August 28, 2025 • 50 mins
Welcome back to another episode of Scream and Sugar, your true crime coffee hour. Today we are covering part 2 of the Rebecca Zahau tragedy.
What unfolded after Rebecca Zahau’s body was found only deepened the mystery. From the very beginning, investigators leaned toward calling her death a suicide. But the crime scene itself told a much stranger story. Rebecca was discovered bound, gagged, and hanging from a second-floor balcony at the Spreckels mansion. Her hands were tied behind her back, her ankles bound, and a T-shirt had been forced into her mouth.
Words painted on the door only raised more questions—was it Rebecca’s handwriting, or someone else’s attempt to stage the scene? Family members immediately disputed the idea that Rebecca would have taken her own life in such a humiliating and elaborate fashion. They described her as devout, hopeful, and determined to help Max recover. Experts in crime scene investigation also questioned the bindings—how could she have tied herself up so completely and still managed to hang herself? Despite these doubts, the San Diego Sheriff’s Department closed the case in 2012, ruling it a suicide. This decision ignited a firestorm of criticism, leading Zahau’s family to file a wrongful death civil suit.
The Zahau case remains one of the most debated true crime mysteries of the last decade. What are your thoughts?
Bounding reinactment by SDSO: https://youtu.be/600qq5O5qwk
Link to Mary's book: https://www.amazon.com/Unraveling-Knots-Sisters-Relentless-Justice-ebook/dp/B0F18YMTXK
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.
What unfolded after Rebecca Zahau’s body was found only deepened the mystery. From the very beginning, investigators leaned toward calling her death a suicide. But the crime scene itself told a much stranger story. Rebecca was discovered bound, gagged, and hanging from a second-floor balcony at the Spreckels mansion. Her hands were tied behind her back, her ankles bound, and a T-shirt had been forced into her mouth.
Words painted on the door only raised more questions—was it Rebecca’s handwriting, or someone else’s attempt to stage the scene? Family members immediately disputed the idea that Rebecca would have taken her own life in such a humiliating and elaborate fashion. They described her as devout, hopeful, and determined to help Max recover. Experts in crime scene investigation also questioned the bindings—how could she have tied herself up so completely and still managed to hang herself? Despite these doubts, the San Diego Sheriff’s Department closed the case in 2012, ruling it a suicide. This decision ignited a firestorm of criticism, leading Zahau’s family to file a wrongful death civil suit.
The Zahau case remains one of the most debated true crime mysteries of the last decade. What are your thoughts?
Bounding reinactment by SDSO: https://youtu.be/600qq5O5qwk
Link to Mary's book: https://www.amazon.com/Unraveling-Knots-Sisters-Relentless-Justice-ebook/dp/B0F18YMTXK
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.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back, everybody to another episode of Scream and Sugar,
your true crime coffee hour. I'm your host Sahara and
I'm Candace, and today we are covering part two of
the Rebecca Za Howe murder death case case, because I
(00:55):
guess I logically technically can't call it a murder.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Technically though, is it not? I don't know. It's feel
that wish.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
It's very suspicius. Hey, Samarah, Hey Candice, how are you.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Agreed? It's good?
Speaker 1 (01:16):
I love it here. Hi, everybody, welcome back. We missed you, guys.
I hope that you are going to be calling us
on our seven seven five at three eight six two
one eight five voicemail because that's absolutely hilarious.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yeah, prank call us or don't if I have a
normal call.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
If I have one by the time I upload this,
I will put it in. We'll put it in here.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
You heard it here first.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
I heard it here first.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Yeah. I've updated like our social media to include this
phone number. It's a Google voicemail. You will not get
a hold of me directly because I don't answer my
phone A and B. I have it set up just
a voicemail.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
So this is a voicemail you. Yeah, but it should
still be fun.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
It'll be really fun. And then if, yeah, if we
start getting some more of these, maybe we just have
a segment where it's voicemails catching up with everybody. Hell no,
it'd be cool, cool aff heck, and yes, did we
make it all the way through last episode? We did? Yeah,
with no cussing you guys. I'm so proud of.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Us, beck as a How And now we have to
we have to make sure we do it on this
one too gone.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
I thought it was gonna take us way longer. I
was like counting back from ten or eleven because of
the first episode. We tried real hard and we failed epically, Yes,
but we succeeded.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
So only three episodes in. I know, I'm pretty proud
of us. Honestly, I'm shocked. Well we did well, Just
wait until I record my I know we're all giving
ourselves way too much credit right now, two.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Out of sixty nine will be clean.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Okay, guys. Well, if you guys were following long in
the first episode, we are talking about the Rebecca how
death case, I guess I think it's most likely probably
some kind of murder.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Some kind of Murner. Yeah, I agreed. I believe there's
foul play. That's just my thoughts. That's my opinion obviously.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Same so, but if you haven't listened to that episode,
go ahead and do that.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Now.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
I'm going to give just a brief overview about what
we talked about. So, Rebecca was found hanging nude with
her hands bound behind her back and her ankles bound
and a gag in her mouth outside of her millionaire
boyfriend's house. His younger brother was the only other person
there at the time who he was allegedly staying in
(03:47):
the guest house, which was across the.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Way, but he still had access to the main house.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
He did, yes, and when he found her, he called
nine one one. He cut her down, But the crime
scene was very strange. In the room that she her
she hung herself from, there was a note written in
black paint, allegedly by her, even though there were there
was really no paint on her hands, and that said
she saved him, can you save her? It's in all
(04:12):
caps and it is a little bit freaky.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
That very freaky.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
And we will go ahead and post a picture of that,
and then we will also post a picture of the
handwriting analysis.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
That was done. Yeah, that was We're gonna ask like,
did it look like it was written in.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Her so apparently according And if you hear me flipping
around in my book right now, just know that this
is the book that Mary wrote her sister. She wrote
this out because she is horribly tragically she has stage
four lung cancer and she is trying to get everything
out so she can get justice for her sister.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
I don't know that. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
And then also like those a's, she saved him.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
And those that those a's are like identical.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Saying that she saved as you think, yes, because she
gave him CPR, can you save her? Maybe he did
it on Ambien hot take Holy crap.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Compare Adam's M to the M and him on the door.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
You read that like you were reading what's that thing called?
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Like?
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Find three differences in these pictures?
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Okay, So the way that it's slanting definitely is back
into the left, whereas Rebecca's ms definitely have a curve
to the right.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Yeah, but the handwriting experts do say that because it's
not caps, it's very difficult to tell because I guess
the way we write our capital letters is different. But uh,
I don't know. To me, that's pretty damny.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
That Rebecca probably often writes capital m's because she has
her sister Mary, so I'm sure there's letters between her
and Mary. I agree, Yeah, that's very interesting. This book
is cool, okay. Yeah, And the same thing for the
A and compared and Adam and just like like I said,
(06:09):
curves back and then the top of the A is
definitely more exaggerated, and it looks like Rebecca's. I'll go
towards the right because I'll go to the left. So
very interesting, interesting, quote unquote circumstantial evidence. But I'm gonna
go ahead and say that's a pretty big red herring.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
I don't know, man, it's it's something for sure. So
Rebecca was found. They are looking at the crime scene,
and despite all these weird, weird things, the police say, oh, well,
guess what, it's just a suicide. Let's go ahead and
close this bad boy up. A lot of people have
(06:48):
asked whether or not it's incompetence or it's.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
They got paid off, because rich.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Is exactly what's it called. What's the other one, sugar daddy? Competent?
And corruption?
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Corruption?
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Oh, corruption, corruption, So this is kind of an interesting
little turn of events. The guy who is the sheriff
at the time, his name is Gore. I think Bill
Gore or some crap al Gore, Al Gore. So Jonah
and Sheriff Gore actually run in similar circles. Oh no,
(07:25):
maybe you recall from last episode. But Jonah's background was
in politics, which places him directly in the Republican groups
with Sheriff Gore. They know each other well, and they
know each other well enough that Gore would actually take
Jonahs calls directly. At one point, Jonah asked Gore, and
it's recorded, to resolve the case as quickly as he
(07:48):
could because it was negatively affecting his stock because people
believed he might have something to do with it.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Gross, I'm sorry, are we going to play that there?
