August 21, 2025 • 46 mins
Welcome back, spooky squad to another episode of your favorite true crime coffe hour. We missed you!
Today's episode is a doozy. In July of 2011, a tragedy unfolded inside one of Coronado’s most exclusive mansions. Six-year-old Max Shacknai suffers a mysterious fall, and just two days later, Jonah Shacknai’s girlfriend, 32-year-old Rebecca Zahau, is found hanging naked from a balcony—her hands and feet bound, a cryptic message painted on a bedroom door.
Authorities ruled it a suicide. Her family insists it was murder.
In this first part, we dive into the days leading up to Rebecca’s death: who she was, the key players in her life, Max’s devastating accident, and the chilling morning Rebecca was discovered. From the bizarre crime scene to the immediate questions about how investigators handled it, this case still sparks fierce debate over what really happened in that mansion. Grab your coffee and settle in—it’s time to unravel the first half of a case that blends mystery, scandal, and heartbreaking loss.
Stay spooky, ya'll!
Case notes:
Unravelling the Knots: Mary’s book https://www.amazon.com/Unraveling-Knots-Sisters-Relentless-Justice-ebook/dp/B0F18YMTXKCoroners' report, Rebecca: https://www.autopsyfiles.org/reports/Other/zahau,%20rebecca_report.pdfCoroners' report, Max: https://www.autopsyfiles.org/reports/Other/shacknai,%20max_report.pdfIncredibly detailed review: https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/7w8uhi/unexplained_death_part_2_rebecca_zahau_murder_or/Death at the Mansion TV Series: https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B07S7TMRRT/ref=atv_dp_share_cu_r
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/scream-and-sugar-true-crime-coffee-hour--6015946/support.
This content is not appropriate for all viewers; viewer discretion is advised. PS. Let's just umbrella all our content with a blanket statement: allegedly, supposedly! Stay spooky, squad.
Today's episode is a doozy. In July of 2011, a tragedy unfolded inside one of Coronado’s most exclusive mansions. Six-year-old Max Shacknai suffers a mysterious fall, and just two days later, Jonah Shacknai’s girlfriend, 32-year-old Rebecca Zahau, is found hanging naked from a balcony—her hands and feet bound, a cryptic message painted on a bedroom door.
Authorities ruled it a suicide. Her family insists it was murder.
In this first part, we dive into the days leading up to Rebecca’s death: who she was, the key players in her life, Max’s devastating accident, and the chilling morning Rebecca was discovered. From the bizarre crime scene to the immediate questions about how investigators handled it, this case still sparks fierce debate over what really happened in that mansion. Grab your coffee and settle in—it’s time to unravel the first half of a case that blends mystery, scandal, and heartbreaking loss.
Stay spooky, ya'll!
Case notes:
Unravelling the Knots: Mary’s book https://www.amazon.com/Unraveling-Knots-Sisters-Relentless-Justice-ebook/dp/B0F18YMTXKCoroners' report, Rebecca: https://www.autopsyfiles.org/reports/Other/zahau,%20rebecca_report.pdfCoroners' report, Max: https://www.autopsyfiles.org/reports/Other/shacknai,%20max_report.pdfIncredibly detailed review: https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/7w8uhi/unexplained_death_part_2_rebecca_zahau_murder_or/Death at the Mansion TV Series: https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B07S7TMRRT/ref=atv_dp_share_cu_r
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/scream-and-sugar-true-crime-coffee-hour--6015946/support.
This content is not appropriate for all viewers; viewer discretion is advised. PS. Let's just umbrella all our content with a blanket statement: allegedly, supposedly! Stay spooky, squad.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome back, everybody to another episode of Scream and Sugar,
your true crime coffee Hour, the podcast where we dive
into the darker side of humanity while enjoying a little
sweetness on the side. I'm your host Sahara and I
am Candace, and today we are going to be covering
the tragic case of Rebecca to.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
How art one so hungry?
Speaker 3 (00:57):
What is up?
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Everybody?
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Welcome back? We miss you all since last week. We
want to say thank you to everybody who interacts and
hangs out with us and gives us love and rates
the pod and all that crap. So yeah, we are
once again doing our best not to cuss this episode.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
What's this luck? Because we're both exhausted and I feel
like it comes out even more when I'm tired.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Oh a thousand percent, I'm going to say, here we go.
We tried to get it all out at the beginning.
I cut it all out for for everybody's welfare.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
We'll add it on to the Facebook pages, Instagram, just
a clip, just.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Like a separate, separate car, a separate little case or something. Yeah,
So what's us luck? Today? We are talking about a
case that has always lived in my mind as one
of the most horrific injustices of the last you know,
twenty years.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Yeah, that's twenty eleven.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Yeah, if you haven't heard of the Rebeccasa how case
or I believe they called the Carnado death the Coronado
death case in the actual police files, this one is
going to blow your mind. So just strap in, y'all,
because we're getting into it. Coronado is where this takes place.
It's a beautiful resort city a few miles outside of
San Diego. It has the lowest crime rate in the area.
(02:16):
It is full of wealthy people and the most common
crime is like bicycle theft. So yeah, you could say
it's pretty chill.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Coronada Island is like literally you can drive across a
bridge and you're there from San Diego, from where my
friend Jenna lives.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Yes, exactly, So yeah, you have like lots of it's
like and it's like very very wealthy, affluent area. So
one of the reasons I believe in the family the
victim believes that the the police department, the Coronada Police Department,
we're unable to handle this. So they basically showed up
on the scene and they said that it was some
sort of violent murder, and actually turned the case over
(02:52):
to the San Diego Sheriff's office, well equipped exactly, and unfortunately,
I do believe that was a huge mistake. So at
six forty three am on July thirteenth of twenty eleven,
a thirty two year old woman named Rebecca's A Howe
was found hanging from the balcony of her millionaire boyfriend
Jonas Shackni's San Diego mansion. When she was found, she
(03:15):
was nude, with her hands bound behind her back, her
ankles bound, and a T shirt wrapped around her neck
and head and the end of it was put into
her mouth. She was completely nude, hanging out off this
balcony in public and was bound, bound gagged. Her death
was quickly and quietly ruled a suicide, but her friends
(03:35):
and family and I would say ninety eight percent of
the population completely disagree with this. Well duh, you'd think.
To this day, the family has not stopped fighting this case.
Rebecca's sister, Mary's a how loner. She published a book
this year called Unraveling the not So. This came out
in March of twenty twenty five. I will obviously link
it for you, and it's called Unraveling the Knots, A
Sister's relentless fight for justice in the murder of Rebecca's
(03:58):
a How I read the book and it's just you
can tell how hard Mary has been fighting for this
for so long. And at the end she does reveal
that she now has stage four cancer, a stage four
lung cancer specifically, and she wants to get this written
out so that her book and her words can continue
to fight for justice for her sister even if she's gone. So, yeah,
(04:22):
we're going to go through this case. You can decide
what you think after I've kind of laid out some
of the facts. I'm going to do my best to
stay away from specifically pointing out like my opinion. It's
just going to kind of lay things out and you
can kind of make that decision for yourself. So there
are quite a few players in this case, so I'm
(04:42):
going to lay them out as much as I can. First,
there is Rebecca, who we've kind of mentioned. She's our victim.
She's thirty two years old. She was very petite, at
about five to three. She was a beautiful, beautiful girl
in a fitness enthusiast. She was the daughter to a
Burmese or Chinhill's chie in a political refugee, and her
family worked really hard to bring themselves to the US
(05:04):
after her father was held as a political prisoner when
they were children.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Yeah. So in Mary's book, she often talks about her
and Rebecca's time in the chin Hills and in Nepal
where they were living before they moved to Germany and
then to the US. And Burma was under military rule
there when they were children, so they often worked really
hard to blend in and not stand out to avoid
a lot of the rape and the murder that was
occurring there. So the headline for Rebecca after this occurred
(05:31):
was the beautiful Burmese girlfriend of the millionaire boyfriend. That's
what the headlines were calling her, And I feel like,
don't get me wrong, she was absolutely stunning and you
obviously will see pictures of her, but she was also
unbelievably educated. In a polyglot she spoke over six different languages.
Mary describes her as funny, outgoing. She was always just
(05:52):
a ray of sunshine. She made everybody feel welcome, she
made everybody laugh, and she would often put others before
herself while she hadn't had the chance to have her
own children, yet she do did on her boyfriend Jonah,
his son Max, and on Ocean, her three year old.
Why a Morainer, I hope I'm saying that right. Was
what looks like some kind of Wiener dog Mariner dog Mariner?
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Is it a Pomeranian? Let me see.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
This is what it says. Why Morainer?
Speaker 3 (06:20):
We Wiener? We we a Rainer.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
We're gonna look it up. It's a wei Morainer Wayne Marner.
I don't know, correct me if you want. It's a
type of German breed of hunting dog. It's medium to
large sized, It's cute.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
It's really pretty.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
It's a really pretty dog. And that was Ocean, and
she loved Ocean like Rebecca and Ocean were bestie besties,
you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (06:40):
I do.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
So that is a little bit about Rebecca. We're also
going to talk about Max. So he was called Maxie
by Rebecca and Max was Jonah's six year old son
from his second marriage. Max and Rebecca were very very close.
She actually was probably I would say, his main caretaker
for the most part.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Oh okay.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
He says that Rebecca ended up putting a lot of
her life on hold so that she could kind of
help raise Max and kind of be at Jonah's back
and call. So we'll get into that a little bit more.
