Shacknai to Appeal to City Council Regarding Son's Death

The City Council will be pulled into the Spreckels fray Tuesday when the mother of the boy who died of injuries suffered at the mansion appears before members to air her grievances with Coronado police.

Police rejected Dina Shacknai's appeal last month for a new look at the investigation into how Max, 6, died in July 2011. Shacknai announced her intentions to come to City Hall in a Monday press release.

Shacknai has employed experts who question the police determination that Max died as the result of an accident. Shacknai criticized the police decision last week. Shacknai wants the case reclassified as a homicide.

Questions have remained about incidents at the mansion last summer. Two days after Max's fall down from a Spreckels staircase, the body of his father's girlfriend, Rebecca Zahau, 32, was found nude and bound to the rear of the property. 

San Diego Sheriff's investigators found that Zahau had killed herself. Zahau's family maintains she died at another's hands and have called on the state to conduct new probes in both deaths.

Shacknai and the Zahau family taped a new episode of the Dr. Phil talk show last week, 10 months after the host first visited the case. 

The show will air Friday, according to the Zahau family's attorney.

Jonah Shacknai, the boy's father and Zahau's boyfriend at the time of her death, has expressed confidence in the investigation, though at one time he too sought a new probe, to quell ongoing speculation about the case. 

This story has been amended to reflect the correct date of the incidents at the Spreckels mansion.