Speaker 1 (07:58):
M I could, Yeah, do you guys want to hear it?
Speaker 2 (08:00):
So yes? Oh I heard them.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
They said yes, they want to hear it. So here
it is.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yeah, you can do me a favor power general counsel
through people that he knows in say approaches about the
sharing the DA to get you guys to make some
sort of statement that I'm doing a suspect because our
stock has been depressed out of some concern that somehow
I'm involved in this, we am probably being no one
(08:31):
in If you can do something, I'd appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
I think it's very possible that Bill Gore was swayed
by influences outside the Sheriff's department to have this investigation finished.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
So you can hear that, like, that's basically an incentive
to him to close out the investigation.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
That is insane.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
I know, no he also this is crazy too, Jonah.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
I mean police corruption, big surprise. But Jonah, what now?
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Oh well, I'm just thinking, like Jonah, the fact that
they knew each other, I feel like should have immediately
been reason for him to recuse himself, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Absolutely someone else should have taken over.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
But also the detective on his case, who Mary talks
about quite a bit in her book. She also said that,
oh well, like I talked to Jonah. I talked to Jonah.
I talked to Jonah. That's what she would say to
Mary all the time. Mary's like, they're not married, this
is her boyfriend. They allowed Jonah to go through all
of Rebecca's stuff before it was returned to the family,
and some of it was never returned to the family.
(09:44):
The Sheriff's also wiped a large portion of the data
on her phone leading up to this and downloaded a
large portion of it that was also never returned to
the family. So there's just a lot.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Of foul play and obviously tampering.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
It feels like, yeah, because at the end of the day,
I feel like the family would be able to get
behind this if they could see all the evidence exactly
and you can prove all the evidence. So today we're
gonna get into part two. We've started out by calling
out the police department. These are our opinions. Please don't
(10:21):
sue us.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
I'm gonna be down on San Diego trust. I'm gonna
go talk.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
And be like, listen here, mother effort. I don't think
he's still in office either. I don't care. We're gonna
We're gonna talk. We're gonna chat because there's some interesting
stuff going on here. So these details of the case,
the cryptic message, the bindings, and nudity has sparked a
controversy in this case that has never faded. The fact
that also people were able to take images of her,
(10:48):
which I will say was absolutely diabolical. Please don't do that.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
No, I also post up people's nude deceased bodies have
some respect.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Yeah, I mean it was really hard on her family.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
I can only imagine that.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Being said, it is nice to know that at least
somebody was taking actual images because I don't think that
if this had gone a different way, we would even
know because of how secretive the police have.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Been, how much they covered up.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Yeah, because it's like, if this is just a suicide,
then why not just open up the case for.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
Us, Let us just all look well to see the
case files.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Anyway, Officially, the sheriff's office closed the case as suicide,
reaffirmed again after a full quote unquote re review in
twenty eighteen. But in a civil court, a jury did
find Adam Shacknight, the homeowner's brother who discovered her body,
liable for wrongful death. So this was a civil case. Okay,
this verdict was reached under a lower standard of proof.
(11:49):
So in a criminal case you have to prove beyon
a shadow of a doubt, so somebody's guilty. In a
civil case, you just have to say something is a
miss here, and we think it's likely that this guy
had something to do with it.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
And was he found guilty.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
He was found guilty, So we're gonna get into that,
and then what happened afterwards? Okay, okay. So a new
Investigati journalist and a former prosecutor got together with a
forensic detective, the guy who actually helped find the Golden
State Killer.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Cool.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Cool, and they put out a docu series called Death
at the Mansion The Rebecca's a House case. So these
three people, I'm going to refer to them as the
dream Team, Okay, okay, because I think it's easier. They
get together and they start kind of going over the
details of this case, especially since everybody there was like,
what this is kind of weird. The first thing that
(12:40):
the Investigati journalist said was that it actually is fairly
common for people to bind their hands during a suicide,
but that's to prevent self rescue. However, it is not
common to bind your feet. No, that was very uncommon.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
I'm gonna say sorry, I was gonna say, like, how
would she have gotten herself over the railing if she
was found by her feet? There's not You're not gonna
be able to climb up on anything to.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Like, Yeah, they think that she just like hobbled over
their ies. But when they look at the ground, there's
like a set of footprints and then the set of
toe prints. So they're saying that she just like hopped
off toes off her toes. Very weird. M And it's
also very clear that whoever tied these knots knew what
they were doing. They were clear, Yes, they were clear.
(13:27):
Complex figure eight knots also sometimes called half half hitch knots,
very common in nautical sailing, a nautical maritime boat.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Stuff technical terms on them.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Yeah, that's me interesting, very interesting. During the trial. So
during the civil trial, something that Mary notes in her book,
which I found just fascinating is that Adam Shackney was
downing doctor Pepper like nobody's business. Doctor Pepper is delicious,
Ryan Porter. But so she thought that, you know, that
(14:03):
was interesting because in the crime scene photos on top
of the laundry hamper, there is an empty bottle of
doctor pepper. Okay, And at first you're like, well, it's
a household, you know, people drink that stuff. She said,
not my sister and not Jonah shack Knight, because they're
health nets, their health nuts. They would never ever do that.
And the house was clean.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
So it's not like you're throwing stuff on top of
the hamper.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Something. Again circumstantial, but very very interesting, especially since he
said he really wasn't in the main house. Okay, especially
not upstairs.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Here's my thought. He's having some wine. He pops an ambien,
so he's drinking along with ambien.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
This is diabolical, diabolical. You're not going to get it
this case. I don't believe that she is. I'm about
to tell you, oh girl, tell me about it.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Okay, I'm already just like that's there's too many, too
many things pointing to this mofo. I know.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
So, like we said before, there's no DNA on the rope,
on the knives, and the room other than Rebecca's. However,
logically you would EXPECTDNA from other people living at the
house to be at the crime scene, so it's kind
of weird to see only hers. This includes the knife
that was allegedly used to cut her down. His DNA
was not on.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
It, no fingerprints, no fingerprints.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
That's weird seeing as he was holding it to cut
her down.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Unless he was wearing gloves or he.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Never cut her down at all. That's another theory. But
according to the forensic science investigator. The pathologist notes that
this was a long drop hanging, something we talked about
in the last episode, So Rebecca had to have dropped
around ten feet then hit an immediate deceleration on the rope.
This is fairly rare, and it's found more often where
(15:40):
executions are still done by hanging. These long drop hangings
have incredible devastation to the bones and the tissues in
the neck. It'll break the vertebrae in the neck. It'll
cause internal decapitation and sometimes full on decapitation.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Holy crap with the velocity, yeah, holy crap.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Based on her autopsy results, her neck was more consistent
with a strangulation than with a hanging like this. She
had that fractured hyghoid we mentioned something that happens when
a broad hand is strangling and can hold that hyoid
in place versus when hanging occurs.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
So she was staged.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
We think some people might think so. I think so.
Based the long drop hanging for me is the key.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Well, and with the bed you said, the bed itself
moving sand benches towards the window. You just not have
a long I'm sorry, allegedly not have a long enough
rope maybe.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
I My opinion is, what if somebody wasn't sure how
long the rope needed to be. They weren't sure if
she was going to hit the ground. Okay, so instead
of long drop hanging her after she was dead, they
slowly lowered her down to make sure that she wasn't
going to hit the ground, and by doing that, the
bed wouldn't move as far as it needed to. Based
on the physics, the bed should have shot out about
two to three feet. You just slowly lower her down.
(16:53):
She doesn't have the impact of hitting the ground at
full force or hitting that the tension the end of
the tension in the road be full force. So she's
just being lowered down slowly. That to me, that makes
the most sense.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
That does make sense.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
You have the half foot print bootprint up there that
somebodow never got tested.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
M hm now as the police boot Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Anyway, interesting, just my theory.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Just a side note, analysts have looked at the movement
of the Vanprain as a move seven inches. Wait, we
were talking about that, Okay, moving on.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
So so I'm wondering, so they've recreated this scene. Did
they use her same weight with the bed to see
how far it would move.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
So it's interesting that you say that the police never did.