But he falls off. This is like a crazy part
of the case. He fell off the stair landing two
days before Rebecca is found dead and was critically injured
(07:20):
and in the hospital.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Oh nobe.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
So this adds a whole other level. He fell off
the stair landing when I was supposed to be watching him,
which I believe she was watching him. He's just a kid,
you know.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Yeah, stuff happens, running around and jumping all things.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Well, yeah, and we'll get into kind of how they
found him to.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Six Okay, yeah, getting into trouble.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Hm.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
I was one of those I'm gonna go pet these
horses if I died, and away if I die, and
then we have Jonah shack Nay. He is a self
made millionaire who started in politics before moving to cosmaceuticals.
He got his money off a pharma company called Medicis Pharmaceuticals,
(08:02):
which he started and sold the famous ristises botox Ristysis botox.
It's like the it's not the botox, it's like the
cheaper brand of botox. Well, that's how he made his money.
So he was very, very wealthy man. When he met her,
he was she was working as a like an automatry.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Tech okay, atoms.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Atomaist, there's like a weird word for it. But that's
how they met and then they ended up falling in love.
They both loved like working out. They were very into fitness,
they were very into health. And he was twenty years
older than Rebecca.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Oh yeah, okay, and.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
He expected her to really drop her external life and
activities to take care of them, which because she was
was very giving in young girl.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
I think so, I mean thirty two, and you kind of.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
I understand.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Now, but I feel like dating someone that's twenty years
older than you. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Anyway, Well, there's a point in time where like she
is texting her sister, so her and Mary were obviously
very close, and she's texting Mary and she's like, it's
not worth the money.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Like, oh, okay, so she was dating him for his money?
Speaker 1 (09:11):
You think, No, no, no, I don't. I don't think
she was. I think she genuinely liked him. I'm sure
that was a nice bonus.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
I think maybe she's stuck around because she was already
taking care of Max.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
I think she was. I think she loved Max, and
I feel like she she tells like her sister, she's
like because he had two ex wives that she said
were freaking mean to her, and then she also says
that he had a couple of teenage kids.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
Okay, so she.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Felt were really really spoiled and treated her poorly, and
there was this kind of like like rumors and rumor
mill that she was dating him for his money, and
I feel like it really got to her to the
point where she was like, I don't deserve to be
treated like this, and if things don't work out by
the end of the summer, I'm going to walk away,
which is something that Mary brings up later and we'll
(09:58):
talk about. Jonah and Rebecca were together for two years
before she was found dead. Interestingly, there was a class
action suit I'm just this isn't aside brought against Medsis
by two hundred and twenty five women who were sexually
harassed and common and things were like said about their looks,
(10:20):
their weight, and their clothing. In his business dealings, he
was known to be very controlling and fighting, like often
to like the last straw, like very controlling that he
wanted to own the situation, and the suit was actually
not settled until after he sold the company years after
Rebecca's death, because he refused to settle. He was like, no, no,
this is how we are where a looks based company.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Oh so you can just sexually harass people because you
provide them with a service to help them have better
self esteem.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
I guess that's insane, right, yeah, I like, that's so whacked,
so even crazy. No, I completely understand, And I felt
I added that in there only because to me, it
really added on a level of who he.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Is, right. It gives you a little bit of a
glimpse of how he perceives and treats women.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Absolutely. And then there is a few more players that
we haven't really talked about yet, but I'm gonna just
give you a brief update on who they are. So
there's Adam Shackney, so Jonah's younger brother. He is a
tug boat pilot in Memphis, Tennessee, and he's been one
since nineteen ninety seven. There's also Jonah's ex wife, Dina Shakni.
She is described as not very friendly with Rebecca. They
(11:40):
kind of always had some issues jealousy, That's what I
would think. Yeah, probably, you know she's younger. Yeah, she's
very close with her son.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
She's getting to play that role that she wanted to be.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Right in fact, Dina at one point says that the
relationship between the brothers was kind of reminiscent of teenage boys,
like they were always kind of talking crap to each other.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
I mean, I still do that to my brother.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
But they were not close in any stretch of the imagination.
So either way, Jonah described Dina and Rebecca's relationship as
on the edge of civil and Dina was adamant about
finding out what happened to Maxie and likely placed a
lot of blame on Rebecca, considering her oh and considered
her negligent.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Sorry.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
So then there is Nina shack Night. So this Dina
and Nina, and they are twins, fraternal twins.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
That's adorable.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
So Nina shack Night flew in after what happened to
Maxie and flew into town and texted Rebecca the night
of her at ten thirty pm asking to talk and
claims that though she went over to the house, all
the lights were off and she never went inside, so
she was at the house at ten thirty b Yes.
In her interview, she claims that she didn't trust Rebecca
and felt that she was hiding something. So she tells
(12:54):
the story about how because Rebecca was kind of holding
things down back at home, when like Ni arrived and
Adam arrived, Rebecca was like picking them up from the
airport and like taking them back. And so when she
picked up Nina, you know, was like, so, what happened Rebecca,
And Rebecca's like, well, they really don't know what is
going on with him, you know, he fell over the banisters.
What we think. I was in the bathroom at the time,
(13:16):
and we'll talk about it more, but she was like
and then she just stopped talking, and I felt like
she was hiding something, And I'm like, or maybe she
was just really stressed out, you know.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Right, Well, I'm sure she had a level of guilt
for something happening to Max while she was on watch.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Oh, I completely agree. Yeah, yeah, I think that, And
again we'll kind of talk about what happens, but I
do feel like she had some She.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
Was probably already grilled by both the hospital, like whoever
showed up to come pick up Max, and obviously Jonah Jonah, Yeah. Yeah,
so she's already getting the third degree and now she
has more family coming in to give her further questioning.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Right, Oh, I completely agree. Nina was given or was
asked to give a polygraph that she couldn't make, and
then it was never rescheduled.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
Because I don't trust polygraps. But well I know, but
but still she intentionally no.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
They just the sheriff's yeah, never followed up because it
was ruled a suicide.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Make it make sense.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Next, we have Zena, which is.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
A dope name Xena Dina and no.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
No, Xena is not. Zena is actually related to Rebecca.
She's her thirteen year old sister. But yeah, there's a Dina,
a Nina, and a Xena and her thirteen year old
sister was living in the Midwest, but she was out
visiting Rebecca at the time of Max's death. So poor Zena.
There is a there's a there's a nine one one
call of Rebecca and is you know, calling for the
(14:55):
paramedics when Max falls?
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Oh okay, and was there?
Speaker 1 (14:58):
She was there and it's absolutely horrible. There is also Mary,
who we've kind of mentioned, that's Rebecca's older sister. She
wrote the book and is working very hard on trying
to get justice for her sister. She and Rebecca were
close and they had even spoken the night before her death.
So during that call, Rebecca told Mary that she was
going to call their mother in the morning about their
father's eightieth birthday party, and she was going to call
(15:19):
her at five am s And she needed to get
up to make Jonah breakfast anyway, so she had plans
mm hm. She seemed to be in good spirits at
the time, according to Mary. At least Max's condition wasn't.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Fatal it was was it improving at all?
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Did appear to be improving? Again, there was the two
other teenagers. I have read sources that said that they
were not at the house at the time of Max's
accident or Rebecca's death. Okay, but then I've also seen
sources that said they were there just did it in
like another part of the house, because I mean, god,
it's a huge house. House is jag Yet there's a
caretaker house, there's a guest house in a main house
(15:59):
in the police bouse's as they were not there, So
I'm just going to go with that and assume that they.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Were not there.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
So now we kind of know the players and we
are now going to go up through the days leading
to Rebecca's tragic death. So on a July eleventh, at
ten thirty am, a call comes into nine one one.
I'm going to play that for you here.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
I'm.
Speaker 4 (16:26):
Are you there, Wow's trying to read has to day?
Oh boy, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
She can't agree.
Speaker 4 (16:40):
What's your ada?
Speaker 1 (16:50):
So as you can hear, Rebecca is incredibly distraught, like
she is absolutely horrified. At one point she even says like, oh,
he's dead. The first responders noticed that Ocean the dog
was also near the area, and that there was a
scooter near the child and parts of the chandelier were
strewn all over around him.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
It reminds me of the Omen a little bit.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Oh seriously, right, Oh my god. So Rebecca said that
she had been in the bathroom when she heard a
loud noise. When she came out to investigate, she saw
that Max was lying at the bottom of the stairway.
Investigators believe that Max was riding his scooter at the
top of the landing, maybe trying to do a trick.
At least that's my opinion, because if you guys remember
the early two thousands, Do you guys remember razor scooter ads?
(17:33):
They were always like grinding and stuff like grinding rails.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
I used to do something called extreme stutin and you
would have a Razor scooter and go down hills of grass,
not of like pavement. My brothers and I were a
little crazy. But I would also ride the scooters off
the pier on out into the water while we're living
in Alaska, and we called it extreme Student's totally heavily
(18:02):
influenced by a certain TV show that was very popular
around that time. Was it Jack butt Yeah, Jack Booty.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
I was a huge Jack Booty fan. In fact, I
just watched Jack Booty three D two days ago. Still
a big fan. Yes, So that's kind of my thought
is that maybe he was trying to do like a
cool trick where he grinded the because as a six
year old, especially in a house at large and that
extravagant and you.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Get to ride your scooter inside, best believe I'm going
to be grinding on stuff exactly. That's what it sounds,
right anyways, But yeah, phrasing anyway, go on.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
But it wasn't a cussword, so it's fine. They believe
that either he got maybe tripped by the dog, or
he somehow inadvertently fell over the banister, which I will
say was pretty high. But when he did, he tried
to grab onto the chandelier and the chandelier went down
with him. When he hit the ground, he suffered from
obviously you know, brain trauma. He was unresponsive, He was
(19:00):
not breathing when the paramedics arrived, but Rebecca was giving
him CPR, which did save his life.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
He was rushed to the hospital and immediately Jonah and
Dina headed to the hospital to be with him for
the next two days. Things appear to be moving forward
in everybody's life. The doctors have a promising prognosis from Max.
