Murder, Mystery & Makeup - Rebecca Zahau - What REALLY happened in the Spreckels Mansion?

Episode Date: December 28, 2021

The death of Rebecca Zahau, first determined as a suicide, reveals further evidence and suspicions that points to a murder. Additional information regarding the case is included in the description of the original MMM YouTube video where you can find here. If you haven't already, check me out on YouTube @BaileySarian!

Hello friends, how are you today? I hope you're having a wonderful day so far. Happy Monday. My name is Bailey Sarian and today is Monday. Welcome to another episode of Murder, Mystery and Makeup Monday. Inch, inch, inch, inch. If you are new here, every Monday I sit down,

I talk about a true crime story that's been heavy on my noggin. And I do my makeup at the same time. I do my makeup because it just like keeps me busy doing something, so that's why I do it. And then we talk about true crime. If you like true crime and you like makeup, I would suggest you subscribe.

Today's story, I want to talk about Rebecca Zahao and her very mysterious, mysterious case. There is just, it's just, it's just like what the hell. That's what it is. It's a what the hell case. But other than that, I will stop rambling and let's get into this tragic story. So this story, like I said, is about Rebecca Zahow, but there is also a lot that kind of went on in the house. Most of my stories, I kind of try and talk about the whole family background and get you, give you an idea of where they come from essentially.

But I just feel like there are so many different names and people involved in this case that it could get really overwhelming. Get to the point, Bailey, get to the point. I'm gonna start off with Max Shackney. And Max was a six-year-old boy in 2011 is when this happened. And his parents were Jonah Shackney and Dina Romano. Jonah, who was 54 at the time,

he was a wealthy CEO of a pharmaceutical company who mainly sold Restylane cosmetic filler. He was a self-made billionaire. He had a lot of money. He also had a very stiff face. No, that's not funny. So his primary residence was in Arizona. He would vacation pretty often at the Spreckles Mansion

in Coronado, California. Now Coronado is for one beautiful, but all the houses are millions of dollars. I mean, it's for the very rich and wealthy people. So Jonah and Dina were together. They were married and then they had the son named Max and they divorced in 2008. Rebecca Zahau who was 32, her and Jonah Shaknai were a couple. They had met at a job that Rebecca was working at in

Arizona. They seemed very in love and very happy. Rebecca was staying at the Spreckles Mansion in Coronado for the summer and she was with the family Max and Jonah and then her sister Zina who was 13 she came to visit from Missouri. So the Spreckles Mansion was the biggest and most beautiful home in Coronado. Some reports say that it had 27 bedrooms but actually I looked it up because it's for sale right now. It has 10 bedrooms, 11 bathrooms right on the ocean. It's beautiful. If I say it's one more time. So on July 11th, 2011, Rebecca was with her sister who was visiting and they were at the Spreckles mansion. Jonah, he was at work. Max was a happy, well-developed six-year-old boy. His mother reports that he was not a daredevil at all.

So somehow that day, Max had taken a pretty bad fall over the second story banister of the Spreckles mansion. And then that turned into fatal injuries. Nobody witnessed Max fall. It's really unclear as to what caused Max to go over the banister. There are tons of theories as to what could have happened. He was riding his scooter and he fell off and foul play. But what we know for sure is that Max was found

on the first floor with fractured facial bones and a spinal cord injury. Resting on Max's leg was his scooter and the chandelier that was hanging from the ceiling, it had broken off and it had fallen. It wasn't on him though, but it had fallen. Two other people present in the home at the time of Max's fall was Rebecca and her sister. Both of them reported that they hadn't seen Max fall, they had no idea as to what happened. Rebecca had reported that she was in the bathroom

at the time and her sister was getting ready to like take a shower. So Rebecca's in the bathroom and she just heard just a really loud noise. And then she came running out and she saw that Max was injured. She called over to her 13 year old sister, call 911. Rebecca says that when she ran out to like go find Max

on the floor, that he was conscious and he was saying the word Ocean and Ocean was the name of their dog. So she thought maybe he was trying to say that the, like it was the dog that did it or something, but she did tell first responders that he was saying the name Ocean. First responders, they would later on testify in court

that they overheard Rebecca saying, "'Dina is going to kill me,' and Dina was Max's mother. When Max was taken to the children's hospital, Max was unresponsive and he wasn't breathing." So a lot of people question Rebecca, like, well, how was he saying Ocean if when he was being transferred to the hospital, he wasn't even, he wasn't even breathing.