Our slouths are the ones they recreated this crime scenes
like beginning to end. They used experts in the field
who are at recreation of crime scenes that absolutely take
it from the victim's perspective and go like, based on
our victim, does this make sense? Get this? Are little slews?
(18:01):
Found a witness? We mentioned this before. Marcia Allison, who
was a neighbor, originally told investigators at the time of
her death that she heard a younger woman screaming for
help early that morning. No, she said, I heard someone
yell ah ah, then help me, and I would say
she's either late twenties or early thirties. It wasn't a
(18:21):
young girl, it was an adult scream. The investigators decided,
without testing that the ear witness account wasn't legitimate because
she could not have heard anything from that distance. There
is a photo I'm going to show you right now
showing how far away she was. Okay, she was two
houses away with a little to no yard between the homes.
And during the deposition at the civil trial, she doubles
(18:44):
down on this information. She's like, no, I heard it
the sound came from higher up. My window was open
because it was warm, and she said, I didn't call
nine one one because this woman stopped screaming, and so
I just assumed things were fine. It was a safe neighborhood.
I know, I know, I know. It's like, come on, Alison, but.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Well, I mean saying, like, do you insert yourself into
like a domestic dispute?
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Is it a mind your business situation?
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Because I don't know. I hear screaming around my house
all the time, but it's not.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
I understand further than I was living. But well, then
you start second guessing yourself. Did I actually hear what
I want to? Right, I've done that, But the fact
that this woman decades later is like, no, dude, I
heard what I heard. I know that she was screaming,
and the investigators were like, no, you couldn't have heard it. Now,
let me show you this picture.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
You would absolutely be able to hear somebody screaming each
other at the top of their line. I was thinking
it was going to be more of like a mansion. Well,
and Coronado Island is smaller, but weird.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
We'll post a picture for you guys to see that
as well. I mean these houses are they're right each
other and the quiet of a night, Yeah you could hear.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
That, Yeah if you're awake. Still absolutely so again, riddle
need this batman? Why are they not taking her claim seriously?
Speaker 1 (20:14):
They just were like, no, you couldn't hear it.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
No it was a southside, don't worry about it.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Yeah you couldn't hear it. No big deal, Absolutely bonkers.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Oh this case, that's so sad.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Mary knew, okay that even if her sister was to
commit suicide, it wouldn't be in this way and their culture,
like I mentioned before, putting yourself on display as rebecca
body Rebecca was. You know, her body was nude and
in public was considered absolutely taboo. And it's never something
Rebecca wouldn't have done. It's never something Rebecca would have done.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
I don't think most people would commit suicide in that fashion.
Like that's just from my opinion. Like you don't hear
about women jumping from balconies in the nude.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Right, Well, it's it seems like it was done to
humiliate her or degree her.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
To confirm Mary's point, the team, the Dream Team, they
actually interviewed a man named Sam Louis. He's an expert
in American shame based cultures, and so he wrote the
book Asian Shame and Addiction Suffering in Silence, and he
sat down with them and was like, yeah, suicide may
be a way to regain a family sense of honor
in some of these shame based cultures.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
However that's done privately.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Yeah, and through the Burmese culture, which is, you know,
a very large groupt. There's a lot of different types
of Burmese people. He said, the amount of emphasis that's
put on like saving face or maintaining honor is very high.
But the nudity completely negates that, completely negates that. Especially
(21:43):
in Asian culture, it would be considered very inappropriate. And
so if she was doing this because of some cultural
guilt to make up for a mistake, which by the way,
is what Jonah Shacknei says, then doing it would be
completely contradictory. Yeah. So if you're wondering, like, where is
this Asian guilt thing coming from it all? Jonah Shackni
says in an interview, they were like, well, why would
(22:04):
she kill herself? And He's like, oh, it's that Asian
guilt type of thing, you know, and so then it
becomes kind of like a racist.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
That's cultural culturally insensitive if and.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Then the police kept repeating it at the crime scene.
Oh that's that Asian.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Sounds like guilt came up with some sort of a story,
some sort of a yarn.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
To spin, and then they just stuck to it.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Mm hmmm. Shame.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
So according to the Sheriff's department, where Rebecca received news
about Max's grave condition and decided to commit suicide just
after coming out of the shower. So she comes out
the shower, she receives the call from Jonah, where he
allegedly tells her Max is not gonna make it, even
though according to notes from Mary's book, the doctors were
not aware that his condition was deteriorating until after she
committed the suicide. She then deletes the voicemail for some reason,
(22:52):
drops her towel, and then proceeds to write the thing
on the back of the door. She goes down in
the nude the whole time it gets the rope, measures
the rope, YadA, YadA, YadA, the whole time just walking
around nude, which is just so unrealistic, you know what
I mean, And then ties herself up, hobbles out to
(23:13):
the banister and then flops over the edge. I cannot
I just can't get behind that. It just doesn't it
doesn't make sense to me.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
No.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Mary also noted that there was a large data dump
done on her sister's phone and a good deal of
the information was from the past days before her death
and it was removed, including pictures and things that they
really wanted back. According to the docu series Jonah Shack
and I told his ex wife that Rebecca had killed herself,
and then when she said why, this is when he
replies Asian honor. He then says that Dina was actually
(23:47):
kind of giddy about it, Yeah, which is pretty gross,
and so he kind of goes on to like try
to put blame on her for a bit, which is
really interesting.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
It's dysfunctional, seriously.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
He then tells the interviewer that Rebecca actually comes from
a true Asian background and that she felt responsible because
she was in the house and she was supposed to
be watching him. So he also perpetuates the idea that
maybe this was a suicide. Now, the ropes are a
huge part of contention here. When it comes to the
ropes like I said. In the last episode, the Sheriff's
(24:20):
Department tried to show another woman could tie her hands
behind her back using a similar knot. However, in that video,
which I will post for anyone interested, the woman ties
this very complicated and time consuming knot, but at the
end of the video the knot is incorrectly aligned with
the autopsy photos, wherein Rebecca's case the knot was top
(24:41):
at the tops, like somebody had pulled up upwards on
her hands and tied it down, whereas in the video
the woman is pulling tension on the knot in the
rope at the bottom where her fingers could manipulate it exactly.
(25:09):
During a review of the crime scene, the Sheriff's department
looked at computers in the house, and that morning they
had found that computers were searching for Asian bondage Asian
women porn, and that Adam shak and I had been
(25:30):
watching fetishized Asian porn with bondage, which she admitted to. Yeah,
he said, just like to.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Past time or whatever, fetishizing her, that's what we think,
and then sexually assaults her and murders her. So thet
that's my opinion.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
So the New Power Team wondered if maybe Rebecca had
been into bondage or something, because at first they thought
maybe she was the one who who had looked it up. Yeah,
I know, kind of weird, but either way, they went
and met with like a Shabari bondage teacher to look
at if the way that she was tied up would
have been possible and if it was related to like
something bondage bondage community, something in.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
The bondage community. Ma'am what.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
And if it could have been related to that community.
This woman took a look and she was like, no,
they are just like half hitch knots. These are very
western style. They are not similar to the Shabari style
at all.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Sabari is beautiful. Yes, interesting, Okay, keep going.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
And then she goes on to say, actually, these look
like boating knots. She says, it almost seems like they
were cleaning a boat but had human limbs instead. Are
you human?
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Okay cool. Later on, well, I know it's like a
crazy thing to say, yeah, but it also just makes
you think about, geez, somebody else who might.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Know, yeah interesting, who was also looking up specifically fetish
porn relating to bondage and Asian women. Absolutely, I don't
think she fetishized herself, So that's an interesting tit to
put in there.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
And she carried she was a boat captain, so and
I will say Jonah did have a boat, and so
he claims, well, she she would have known how to
tie these ropes, blah blah blah. But Mary's like, absolutely not, dude.
