Fatal Friends, Deadly Neighbors (28 page)

In desperation, Becky Zahau’s family contacted Anne Bremner in Seattle.

After she was approached by Becky Zahau’s sister Mary in the fall of 2011, Anne did some initial research on Becky’s alleged hanging death. Now she agreed to donate her legal experience and education to help the Zahau family find out just what had happened to Becky during the dark hours of July 13.

Another familiar name in the justice system stepped up to offer his services on the strange death in Coronado. Chicago private investigator Paul Ciolino is a legend. Dan Rather once called Ciolino “one of America’s top five investigators.” Ciolino, who looks like a man that Central Casting would suggest for the role of a tough cop, has received dozens of awards for his expertise, including International Investigator of the Year. He lectures to prestigious universities from Yale to Northwestern to Columbia.

His topics include investigative ethics, debunking “experts,” child homicide, sexual abuse, repressed memories, and death penalty investigations.

Most impressive, perhaps, is the fact that Ciolino has helped free five innocent men from death row. He also obtained a shocking videotaped confession from a double murder suspect.

Like Anne Bremner, Paul Ciolino has worked many infamous cases, including the heartbreaking murder of two-year-old Caylee Anthony in Florida. Ciolino, too, was doubtful about the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department’s official decision to close the investigation into the manner of Rebecca Zahau’s death so soon. He joined the team dedicated to find answers to what most people felt was a continuing and tragic puzzle.

*   *   *

Although the postmortem exam of Becky’s body had been remarkably thorough and detailed, Paul Ciolino and Anne Bremner studied Dr. Jonathan Lucas’s report and questioned some of his conclusions. Becky had had many scratches, cuts, and contusions, and the pattern of lividity on her back rather than on her lower legs seemed odd.

Fortuitously, Becky’s body had not been cremated; she was buried in St. Joseph, Missouri, near her family. Although it was excruciatingly painful for them, they agreed to consider having her body exhumed for a second autopsy. For Mary Loehner, the answer came with her belief that her sister Becky had
never
really rested in her grave, and never would rest if she wasn’t vindicated.

Not much time had passed—only a few months—and she had been embalmed. There was a fairly good chance that Rebecca Zahau’s body was in essentially the same condition that it had been when she was buried.

There are only a handful of esteemed forensic pathologists in the United States, and they are much sought-after by those dealing with seemingly unfathomable cases. Dr. Michael Baden is one. Baden is the former chief medical examiner of New York City and now works for the New York State Police. As a board-certified forensic pathologist for forty-eight years, he has worked on or testified in a number of headline death cases, including David Carradine, Chandra Levy, Sunny von Bülow, and Caylee Anthony.

Perhaps the most experienced of all is Dr. Cyril H. Wecht, who has been a board-certified forensic pathologist for more than fifty years. He has personally conducted more than 17,000 autopsies and consulted on another 37,000 death cases. He, too, has testified as an expert witness in trials all over the world.

Wecht is a past president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, is on the board of directors of the National Association of Medical Examiners, and, among many other boards dealing with questions of mortality, is a chartered diplomate of the American Board of Disaster Medicine. He is also an attorney in his home state of Pennsylvania.

Along with his coauthor, Dawna Kaufmann, Dr. Wecht has written several bestselling books on both unknown mystery deaths and those of deceased celebrities such as President John F. Kennedy, Anna Nicole Smith, Sharon Tate, and JonBenét Ramsey.

Either Dr. Baden or Dr. Wecht could make a powerful advocate for a death other than suicide in Rebecca Zahau’s case—
if
they disagreed with Dr. Lucas’s conclusions. Anne Bremner had worked with Cyril Wecht before, however, and she approached him about performing the second postmortem exam of Becky Zahau.

Her family would find it difficult to pay for this procedure, but providentially, Dr. Wecht chose to do this autopsy for no charge—if Becky’s family agreed to have her body exhumed and sent to his offices in Pittsburgh. Dr. Phil McGraw of television fame was also puzzled about the facts behind Becky’s death, and he stepped in to pay for the exhumation and transportation.

