hung himself over a door with
Speaker 4: a cord, and I guess he also ingested some glass shards,
Speaker 4: ground up light bulb or something. I mean, pretty desperate guy,
Speaker 4: and so I know what he was acting like, and
Speaker 4: I know he had a lot of problems, and so,
Speaker 4: you know, I was drawn to this case partly because
Speaker 4: of what happened with my own life, but also because
Speaker 4: I you know, I couldn't help but compare the two situations.
Speaker 4: And initially, you know, her family said she's never been
Speaker 4: diagnosed with any mental illness. She wasn't depressed. She was
Speaker 4: a happy person. She was a strong person.
Speaker 6: She worked out.
Speaker 4: A lot, and you know, she slept, but it was
Speaker 4: because she worked out so much when she you know,
Speaker 4: she just sleeps sometimes, but that is actually a sign
Speaker 4: of depression. And the notes on her phone really did
Speaker 4: sound pretty distressed. And the Sheriff's department used those two,
Speaker 4: you know, to back up their ruling that it was
Speaker 4: a suicide. But more than that, the more I got
Speaker 4: into this this case, that over the years after the trial,
Speaker 4: after I interviewed her, one of her former boyfriends, Michael Berger,
Speaker 4: who said that she she called it. She disappeared one
Speaker 4: day and didn't show her what show up at work
Speaker 4: and she called him up crying and said she'd been taken.
Speaker 4: They've taken me, And he says, where are you. She says,
Speaker 4: I don't know, and she's like, well, He goes, well
Speaker 4: look around. She goes, I can't. They've got something over
Speaker 4: my eyes and she's crying. So basically, she's claiming that
Speaker 4: she's been kidnapped, and he truly believed that she had
Speaker 4: been kidnapped. I mean, he heard fear in her voice,
Speaker 4: and I thought to myself, Wow, you know, my husband
Speaker 4: did that same kind of thing to me. He disappeared
Speaker 4: one night and he wasn't where he was supposed to be.
Speaker 4: I drove around looking for him. He walked in the
Speaker 4: house and he claimed that he had been pulled over
Speaker 4: by the police and you know, taken to the station
Speaker 4: and strip searched in a cavity search. And I was like,
Speaker 4: oh my god, that's terrible. But he was crying, and
Speaker 4: you know, I'm like, I wanted to believe him, but
Speaker 4: I knew something weird. So I just started seeing these
Speaker 4: parallels and I'm not just so I am clear, I'm
Speaker 4: not taking a position in the book. I'm not taking
Speaker 4: a position now I am not convinced either way that
Speaker 4: she commits suicide or that she was murdered, so I
Speaker 4: have remained objective, which I think is the best thing. Anyway,
Speaker 4: as an objective journalist doing a book on this case,
Speaker 4: I did see some parallels in their behavior. They both
Speaker 4: were arrested for shoplifting in Phoenix and went through the
Speaker 4: same diversion program, so there's quite some very strange coincidences there.
Speaker 4: So anyways, that's part that's why I got drawn to
Speaker 4: the case, but also because it was such a big
Speaker 4: case here for everybody. I mean, I have never had
Speaker 4: this much anticipation for one of my books. People were like,
Speaker 4: I can't wait for this book. Are you done yet?
Speaker 4: Are you done yet? So people really wanted to read
Speaker 4: this book more than any other book I've ever written. Honestly,
Speaker 4: it's been kind of it's been nice.
Speaker 5: It is a fascinating mystery here, and some of the
Speaker 5: information that you just alluded to as well, that some
Speaker 5: of the behavior that she had exhibited in the past,
Speaker 5: exaggerating and basically even making up entire stories about abductions
Speaker 5: and things, when in an actuality, it was just a
Speaker 5: case of one and to go back to back and
Speaker 5: forth with this ex husband. So there was a lot
Speaker 5: more to this story, and you don an incredible job
Speaker 5: contributing to that mystery. Because I say that after reading this,
Speaker 5: I'm still just like yourself, no definitive conclusion to be made,
Speaker 5: but I encourage people to, yeah, go ahead. I just
Speaker 5: encourage people to pick up Death on Ocean Boulevard because
Speaker 5: this is one compelling, disturbing, and fascinating story. In case
Speaker 5: I have to think, I appreciate that for those that
Speaker 5: might want to find out more about Death on Ocean Boulevard,
Speaker 5: you have a website people might want to take a
Speaker 5: look at. Can you tell us about it before I do.
Speaker 4: It's Caitlin Rother dot com. And because this book was
Speaker 4: released during the lockdown and written during the lockdown, I've
Speaker 4: done pretty much every event online and so I've got
Speaker 4: a virtual tour calendar that's on my blog and I've
Speaker 4: literally posted links for every single podcast and every event,
Speaker 4: every news story, every TV story, every radio story is
Speaker 4: pretty much there, so you can watch it from anywhere
Speaker 4: in the world. Just go down the links and you
Speaker 4: can hear all kinds of stuff that we didn't even
Speaker 4: talk about today too. So absolutely I encourage people to
Speaker 4: do that, and I hope people will buy the book
Speaker 4: and write a review, and I would be ever so grateful.
Speaker 5: Yes, well, it's been fascinating. Thank you so much for
Speaker 5: coming on and talking about death on Ocean Boulevard inside
Speaker 5: the Coronado Mansion case. It is truly a fascinating case
Speaker 5: and so much more to discuss. Thank you so much,
Speaker 5: Caitlin Rother for this interview. You have a great evening.
Speaker 5: Thank you, Thanks Dan.
Speaker 4: You too, Bye bye, good night, good night.
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