First of all, my sister was a princess. She's not
getting out there, she's not tying note, she's not this right,
She's not pulling the boat in.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
She's not tugging the boat in.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Exactly, she's not tugging the boat in.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
No, she's not tying it off at the dog.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
And also I guess Rebecca was constantly just complaining to
Mary that they never take the boat out almost ever
because Jonah was too busy all the time.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
So I don't I don't know about that doesn't to me.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
During the civil trial, the prosecutor was like, hey, Adam,
do you know what kind of not this is? Would
you ever have any reason to use these half hitch knots?
And he's like no, no, no, They're like, but isn't
it exactly the same as this other type of like
a different word for it, and he's like, oh, yeah,
I guess it was grasslutely crazy.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
Oh wait, don't aren't you a tugboat captain? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Well, haven't you been in a tugboat captain for like
fifteen years? This is like what And at the end
of the day, none of this explains why she was naked,
Like even if, like let's say, she had been into bondage,
this was done in such a way to humiliate her
after death.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
I'm wondering if it was a sexual assault gone awry. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
And if you guys remember from the first episode we
mentioned that there was a knife found in the room
that was covered in what appeared to be her menstrual
blood on the handle up to the blade, it seems
more likely to me that she was sexually assaulted and
then strangled, and then the hanging aspect was part of
(28:58):
a cover up. I agree we mentioned Also the note
was another huge part of this case. We talked about
it a little bit earlier. She Saved him? Can you
Saved Her? Was in black paint. This note was near
the top of the door, so it wasn't necessarily Eige
level with Rebecca. There were two paint brushes at the scene.
One of them was loaded with black paint, and the
(29:20):
paint who had a single thro thumbprint from Rebecca on
the cap. Rebecca was known to paint, so the paint
was likely hers and from a shelf in the same room.
The message would have been written in third person if
Rebecca wrote it, which is odd as well very confusing. Yeah,
it did not have punctuation. It was written in all caps.
And additionally, she had a small brush of black paint
on her hand and on her nipples, almost like somebody
(29:42):
had like tweaked her nipples with black paint. If she
had done that herself, she would have seen black paint
on her fingers, which there was none. Handwriting analysis were
brought in to compare the handwriting of this note and
were able to confirm that it likely wasn't from Rebecca
and the police file the detective also calls into question
a single whole book on the bookshelf, which was a
book on magic rituals. Mary hates that this is brought
(30:05):
up because it's just like a random book in like
a thousand books that her sister had, So we're not
going to get into it. But I just want to
point out that it's BS.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
That's brought up because it's on the bookshelf. Yeah, and
how many things on your bookshelf would be brought into
question exactly.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Well, and I think it has some ritual about yeah,
like some.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Sort of ritual something.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
Yeah, committing suicide. So that's why they bring it up.
But Okay, Mary hates it, so I'm not going to
get into it.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Now, our dream team was able to find after zooming
in on these autopsy photos, what that was me zooming
in on her fingernail a tiny bit of black paint
that appeared to be from a glove and had a
glove like pattern, which would also explain the lack of,
you know, fingerprints in the room. The crime scene stager
(31:00):
that they went to so that this seemed to her
more like an emergency murder that's panicky and fast and
thrown together after something bad happens. Two pairs of gloves
were found at the scene. One was well, it's not
two pairs. There was one pair found in the living
room that was were like work gloves, and then there
was a latex glove that was found in the basement
in the crawl space. Creepy Yeah, but they couldn't pull
(31:21):
Dnai la I guess from either of them somehow someway
mm hmm. Again, I'll just mention one more time. Rebecca's
prince were found on the large knife, but not on
the handle, on the blade, almost like a defensive position.
And then there is quite a lot of blood found
on the carpet outside of the bathroom. So in the
initial report it was marked as a red stain, which
is just goofy. It suggested to be menstrual blood to
(31:45):
the lack of marks on her body. However, that would
indicate that she would have had to stood by the door
where the message was written after dropping her towel for
quite a while.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Maybe she saw it as she was coming out of
the bathroom and was.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Like reading it, Can I be for real with you?
In my opinion, that's where she was sexually assaulted. Yeah,
because if you think about when you're bleeding like that,
if there's something going into that area, you're more likely
to going to bleed quicker and more often with something
being you know, penetrating. In my opinion, that's kind of
(32:20):
what I'm thinking. Additionally, in the original report they said
that there was a small amount of blood on her
inner thigh and some blood running up her butt crack
right yep, indicating that she was laying down to me.
When they looked at the handle of the knife, it
was actually a direct transfer print on her inner thigh
(32:40):
that was nice lined up exactly what the print on
her inner thigh? Oh my god, I know, how could they?
Speaker 2 (32:46):
I don't know. So do you think she was hit
over the head because she had sustained four different blows
to the head.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
And yeah, they were saying that she bounced off with foliage.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Oh come on, how many You wouldn't bounce off for times?
Like you would bounce off once or twice and then
settle right. It just didn't make any sense. So I'm
thinking maybe she came out of the bathroom, he hit
her over the head, she felt to the ground. He
sexually assaults her accidentally, Maybe her when she tries when
(33:17):
she comes to.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Yeah, maybe she came to and he just panicked. I
don't know.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Interesting awful.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
I know the crime scene staging expert, she's the one
who helped like recreate the crime scene in person to scale.
She noted something interesting too, is that the police files
didn't know any blood on the bed in the sheets.
There was nothing about the bed at all, like they
just scooped right over it. There was also an overturned
chair in the room, like a chair had been knocked over.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
So signs of a struggles, of.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
A struggle, nothing, nothing was noted. She also mentions that
this victim was self disciplined. She was not an impulsive person.
You know, she worked very hard on like maintaining her
body in her image. She's not somebody who was just
going to impulsively do this.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Yeah. Well, especially if Jonah dealing with Max being in
the hospital and she's trying to comfort him, I don't
think it would be it would be a very selfish thing.
Which it doesn't seem like she was a very selfish
thing for her to just leave him while he's dealing
with that. On top of her death as well, Like
it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
And the gag in her mouth, like she's going to
kill herself. With the point of that, it's like she
can scream if she has a noose on her neck.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
Yeah, why would she be screaming if she was The
neighbor heard her, heard a woman screaming, help me, help me,
help me help me. Mm hmm, yes, sorry.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
No, no, I'm so with you on this. It's such
a freaky case. In the interview where Jonah ended up
saying that Dina was giddy that Rebecca was dead, well,
the prosecutor kind of like latched onto that and he's like, well,
we're going to file this civil suit against Jonah, against Dina, Nina,
and then against Adama. However, after getting all of the facts,
(35:04):
they were able to show that both Dina and Jonah
were in the hospital the whole night with their son. Okay,
that doesn't mean that Gina wasn't going in and out
making phone calls or Jonah wasn't going out and making
phone calls the whole night, but they were there, so
they were removed from the civil suit. And then Nina
was actually staying at Dina's house and there was evidence
showing that she was there the whole night except for
(35:27):
when she did stop by the shack Nai residents to
try to talk to Rebecca.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Oh, that doesn't look good if there's two wine glasses
in Adam's guest house too.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
In fact, so get this, Jonah asked Sheriff Core to
resolve this case quickly, right and that's on record. And
then he also indicated at the same time that the
back door of the mansion was always unlocked and that
Dina and Nina did know this.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
He then goes on to suggest that maybe Dina or
Nina got someone to do this to Rebecca, they hired someone.
This never really goes anywhere, of course, it doesn't. In fact,
another witness noticed that there was a woman walking around
the outside of the mansion late at night and was
going up to the door like they were test siding
whether or not to go in or out. The police
obviously assumed, well, this is Nina, but when he was
(36:19):
shown photos of the women, he said, oh, no, no, no,
that's Dina. That was Dina. It was not Nina. Nina's
got blonde hair. This was a dark haired woman. I
think it was. It was the other woman, Dina. Obviously,
Dina was shown to be at the hospital the whole time,
So who is this woman if it's not Dina, and
it's likely not Nina.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
Did he just get to her being at the hospital
the whole time? Does Jonah just corroborate that she's there
the whole time?
Speaker 1 (36:45):
They have footage at the door, so who's this lady?