As a death investigator, Wecht was most concerned with the scientific findings at autopsy, but he always sought to find out the circumstances surrounding the demise of his subjects. By weighing the two views, one medical and one anecdotal, he found he could get a fully dimensional grasp of what could have happened.

*   *   *

In November 2011, four months after Rebecca Zahau died, Dr. Wecht performed a postmortem exam. There were certain things he would not be able to do because her body had been embalmed. But the first autopsy, performed by Dr. Lucas, had included tests to determine if she had any alcohol or drugs in her system at the time of her death. And, of course, lab reports came back that she had neither. As a health fanatic, Becky had eschewed both.

After he finished the postmortem exam of Becky Zahau, Dr. Wecht was asked if he thought Becky had died from strangulation caused by the blue T-shirt that had been wrapped around her neck three times, or in some other fashion that differed from the hanging diagnosis.

“My reply is that when there is so much internal damage to the neck structures, it’s not always possible to differentiate a pre-hanging strangulation from a staged hanging. Ms. Zahau’s body showed substantial damage to her neck. Her hyoid bone—the small U-shaped cartilage beneath the jawbone—was broken, but there were also hemorrhages in the underlying muscles down to the fractured cricoid cartilage, the first cartilaginous ring beneath the Adam’s apple. Yet, the rope was
above
that level. These are the kinds of injuries that can be attained from a forcible, manual strangulation.

“There was a total absence of
any
injury posteriorly,” Wecht continued. “The cervical vertebrae—the first seven vertebrae in our spinal column beginning at the base of the skull—showed
no
damage, either by way of fracture or dislocation. Also, there was no damage to the delicate muscles, ligaments, and tendons that lie on the front, back, and sides of the vertebral column. There was all that damage and force in the front of her neck, and not even one drop of blood or tear or disruption of any soft tissues in the rear.

“Dr. Jonathan Lucas noted four separate subgaleal hemorrhages on Ms. Zahau—in the area beneath her scalp but over her skull, I confirmed them on Rebecca’s second autopsy,” Wecht noted. “But nobody has provided an explanation as to how the top of her head got those bright red, fresh injuries, which only could have come from something hitting her on the head—or her head hitting something—four times.”

Wecht said that no one knew just what object had struck her. “It could have been a fist, or anything with a reasonable amount of firmness that would not perforate, lacerate, or abrade the scalp [itself] in any way. Crime scene photos show a plastic red toy dog bone in the room by the balcony; that could have easily been the weapon.”

Dr. Wecht pointed out that there is no soft tissue between the scalp and the bony skull. Although the four injuries were not strong enough to fracture Becky’s skull, they definitely had occurred very shortly before her death. How had these wounds happened?

“In order to get four separate, distinct hemorrhages,” Wecht wrote, “you have to have four points of impact—not so hard as to fracture the skull or lacerate the scalp, or cause death on their own—but sufficient to produce the hemorrhages. And the bright red color of these injuries shows they were acute—meaning
immediate
to her demise, not from bumping her head on something days—or even hours—earlier.”

Had Becky’s head hit some tree branches as she dropped from the balcony? The San Diego detectives thought so. Or could she have struck her head on some outcropping from the balcony? No—there
was
no outcropping of stucco, wood, or metal.

Becky had allegedly been hanging from a taut, nautical rope, not something like a bungee cord that would have made it possible for her body to bounce upward several times and cause the four impact injuries.

Dr. Wecht also wondered about the many scratches, punctures, and bruises on her back. “If they came from her dangling on the rope and coming into contact with foliage, as investigators assert, why weren’t there similar abrasions to her arms, which were tied behind her back? Her arms should have been the first point of contact if those abrasions came from hitting foliage while swinging on a rope, and her arms should have shown more abrasions than were on her back.”

The renowned forensic pathologist felt if there had been enough momentum for Becky to rotate while hanging, or to allow her to hit the balcony on her way down, one should expect to find injuries to her nose and the front of her face.

There were none.

Dr. Lucas’s autopsy summation had attributed the four mystery red areas as something that had happened when Adam Shacknai cut her down. Dr. Wecht didn’t concur.