Rebecca is working very hard on the back end to
get things managed. So she took Zena back to the airport.
She picked up Adam Shacknai, she picked up Nina, and
(19:29):
she was kind of running and shutteling everybody around. I
will say, this is so interesting. There was a counselor
that did ride alongs with the police in this area.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
This counselor filed a report which states that while Rebecca
was clearly distraught and upset. She did not show any
signs of depression, nor did she seem to have any
guilt or regret regarding her part in the incident.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Right because she wasn't responsible for it. It was an accident,
and she saved that boy's life.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
And she loved that child.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Just trying to do her best to accommodate everyone else
as well.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
It appeared that her main interest was actually taking care
of Jonah and making sure Jonah felt supported. So this
comes up later on because part of what the Sheriff's
Department says is going on is that, Oh, actually Rebecca
was so distraught and she blamed herself so much for
what's happened to Maxie that she committed suicide.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
No, I don't think she would do that unless I mean,
I obviously don't know her. But if Max's condition is
improving and me stable, and that doesn't make sense, you'd
want to be there for the kids recovery, is all
I'm saying. Oh, absolutely, come on.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
At this time, it's important to remember, like I said
that Mary said, the doctors have a positive proagnosis for Max.
Like you just mentioned during their text, she's very comforting
to Jonah. She's trying to make sure that she's managing
all this workload behind the scene, and her last message
to Jonah at seven to fifty one PM was, Hi, Babe,
left you Max's little monkey at the main lobby. I
thought you might want to keep it in your pocket.
(20:59):
I love you so much and Max will make it through. No,
both of you were in my heart constantly, and Jonah replies,
thinks baby. After she picks up Nina from the hospital,
she picks up Adam shack Andy, she sends Xina back home,
and additionally, with everything going on, she also boards her dog, Ocean,
which Mary thought was very surprising because Ocean was basically.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
Her support and her comfort. Baby.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Yeah, yeah, I can understand being worried about Ocean, and
maybe being worried that like people might do something to
Ocean if they thought he was involved, and wanting to
just kind of keep him away. I don't know for
sure if that's what was going through her mind. Nobody does.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
But maybe she just didn't have the time to care
for Ocean, so she decided to take him to somewhere
she probably trusted to board him, right.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
But Mary, her sister, who I will say probably knows
her better, than anybody. Yeah, said that it was very
strange that she boarded that dog, and that's because Mary
and Rebecca were constantly on the phone. She had told
or she had told Mary at one point she said,
I love Maxie like my own child, but I know
that he's not and I need to be strong for Jonah.
(22:07):
She was very hopeful at this point when she talked
to her sister. According to Mary, Rebecca had also been
talking about leaving Jonah after the summer was over because
she felt like she lost her life and she just
became almost like a glorified nanny who was treated like crap.
This comes and start contrast to the sheriff's motive for
her suicide, which was that she was so guilbert she
(22:29):
couldn't move forward.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Yeah, which we just we know is not true.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
We just don't think it's true. The night before her death,
Jonah was at the hospital and she was at home
with his brother Adam, so Adam had gone to the
(22:55):
hospital earth the other that day he had come back
to the house. Adam was staying in the guest house
at the time, while Rebecca was staying in the main house,
and they were allegedly the only two there. According to Adam,
they went to the hospital and then when they got home,
he thought they would like maybe have dinner together, but
she was like, I just need to go to bed,
and she went to bed and he went to his
room in the guest house. He also mentions that he
(23:17):
ordered he offered her a sleeping pill, which he says
she declined. She did not take the ambien.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
Okay, oh, ambience terrible.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
But the police, the Sheriff's department, the autopsy report was
never They never tested my ambien, which was fascinating to me.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
That is interesting. They didn't do a talk screening.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
At least not for that particular drug.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
I will say my mom used to take prescription ambien
and she would get up while she was like sleepwalking
almost and she would order stuff off of infomercial.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Dude the man I used to do that. She would
get up and she would go down into the kitchen
and eat like thirty five things.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
Yeah, same, she would eat. She'd fall asleep into a
bowl of cereal. And I remember that happening, and I
was just like, you needed when I was growing up.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
Well, maybe we should tie you down or something.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
She's off of it now, but oh my god, I will.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Yeah, that's my thing is. I'm like, if he did
give her ambient, that would at least clarify something. But
we don't know.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
I wouldn't she wouldn't be able to tie herself up.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
You're not gonna be able to tie yourself up.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
I truly don't know how it works up. I don't know,
but I.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
Mean maybe your feet. But you said her hands were
bound too.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
So girl, let me just fucking get into this, okay.
So two days later, when the first responders received a
call of a woman hanging at the same address, they
assumed that she had hung herself due to house upset
she was when they arrived the first time. Automatically, they
kept that mindset, even though parts of the scene were concerning,
like geez, I don't know how her hands and legs
(24:43):
were tied her nudity. The Coronado Pedi immediately called in
the sheriff's apartment because they felt this was a violent murder. However,
when people talk to them after the fact, they were like, no,
we knew that it was going to be this woman,
and we knew it was because of what had happened,
and that's confirmation.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
Bias Babes is very yeah, very.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
You would think that they would be like, you know,
maybe we're wrong, Like, you know, maybe somebody else is
mad about the fact that the child.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
Oh yeah, a bunch of family in town and she's
already on thin ice with Dina and whoever.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
So Jonah, all I'm saying is I think that's a
terrible mindset to have. So I'm going to also just
give Like, we know how her body was found a
little bit, but we're going to talk a little bit
about the crime scene itself. She was bound with a
rope that's like used for skiing, So it's like a red,
like stretchy kind of rope, polypropylene probably propylene rope. Yes,
(25:45):
I'm good with words, that's me.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
Perfect.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Yes, So that's what she was bound with. And that
rope had also been made into a noose that went
over the balcony back into the bedroom and was tied
around the leg of the bed. The leg of the
bed showed that after she was after she hung herself, allegedly,
the bed moved about seven inches. Okay, that is not possible.
(26:15):
Her drop would have been about nine feet what they
call a long drop hanging we'll get into that a
little bit more, but seven inches is where it shows
that the bed moved from. There's also this whole scene
just gets even stranger. There's also on the door leading
out to the balcony a message painted with black paint
(26:36):
from what was most likely her paints because she was
a painter, that were in the corner of the room,
and it said she saved him, can you save her?
Ew in all caps and to write that at her height,
she would have been reaching up to write it on
the door, which is kind of interesting.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
Because she was a shorty said she was five three.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
She's just little. Authorities never called a suicide note it
doesn't really read like one. Some people have mentioned it
as a suicide. Note Rebecca's family doesn't think she wrote.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
It at all. That give me the heaps so hard
right now.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
And it's like in third person.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
There's some weird how many staff members are on staff
at the house, so that's get to it.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
They were allegedly not in the main house at all.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
No gardener, no cook, no.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
Just Adam and Rebecca. I know. Next to the message,
our two kitchen knives, one large one, one smaller one
on one of the knives, the larger one. Rebecca's fingerprints
are found on the blade, not the handle, as though
she was kind of grabbing it from the top. Okay,
the second knife, and this is probably like a trigger
(27:43):
warning for a sexual assault. Had DNA had from two people,
but not enough really to identify. But it did show
that Rebecca's blood was found on the handle of the
knife up to the blade apart. Oh, however, she really
did not have any areas that were bleeding enough.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
For that indicative of that.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
However, they found that she was on her period. They
believe that she was sexually assaulted with that knife. Additionally,
there is black paint that they believe was from the
the message on the wall. They found the brushes covered
in black paint, but that black paint was found for
(28:29):
some reason on Rebecca's nipples and like a little bit
on the side of her hand. And that's kind of it.
So I think it's a little odd to suggest that,
you know, she wrote this and then it didn't get
anywhere else. Additionally, her fingerprints were the only ones found
in this whole place, even though multiple people were living
(28:51):
there in and out of that room. Another unusual thing,
and we'll talk about theory for that as well. Her
fingerprint was the only one found on the tube paint,
but it was one thumb print on the top of
the cap. That's it almost like everything had been wiped down.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Yeah, that sounds like it, because when you're handling any
type of paint, like your fingerprints can be over that.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Yeah, especially if she used it.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
On the top. You can't see Sahara and I, but
we're doing and like we're doing getting our fingerprints taken
thumb and ink print blood green. Oh that sounds suspicious.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
Yeah, bizarre. They believe that some smears looked patterned like
potentially and we'll talk about it in a second, like
a glove like somebody. They also found the they found
freaking what are those things called? They found dryer sheets. Okay,
(29:52):
they found like a couple dryer sheets. This house is
pretty spotless. They found a couple dryer sheets, which I
guess are really commonly used to remove fingerprints. Could be coincidence,
interest it's a very very circumstantial, but it is interesting.
They found them in by Rebecca and then they found
them in Adam Shackney's room.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
M M.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
There was also a towel that led out of the
bathroom into the bedroom, so it's almost like she walked
out of her like a shower. She walked out, dropped
the towel, and then stood there. So there was blood
on the ground by the towel that they believe was
menstrual blood, even though I don't believe they've ever tested
it to confirm, but they believe that because that's the
(30:33):
only place she would have been bleeding like that from.
