Some basic info on this very weird case. A little boy was playing on the second story of his house and fell over the stair railing and died. His father’s girlfriend (Rebecca Zahau) was at home at the time, but everything points to it being just a tragic accident.
Two days later Rebecca’s body was found hung from an exterior balcony. Hands tied behind her back, ankles tied together, t-shirt stuffed into her mouth. Written by the door was “She saved him, can he save her.” Police have ruled it a suicide.
There are a lot of ??? about this case. It’s either the weirdest suicide I’ve ever heard of, or something else is going on.
I dunno. The Wikipedia article seems to have some claims that are dubiously sourced.
Footnote 19 turns out to be an article quoting a paid expert hired by Zahau’s family.
The enigmatic message “She saved him, can he save her” turns out to be sourced from an ex-husband:
Presumably an ex-husband is not a strictly unbiased source when it comes to implicating as a murderer the new husband who replaced him.
Other parts of the case report do not make any sense as written:
If Adam Shacknai handled the body, what this should say is “unable to find any other DNA at the scene besides Zahau’s and Adam Shacknai’s.”
It’s also full of entirely spurious complaints:
So the police didn’t satisfy a “true crime writer’s” thirst for vital details?
McKenna, whose book will sell well if this is a mystery or miscarriage of justice, and not a boring suicide, thinks “things…don’t add up.”
I am not arguing that it was suicide, but the folks breathlessly suggesting it was murder-by-billionaire all seem to be interested parties making difficult-to-independently-verify claims. So for now I will raise one eyebrow and await developments.
You have to where the evidence leads and there just didn’t appear to be enough evidence pointing to murder. It’s very bizarre, though. There’s not much information on her bahavior the evening of the incident, other than she spoke with and texted her sister for about 2 hours.
There have been plenty of weird suicides. And there isn’t any evidence of a murder. It is a wierd story. It almost begs for an underlying secret to be exposed which explains the bizarre nature of it, but when people commit suicide they can do it with means and reasons that no one else can understand.
If her hands were tied behind her back, there’s at least grounds to speculate about another person being involved. That would difficult–but I suppose not impossible–to accomplish alone.
I don’t think anyone suspect the child’s father. He was pretty clearly at the hospital all night when she died. That would be even more attractive to the tabloid writers, if they could somehow blame the millionaire.
They had a policewoman demonstrate how it could be done. It was on TV, it must be out on the web somewhere. It’s possible, and similar to other cases of suicide. It still could be murder. There aren’t any witnesses. But there isn’t any evidence of anyone else being there.