He wasn't even responsive. A lot of people started to kind of question, well, you know, what really happened? Investigators reported that Max, he played on a scooter. He played with soccer balls, like in the hallway area. Like that's kind of where he would play a lot. Many have alleged that Max was either like riding his scooter in the house and tripped

or either the dog came into play somehow and he tripped and fell. And then that's how he fell over the railing, grabbed onto the chandelier on his way down and then crashed. There are others who highly disagree that like this can't even be possible. There's no way that this happened. Max's mother ended up hiring a private firm to really look into Max's fall. They concluded that Max's center of gravity was far too low to allow him to go over the railing

along with his scooter. Also they said that the shag carpet in the hallway, it was just way too thick that it would have prevented Max to ride at a speed that would throw him over the banister. Max, he had no cuts on his hands, despite the fact that he supposedly grabbed the chandelier on the way down. But after this private firm had looked into Max's fall, they couldn't even like replicate how this could have happened.

And they concluded it had to be foul play that was involved. But when the scooter was looked at, it was shown that on the bottom of the scooter, there was like white paint and white markings and some dents. And it lined up exactly with the dents that were on the railing of the staircase. There were some theories that Max was trying

to like use his scooter and go down the railing. He ended up falling and then he grabbed onto the chandelier and like took that down with him. Remember Razor scooters on YouTube and on TV and stuff, you would see like kids using the scooters to go down railings, to go over like staircases, pretty much just act a fool on their scooters. So some theories were saying that Max was trying to go down

the railing or something and do one of these tricks he saw, but unfortunately he ended up falling. Police investigators ended up concluding it a terrible and tragic accident. Max was rushed to a local children's hospital by ambulance and was in critical condition in ICU. His parents, Dina and Jonah were right there by his side, like the entire time.

It didn't look too good for poor Max. So Dina had called up her twin sister, Nina, and Nina flew into town to come, you know, be there for her sister, be there for the family. Rebecca went to the airport to pick up Nina. And then Nina would later say that Rebecca was acting really strange. Whenever she asked her like what had happened, she was kind of beating around the bush.

Like she wasn't giving a straight answer. The next day, Rebecca also went down to the airport to pick up Jonah, his younger brother, and his name is Adam. And Adam worked on the Mississippi River and he was a tugboat pilot since like 1997. So she picked up Adam. That way the whole family could come in

and be there to support. Max remained on life support in ICU. His condition did seem to be stable or even improving. Adam, Jonah, Rebecca, they all like went home for the night and they had dinner on July 12, 2011. And then Jonah, the dad, he went back to the children's hospital to be next to Max. Adam and Rebecca ended up staying at the home by themselves. Adam stays out in the guest house. It's fine though because the guest house is massive too and then Rebecca was in the large house by herself because her sister had flown back the day before. Okay I know we're getting there. So Adam is in the back house.

He reported saying that he took an Ambien sleeping pill and then he fell asleep around 8 p.m. on July 12th. The next morning, July 13th at 6 48 a.m., Adam, he called 911. So on this 911 call, Adam says that he found a body. It was bound, gagged, nude, and hanging from the second story balcony of the mansion. On the 911 call, the first thing you hear Adam say is, "'Yeah, got a girl, hung herself at the house "'on Ocean Boulevard across from the hotel, "'where you guys came yesterday for the boy.'" Like the 911 call is weird. Why did he call her just a girl?