And then there was blood moving in like an upwards
motion on her. But she crack, you know, like as
a woman when you lay down, it moves up, rolls down. Yeah,
so FYI for all our male listeners. But they think
that maybe she was standing there like writing that message
(30:54):
on the door for that long and that's why the
blood was there. I don't think I agree with that,
but whatever, because it's a lot and we'll post a
picture of that crime scene photo. There were also footprints
and dust patterns on the balcony railing, suggesting that maybe
Rebecca had leaned over the railings. She's pretty small and
(31:15):
the railing was pretty high, so she would have had
to have like it's like one set of feet prints
and then toe prints like half a foot ahead and
then so they think that she like hopped up on
her toes and leaned over and fell over the top
of the railing, and that's why the dust pattern on
the top of the balcony railing was disturbed.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Four areas of trauma were found on her head, which
the Sheriff's Department claimed were from like her body striking
the balcony wall or like during the fall, like she
was bouncing up against the foliage. But a lot of
people are unsure about that. Additionally, there was a red
dog toy, like a large like cang dog toy that
(31:54):
were near her body. Okay, so this whole thing is
kind of unusual.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
Their whole scene, let's say.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Yeah, like I said, they were all these fingerprints were
Rebecca's and there were partial prints that were not looked into.
But it's because they believed this was a suicide from
the get go. So I don't believe they did a
full crime scene processing like they would if it had
been like a true homicide.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Right if she was if she was stabbed to death
as opposed to haunt like hanging, like I don't.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Understand exactly exactly well, And it's like.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
And women typically don't do such violent suicide attempts.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Right well, And her hair was stuck inside the gag,
which we've talked about before. If you're a woman with
long hair, you pull that out. And that doesn't even
get into like the cultural aspect of this, which we
will get into, which is that in her culture, being
nude like this would be a huge taboo. And Mary's like,
she would never do this, especially knowing that we would
(32:55):
be there to see it afterwards, her family, She would
have never done this.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
No, I was gonna say, more private, and you wouldn't
be jumping off of a balcony in full view of
everyone right in the buff crazy.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
There was also a bootprint that was found at the
scene on the balcony, and the detectors were like, oh, no,
that's a police bootprint.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
However, in Mary's but contaminated the scene of the crime.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
Allegedly, No, it's a shoddy police work, agreed, And Mary's
book gets noted that the print was never tested and
that the footprint that they say was Rebecca's was too
small to have been Rebecca's footprint. In her book, that's
what she says, So who was it? Was it her sister's?
Maybe from a previous day because Zina had smaller feet.
Nobody knows so because they were looking that this case
(33:39):
is a suicide not a homicide. There were also no
blind swabs taken, So a blind swab is a swab
for DNA where an offender may have like mouthed or
contacted a victim.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
M hm.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
So you'd think like inner thighs, throat, breasts, that kind
of stuff. She was checked for seamen, but no blind
swabs were taken and never tested.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
Unreal.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
So now we're gonna get into her being found by Adam.
So Adam says, he wakes up, it's like six am
or something, and he's just kind of like vibein hanging.
He decides he's gonna go to the main house, get
him some coffee, get him some snacks. He walks out,
and he immediately sees her hanging from the balcony. He says,
so he runs into the house, he calls nine on
(34:37):
one and he grabs a knife. He then runs out,
pulls up a table to climb up on top of,
and then goes to cut her down.
Speaker 3 (34:46):
Okay, you're reporting, Yeah, I gotta girl go along across
from Jill.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
Today.
Speaker 4 (35:03):
Okay, kerk alive.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
I don't know, so you a lot?
Speaker 4 (35:18):
Okay, so what's the address?
Speaker 2 (35:22):
Three seven?
Speaker 4 (35:23):
Okay, hang on, let me get the car. Dependent on
the phone to help you. Okay, Okay, what's wrong? Very much? Okay,
it should be on how I'm doing right now? Okay,
you cut her down? Okay.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
In Mary's book, she has a diagram which we will
post that shows that Rebecca, based on like the tension
of this of the rope, would have been about seven
to nine inches from the ground.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
So why would you have to grab a table?
Speaker 1 (35:55):
So it's very unlikely that Autumn, who's over six feet,
would have to have grabbed that tape at all. He
should have just been able to get up and cut
her down.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
Oh, it was like a side table.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
It was like a I don't know, like an outdoor table,
a little outdoor table.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Based on his testimony during a civil trial that we'll
get into later, he would have been cutting like two
feet above her head to remove her. Also, the table
itself was really rickety and unstable. I I don't know,
I do I can understand to an extent, like if
he felt like he needed to lift her right to
cut it maybe.
Speaker 3 (36:30):
So he was probably didn't want her to fall into
the ground potentially.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
That that's the only way I could really think about it, uh,
in the way that he talks about it. But I'm
gonna show you really quick, okay, because there it is
actually in here. I have it. Your dog heared?
Speaker 3 (36:49):
Did you say your dog did? K? Yeah, I don't know.
That's weird. Interesting, Uh. From the diagram on the left,
looks like the knife would have just been hitting her
head if that's where her feet were at, So maybe
he did need to have a little extra room.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
To Yeah, it's it's very interesting. Very I could, like
you said, I could, I guess kind of see it.
I don't know if I would have wasted the time
to pull over at a table. Yeah, okay, whatever either way,
Adam Shack and I was trying to deliver CPR, though
Rigor Mortis was sent in when first responders arrived, which
(37:30):
is kind of gnarly. Again, Rebecca, I'd been bound with
that rope, the kind that was used for water skiing,
and had kind of like a stretchiness to it. So
this will come back later because she also had her
hands tied with this rope and both were done in
a figure eight manner, looped more than six times and
tied so tight that it actually pushed the rubber bracelet
she was wearing like, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:53):
You wouldn't be able to do that by yourself.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
Sorry, I agree. She also had a blue the blue
long sleeve shirt that was wrapped around her head and
stuffed on her mouth. Those throat excretions were actually found
at the end of the gag, suggesting it was really
far down there. Her hair was caught in the knots
of the shirt, and she was in rigor. After the
police arrived. It took twelve hours. So the initial call
(38:15):
was at seven am and it took twelve hours for
the medical examiner to arrive and pick Rebecca up at
seven pm. While this may not be uncommon, this whole
twelve hour period, I don't know. What is uncommon is
the fact that they left her body outside of the
house uncovered the entire time. They did not set up
a privacy tent to cover her body. There were helicopters,
(38:35):
there were people taking photos of her. Her entire nude
body was shown to the public for twelve hours with
her legs tied like that. Her knees had been opened
up a little bit exposing her genitals, and people were
taking pictures of her and posting them on public TV
for her family to see. It was absolutely horrific. Rebecca's
(38:59):
family had to watch this four hours on TV. The
official autopsy from her death at the time paint some
really interesting picture so there were no alcohol, no drugs
that are commonly tested for, no signs of sexual assault. Allegedly,
her feet were dirty as if she'd stood barefoot out
on the balcony for a while. The bindings, according to investigators,
(39:22):
could be slipped on and tightened by one person by
one person. Head injuries, these sub gallial hemorrhages were explained
by the examiners impacts of her head on the foliage
during the fall, and they found what appeared to be
tape residue and a horizontal pattern across her ankles. Tape residue, yes, yes, yes, interesting,
but they said, nope, this is a suicide. They at
(39:45):
one point even had a female detective roughly the same size,
or female cop or something. They said they had her
do like a reenactment, sure showing that she could get
into the same bindings. However, if you look at that again,
you'll see that the knot of her bindings are at
the bottom so that she can tighten it herself, whereas
(40:08):
Rebecca's were at the top.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
Well she could teeth.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
Well.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
They were behind her back, so she would have had
to have then gotten into a It.
Speaker 3 (40:15):
Was behind her back.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
They were behind her back.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:17):
My next question was it in front of her? Behind
her You're going like showing me out in front.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
That's because you can't see them by me.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
Yeah, girl.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
So her she had her hands behind her back, she
had her legs tied, and then the noose around her neck.
And they're saying that she did this, and then they
tried to prove it with this officer but they couldn't.
Speaker 3 (40:39):
That was organized and she's she's five three banister is
how high? Gosh?
Speaker 1 (40:46):
I want to say it was over three feet. I
can't say for sure, but I know it was tall.
I know it was tall to the point where to
do what she would have had to go head first
over the top. And they called that a long drop fall,
which is often done in countries where hanging is still
capital punishment because it's considered the most humane version because
(41:07):
it immediately will break the neck. It causes so much
damage to your neck, which actually is not seen in
her autopsy. They see signs that are really more consistent
with strangulation. So a fractured hyoid bone. When you undergo
a long drop hanging, your hyoid bone actually most likely
(41:28):
will get moved up and then it's your vertebrate that take.
Speaker 3 (41:31):
A lot of that. So it was her hyroid pushed in.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
Her hyoid was because that's.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
Just floating in the body for those of the you
know what's not connected to anything cut that. I don't
know if that's true.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
I'm pretty sure it is. Yeah, it just.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
Floats in the neck. Her cervical spine is intact, her
hyoid bone is pushed and fractured, fractured.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Yeah, but her neck does not have the amount of
damage that you would expect from a nine footfall, Okay,
which is what she sustain. I was curious about the
fact that the rope was stretchy, stretchy. Yeah, but even then,
let me explain something to you. Let me go into
(42:16):
some more of what the Sheriff's department says is going on.
So there was a call made to Rebecca that night
from Jonah Jonas Shacknay. Okay, they can see that Rebecca
accessed her voicemail deleted the message at like ten something PM,
(42:38):
and they believe that that was Jonah telling her that
Max's condition had taken a turn for the worst.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
Does Jonah confirm us.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
That's what Jonah says? Nobody's ever heard this voice message.
