Update: Sheriff to Explain Coronado Mansion Deaths Friday

Updated at 1:10 p.m. Thursday.
One of the people to see Rebecca Zahau the day before her death, a San Diego kennel owner, doubts the suicide theory floated in media reports in recent days.

Ted Greenberg met Zahau when she boarded a dog July 12, after her boyfriend's son was critically injured in a fall. He said he won't be convinced she killed herself, regardless of what is announced Friday and that he is suspicious about what pressures detectives might have faced during their investigation.

“It may be a temporary statement until they can further prove it, or they may never change it,” Greenberg said.

Investigators will announce at 11 a.m. Friday how , the Sheriff's Department said this morning.

Rebecca Zahau, 32, , and was found naked, bound and hanging by the neck from a second-story balcony. Authorities said Adam Shacknai, brother of the homeowner, Jonah Shacknai, found her and cut her down before they arrived.

Politicians and other public officials traditionally release controversial information late on a Friday or before a long weekend in hopes of short-circuiting any criticism that might be directed their way.

Recent leaks to media outlets have indicated that detectives are leaning toward what initially had seemed an unlikely conclusion: that  .

The list of officials to appear at the press conference, hosted by Sheriff Bill Gore, does not include District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, indicating that charges are not planned in Zahau's case.

Her death, and the detectives' weeks of reluctance to comment on it—or even to declare a cause of death or that it was a criminal case—shined a spotlight on Jonah Shacknai, and Coronado, as interest in the tragedy soared.

The focus was driven in part by the timing of another calamity that befell Shacknai, founder of Scottsdale-based Medicis Pharmaceutical.

, because of injuries the boy suffered in a July 11 fall at the oceanfront mansion, which sits on a stretch of beachfront property that includes other exclusive and historic homes.

Speculation surrounds the cases, partially fed by , but also stoked by the authorities' silence.

• Were the incidents connected? (Investigators emphatically said no, then retreated and said they would take a closer look.)
• Could someone kill herself with her hands tied behind her back? (Detectives said stranger things have happened in suicides.)
• How exactly did the boy fall? (Coronado police only said it happened on the mansion's staircase.)
• Where was Shacknai when his girlfriend died? (Detectives said they were in contact with him from the beginning, but refused to elaborate.)

Whether the announcement of how Zahau, a medical assistant, died, satisfies her family or those who have followed the case closely remains to be seen.

Zahau's loved ones have maintained that she would never kill herself. Shacknai did not single his girlfriend out in his only public comments about his losses.

In , he thanked supporters for their expressions of sympathy and charitable donations in his son's name, and said he expected to be back in the office soon.

Gloria Tierney contributed to this report.