And he knew who she was. So the whole thing was just kind of, that was weird. And that will come into play later on. Adam said that he was going to get coffee. And then that's when he spotted Rebecca. Adam says when he found Rebecca, she was completely nude. She was gagged by a long sleeve blue t-shirt. The body of the t-shirt was wrapped

around her neck three times. The sleeves of the t-shirt were double knotted and stuffed into her mouth. Her hands were bound behind her back and her feet were also bound. Rebecca's body was hanging by a reddish orange rope tied around her neck. The same type of rope was used to bind her hands

and her feet as well. The other end of the rope was tied to the bed frame in the bedroom in which Rebecca was staying. Adam says when he saw Rebecca's body hanging that he ran to the kitchen, he grabbed a knife and he grabbed a three legged table, he brought it out there so he could get on the table and cut the rope.

He then says he removed the t-shirt that was around Rebecca's neck and in her mouth. He removed that and then he began to perform CPR. For some odd reason, I guess like this story had gotten out to news outlets and then they sent out like a news helicopter and this helicopter went around the house. They captured Rebecca's body, which was still outside

and she was still naked. She wasn't even covered. And then they showed it on TV. They blurred it, but what the F are you guys doing? Because the police had already been there. You know, I'm just a nobody, but from my understanding, most of the times at a crime scene, they cover the body with something, but they didn't.

Like they just left Rebecca out there, still nude on the grass. This made the family extremely upset. I mean, for obvious reasons, any of us would be upset if that happened to like one of our family members, why were they showing it on the news? So the San Diego medical examiner,

he arrived on the scene 12 hours after Adam's original 911 call. For 12 hours, Rebecca's body was just still outside and she wasn't covered, over 12 hours. This made a lot of people upset. They believed it was proof of a compromised investigation. The medical examiner, he determined that Rebecca's official cause of death was suicide by hanging.

On her autopsy report, it showed that she had injury to her neck, she had fractures to the left arm. And also in the autopsy report, there were multiple scattered bruises and abrasions on Rebecca's back, arms and legs. Autopsy examiner believed that this happened because Rebecca didn't go straight over the balcony. They believe that she fell at an angle.

And when she fell, she must've hit large plants under the balcony. There really wasn't much around the balcony for her to hit. So yeah, it just is like, are you sure? They also ran a toxicology report and it showed that she had no drugs or alcohol in her system.

They estimated that her time of death was around 3 a.m. on July 13th, 2011. So if we go back to Rebecca's bedroom, a red rope can be seen tied with a slipknot to one leg of the bed. On the floor near the bed is a plastic garbage bag, a small paintbrush, and a large paintbrush, a large kitchen knife, and a small kitchen knife.

Under the plastic bag was a tube of black paint. So Rebecca's hands and her feet, they were widely reported in the media to be nautical knots. The police investigators, they had said that the type of knots utilized were a cleat hitch knot and a slip knot. It isn't exactly inaccurate to describe these as nautical knots.

They're not exclusively used in boating, but for the most part, they are used in boating. A slip knot is extremely simple to create, but a cleat hitch knot is a bit more complicated. This type of knot is most commonly used in sailing. Now, pop quiz. Do you remember when I said Adam did as a profession in the beginning when I introduced Adam? And he was a tugboat pilot since like 1997. Now investigators came back and

they were like these are very common knots, everybody knows how to use these knots, they're not complicated to do, it's completely overblown by the media and when I heard that I was like, bitch shut up. No. If you're familiar with Coronado at all, it's right on the water. And a lot of people do own boats there. A lot of people do go out on the water in their fancy boats. A lot of people were saying, well, Rebecca and her boyfriend, they would go out, take the boat, and they would go out all the time.

Like, Rebecca would know how to tie these knots. But Rebecca's family would say that Rebecca would complain all the time, like he never takes me out on the boat. We only take it out like once a year. We never use the boat. If you look at the pictures, like these knots are, they look kind of complicated. So also Rebecca's feet were very dirty

and they took a look at the balcony and the balcony was very dirty. And her footprints were shown like on the balcony, you can see like a V shape. So they saw that it lined up with why her feet were so dirty. And then they also saw like a little bit of a boot print. Now the police, they said it was a police boot print,

but they didn't like test it or anything like that. They just assumed that it was the police boot. So we haven't even mentioned the painted message that was in the bedroom. A door in the bedroom. There were words that were painted, like a secret message that was painted on the door. And it said, quote,

"'She saved him, can you save her? I was about to say suspish, but like that's just creepy. The whole thing, it gives you the creeps when you see it. Like what the kind of fucking shit is going on? Everybody has their theories as to what it means. Police have never figured it out. They did not find any other DNA in the room besides Rebecca's.