The police won't get handed over. Also, according to Mary's book,
the doctor at the time of Rebecca's death still was
not aware that something was going bad was going to
be happening to Max. Okay, So, according to Mary's book,
(43:06):
the doctor hadn't even told Jonah that Max's condition had
started to go badly. Max does end up dying, but
it's after, but it is after Rebecca is dead.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
Okay, interesting, very interesting.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
So the family obviously is like, no, yeah, this is
not who she is. She would never have done this.
And they come down and they start fighting with the
Sheriff's department. They end up going on doctor Phil, We're
going to talk about that. They end up having a
second autopsy done. We're going to talk about that.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
There's another group of people this I call them the
super Team. They come together to start looking into this,
and they come up with even more fascinating evidence. We're
going to talk about that, and we're going to talk
about this in part two in.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
The next section of this episode, Part two baby, okay,
oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
And they found a witness. Yes, okay, So I hope
to catch you guys in the next episode. Thank you
so much for hanging out with us again today.
Speaker 3 (44:13):
We love you guys so much.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
Hey, we have that new shirt out, so come take
a look at it whenever you want. It's got wizards,
It's got a Hello wizards. Okay. If you have any
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some knowledge, Maybe you have cases you want us to cover.
You just want to hang out, You want to talk
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Hit us up on ig.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
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(44:55):
you just want to, you know, yell, let us over
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Speaker 1 (45:16):
Give us a voicemail.
Speaker 3 (45:17):
It us a voicemail, Okay, give us some love, end
us love, and until next time, stay suky y'all night
by no cussing.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
That's right, that's right, Okay, get it all out now
balls alright, I already, I'm already, I'm ready to do
this
Welcome back, everybody to another episode of Scream and Sugar,
your true crime coffee Hour, the podcast where we dive
into the darker side of humanity while enjoying a little
sweetness on the side. I'm your host Sahara and I
am Candace, and today we are going to be covering
the tragic case of Rebecca to.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
How art one so hungry?
Speaker 3 (00:57):
What is up?
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Everybody?
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Welcome back? We miss you all since last week. We
want to say thank you to everybody who interacts and
hangs out with us and gives us love and rates
the pod and all that crap. So yeah, we are
once again doing our best not to cuss this episode.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
What's this luck? Because we're both exhausted and I feel
like it comes out even more when I'm tired.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Oh a thousand percent, I'm going to say, here we go.
We tried to get it all out at the beginning.
I cut it all out for for everybody's welfare.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
We'll add it on to the Facebook pages, Instagram, just
a clip, just.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Like a separate, separate car, a separate little case or something. Yeah,
So what's us luck? Today? We are talking about a
case that has always lived in my mind as one
of the most horrific injustices of the last you know,
twenty years.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Yeah, that's twenty eleven.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Yeah, if you haven't heard of the Rebeccasa how case
or I believe they called the Carnado death the Coronado
death case in the actual police files, this one is
going to blow your mind. So just strap in, y'all,
because we're getting into it. Coronado is where this takes place.
It's a beautiful resort city a few miles outside of
San Diego. It has the lowest crime rate in the area.
(02:16):
It is full of wealthy people and the most common
crime is like bicycle theft. So yeah, you could say
it's pretty chill.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Coronada Island is like literally you can drive across a
bridge and you're there from San Diego, from where my
friend Jenna lives.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Yes, exactly, So yeah, you have like lots of it's
like and it's like very very wealthy, affluent area. So
one of the reasons I believe in the family the
victim believes that the the police department, the Coronada Police Department,
we're unable to handle this. So they basically showed up
on the scene and they said that it was some
sort of violent murder, and actually turned the case over
(02:52):
to the San Diego Sheriff's office, well equipped exactly, and unfortunately,
I do believe that was a huge mistake. So at
six forty three am on July thirteenth of twenty eleven,
a thirty two year old woman named Rebecca's A Howe
was found hanging from the balcony of her millionaire boyfriend
Jonas Shackni's San Diego mansion. When she was found, she
(03:15):
was nude, with her hands bound behind her back, her
ankles bound, and a T shirt wrapped around her neck
and head and the end of it was put into
her mouth. She was completely nude, hanging out off this
balcony in public and was bound, bound gagged. Her death
was quickly and quietly ruled a suicide, but her friends
(03:35):
and family and I would say ninety eight percent of
the population completely disagree with this. Well duh, you'd think.
To this day, the family has not stopped fighting this case.
Rebecca's sister, Mary's a how loner. She published a book
this year called Unraveling the not So. This came out
in March of twenty twenty five. I will obviously link
it for you, and it's called Unraveling the Knots, A
Sister's relentless fight for justice in the murder of Rebecca's
(03:58):
a How I read the book and it's just you
can tell how hard Mary has been fighting for this
for so long. And at the end she does reveal
that she now has stage four cancer, a stage four
lung cancer specifically, and she wants to get this written
out so that her book and her words can continue
to fight for justice for her sister even if she's gone. So, yeah,
(04:22):
we're going to go through this case. You can decide
what you think after I've kind of laid out some
of the facts. I'm going to do my best to
stay away from specifically pointing out like my opinion. It's
just going to kind of lay things out and you
can kind of make that decision for yourself. So there
are quite a few players in this case, so I'm
(04:42):
going to lay them out as much as I can. First,
there is Rebecca, who we've kind of mentioned. She's our victim.
She's thirty two years old. She was very petite, at
about five to three. She was a beautiful, beautiful girl
in a fitness enthusiast. She was the daughter to a
Burmese or Chinhill's chie in a political refugee, and her
family worked really hard to bring themselves to the US
(05:04):
after her father was held as a political prisoner when
they were children.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Yeah. So in Mary's book, she often talks about her
and Rebecca's time in the chin Hills and in Nepal
where they were living before they moved to Germany and
then to the US. And Burma was under military rule
there when they were children, so they often worked really
hard to blend in and not stand out to avoid
a lot of the rape and the murder that was
occurring there. So the headline for Rebecca after this occurred
(05:31):
was the beautiful Burmese girlfriend of the millionaire boyfriend. That's
what the headlines were calling her, And I feel like,
don't get me wrong, she was absolutely stunning and you
obviously will see pictures of her, but she was also
unbelievably educated. In a polyglot she spoke over six different languages.
Mary describes her as funny, outgoing. She was always just
(05:52):
a ray of sunshine. She made everybody feel welcome, she
made everybody laugh, and she would often put others before
herself while she hadn't had the chance to have her
own children, yet she do did on her boyfriend Jonah,
his son Max, and on Ocean, her three year old.
Why a Morainer, I hope I'm saying that right. Was
what looks like some kind of Wiener dog Mariner dog Mariner?
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Is it a Pomeranian? Let me see.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
This is what it says. Why Morainer?
Speaker 3 (06:20):
We Wiener? We we a Rainer.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
We're gonna look it up. It's a wei Morainer Wayne Marner.
I don't know, correct me if you want. It's a
type of German breed of hunting dog. It's medium to
large sized, It's cute.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
It's really pretty.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
It's a really pretty dog. And that was Ocean, and
she loved Ocean like Rebecca and Ocean were bestie besties,
you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (06:40):
I do.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
So that is a little bit about Rebecca. We're also
going to talk about Max. So he was called Maxie
by Rebecca and Max was Jonah's six year old son
from his second marriage. Max and Rebecca were very very close.
She actually was probably I would say, his main caretaker
for the most part.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Oh okay.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
He says that Rebecca ended up putting a lot of
her life on hold so that she could kind of
help raise Max and kind of be at Jonah's back
and call. So we'll get into that a little bit more.
But he falls off. This is like a crazy part
of the case. He fell off the stair landing two
days before Rebecca is found dead and was critically injured
(07:20):
and in the hospital.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Oh nobe.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
So this adds a whole other level. He fell off
the stair landing when I was supposed to be watching him,
which I believe she was watching him. He's just a kid,
you know.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Yeah, stuff happens, running around and jumping all things.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Well, yeah, and we'll get into kind of how they
found him to.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Six Okay, yeah, getting into trouble.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Hm.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
I was one of those I'm gonna go pet these
horses if I died, and away if I die, and
then we have Jonah shack Nay. He is a self
made millionaire who started in politics before moving to cosmaceuticals.
He got his money off a pharma company called Medicis Pharmaceuticals,
(08:02):
which he started and sold the famous ristises botox Ristysis botox.
It's like the it's not the botox, it's like the
cheaper brand of botox. Well, that's how he made his money.
So he was very, very wealthy man. When he met her,
he was she was working as a like an automatry.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Tech okay, atoms.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Atomaist, there's like a weird word for it. But that's
how they met and then they ended up falling in love.
They both loved like working out. They were very into fitness,
they were very into health. And he was twenty years
older than Rebecca.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Oh yeah, okay, and.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
He expected her to really drop her external life and
activities to take care of them, which because she was
was very giving in young girl.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
I think so, I mean thirty two, and you kind of.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
I understand.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Now, but I feel like dating someone that's twenty years
older than you. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Anyway, Well, there's a point in time where like she
is texting her sister, so her and Mary were obviously
very close, and she's texting Mary and she's like, it's
not worth the money.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Like, oh, okay, so she was dating him for his money?
