San Diego County Medical Examiner denies petition by Rebecca Zahau’s family to amend her death certificate

By Caitlin Rother

Today, July 11, is the thirteenth anniversary of Max Shacknai’s death, and Saturday, July 13, will be the same anniversary of Rebecca Zahau’s death. I hope they are both resting in peace.

I’ve been a little lax in checking on this, but nothing has been reported in the media, so I’m still ahead of the working reporters who have been following this very high-profile case from the beginning, when Rebecca was found dead, hanging naked, bound and gagged in the rear courtyard of the historic Spreckels Mansion in Coronado, California. My book on the case, Death on Ocean Boulevard: Inside the Coronado Mansion Case, came out in 2021, and is in development for a TV limited series.

But my original prediction fourteen months ago was correct, that the Zahau’s petition to the ME—to amend Rebecca’s death certificate to reflect that her death was a “homicide,” or an “undetermined” cause, rather than “suicide”—was dead on arrival when it was submitted in October 2022.

The San Diego County ME’s office took nearly a year to respond to the Zahau family’s 204-page petition letter. In a brief letter dated September 11, 2023, Chief Medical Examiner Steven C. Campman said he considered the arguments set forth in the letter sent by attorney Keith Greer, but “after reviewing the totality of the evidence, the conclusion of this office has not changed.”

In other words, the ME is sticking to its position that Rebecca Zahau hung herself, regardless of the family’s argument that she was murdered by Adam Shacknai, the brother of her boyfriend, Jonah Shacknai.

A civil jury supported that argument in 2018, finding Adam responsible for Rebecca’s wrongful death. Adam Shacknai claims innocence, but his insurance company settled with the Zahaus for $600,000 against his wishes, to avoid the costs of appealing the jury verdict.

“I considered the arguments set forth in your letter and the information in the accompanying documents,” Campman wrote, referring to transcripts and other information from the civil trial. “I also discussed your arguments with other members of the Medical Examiner’s Office, including staff pathologists and Dr. Lucas, who originally worked on the determining the manner of death classification for Ms. Zahau.”

Adam Shacknai called 911 on the morning of July 13, 2011, to report that he’d found Zahau hanging naked, bound and gaged from a balcony in the mansion’s rear courtyard. Adam claimed he’d stayed the night in the guest house, while Rebecca was in the main house.

In my last blog on this topic last year, I reported that the ME’s office still had not issued a substantive response to the Zahaus because it considered the family’s request to be a second “courtesy review” of the case, the first being in 2018, after the jury verdict was announced.

At the time, Greer claimed to have handed over transcripts or findings that came out of the civil trial, but then-chief ME Glenn Wagner said he didn’t consider any such data because “no new information was forthcoming from the Zahau lawyers.” County officials have always maintained that the Zahaus never presented “new evidence” at trial, only new interpretations of existing evidence. With that disconnect, I always felt it was unlikely that the second “courtesy review” would go any differently.

Despite acknowledging “the public interest and complexities of the case” and promising a careful examination and consideration of the petition, the county’s lack of urgency and Campman’s four-paragraph form-like response to the Zahas speaks louder than words.

Sheriff Kelly Martinez told me before she was elected in November 2022 that she wouldn’t ask an outside agency to re-open the criminal case in Rebecca’s death unless the ME changed its “suicide” finding. This was only after two of her challengers in that election, Dave Myers and John Hemmerling, both said they would re-open the case if elected.

In 2022, Greer sent the same petition letter to Dr. Jonathan Lucas at the Los Angeles Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner, because Lucas was the one who made the original “suicide” finding after conducting the autopsy on Rebecca’s body and signed the death certificate. Lucas, who was the chief deputy ME in San Diego, left to head the LA county’s medical examiner-coroner’s office in 2017.

Greer’s letter to Lucas stated, “The reason for this request is that the large body of evidence and expert analysis developed after you signed Rebecca’s death certificate, as discussed in detail below, shows that it is “more likely than not” that Rebecca did not commit suicide. “More likely than not” is the standard in civil court, vs. “beyond a reasonable doubt” in criminal court.

The letter outlined 13 points of forensic evidence the jury supported in its wrongful death verdict, establishing “Adam Shacknai as the killer.” Greer also cited findings from the Zahaus’ expert witnesses in the civil trial that differed from Lucas’s. For example, forensic kinesiologist James Kent testified that Rebecca’s injuries didn’t gibe with a suicide death caused by a nine-foot fall. He said her height, center of gravity and bound hands would have made it virtually impossible for her to propel herself over the balcony railing, and that she should have been partially or completely decapitated if she’d found some way of doing so.

Lucas left his ME job in Los Angeles several days after receiving Greer’s letter, to which he did not respond and did not plan to, according to a spokesman. In his letter, Campman was apparently speaking for Lucas as well.

Greer has said numerous times publicly that if this petition was ultimately rejected, he would go back to court to request a change to the death certificate in what would be a third round of court proceedings that he hoped would be more successful. However, he has yet to make any such statement or court filing since receiving Campman’s letter 10 months ago, and neither have the Zahaus.

After winning the civil trial against Adam Shacknai in 2018, the Zahaus filed a lawsuit against the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department (SDSD) in 2020, trying to force the release of investigative documents that would show the department hid or ignored internal communications, notes or emails that pointed toward or discussed the homicide theory.

This was somewhat of a fishing expedition, because they had no proof such documents existed. The judge said he wouldn’t force then-Sheriff Bill Gore—or anyone else from the SDSD—to testify about the issue, because law enforcement is protected from having to release, or even discuss, investigative documents under California law.

It is legal to publish findings from such documents if they are released through a party who has access to the discovery process, which is how I obtained investigative reports and witness interviews in the case. However, Greer maintained that the documents he was looking for were never made part of that process due to corruption within the SDSD, which Gore always denied.

After a promising start in the lawsuit against the SDSD, the family ended up asking for a dismissal when the judge indicated he was about to rule in the SDSD’s favor, saying that a writ of mandate was not the proper legal vehicle to go about getting such documents.

The question is, are the Zahaus going to take this case back to court for round three? It’s been a long and costly road for them, but they have said they intend to keep fighting until they get justice for Rebecca. They often wait to make announcements on the anniversary of Rebecca’s death, so I guess we’ll see if that happens later this week.