So then a witness comes forward. There was a next door neighbor. She had heard screaming and it sounded like a woman and she was screaming for help. And she was just, there was a lot of screaming. She heard a lot of screaming happening. So when the police interviewed this neighbor, they were like, they pretty much told her that she was wrong

that she heard screaming coming from a different direction. And then they just pretty much brushed this lady off. No one ever interviewed her again. Rebecca's family contacted a high profile Seattle attorney. Her name was Ann Bremner. We're just gonna call her Ann. And that was in the fall of 2011. And then after reviewing the case details,

Ann, she agreed with Rebecca's family that the suicide ruling was suspish. And Anne actually offered to take Rebecca's case pro bono. So Anne had some pretty high connections. She brought in this guy, his name was Dr. Uwech. He was a doctor, a renowned forensic pathologist, and he had over 17,000 autopsies under his belt. So like he's seen some shit.

So she brings him in. So they decide to do a second autopsy, but even though like she was embalmed, he still had like several findings. So there were some things that this guy, he agreed with. They both noted that there was a lot of damage to Rebecca's neck. She had severely torn muscles in the front

and sides of her neck. Well, he agreed that the findings regarding Rebecca's neck injuries are consistent with hanging. They are not exclusive to just hanging. He believed that they could also be consistent with strangulation as the cause of death. And she found it odd that Rebecca's hair was tucked

under the noose. So she thought this was odd because many people, especially women with longer, medium to long hair, in most cases, they will pull out their hair from whatever is around their neck, whether it's a shirt collar, a noose. She said that most women, when they are found, if they did commit suicide,

that their hair will be pulled out. It was very strange that Rebecca's hair was not pulled out, which I thought that was so interesting because it's little things like that that you don't think about, but are kind of big clues. You know, I don't want it to sound like these are my words because they're not my words. This is coming from Anne.

Like she's saying that most women, if they were to commit suicide, they wouldn't do it naked. And that was something that needed to be noted as well. Also on both of the autopsy reports, there have been four areas like on top of Rebecca's head that there was hemorrhage near the top of her scalp. When the first autopsy was done, there was a theory that Rebecca did not fall straight down over the railing,

that she kind of fell sideways, remember, at like an angle, and that her head came into contact with trees or bushes or the balcony itself, causing the small hemorrhages barely get together when the second autopsy was done they were convinced that like this was not the case they believe it could have been caused by intentionally inflicted blows to the head okay so then comes in lividity lividity is pooling of blood in the body after death causing purple or like a purplish discoloration of the skin. So if a person dies on their back most likely there will be a pool of blood that would go with the position of the deceased. So if you die on your back then there's going to be a pool of blood like on your

backside. Medical examiners they will use lividity to help determine the time of death and what position the body was in at the time of death. Also be used to determine if the body has been moved at all post-mortem. Lividity, it may begin as soon as 30 minutes once the person has died. Becomes fixed like or permanent four to six hours after death. So when the autopsy was done on Rebecca, the lividity was fixed in Rebecca's back. If Rebecca had died as a result of hanging, then the lividity would have been fixed in the lower limbs. So in the original autopsy report,

they said that there was blood present in Rebecca's vagina. Isn't that suspicious? They know, or they think that Rebecca was on her period. I know, watch all the guys in the room cringe. And thank God she was, and we'll get into that. Then there was this doctor, Dr. Goodman. He was another forensic analyst, but he looked at the images that were provided of the scene.