Speaker 1 (09:11):
You think, No, no, no, I don't. I don't think
she was. I think she genuinely liked him. I'm sure
that was a nice bonus.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
I think maybe she's stuck around because she was already
taking care of Max.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
I think she was. I think she loved Max, and
I feel like she she tells like her sister, she's
like because he had two ex wives that she said
were freaking mean to her, and then she also says
that he had a couple of teenage kids.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
Okay, so she.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Felt were really really spoiled and treated her poorly, and
there was this kind of like like rumors and rumor
mill that she was dating him for his money, and
I feel like it really got to her to the
point where she was like, I don't deserve to be
treated like this, and if things don't work out by
the end of the summer, I'm going to walk away,
which is something that Mary brings up later and we'll
(09:58):
talk about. Jonah and Rebecca were together for two years
before she was found dead. Interestingly, there was a class
action suit I'm just this isn't aside brought against Medsis
by two hundred and twenty five women who were sexually
harassed and common and things were like said about their looks,
(10:20):
their weight, and their clothing. In his business dealings, he
was known to be very controlling and fighting, like often
to like the last straw, like very controlling that he
wanted to own the situation, and the suit was actually
not settled until after he sold the company years after
Rebecca's death, because he refused to settle. He was like, no, no,
this is how we are where a looks based company.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Oh so you can just sexually harass people because you
provide them with a service to help them have better
self esteem.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
I guess that's insane, right, yeah, I like, that's so whacked,
so even crazy. No, I completely understand, And I felt
I added that in there only because to me, it
really added on a level of who he.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Is, right. It gives you a little bit of a
glimpse of how he perceives and treats women.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Absolutely. And then there is a few more players that
we haven't really talked about yet, but I'm gonna just
give you a brief update on who they are. So
there's Adam Shackney, so Jonah's younger brother. He is a
tug boat pilot in Memphis, Tennessee, and he's been one
since nineteen ninety seven. There's also Jonah's ex wife, Dina Shakni.
She is described as not very friendly with Rebecca. They
(11:40):
kind of always had some issues jealousy, That's what I
would think. Yeah, probably, you know she's younger. Yeah, she's
very close with her son.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
She's getting to play that role that she wanted to be.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Right in fact, Dina at one point says that the
relationship between the brothers was kind of reminiscent of teenage boys,
like they were always kind of talking crap to each other.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
I mean, I still do that to my brother.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
But they were not close in any stretch of the imagination.
So either way, Jonah described Dina and Rebecca's relationship as
on the edge of civil and Dina was adamant about
finding out what happened to Maxie and likely placed a
lot of blame on Rebecca, considering her oh and considered
her negligent.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Sorry.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
So then there is Nina shack Night. So this Dina
and Nina, and they are twins, fraternal twins.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
That's adorable.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
So Nina shack Night flew in after what happened to
Maxie and flew into town and texted Rebecca the night
of her at ten thirty pm asking to talk and
claims that though she went over to the house, all
the lights were off and she never went inside, so
she was at the house at ten thirty b Yes.
In her interview, she claims that she didn't trust Rebecca
and felt that she was hiding something. So she tells
(12:54):
the story about how because Rebecca was kind of holding
things down back at home, when like Ni arrived and
Adam arrived, Rebecca was like picking them up from the
airport and like taking them back. And so when she
picked up Nina, you know, was like, so, what happened Rebecca,
And Rebecca's like, well, they really don't know what is
going on with him, you know, he fell over the banisters.
What we think. I was in the bathroom at the time,
(13:16):
and we'll talk about it more, but she was like
and then she just stopped talking, and I felt like
she was hiding something, And I'm like, or maybe she
was just really stressed out, you know.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Right, Well, I'm sure she had a level of guilt
for something happening to Max while she was on watch.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Oh, I completely agree. Yeah, yeah, I think that, And
again we'll kind of talk about what happens, but I
do feel like she had some She.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
Was probably already grilled by both the hospital, like whoever
showed up to come pick up Max, and obviously Jonah Jonah, Yeah. Yeah,
so she's already getting the third degree and now she
has more family coming in to give her further questioning.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Right, Oh, I completely agree. Nina was given or was
asked to give a polygraph that she couldn't make, and
then it was never rescheduled.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
Because I don't trust polygraps. But well I know, but
but still she intentionally no.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
They just the sheriff's yeah, never followed up because it
was ruled a suicide.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Make it make sense.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Next, we have Zena, which is.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
A dope name Xena Dina and no.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
No, Xena is not. Zena is actually related to Rebecca.
She's her thirteen year old sister. But yeah, there's a Dina,
a Nina, and a Xena and her thirteen year old
sister was living in the Midwest, but she was out
visiting Rebecca at the time of Max's death. So poor Zena.
There is a there's a there's a nine one one
call of Rebecca and is you know, calling for the
(14:55):
paramedics when Max falls?
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Oh okay, and was there?
Speaker 1 (14:58):
She was there and it's absolutely horrible. There is also Mary,
who we've kind of mentioned, that's Rebecca's older sister. She
wrote the book and is working very hard on trying
to get justice for her sister. She and Rebecca were
close and they had even spoken the night before her death.
So during that call, Rebecca told Mary that she was
going to call their mother in the morning about their
father's eightieth birthday party, and she was going to call
(15:19):
her at five am s And she needed to get
up to make Jonah breakfast anyway, so she had plans
mm hm. She seemed to be in good spirits at
the time, according to Mary. At least Max's condition wasn't.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Fatal it was was it improving at all?
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Did appear to be improving? Again, there was the two
other teenagers. I have read sources that said that they
were not at the house at the time of Max's
accident or Rebecca's death. Okay, but then I've also seen
sources that said they were there just did it in
like another part of the house, because I mean, god,
it's a huge house. House is jag Yet there's a
caretaker house, there's a guest house in a main house
(15:59):
in the police bouse's as they were not there, So
I'm just going to go with that and assume that they.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Were not there.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
So now we kind of know the players and we
are now going to go up through the days leading
to Rebecca's tragic death. So on a July eleventh, at
ten thirty am, a call comes into nine one one.
I'm going to play that for you here.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
I'm.
Speaker 4 (16:26):
Are you there, Wow's trying to read has to day?
Oh boy, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
She can't agree.
Speaker 4 (16:40):
What's your ada?
Speaker 1 (16:50):
So as you can hear, Rebecca is incredibly distraught, like
she is absolutely horrified. At one point she even says like, oh,
he's dead. The first responders noticed that Ocean the dog
was also near the area, and that there was a
scooter near the child and parts of the chandelier were
strewn all over around him.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
It reminds me of the Omen a little bit.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Oh seriously, right, Oh my god. So Rebecca said that
she had been in the bathroom when she heard a
loud noise. When she came out to investigate, she saw
that Max was lying at the bottom of the stairway.
Investigators believe that Max was riding his scooter at the
top of the landing, maybe trying to do a trick.
At least that's my opinion, because if you guys remember
the early two thousands, Do you guys remember razor scooter ads?
(17:33):
They were always like grinding and stuff like grinding rails.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
I used to do something called extreme stutin and you
would have a Razor scooter and go down hills of grass,
not of like pavement. My brothers and I were a
little crazy. But I would also ride the scooters off
the pier on out into the water while we're living
in Alaska, and we called it extreme Student's totally heavily
(18:02):
influenced by a certain TV show that was very popular
around that time. Was it Jack butt Yeah, Jack Booty.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
I was a huge Jack Booty fan. In fact, I
just watched Jack Booty three D two days ago. Still
a big fan. Yes, So that's kind of my thought
is that maybe he was trying to do like a
cool trick where he grinded the because as a six
year old, especially in a house at large and that
extravagant and you.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Get to ride your scooter inside, best believe I'm going
to be grinding on stuff exactly. That's what it sounds,
right anyways, But yeah, phrasing anyway, go on.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
But it wasn't a cussword, so it's fine. They believe
that either he got maybe tripped by the dog, or
he somehow inadvertently fell over the banister, which I will
say was pretty high. But when he did, he tried
to grab onto the chandelier and the chandelier went down
with him. When he hit the ground, he suffered from
obviously you know, brain trauma. He was unresponsive, He was
(19:00):
not breathing when the paramedics arrived, but Rebecca was giving
him CPR, which did save his life.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
He was rushed to the hospital and immediately Jonah and
Dina headed to the hospital to be with him for
the next two days. Things appear to be moving forward
in everybody's life. The doctors have a promising prognosis from Max.
Rebecca is working very hard on the back end to
get things managed. So she took Zena back to the airport.
She picked up Adam Shacknai, she picked up Nina, and
(19:29):
she was kind of running and shutteling everybody around. I
will say, this is so interesting. There was a counselor
that did ride alongs with the police in this area.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
This counselor filed a report which states that while Rebecca
was clearly distraught and upset. She did not show any
signs of depression, nor did she seem to have any
guilt or regret regarding her part in the incident.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Right because she wasn't responsible for it. It was an accident,
and she saved that boy's life.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
And she loved that child.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Just trying to do her best to accommodate everyone else
as well.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
It appeared that her main interest was actually taking care
of Jonah and making sure Jonah felt supported. So this
comes up later on because part of what the Sheriff's
Department says is going on is that, Oh, actually Rebecca
was so distraught and she blamed herself so much for
what's happened to Maxie that she committed suicide.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
No, I don't think she would do that unless I mean,
I obviously don't know her. But if Max's condition is
improving and me stable, and that doesn't make sense, you'd
want to be there for the kids recovery, is all
I'm saying. Oh, absolutely, come on.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
At this time, it's important to remember, like I said
that Mary said, the doctors have a positive proagnosis for Max.
Like you just mentioned during their text, she's very comforting
to Jonah. She's trying to make sure that she's managing
all this workload behind the scene, and her last message
to Jonah at seven to fifty one PM was, Hi, Babe,
left you Max's little monkey at the main lobby. I
thought you might want to keep it in your pocket.