Speaker 2 (36:48):
I was gonna say the B word.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
Who's this lady?
Speaker 2 (36:51):
Who is this late?
Speaker 1 (36:52):
This this old lady?
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Interesting, yeah, so very interesting. The officers just decide the
investigators is, oh, well, he must have just had his
eyewitness account wrong and it was just Nina there. Should
try to talk to Rebecca where she tries to talk
to her, can't get a hold of her, and just
leaves allegedly the heck so, because there was no way
(37:14):
to physically show that those people were there, they were
removed from the civil suit. There's just so much going on.
I will say that after Adam shackna I was found
guilty in the civil suit, it was also time to
re elect sheriffs in this area in San Diego, and
the guy running against Sheriff Gore was like, the first
(37:35):
thing I'm gonna do is reopen this case.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
And he didn't, obviously, and.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Guess what happened. Sheriff Gore was like, based on this
new uh, this you know, guilty verdict, I'm going to
reopen the case. We're going to look at it again.
And then after he got invested, he got re elected,
he was all, yeah, we just looked up the old
notes again and we just don't feel like there's anything there.
So they actually didn't do any additional testing. They didn't
(37:59):
look at the fact that DNA testing has come so
far since back then. They didn't test anything else. They
just looked at what was already done and.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
Just said the police for already.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Yes, indeed looks good. And then they close the.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
Can confirm that are our crappy notes.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
Yeah, I'm blown away.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
Investigation was thorough what a d.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
Bag I know well, And it's crazy because doctor Phil
had them on right, yes, right, And at the time,
Doctor Phil heard their case and he said, you know what,
I will pay for a new autopsy to be done.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
And DNA analysis to be run.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
And so he did pay for a new autopsy. I
don't think they paid for the DNA analysis. They did
pay for the new autopsy. And the guy that he
pulled on was this guy named doctor Cyril wetch So
he's pretty famous for doing like celebrity autopsies. And doctor
Cyril was the one who was like, this looks very
(39:04):
much like a strangulation. There's a lot of things going
on here that I just it's hard to say one
way or another, but I would mark it as undetermined
and as.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Opposed to suicide. Yeah, which is the safer route to
go when you're.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
Un sure, right, And it makes sense, that's the whole
reason it's there undetermined, so that you can keep looking
at it, keep it open.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Absolutely, So he's obviously cited the throat fractures, the potential
sexual assaul YadA, YadA, YadA. They brought that back to
the Sheriff's department, and the sheriff's departent was like, that
guy's just an actor. He's an entertainment guy.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Like he's a celebrity, celebrity medical investigator examiner.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
So he just like talked so much crap about it
and like basically refused to take it into consideration. Isn't
that crazy?
Speaker 2 (39:50):
Yes, well, he's trying to cover his own but so
it makes sense. But at the same time, like, really, dude,
you're gonna accuse this dude of not having qualification when
he literally goes and investigates celebrity deaths.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
Yeah right, you're like, sir, it's not.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
An actor portraying a doctor.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Oh my god, oh lord. So how the Sandy Grochireff's
office treated this family is honestly in my opinion, criminal
you can hear in the way that Mary writes this
story that she is just desperately begging them to give
her family some solid proof that their suicide theory is correct,
but they just won't budge. They honestly talk so much
trash about this family. It's so it's so sad. The
(40:29):
family isn't interested in the money. They want it on
record that someone killed her.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
They want justice for their daughter, for their sister. M hmm. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
So in twenty eighteen, when Adam Chekna was found responsible
for the wrongful death, they did award this Zahal family
five point two million, but it was later settled for
six hundred thousand and the judgment was vacated. The reason
I believe that that was done was just so that
they could keep it on file that he was guilty
mm hmm for her wrongful death.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
Uh. Well, it's just so interesting to me that he
was not guilty of a wrongful death, bro when it
was allegedly a suicide.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Because right, I have to tell you something else. The
dream team down but I forgot to tell you, sorry everybody.
So they sent out the nine on one call that
Adam Shack and I made to a team to like
clean it up and get some of the background because
it was like he was like breathing a lot and
like moving around a lot. And they found that there
was probably another person there at the time he made
(41:34):
the call.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
Okay, so I already thought that that was a possibility.
Here's this dark haired woman a b yeah. Yeah, according
to the belonging to right, Okay.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
They believe that they heard him say during the thing,
hold her still, and then the person responds to him,
and they kind of break it down like here is
you know, this person's vocal signature, and then here's another
vocal signature here, like somebody's responding to him. So during
his polygraph, he compares a bat combative and like self absorbed.
He doesn't have any empathy for Rebecca. He's like, well,
(42:07):
of course she would do this to us, and like
just things like that, you know what I mean. His
toll his test result was inconclusive. And like you said,
polygraphs may.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
Yeah, but you can tell a lot about a person
whether or not they're cooperating, whether or not yeah, like
you said, showing signs of empathy, Like everyone deals with
trauma and grief differently.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
Sure, but well and he goes in there and he's like, well,
I wasn't worried about this, but now I am after
what these what the cops were saying to me, and
blah blah blah, and I'm.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
Looking untruthful and his and like you said, combative, combative
and defensive.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
Defensive, Yes, that's the word. His follow up polygraph was
never rescheduled because her gath was worked to suicide and
the dream Team had his polygraph re examined by a
different a different person, and he failed horribly.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
No, it's not just inconclusive. It's an epic failure.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
This guy was like, I would have failed the crap
out of him. So he failed it. The following two
questions and the death of Rebecca, did you yourself do
anything to her that resulted in her death? Regarding the
death of Rebecca, do you know for sure if anyone
did something that resulted in her death? Those two the
guy who was reading his paperwork his biological results, was
like at those two questions, he shot out sweat. He
(43:26):
was nervous. He failed those questions.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Little lines. It was.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
No, of course polygros.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
So they're not admissible in court, and they're not, but it.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
Is something interesting. Another something interesting that Mary writes about
is that when she first spoke to Adam on the phone,
he said he didn't want to push another person over
the edge, which is a pretty shocking thing to say
to her family. I don't want to push another person
over the edge. I shouldn't even been talking to you.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
I would have verbally slapped the crap out of him.
I don't want to push another person wording phrase, come on, dude.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
And then get this. The practice of the San Diego
Sheriff's Office at the time was to use a single
swab okay for every item they tested for DNA. So
this comes out during the Dream Teens investigation. Every item
they tested for DNA, AKA, they used one swab for
the message on the door. Put the whole message on
the door one swab. It was just their policy.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
Why doesn't make any sense? I'm so it's so hard
for me not to just go off on a full.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
On cursing tangent.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
Yes, if you're wondering why we're not as mad as
we usually are, it's because we can't be so mad.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
That's when my voice is instead of just burbal diarrhea
I feel like I'm just screaming.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
Yeah, so a swap can only pick up so much
before it just mirror stuff around.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
Yeah, it would be contaminated. Like that doesn't cross contamination
like that doesn't.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
Well, let me rephrase. It's a single swab for each thing.
So one swab for the door, one swab for the
whole knife, one swab for the whole banister. You know
what I mean.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
I would still say that there it would be intaminating
if you're not doing it and like more of a
localized area.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Oh, I completely agree, yeah, yeah, yeah, So he said
what should have been done is each area should have
been gridded off. Yes, single swap should have been done
per one spot of the grid exactly. That's how it
should be done. They didn't do it that way, so
no wonder the only freaking DNA they had was Rebecca's.
Because a, if you do this, you have if you
have like a major in a minor DNA donor in
one area, the major donor DNA will become preferentially seen
(45:28):
and the minor donor basically disappears, It's wiped out. And
that explains why we wouldn't see any other DNA especially
if they're using one swab for an entire area.
Speaker 2 (45:38):
This is so frustrating.
Speaker 1 (45:39):
It's so frustrating, and like we're in the air twenty
twenty five. If they still have these swabs, we need
to look again, because now maybe we could see this
minor donor DNA. Right, we've come so freaking far out.
Speaker 2 (45:50):
Yeah, oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
So in conclusion, was this suicide? Was it a homicide?
