A Boy and His Dad's Girlfriend Were Found Dead at Calif. Mansion Days Apart. Was Her Death a Suicide or Murder?

Mar. 15, 2025

Rebecca Zahau.Photo:San Diego County Sheriff’s Office

San Diego County Sheriff’s Office

On the morning of July 13, 2011,Rebecca Zahau, 32, was found hanging naked from the second-story balcony of her boyfriend’s mansion in Coronado, Calif.

Zahau, a certified ophthalmic technician who’d been dating pharmaceutical tycoon Jonah Shacknai, was gagged. Her hands and feet had been bound.

Police soon learned that hours earlier, Zahau had checked her voicemail, on which was a message about the grave condition of Shacknai’s 6-year-old son Max, who was in the hospital after falling down a staircase in his father’s 27-bedroom historic mansion.

Zahau was the only adult present at the home during the accident.

Rebecca Zahau and Jonah Shacknai

The prognosis for the boy wasn’t good. He died of his injuries days later, on July 17.

When Zahau died, the quiet, picturesque, and wealthy island community of Coronado — just across the San Diego Bay from downtown San Diego — was confronted with its most mysterious, high-profile police investigation.

Zahau and Shacknai began dating shortly after he divorced his second wife, who was Max’s mother.

As their relationship grew more serious, she quit her job at Horizon Eye Specialists & Lasik Center in Scottsdale, Ariz., to spend more time with Shacknai and his children, according to reports from her former boss.

Shacknai moved into the mansion, known as the Spreckels Mansion — an Italian Renaissance and Beaux-Arts-decorated residence built in 1908 for a member of the Spreckels sugar dynasty — in 2007, using it primarily as a summer residence.

Zahau’s death initially confounded local police.

At first, her death was thought to be a homicide. Shortly after she was found, authorities discovered a message written in black paint on the door of the guest bedroom, reading, “She saved him can he save her.”

Max Shacknai.San Diego County Sheriff’s Office

But after a lengthy investigation, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department concluded that she killed herself, theorizing that she felt responsible for Max’s death.

As evidence, investigators showed reporters a video reenactment of how they believed she was able to bind her hands and feet and then hang herself.

Investigators said they also found her fingerprints on a knife that was used to cut the rope as well as her toe impressions on the balcony floor, where they believe she fell from.

Adam Shacknai.Nelvin C. Cepeda/San Diego Union-Tribune/ZUMA Wire/Alamy

Nelvin C. Cepeda/San Diego Union-Tribune/ZUMA Wire/Alamy

However, Zahau’s mother and sister never accepted the police version of events. The pair filed a wrongful death suit, claiming that Shacknai’s brother Adam, who had flown to California after hearing the news about Max’s accident and was staying in the estate’s guesthouse, was responsible for her death.

In 2018, acivil jury in San Diego awarded her family $5 million in damagesafter they found Adam, who denied he had anything to do with her death, responsible, according to ABC News.

Zahau family’s lawyer argued Adam had sexually assaulted her and then killed her before staging her death to look like a suicide, theLos Angeles Timesreported.

Adam’s attorney Dan Webb said he was “absolutely astonished” at the decision.

Spreckels Mansion.Sandy Huffaker/Corbis via Gett

Sandy Huffaker/Corbis via Gett

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After the civil jury verdict, the family’s attorney told reporters they were planning to petition the sheriff’s department to reopen the case.

The department assigned new investigators to reexamine the evidence, but those investigators came to the same conclusion as the ones before.

“We conducted an objective and thorough investigation into Miss Zahau’s death,” the sheriff’s department wrote in a statement to PEOPLE at the time. “The facts of that investigation have led to the conclusion that Miss Zahau took her own life.”

In 2022, Zahau’s family sent a petition to the San Diego Department of the Medical Examiner asking to reclassify her manner of death from suicide to homicide.

Campman said he also discussed their arguments with other members of his office as well as the pathologist who came up with the initial ruling.

“However, after reviewing the totality of the evidence, the conclusion of this office has not changed,” he wrote.

source: people.com