“Without knowing how she got those marks, we cannot eliminate the possibility that someone assaulted her and caused her to have a cerebral concussion and become momentarily unconscious—and that suggests the application of some degree of force against her and a possible murder scenario. Authorities maintain that there was no evidence of a struggle—but when someone has had a cerebral contusion and unconsciousness [however brief], he or she is not going to struggle.”

Dr. Lucas had noted three rectangles of what appeared to be tape residue on Becky’s lower right leg but hadn’t found this particularly relevant.

“Are we to think,” Dr. Wecht asked, “she first bound her legs with duct tape, but took it off and used rope instead? If so, where is the roll of tape from which the tape was cut, and the wadded up bits she decided not to use?”

All in all, Cyril Wecht found the mystery of Becky’s death inexplicable. “I have never experienced the same set of circumstances that I see in this case. Any scenario I try to come up with to explain the physical circumstances in which Rebecca was found defies my imagination.

“The knots around Ms. Zahau’s wrists enabled her, apparently to put her hands in and out of the bindings.”

Dr. Wecht wrote that he had appeared on a television show with a “well-respected” rope knot expert and discussed the way Becky was bound up with him.

“He stated that he didn’t see how
anybody
could have accomplished what Rebecca was alleged to have done.”

Even though the San Diego investigators had re-created the hanging of Becky to counter criticism from the public, showing that “Rebecca fastened the bindings in front of her, then pulled her right hand out of a sophisticated slipknot, repositioned the rope behind her back, and put her right hand back in the binding,” Wecht wrote, “I contend that it is no great surprise that they could instruct someone to do the act for a re-creation. Harry Houdini did this 70 years ago. What I want to know is how Ms. Zahau learned to fashion these kinds of knots that were around her neck, wrists, and ankles, and tied to the bed leg. Where did she acquire this special skill?”

Cyril Wecht is at an age and with enough experience under his belt that he doesn’t soften his conclusions. He criticized the investigators for failing do a “proper and meaningful” re-creation. Rather than use a newly hired policewoman as a subject to represent Becky, he felt the sheriff’s investigators should have used a dummy of
exactly
the same weight and size of Becky, and videotaped how her fall might have occurred. It wasn’t enough in his opinion to re-create the “hanging” with a female police officer who was only approximately Becky’s size.

Wecht wondered just how Becky had suffered the marks on her body that were apparent on autopsy. And why was the bed frame in her office/bedroom moved so little? He felt that the iron bed should have moved more when the sudden weight of a plunging body pulled it. In the photos of the floor in Becky’s office/bedroom, there were no drag marks—no furrows on the rug. Indeed, it looked more as if it had been lifted and then moved to the position in which it was found.

Dr. Wecht also determined that there should have been acoustic tests in the mansion. Had the screams neighbors heard come from
inside
the Spreckels Mansion?

Or from outside?

Dr. Cyril Wecht believed that Becky Zahau had not perished from hanging herself. He, Anne Bremner, Paul Ciolino, and Becky’s sister and brother-in-law, Mary and Doug Loehner, appeared on the
Dr. Phil
show and presented their conclusions on the manner of her death.

Although Sheriff Bill Gore, a former FBI special agent, was a good friend of Adam Shacknai’s attorney, Paul Pfingst, there was no ulterior reason that Gore had opted to close the death investigation prematurely. There seemed to be just as much circumstantial evidence on either side of the dilemma, and there was no question that everyone involved sincerely wanted to find the manner of Becky Zahau’s death. Of course, her demise garnered more headlines than if she had been the girlfriend of an average “Joe the Plumber” type of man. Instead she had been the love of a world-famous pharmaceutical billionaire.

And the fact that Becky and Maxie had allegedly plunged to their deaths within forty-eight hours could not be ignored.

Was there any way to winnow out what really happened?

*   *   *

Private investigator Paul Ciolino flew to California and looked around the grounds of the Shacknai estate, studying the balcony where Becky Zahau had reportedly hung herself and estimating the distance from Ocean Boulevard to the front door, where Hank Bowden, the bicycling tourist, still insisted he had seen Dina—not Nina—on the night before Becky died. He knocked on doors along the street, and reinterviewed many of Jonah and Becky’s neighbors.