I have always been pretty secure on the idea that
this was a stage. Absolutely, this was a homicide. Something
went wrong. I don't know for sure. Okay, if it
was Adam Shackney, I don't know if the shack Knights
were even involved. This could have been an outside person.
(46:14):
Nobody's ever even talked about somebody else showing up and
doing this to her, that maybe.
Speaker 2 (46:19):
Had been a guest the house at one point and
knew that the back door.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
Was obsessed with her or something. There was nothing ever
done because they never looked at it outside of this
is a suicide. Right, So is it possible that Adam
Shakne is not involved?
Speaker 2 (46:32):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (46:32):
Is it also possible that he is involved? I think so.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
I don't know. I think all points, like all signs
point to Adam, and that's just, like I said, my opinion,
because there's just too much circumstantial evidence that's thinking to him,
like the handwriting analysis, the boat knots, the bondage, porn
on his freaking computer right, specifically fetishizing Asian women. And
(46:59):
she there alone and he's in the guest house. They're
the only two people.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
And him and his brother have always had kind of
like a tumultuous relationship.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
Right, So maybe he was jealous of the fact.
Speaker 1 (47:09):
That his brother now had wealth and a hot girl.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
And that was just an opportunity to where his brother
wasn't at the house because he's at the hospital with Max,
which also rip Max.
Speaker 1 (47:19):
Yeah, I mean, gosh, poor Max too. It's like this
whole case was ri just terrible.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
It's awful. Yeah, I don't know, I say, and conclusively
it is.
Speaker 1 (47:33):
It's there's so many inconsistencies. I feel like the data
is suicide process appropriately. Yeah, And I cannot get behind
the idea that this was a suicide. I can't do it.
I can't. I also want to just point out that
the sheriffs, the Sheriff's office, when they re quote unquote
reopened their case and then quote unquote reclosed their case.
They took excerpts from her text and her phone and
completely misrepresented her state of mind. Oh good, So they
(47:57):
went out of their way to make her look classy.
They use sections where she was complaining about the fact
that she felt like she gave up her life to
take care of Jonahs spoiled kids, and they twisted it
to make it seem like she was suicidal. So they
used to text, it's my own fault. I've allowed myself
to be completely cut off from my own life. My
life does not exist. But in all actuality, that was
the last sentence of her being like, I am angry
(48:20):
that I am being treated like this, and I want
to walk away from this.
Speaker 2 (48:24):
Relationship, right she wants to live for herself again.
Speaker 1 (48:27):
Exactly. It was so sad to watch them twist her
words and make her look like she was not stable
when I think it was very clear that she was stable.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Well, they're just interpreting it the way that they want to,
so they're portraying it in a light that makes it
seem like they're correct, and obviously it It's just such
a trashy and awful thing that they did, right because
clearly this woman had so much to live for, and
(48:56):
like you said, she was very, very disciplined and had
a lot going on her. She's intelligent, beautiful. I don't know.
It just doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
It doesn't, it doesn't and the way that it happened,
like I don't know anyway. So that is the horrific
case of what happened to Rebecca. So how how her
family is still fighting to try to get her justice,
and how this freaking San Diego Sheriff's Department is still
refusing to reopen this investigation. This should be marked as undetermined.
(49:30):
It really should fin at the very least. So if
you guys have any other case corrections, anything you want
to add, you have things you want us to look into,
potential other cases, things like that, just hit us up
on Instagram at scream dot and Dot Sugar Dot podcast
on Facebook, Scream and Sugar, True Crime Copy Hour on TikTok,
Scream Dot and Dot Sugar on Gmail Scream and Sugar
(49:52):
Reno at gmail dot com. You can also hit us
up on our voicemail at.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
Seven seven five three eight six two one eight five.
Speaker 1 (49:59):
Awesome. Thank you all so much for hanging out with us,
and we'll see you in the next one. Remember to
stay spooky y'all.
Speaker 2 (50:06):
By bye bye bye
Welcome back, everybody to another episode of Scream and Sugar,
your true crime coffee hour. I'm your host Sahara and
I'm Candace, and today we are covering part two of
the Rebecca Za Howe murder death case case, because I
(00:55):
guess I logically technically can't call it a murder.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Technically though, is it not? I don't know. It's feel
that wish.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
It's very suspicius. Hey, Samarah, Hey Candice, how are you.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Agreed? It's good?
Speaker 1 (01:16):
I love it here. Hi, everybody, welcome back. We missed you, guys.
I hope that you are going to be calling us
on our seven seven five at three eight six two
one eight five voicemail because that's absolutely hilarious.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yeah, prank call us or don't if I have a
normal call.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
If I have one by the time I upload this,
I will put it in. We'll put it in here.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
You heard it here first.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
I heard it here first.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Yeah. I've updated like our social media to include this
phone number. It's a Google voicemail. You will not get
a hold of me directly because I don't answer my
phone A and B. I have it set up just
a voicemail.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
So this is a voicemail you. Yeah, but it should
still be fun.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
It'll be really fun. And then if, yeah, if we
start getting some more of these, maybe we just have
a segment where it's voicemails catching up with everybody. Hell no,
it'd be cool, cool aff heck, and yes, did we
make it all the way through last episode? We did? Yeah,
with no cussing you guys. I'm so proud of.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Us, beck as a How And now we have to
we have to make sure we do it on this
one too gone.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
I thought it was gonna take us way longer. I
was like counting back from ten or eleven because of
the first episode. We tried real hard and we failed epically, Yes,
but we succeeded.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
So only three episodes in. I know, I'm pretty proud
of us. Honestly, I'm shocked. Well we did well, Just
wait until I record my I know we're all giving
ourselves way too much credit right now, two.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Out of sixty nine will be clean.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Okay, guys. Well, if you guys were following long in
the first episode, we are talking about the Rebecca how
death case, I guess I think it's most likely probably
some kind of murder.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Some kind of Murner. Yeah, I agreed. I believe there's
foul play. That's just my thoughts. That's my opinion obviously.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Same so, but if you haven't listened to that episode,
go ahead and do that.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Now.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
I'm going to give just a brief overview about what
we talked about. So, Rebecca was found hanging nude with
her hands bound behind her back and her ankles bound
and a gag in her mouth outside of her millionaire
boyfriend's house. His younger brother was the only other person
there at the time who he was allegedly staying in
(03:47):
the guest house, which was across the.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Way, but he still had access to the main house.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
He did, yes, and when he found her, he called
nine one one. He cut her down, But the crime
scene was very strange. In the room that she her
she hung herself from, there was a note written in
black paint, allegedly by her, even though there were there
was really no paint on her hands, and that said
she saved him, can you save her? It's in all
(04:12):
caps and it is a little bit freaky.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
That very freaky.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
And we will go ahead and post a picture of that,
and then we will also post a picture of the
handwriting analysis.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
That was done. Yeah, that was We're gonna ask like,
did it look like it was written in.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Her so apparently according And if you hear me flipping
around in my book right now, just know that this
is the book that Mary wrote her sister. She wrote
this out because she is horribly tragically she has stage
four lung cancer and she is trying to get everything
out so she can get justice for her sister.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
I don't know that. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
And then also like those a's, she saved him.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
And those that those a's are like identical.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Saying that she saved as you think, yes, because she
gave him CPR, can you save her? Maybe he did
it on Ambien hot take Holy crap.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Compare Adam's M to the M and him on the door.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
You read that like you were reading what's that thing called?
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Like?
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Find three differences in these pictures?