(20:59):
I love you so much and Max will make it through. No,
both of you were in my heart constantly, and Jonah replies,
thinks baby. After she picks up Nina from the hospital,
she picks up Adam shack Andy, she sends Xina back home,
and additionally, with everything going on, she also boards her dog, Ocean,
which Mary thought was very surprising because Ocean was basically.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
Her support and her comfort. Baby.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Yeah, yeah, I can understand being worried about Ocean, and
maybe being worried that like people might do something to
Ocean if they thought he was involved, and wanting to
just kind of keep him away. I don't know for
sure if that's what was going through her mind. Nobody does.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
But maybe she just didn't have the time to care
for Ocean, so she decided to take him to somewhere
she probably trusted to board him, right.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
But Mary, her sister, who I will say probably knows
her better, than anybody. Yeah, said that it was very
strange that she boarded that dog, and that's because Mary
and Rebecca were constantly on the phone. She had told
or she had told Mary at one point she said,
I love Maxie like my own child, but I know
that he's not and I need to be strong for Jonah.
(22:07):
She was very hopeful at this point when she talked
to her sister. According to Mary, Rebecca had also been
talking about leaving Jonah after the summer was over because
she felt like she lost her life and she just
became almost like a glorified nanny who was treated like crap.
This comes and start contrast to the sheriff's motive for
her suicide, which was that she was so guilbert she
(22:29):
couldn't move forward.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Yeah, which we just we know is not true.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
We just don't think it's true. The night before her death,
Jonah was at the hospital and she was at home
with his brother Adam, so Adam had gone to the
(22:55):
hospital earth the other that day he had come back
to the house. Adam was staying in the guest house
at the time, while Rebecca was staying in the main house,
and they were allegedly the only two there. According to Adam,
they went to the hospital and then when they got home,
he thought they would like maybe have dinner together, but
she was like, I just need to go to bed,
and she went to bed and he went to his
room in the guest house. He also mentions that he
(23:17):
ordered he offered her a sleeping pill, which he says
she declined. She did not take the ambien.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
Okay, oh, ambience terrible.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
But the police, the Sheriff's department, the autopsy report was
never They never tested my ambien, which was fascinating to me.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
That is interesting. They didn't do a talk screening.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
At least not for that particular drug.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
I will say my mom used to take prescription ambien
and she would get up while she was like sleepwalking
almost and she would order stuff off of infomercial.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Dude the man I used to do that. She would
get up and she would go down into the kitchen
and eat like thirty five things.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
Yeah, same, she would eat. She'd fall asleep into a
bowl of cereal. And I remember that happening, and I
was just like, you needed when I was growing up.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
Well, maybe we should tie you down or something.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
She's off of it now, but oh my god, I will.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Yeah, that's my thing is. I'm like, if he did
give her ambient, that would at least clarify something. But
we don't know.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
I wouldn't she wouldn't be able to tie herself up.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
You're not gonna be able to tie yourself up.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
I truly don't know how it works up. I don't know,
but I.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
Mean maybe your feet. But you said her hands were
bound too.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
So girl, let me just fucking get into this, okay.
So two days later, when the first responders received a
call of a woman hanging at the same address, they
assumed that she had hung herself due to house upset
she was when they arrived the first time. Automatically, they
kept that mindset, even though parts of the scene were concerning,
like geez, I don't know how her hands and legs
(24:43):
were tied her nudity. The Coronado Pedi immediately called in
the sheriff's apartment because they felt this was a violent murder. However,
when people talk to them after the fact, they were like, no,
we knew that it was going to be this woman,
and we knew it was because of what had happened,
and that's confirmation.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
Bias Babes is very yeah, very.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
You would think that they would be like, you know,
maybe we're wrong, Like, you know, maybe somebody else is
mad about the fact that the child.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
Oh yeah, a bunch of family in town and she's
already on thin ice with Dina and whoever.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
So Jonah, all I'm saying is I think that's a
terrible mindset to have. So I'm going to also just
give Like, we know how her body was found a
little bit, but we're going to talk a little bit
about the crime scene itself. She was bound with a
rope that's like used for skiing, So it's like a red,
like stretchy kind of rope, polypropylene probably propylene rope. Yes,
(25:45):
I'm good with words, that's me.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
Perfect.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Yes, So that's what she was bound with. And that
rope had also been made into a noose that went
over the balcony back into the bedroom and was tied
around the leg of the bed. The leg of the
bed showed that after she was after she hung herself, allegedly,
the bed moved about seven inches. Okay, that is not possible.
(26:15):
Her drop would have been about nine feet what they
call a long drop hanging we'll get into that a
little bit more, but seven inches is where it shows
that the bed moved from. There's also this whole scene
just gets even stranger. There's also on the door leading
out to the balcony a message painted with black paint
(26:36):
from what was most likely her paints because she was
a painter, that were in the corner of the room,
and it said she saved him, can you save her?
Ew in all caps and to write that at her height,
she would have been reaching up to write it on
the door, which is kind of interesting.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
Because she was a shorty said she was five three.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
She's just little. Authorities never called a suicide note it
doesn't really read like one. Some people have mentioned it
as a suicide. Note Rebecca's family doesn't think she wrote.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
It at all. That give me the heaps so hard
right now.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
And it's like in third person.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
There's some weird how many staff members are on staff
at the house, so that's get to it.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
They were allegedly not in the main house at all.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
No gardener, no cook, no.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
Just Adam and Rebecca. I know. Next to the message,
our two kitchen knives, one large one, one smaller one
on one of the knives, the larger one. Rebecca's fingerprints
are found on the blade, not the handle, as though
she was kind of grabbing it from the top. Okay,
the second knife, and this is probably like a trigger
(27:43):
warning for a sexual assault. Had DNA had from two people,
but not enough really to identify. But it did show
that Rebecca's blood was found on the handle of the
knife up to the blade apart. Oh, however, she really
did not have any areas that were bleeding enough.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
For that indicative of that.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
However, they found that she was on her period. They
believe that she was sexually assaulted with that knife. Additionally,
there is black paint that they believe was from the
the message on the wall. They found the brushes covered
in black paint, but that black paint was found for
(28:29):
some reason on Rebecca's nipples and like a little bit
on the side of her hand. And that's kind of it.
So I think it's a little odd to suggest that,
you know, she wrote this and then it didn't get
anywhere else. Additionally, her fingerprints were the only ones found
in this whole place, even though multiple people were living
(28:51):
there in and out of that room. Another unusual thing,
and we'll talk about theory for that as well. Her
fingerprint was the only one found on the tube paint,
but it was one thumb print on the top of
the cap. That's it almost like everything had been wiped down.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Yeah, that sounds like it, because when you're handling any
type of paint, like your fingerprints can be over that.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Yeah, especially if she used it.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
On the top. You can't see Sahara and I, but
we're doing and like we're doing getting our fingerprints taken
thumb and ink print blood green. Oh that sounds suspicious.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
Yeah, bizarre. They believe that some smears looked patterned like
potentially and we'll talk about it in a second, like
a glove like somebody. They also found the they found
freaking what are those things called? They found dryer sheets. Okay,
(29:52):
they found like a couple dryer sheets. This house is
pretty spotless. They found a couple dryer sheets, which I
guess are really commonly used to remove fingerprints. Could be coincidence,
interest it's a very very circumstantial, but it is interesting.
They found them in by Rebecca and then they found
them in Adam Shackney's room.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
M M.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
There was also a towel that led out of the
bathroom into the bedroom, so it's almost like she walked
out of her like a shower. She walked out, dropped
the towel, and then stood there. So there was blood
on the ground by the towel that they believe was
menstrual blood, even though I don't believe they've ever tested
it to confirm, but they believe that because that's the
(30:33):
only place she would have been bleeding like that from.
And then there was blood moving in like an upwards
motion on her. But she crack, you know, like as
a woman when you lay down, it moves up, rolls down. Yeah,
so FYI for all our male listeners. But they think
that maybe she was standing there like writing that message
(30:54):
on the door for that long and that's why the
blood was there. I don't think I agree with that,
but whatever, because it's a lot and we'll post a
picture of that crime scene photo. There were also footprints
and dust patterns on the balcony railing, suggesting that maybe
Rebecca had leaned over the railings. She's pretty small and
(31:15):
the railing was pretty high, so she would have had
to have like it's like one set of feet prints
and then toe prints like half a foot ahead and
then so they think that she like hopped up on
her toes and leaned over and fell over the top
of the railing, and that's why the dust pattern on
the top of the balcony railing was disturbed.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Four areas of trauma were found on her head, which
the Sheriff's Department claimed were from like her body striking
the balcony wall or like during the fall, like she
was bouncing up against the foliage. But a lot of
people are unsure about that. Additionally, there was a red
dog toy, like a large like cang dog toy that
(31:54):
were near her body. Okay, so this whole thing is
kind of unusual.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
Their whole scene, let's say.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Yeah, like I said, they were all these fingerprints were
Rebecca's and there were partial prints that were not looked into.
But it's because they believed this was a suicide from
the get go. So I don't believe they did a
full crime scene processing like they would if it had
been like a true homicide.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Right if she was if she was stabbed to death
as opposed to haunt like hanging, like I don't.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Understand exactly exactly well, And it's like.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
And women typically don't do such violent suicide attempts.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Right well, And her hair was stuck inside the gag,
which we've talked about before. If you're a woman with
long hair, you pull that out. And that doesn't even
get into like the cultural aspect of this, which we
will get into, which is that in her culture, being
nude like this would be a huge taboo. And Mary's like,
she would never do this, especially knowing that we would
(32:55):
be there to see it afterwards, her family, She would
have never done this.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
No, I was gonna say, more private, and you wouldn't
be jumping off of a balcony in full view of
everyone right in the buff crazy.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
There was also a bootprint that was found at the
scene on the balcony, and the detectors were like, oh, no,
that's a police bootprint.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
However, in Mary's but contaminated the scene of the crime.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
Allegedly, No, it's a shoddy police work, agreed, And Mary's
book gets noted that the print was never tested and
that the footprint that they say was Rebecca's was too
small to have been Rebecca's footprint. In her book, that's
what she says, So who was it? Was it her sister's?