And remember earlier how we talked about like there was another footprint on the balcony? The police officer said, well, it was a police boot. It's not another footprint, it's just a police boot. Well, this guy, Dr. Goodwin, he looked at this photograph of the footprint and then he compared it to like a police boot and whatnot and he determined that the boot print was not from police officers it didn't line up with police officers it didn't line up

with Rebecca because Rebecca was barefoot and he went on the Dr. Phil show and pretty much broke down all of it didn't make sense there was somebody else on the balcony and then oddly enough Dr. Goodwin he got forced off of Rebecca's case but he never fully explained like why he got forced off. So then guess what there's more. Okay when Rebecca's death happened they took in you know computers and stuff for evidence to look at and phones to look and see if they could kind of put some pieces together right so they took adam's phone because adam was at the house that night anyways so they take adam's phone and guess what they find on his phone now i'm not judging i'm not you're allowed to like this kind of stuff but like it it fits in with the story they believe that sometime on the night of july 12th

or even the next like early next day july 13th somebody we can't say adam somebody had searched terms like sexy asian girls and bondage anime so again even if he's like into that i mean whatever but the odd the come on him looking at it the night before that she gets murdered and she ends up being bound and whatnot like and then of course police investigators because they seem to be on team adam over here they say that you know somebody must have accessed the computer. Now Adam allegedly he did admit to looking at pornography on his iPhone on the morning of July 13th. So then in 2010 Rebecca's family they had filed a 10 million dollar civil lawsuit. They had claimed that Rebecca's death was a murder. Civil lawsuit itself named Nina, Dina and Adam.

And it claims that Rebecca was beaten, gagged and strangled before being thrown over the balcony railing. The lawsuit would eventually drop both Nina and Dina. Nina and Dina both had solid alibis at the hospital by her son Max's side, video footage of this as well. So she, it was pretty solid. And then Dina was at Nina's house, but some, like she had an alibi, some,

I think the neighbor saw her enter the house, but Adam didn't have a solid alibi. So he still is like the number one focus. So once Dina and Nina, their alibis had come out, they came out with their alibis, that's when, oops, that's when Rebecca's family, their attorney, Keith Greer, that's when he publicly apologized to both Nina and Dina

at a press conference. Honestly, it's extremely unusual for an attorney to make this type of public apology to former defendants. So I thought that was nice. Is that the right word? It takes a big person to like publicly apologize. Rebecca's family alleged that Adam was solely responsible for murdering Rebecca in the early morning

of July 13th, 2011. This lawsuit was permitted to move forward. The civil wrongful death trial, it began in February of 2018. The Zahal family was being represented by Keith Greer, the defendant, Adam. He was represented by attorney Dan Webb. And Dan Webb, I understand, you know, you know, okay, it's fine. He's got a job to do, Bailey, get over it. But Dan Webb was considered like the best of the best he represented a shit ton of high profile cases and he was even contacted by Donald Trump but Dan

had to turn him away because he was quote unquote too busy so Dan tends to represent a lot of the bad guys he's really good at it too and in the video I was watching of the the trial Dan looks like he's about to die. He is intimidating. Not that that matters but it's just a side note. He looks like a toad. A side note about civil trials. In criminal cases the jury has to determine that the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Civil trials also very rarely result in the defendant being incarcerated. Civil trials generally deal with monetary damages against the defendant.

This was a civil case was because the San Diego Police Department determined that Rebecca's death was a suicide and they were not willing to reopen it in order to take Adam to court. So that's why they went the civil lawsuit way. But the reason the family was doing this wasn't because of the money.

Like they went into this knowing that Adam didn't have money. He wasn't a rich guy, his brother was, but Adam wasn't wealthy at all. They did it to pretty much show everybody else that he is responsible for this in hopes that they could open this case and then be able to put him in jail so adam's lawyers they argued in their opening arguments that there was absolutely no evidence that placed adam at the scene of rebecca's death

and they had a point honestly there was no was no fingerprints, no DNA, nothing. And he stated that over and over and over again to really like drill it into the jurors head. I mean, he's not wrong. There isn't any proof. So then Adam gets called to the witness stand. Now he is just like so nonchalant. The way he's speaking is just, it just sounds,

I don't know, just his whole demeanor is like i bet you if he would have acted remorseful sad shed some tears i bet you it would have been a different outcome for him because they played it so heavy on the fact that there was no physical evidence but the way he's acting makes you feel like what a douche he's not even like sad or sorry about what happened i mean that's my opinion so then they play the 911 call for the jury, of course, because like the 911 call is so weird. And when Adam calls 911, he doesn't even refer to Rebecca by her name.