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Okay, So the way that it's slanting definitely is back
into the left, whereas Rebecca's ms definitely have a curve
to the right.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Yeah, but the handwriting experts do say that because it's
not caps, it's very difficult to tell because I guess
the way we write our capital letters is different. But uh,
I don't know. To me, that's pretty damny.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
That Rebecca probably often writes capital m's because she has
her sister Mary, so I'm sure there's letters between her
and Mary. I agree, Yeah, that's very interesting. This book
is cool, okay. Yeah, And the same thing for the
A and compared and Adam and just like like I said,
(06:09):
curves back and then the top of the A is
definitely more exaggerated, and it looks like Rebecca's. I'll go
towards the right because I'll go to the left. So
very interesting, interesting, quote unquote circumstantial evidence. But I'm gonna
go ahead and say that's a pretty big red herring.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
I don't know, man, it's it's something for sure. So
Rebecca was found. They are looking at the crime scene,
and despite all these weird, weird things, the police say, oh, well,
guess what, it's just a suicide. Let's go ahead and
close this bad boy up. A lot of people have
(06:48):
asked whether or not it's incompetence or it's.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
They got paid off, because rich.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Is exactly what's it called. What's the other one, sugar daddy? Competent?
And corruption?
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Corruption?
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Oh, corruption, corruption, So this is kind of an interesting
little turn of events. The guy who is the sheriff
at the time, his name is Gore. I think Bill
Gore or some crap al Gore, Al Gore. So Jonah
and Sheriff Gore actually run in similar circles. Oh no,
(07:25):
maybe you recall from last episode. But Jonah's background was
in politics, which places him directly in the Republican groups
with Sheriff Gore. They know each other well, and they
know each other well enough that Gore would actually take
Jonahs calls directly. At one point, Jonah asked Gore, and
it's recorded, to resolve the case as quickly as he
(07:48):
could because it was negatively affecting his stock because people
believed he might have something to do with it.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Gross, I'm sorry, are we going to play that there?
Speaker 1 (07:58):
M I could, Yeah, do you guys want to hear it?
Speaker 2 (08:00):
So yes? Oh I heard them.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
They said yes, they want to hear it. So here
it is.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yeah, you can do me a favor power general counsel
through people that he knows in say approaches about the
sharing the DA to get you guys to make some
sort of statement that I'm doing a suspect because our
stock has been depressed out of some concern that somehow
I'm involved in this, we am probably being no one
(08:31):
in If you can do something, I'd appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
I think it's very possible that Bill Gore was swayed
by influences outside the Sheriff's department to have this investigation finished.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
So you can hear that, like, that's basically an incentive
to him to close out the investigation.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
That is insane.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
I know, no he also this is crazy too, Jonah.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
I mean police corruption, big surprise. But Jonah, what now?
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Oh well, I'm just thinking, like Jonah, the fact that
they knew each other, I feel like should have immediately
been reason for him to recuse himself, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Absolutely someone else should have taken over.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
But also the detective on his case, who Mary talks
about quite a bit in her book. She also said that,
oh well, like I talked to Jonah. I talked to Jonah.
I talked to Jonah. That's what she would say to
Mary all the time. Mary's like, they're not married, this
is her boyfriend. They allowed Jonah to go through all
of Rebecca's stuff before it was returned to the family,
and some of it was never returned to the family.
(09:44):
The Sheriff's also wiped a large portion of the data
on her phone leading up to this and downloaded a
large portion of it that was also never returned to
the family. So there's just a lot.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Of foul play and obviously tampering.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
It feels like, yeah, because at the end of the day,
I feel like the family would be able to get
behind this if they could see all the evidence exactly
and you can prove all the evidence. So today we're
gonna get into part two. We've started out by calling
out the police department. These are our opinions. Please don't
(10:21):
sue us.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
I'm gonna be down on San Diego trust. I'm gonna
go talk.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
And be like, listen here, mother effort. I don't think
he's still in office either. I don't care. We're gonna
We're gonna talk. We're gonna chat because there's some interesting
stuff going on here. So these details of the case,
the cryptic message, the bindings, and nudity has sparked a
controversy in this case that has never faded. The fact
that also people were able to take images of her,
(10:48):
which I will say was absolutely diabolical. Please don't do that.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
No, I also post up people's nude deceased bodies have
some respect.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Yeah, I mean it was really hard on her family.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
I can only imagine that.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Being said, it is nice to know that at least
somebody was taking actual images because I don't think that
if this had gone a different way, we would even
know because of how secretive the police have.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Been, how much they covered up.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Yeah, because it's like, if this is just a suicide,
then why not just open up the case for.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
Us, Let us just all look well to see the
case files.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Anyway, Officially, the sheriff's office closed the case as suicide,
reaffirmed again after a full quote unquote re review in
twenty eighteen. But in a civil court, a jury did
find Adam Shacknight, the homeowner's brother who discovered her body,
liable for wrongful death. So this was a civil case. Okay,
this verdict was reached under a lower standard of proof.
(11:49):
So in a criminal case you have to prove beyon
a shadow of a doubt, so somebody's guilty. In a
civil case, you just have to say something is a
miss here, and we think it's likely that this guy
had something to do with it.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
And was he found guilty.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
He was found guilty, So we're gonna get into that,
and then what happened afterwards? Okay, okay. So a new
Investigati journalist and a former prosecutor got together with a
forensic detective, the guy who actually helped find the Golden
State Killer.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Cool.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Cool, and they put out a docu series called Death
at the Mansion The Rebecca's a House case. So these
three people, I'm going to refer to them as the
dream Team, Okay, okay, because I think it's easier. They
get together and they start kind of going over the
details of this case, especially since everybody there was like,
what this is kind of weird. The first thing that
(12:40):
the Investigati journalist said was that it actually is fairly
common for people to bind their hands during a suicide,
but that's to prevent self rescue. However, it is not
common to bind your feet. No, that was very uncommon.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
I'm gonna say sorry, I was gonna say, like, how
would she have gotten herself over the railing if she
was found by her feet? There's not You're not gonna
be able to climb up on anything to.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Like, Yeah, they think that she just like hobbled over
their ies. But when they look at the ground, there's
like a set of footprints and then the set of
toe prints. So they're saying that she just like hopped
off toes off her toes. Very weird. M And it's
also very clear that whoever tied these knots knew what
they were doing. They were clear, Yes, they were clear.
(13:27):
Complex figure eight knots also sometimes called half half hitch knots,
very common in nautical sailing, a nautical maritime boat.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Stuff technical terms on them.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Yeah, that's me interesting, very interesting. During the trial. So
during the civil trial, something that Mary notes in her book,
which I found just fascinating is that Adam Shackney was
downing doctor Pepper like nobody's business. Doctor Pepper is delicious,
Ryan Porter. But so she thought that, you know, that
(14:03):
was interesting because in the crime scene photos on top
of the laundry hamper, there is an empty bottle of
doctor pepper. Okay, And at first you're like, well, it's
a household, you know, people drink that stuff. She said,
not my sister and not Jonah shack Knight, because they're
health nets, their health nuts. They would never ever do that.
And the house was clean.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
So it's not like you're throwing stuff on top of
the hamper.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Something. Again circumstantial, but very very interesting, especially since he
said he really wasn't in the main house. Okay, especially
not upstairs.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Here's my thought. He's having some wine. He pops an ambien,
so he's drinking along with ambien.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
This is diabolical, diabolical. You're not going to get it
this case. I don't believe that she is. I'm about
to tell you, oh girl, tell me about it.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Okay, I'm already just like that's there's too many, too
many things pointing to this mofo. I know.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
So, like we said before, there's no DNA on the rope,
on the knives, and the room other than Rebecca's. However,
logically you would EXPECTDNA from other people living at the
house to be at the crime scene, so it's kind
of weird to see only hers. This includes the knife
that was allegedly used to cut her down. His DNA
was not on.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
It, no fingerprints, no fingerprints.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
That's weird seeing as he was holding it to cut
her down.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Unless he was wearing gloves or he.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Never cut her down at all. That's another theory. But
according to the forensic science investigator. The pathologist notes that
this was a long drop hanging, something we talked about
in the last episode, So Rebecca had to have dropped
around ten feet then hit an immediate deceleration on the rope.
This is fairly rare, and it's found more often where
(15:40):
executions are still done by hanging. These long drop hangings
have incredible devastation to the bones and the tissues in
the neck. It'll break the vertebrae in the neck. It'll
cause internal decapitation and sometimes full on decapitation.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Holy crap with the velocity, yeah, holy crap.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Based on her autopsy results, her neck was more consistent
with a strangulation than with a hanging like this. She
had that fractured hyghoid we mentioned something that happens when
a broad hand is strangling and can hold that hyoid
in place versus when hanging occurs.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
So she was staged.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
We think some people might think so. I think so.