Maybe from a previous day because Zina had smaller feet.
Nobody knows so because they were looking that this case
(33:39):
is a suicide not a homicide. There were also no
blind swabs taken, So a blind swab is a swab
for DNA where an offender may have like mouthed or
contacted a victim.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
M hm.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
So you'd think like inner thighs, throat, breasts, that kind
of stuff. She was checked for seamen, but no blind
swabs were taken and never tested.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
Unreal.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
So now we're gonna get into her being found by Adam.
So Adam says, he wakes up, it's like six am
or something, and he's just kind of like vibein hanging.
He decides he's gonna go to the main house, get
him some coffee, get him some snacks. He walks out,
and he immediately sees her hanging from the balcony. He says,
so he runs into the house, he calls nine on
(34:37):
one and he grabs a knife. He then runs out,
pulls up a table to climb up on top of,
and then goes to cut her down.
Speaker 3 (34:46):
Okay, you're reporting, Yeah, I gotta girl go along across
from Jill.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
Today.
Speaker 4 (35:03):
Okay, kerk alive.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
I don't know, so you a lot?
Speaker 4 (35:18):
Okay, so what's the address?
Speaker 2 (35:22):
Three seven?
Speaker 4 (35:23):
Okay, hang on, let me get the car. Dependent on
the phone to help you. Okay, Okay, what's wrong? Very much? Okay,
it should be on how I'm doing right now? Okay,
you cut her down? Okay.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
In Mary's book, she has a diagram which we will
post that shows that Rebecca, based on like the tension
of this of the rope, would have been about seven
to nine inches from the ground.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
So why would you have to grab a table?
Speaker 1 (35:55):
So it's very unlikely that Autumn, who's over six feet,
would have to have grabbed that tape at all. He
should have just been able to get up and cut
her down.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
Oh, it was like a side table.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
It was like a I don't know, like an outdoor table,
a little outdoor table.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Based on his testimony during a civil trial that we'll
get into later, he would have been cutting like two
feet above her head to remove her. Also, the table
itself was really rickety and unstable. I I don't know,
I do I can understand to an extent, like if
he felt like he needed to lift her right to
cut it maybe.
Speaker 3 (36:30):
So he was probably didn't want her to fall into
the ground potentially.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
That that's the only way I could really think about it, uh,
in the way that he talks about it. But I'm
gonna show you really quick, okay, because there it is
actually in here. I have it. Your dog heared?
Speaker 3 (36:49):
Did you say your dog did? K? Yeah, I don't know.
That's weird. Interesting, Uh. From the diagram on the left,
looks like the knife would have just been hitting her
head if that's where her feet were at, So maybe
he did need to have a little extra room.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
To Yeah, it's it's very interesting. Very I could, like
you said, I could, I guess kind of see it.
I don't know if I would have wasted the time
to pull over at a table. Yeah, okay, whatever either way,
Adam Shack and I was trying to deliver CPR, though
Rigor Mortis was sent in when first responders arrived, which
(37:30):
is kind of gnarly. Again, Rebecca, I'd been bound with
that rope, the kind that was used for water skiing,
and had kind of like a stretchiness to it. So
this will come back later because she also had her
hands tied with this rope and both were done in
a figure eight manner, looped more than six times and
tied so tight that it actually pushed the rubber bracelet
she was wearing like, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:53):
You wouldn't be able to do that by yourself.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
Sorry, I agree. She also had a blue the blue
long sleeve shirt that was wrapped around her head and
stuffed on her mouth. Those throat excretions were actually found
at the end of the gag, suggesting it was really
far down there. Her hair was caught in the knots
of the shirt, and she was in rigor. After the
police arrived. It took twelve hours. So the initial call
(38:15):
was at seven am and it took twelve hours for
the medical examiner to arrive and pick Rebecca up at
seven pm. While this may not be uncommon, this whole
twelve hour period, I don't know. What is uncommon is
the fact that they left her body outside of the
house uncovered the entire time. They did not set up
a privacy tent to cover her body. There were helicopters,
(38:35):
there were people taking photos of her. Her entire nude
body was shown to the public for twelve hours with
her legs tied like that. Her knees had been opened
up a little bit exposing her genitals, and people were
taking pictures of her and posting them on public TV
for her family to see. It was absolutely horrific. Rebecca's
(38:59):
family had to watch this four hours on TV. The
official autopsy from her death at the time paint some
really interesting picture so there were no alcohol, no drugs
that are commonly tested for, no signs of sexual assault. Allegedly,
her feet were dirty as if she'd stood barefoot out
on the balcony for a while. The bindings, according to investigators,
(39:22):
could be slipped on and tightened by one person by
one person. Head injuries, these sub gallial hemorrhages were explained
by the examiners impacts of her head on the foliage
during the fall, and they found what appeared to be
tape residue and a horizontal pattern across her ankles. Tape residue, yes, yes, yes, interesting,
but they said, nope, this is a suicide. They at
(39:45):
one point even had a female detective roughly the same size,
or female cop or something. They said they had her
do like a reenactment, sure showing that she could get
into the same bindings. However, if you look at that again,
you'll see that the knot of her bindings are at
the bottom so that she can tighten it herself, whereas
(40:08):
Rebecca's were at the top.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
Well she could teeth.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
Well.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
They were behind her back, so she would have had
to have then gotten into a It.
Speaker 3 (40:15):
Was behind her back.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
They were behind her back.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:17):
My next question was it in front of her? Behind
her You're going like showing me out in front.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
That's because you can't see them by me.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
Yeah, girl.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
So her she had her hands behind her back, she
had her legs tied, and then the noose around her neck.
And they're saying that she did this, and then they
tried to prove it with this officer but they couldn't.
Speaker 3 (40:39):
That was organized and she's she's five three banister is
how high? Gosh?
Speaker 1 (40:46):
I want to say it was over three feet. I
can't say for sure, but I know it was tall.
I know it was tall to the point where to
do what she would have had to go head first
over the top. And they called that a long drop fall,
which is often done in countries where hanging is still
capital punishment because it's considered the most humane version because
(41:07):
it immediately will break the neck. It causes so much
damage to your neck, which actually is not seen in
her autopsy. They see signs that are really more consistent
with strangulation. So a fractured hyoid bone. When you undergo
a long drop hanging, your hyoid bone actually most likely
(41:28):
will get moved up and then it's your vertebrate that take.
Speaker 3 (41:31):
A lot of that. So it was her hyroid pushed in.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
Her hyoid was because that's.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
Just floating in the body for those of the you
know what's not connected to anything cut that. I don't
know if that's true.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
I'm pretty sure it is. Yeah, it just.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
Floats in the neck. Her cervical spine is intact, her
hyoid bone is pushed and fractured, fractured.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Yeah, but her neck does not have the amount of
damage that you would expect from a nine footfall, Okay,
which is what she sustain. I was curious about the
fact that the rope was stretchy, stretchy. Yeah, but even then,
let me explain something to you. Let me go into
(42:16):
some more of what the Sheriff's department says is going on.
So there was a call made to Rebecca that night
from Jonah Jonas Shacknay. Okay, they can see that Rebecca
accessed her voicemail deleted the message at like ten something PM,
(42:38):
and they believe that that was Jonah telling her that
Max's condition had taken a turn for the worst.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
Does Jonah confirm us.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
That's what Jonah says? Nobody's ever heard this voice message.
The police won't get handed over. Also, according to Mary's book,
the doctor at the time of Rebecca's death still was
not aware that something was going bad was going to
be happening to Max. Okay, So, according to Mary's book,
(43:06):
the doctor hadn't even told Jonah that Max's condition had
started to go badly. Max does end up dying, but
it's after, but it is after Rebecca is dead.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
Okay, interesting, very interesting.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
So the family obviously is like, no, yeah, this is
not who she is. She would never have done this.
And they come down and they start fighting with the
Sheriff's department. They end up going on doctor Phil, We're
going to talk about that. They end up having a
second autopsy done. We're going to talk about that.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
There's another group of people this I call them the
super Team. They come together to start looking into this,
and they come up with even more fascinating evidence. We're
going to talk about that, and we're going to talk
about this in part two in.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
The next section of this episode, Part two baby, okay,
oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
And they found a witness. Yes, okay, So I hope
to catch you guys in the next episode. Thank you
so much for hanging out with us again today.
Speaker 3 (44:13):
We love you guys so much.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
Hey, we have that new shirt out, so come take
a look at it whenever you want. It's got wizards,
It's got a Hello wizards. Okay. If you have any
case corrections, you have information you want to drop on us,
some knowledge, Maybe you have cases you want us to cover.
You just want to hang out, You want to talk
to us, You want to tell us about your day.
Hit us up on ig.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
At, Scream Dot and Dot Sugar Dot podcast on Facebook,
Scream and Sugar, True Crime Coffee Hour on TikTok, Scream
Dot and Dot Sugar, hit us up on the Gmail
Scream and Sugar Reno at gmail dot com. We also
have a phone number now that you call quick, So
if you want to leave us a voicemail, if you
have a case correction and instead of typing it out,
(44:55):
you just want to, you know, yell, let us over
the phone. That's totally great too. I could find it.
It's right here. Oh here we go. So call us
at seven seven five three eight six two one eight
five and maybe we'll feature your voicemail on the podcast Fun.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
Give us a voicemail.
Speaker 3 (45:17):
It us a voicemail, Okay, give us some love, end
us love, and until next time, stay suky y'all night
by no cussing.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
That's right, that's right, Okay, get it all out now
balls alright, I already, I'm already, I'm ready to do
this
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