He just says that I've got a woman here who's hanged herself. You know, when they ask him about that, he's just like, well, she was a woman. And so they ask him like about these types of knots that are used on Rebecca like what about these knots do you use these often and of course he says no I have no idea how to tie those knots and you just want to roll your eyes to the back of your head because you're like dude

you work on boats I don't know anyways then April 2nd we have like the closing statements going down and Keith Greer comes in he brings in a realistic mannequin of Rebecca to the courtroom and it shows I won't show you the the image because it yeah but it's a lifelike doll that looks like Rebecca and it's hanging and she's naked and you know it's just adding more shock to what really happened. Keith was able to like piece together a solid timeline as to what happened that night. He believes that Rebecca was in the shower. She turned it off.

And then there was a spot of blood in the shower from her period. So they know like the water was off cause it didn't run the blood down the drain. Once Rebecca gets out of the shower, Adam then confronted her. Something happens where she ends up on the opposite side of the drain. Once Rebecca gets out of the shower, Adam then confronted her. Something happens where she ends up on the opposite side of the house.

They know this because there are drops of blood, a dropped towel and her cell phone on the floor. So then they believe that she was struck on the back of the head four times by Adam, by some kind of object. Then she was knocked out unconscious. She was bound and gagged and then sexually assaulted by Adam. And then he proceeded to strangle her before she was hanged. And they

believe the motive was due to rage about what happened to Max. So then the defense for their closing statements and they just go in heavy with the with saying over and over again that there's no evidence proving adam did this no fingerprints no dna nothing leading back to adam and the jurors determined that adam was responsible for the death of rebecca zahal so they determined that adam owed the family over five million dollars in damages and again they made it clear in a statement that they knew adam didn't have money and it wasn't about money they just wanted to get the sheriff's department to open up this case do their job and that it clearly wasn't a suicide adam has always

denied all the allegations and initially appealed the jury's verdict right after he comes out of court the media asks him they interview adam he's just like angry right and he calls the whole family posers which it's like what the hell does that mean but it made a lot of people upset if he truly is innocent he's being accused of awful things that were done to rebecca of course you have a right to be angry he should have gotten like some kind of counsel or something on how to act because the way he was acting towards the media in certain interviews, it's like, dude, what are you doing? You're just making yourself look more guilty.

He just comes off as a douche. However, in February, a judge dismissed the case but noted the verdict against Adam would remain which I don't quite understand why they did that. An attorney for Adam said that while the verdict remains on file, it now lacks legal standing and cleared Adam's name. The San Diego County Sheriff's Department

reopened the investigation, but once again, they determined in December of 2018 that Rebecca had taken her own life. That is this awful story about Rebecca Zahow and also Max, poor Max. If foul play was involved with Max, I feel so awful because it completely got overshadowed. My own personal opinion is I believe

that Adam was involved, physical evidence, but the fact that like a lot of their stuff was like wiped down is super suspicious. The fact that the knife had possibly been inserted into her is awful because how she was tied up, all of it is just weird. And then the saying on the wall, like what was that? So Rebecca's husband, he wanted the police department

to reopen the case because he did want some closure for Rebecca's family. So he wasn't against it, but he did pay for all the legal to represent Adam. So that's why he got like the best of the best attorney. He didn't believe his brother did it at all. But the guy comes from a lot of money, right? Like he's a self-made billionaire or whatever. So he has all the money in the world to pay people off. I believe that maybe he's been making donations

to the police department. I don't know. Like maybe he has some kind of tie to the police department where they felt like they needed to be loyal to him in a way. And that's why they just closed the case and didn't look into it because if they prosecute the brother then maybe i don't know it just shows though like if you have money you could get away with anything and shit like that drives me fucking bonkers i would love to

hear your theory on this case but other than that I appreciate you so much for hanging out with me today. I hope that you have a really good day. You make good choices and I will be seeing you guys later. Bye.