Crime & Safety

Sheriff Defends Agency's Probe of Spreckels Mansion Death

Statement is a response to the two-part special about the case on the "Dr. Phil" TV show.

Sheriff Bill Gore responded Wednesday to charges, aired on a nationally syndicated television show, that his department badly mishandled its investigation of the death of Rebecca Zahau.

Gore accused the “Dr. Phil” program of indulging in “sensationalism at its lowest point” in a two-part examination of the death of Zahau, a 32-year-old Arizona woman whose nude body was found hanged at the oceanfront manor owned by her pharmaceutical-tycoon boyfriend.

A spokeswoman for the talk show did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the sheriff’s statements.

Find out what's happening in Coronadowith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Detectives concluded that the woman killed herself, a ruling vehemently challenged on the TV program by her sister, a private detective, a prominent attorney and famed forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht, who performed a second
autopsy on Zahau's body.

Her relatives and friends have refused to accept the ruling that she took her own life, saying she was a religious woman who viewed suicide as a sin, had shown no signs of despair and had made no statements blaming herself for Max’s disastrous fall.

Find out what's happening in Coronadowith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Gore responded to the accusations against his department by charging that the “Dr. Phil'” interviewees put forth “altered and misrepresented facts” and “omitted pertinent details altogether.”

“For example, the guests on the show referred to mixed DNA underneath Rebecca’s fingernails,” the sheriff asserted in a prepared statement. “There were 13 samples taken from fingernails of both hands. Each of the samples was analyzed separately. In 12 of the samples, the DNA results were consistent with
the presence of DNA from only one person. The DNA types found in these samples matched the DNA of Rebecca Zahau.”

In one of the samples, according to Gore, the results indicated the presence of DNA from at least two people. The majority of the genetic material present was consistent with Rebecca’s profile, he said.

“The amount of information obtained from the other contributor(s) was so minute, it was not possible to identify the source,” he stated “It is important to understand that small amounts of DNA can be transferred easily through any number of ways, including something as ethereal as a breath.”

Gore also sought to refute a claim by the Zahau family’s legal representative in the case, high-profile Seattle lawyer Anne Bremner, that an unknown person used a computer in the mansion a short time after the hanging occurred, despite sheriff’s investigators’ contention that Zahau was alone in the home at the time of her death.

“Their ‘findings’ that someone had logged on to Rebecca’s computer had already been investigated by our detectives, and it was simply determined to be an automatic computer update,” Gore asserted.

The sheriff also dismissed Wecht’s claim that his follow-up postmortem exam uncovered evidence that put the suicide ruling into serious doubt.

“No new information has been provided by this second autopsy. ... Further, Dr. Wecht did not reach out to the San Diego County Medical Examiner’s Office or the sheriff’s office to attend the autopsy, as is normal protocol to establish and maintain a clean chain of custody, should new evidence be found,” Gore said.

The sheriff concluded his rebuttal by suggesting that the two-part show hosted by “entertainment psychologist” McGraw was a calculated bid to achieve high TV ratings by exploiting Zahau’s grieving survivors.

“This is nothing more than sensationalism at its lowest point, and the family is only enduring more suffering from this insensitivity,” Gore said.

-City News Service


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

To request removal of your name from an arrest report, submit these required items to arrestreports@patch.com.