Based the long drop hanging for me is the key.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Well, and with the bed you said, the bed itself
moving sand benches towards the window. You just not have
a long I'm sorry, allegedly not have a long enough
rope maybe.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
I My opinion is, what if somebody wasn't sure how
long the rope needed to be. They weren't sure if
she was going to hit the ground. Okay, so instead
of long drop hanging her after she was dead, they
slowly lowered her down to make sure that she wasn't
going to hit the ground, and by doing that, the
bed wouldn't move as far as it needed to. Based
on the physics, the bed should have shot out about
two to three feet. You just slowly lower her down.
(16:53):
She doesn't have the impact of hitting the ground at
full force or hitting that the tension the end of
the tension in the road be full force. So she's
just being lowered down slowly. That to me, that makes
the most sense.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
That does make sense.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
You have the half foot print bootprint up there that
somebodow never got tested.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
M hm now as the police boot Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Anyway, interesting, just my theory.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Just a side note, analysts have looked at the movement
of the Vanprain as a move seven inches. Wait, we
were talking about that, Okay, moving on.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
So so I'm wondering, so they've recreated this scene. Did
they use her same weight with the bed to see
how far it would move.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
So it's interesting that you say that the police never did.
Our slouths are the ones they recreated this crime scenes
like beginning to end. They used experts in the field
who are at recreation of crime scenes that absolutely take
it from the victim's perspective and go like, based on
our victim, does this make sense? Get this? Are little slews?
(18:01):
Found a witness? We mentioned this before. Marcia Allison, who
was a neighbor, originally told investigators at the time of
her death that she heard a younger woman screaming for
help early that morning. No, she said, I heard someone
yell ah ah, then help me, and I would say
she's either late twenties or early thirties. It wasn't a
(18:21):
young girl, it was an adult scream. The investigators decided,
without testing that the ear witness account wasn't legitimate because
she could not have heard anything from that distance. There
is a photo I'm going to show you right now
showing how far away she was. Okay, she was two
houses away with a little to no yard between the homes.
And during the deposition at the civil trial, she doubles
(18:44):
down on this information. She's like, no, I heard it
the sound came from higher up. My window was open
because it was warm, and she said, I didn't call
nine one one because this woman stopped screaming, and so
I just assumed things were fine. It was a safe neighborhood.
I know, I know, I know. It's like, come on, Alison, but.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Well, I mean saying, like, do you insert yourself into
like a domestic dispute?
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Is it a mind your business situation?
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Because I don't know. I hear screaming around my house
all the time, but it's not.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
I understand further than I was living. But well, then
you start second guessing yourself. Did I actually hear what
I want to? Right, I've done that, But the fact
that this woman decades later is like, no, dude, I
heard what I heard. I know that she was screaming,
and the investigators were like, no, you couldn't have heard it. Now,
let me show you this picture.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
You would absolutely be able to hear somebody screaming each
other at the top of their line. I was thinking
it was going to be more of like a mansion. Well,
and Coronado Island is smaller, but weird.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
We'll post a picture for you guys to see that
as well. I mean these houses are they're right each
other and the quiet of a night, Yeah you could hear.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
That, Yeah if you're awake. Still absolutely so again, riddle
need this batman? Why are they not taking her claim seriously?
Speaker 1 (20:14):
They just were like, no, you couldn't hear it.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
No it was a southside, don't worry about it.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Yeah you couldn't hear it. No big deal, Absolutely bonkers.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Oh this case, that's so sad.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Mary knew, okay that even if her sister was to
commit suicide, it wouldn't be in this way and their culture,
like I mentioned before, putting yourself on display as rebecca
body Rebecca was. You know, her body was nude and
in public was considered absolutely taboo. And it's never something
Rebecca wouldn't have done. It's never something Rebecca would have done.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
I don't think most people would commit suicide in that fashion.
Like that's just from my opinion. Like you don't hear
about women jumping from balconies in the nude.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Right, Well, it's it seems like it was done to
humiliate her or degree her.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
To confirm Mary's point, the team, the Dream Team, they
actually interviewed a man named Sam Louis. He's an expert
in American shame based cultures, and so he wrote the
book Asian Shame and Addiction Suffering in Silence, and he
sat down with them and was like, yeah, suicide may
be a way to regain a family sense of honor
in some of these shame based cultures.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
However that's done privately.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Yeah, and through the Burmese culture, which is, you know,
a very large groupt. There's a lot of different types
of Burmese people. He said, the amount of emphasis that's
put on like saving face or maintaining honor is very high.
But the nudity completely negates that, completely negates that. Especially
(21:43):
in Asian culture, it would be considered very inappropriate. And
so if she was doing this because of some cultural
guilt to make up for a mistake, which by the way,
is what Jonah Shacknei says, then doing it would be
completely contradictory. Yeah. So if you're wondering, like, where is
this Asian guilt thing coming from it all? Jonah Shackni
says in an interview, they were like, well, why would
(22:04):
she kill herself? And He's like, oh, it's that Asian
guilt type of thing, you know, and so then it
becomes kind of like a racist.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
That's cultural culturally insensitive if and.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Then the police kept repeating it at the crime scene.
Oh that's that Asian.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Sounds like guilt came up with some sort of a story,
some sort of a yarn.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
To spin, and then they just stuck to it.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Mm hmmm. Shame.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
So according to the Sheriff's department, where Rebecca received news
about Max's grave condition and decided to commit suicide just
after coming out of the shower. So she comes out
the shower, she receives the call from Jonah, where he
allegedly tells her Max is not gonna make it, even
though according to notes from Mary's book, the doctors were
not aware that his condition was deteriorating until after she
committed the suicide. She then deletes the voicemail for some reason,
(22:52):
drops her towel, and then proceeds to write the thing
on the back of the door. She goes down in
the nude the whole time it gets the rope, measures
the rope, YadA, YadA, YadA, the whole time just walking
around nude, which is just so unrealistic, you know what
I mean, And then ties herself up, hobbles out to
(23:13):
the banister and then flops over the edge. I cannot
I just can't get behind that. It just doesn't it
doesn't make sense to me.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
No.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Mary also noted that there was a large data dump
done on her sister's phone and a good deal of
the information was from the past days before her death
and it was removed, including pictures and things that they
really wanted back. According to the docu series Jonah Shack
and I told his ex wife that Rebecca had killed herself,
and then when she said why, this is when he
replies Asian honor. He then says that Dina was actually
(23:47):
kind of giddy about it, Yeah, which is pretty gross,
and so he kind of goes on to like try
to put blame on her for a bit, which is
really interesting.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
It's dysfunctional, seriously.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
He then tells the interviewer that Rebecca actually comes from
a true Asian background and that she felt responsible because
she was in the house and she was supposed to
be watching him. So he also perpetuates the idea that
maybe this was a suicide. Now, the ropes are a
huge part of contention here. When it comes to the
ropes like I said. In the last episode, the Sheriff's
(24:20):
Department tried to show another woman could tie her hands
behind her back using a similar knot. However, in that video,
which I will post for anyone interested, the woman ties
this very complicated and time consuming knot, but at the
end of the video the knot is incorrectly aligned with
the autopsy photos, wherein Rebecca's case the knot was top
(24:41):
at the tops, like somebody had pulled up upwards on
her hands and tied it down, whereas in the video
the woman is pulling tension on the knot in the
rope at the bottom where her fingers could manipulate it exactly.
(25:09):
During a review of the crime scene, the Sheriff's department
looked at computers in the house, and that morning they
had found that computers were searching for Asian bondage Asian
women porn, and that Adam shak and I had been
(25:30):
watching fetishized Asian porn with bondage, which she admitted to. Yeah,
he said, just like to.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Past time or whatever, fetishizing her, that's what we think,
and then sexually assaults her and murders her. So thet
that's my opinion.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
So the New Power Team wondered if maybe Rebecca had
been into bondage or something, because at first they thought
maybe she was the one who who had looked it up. Yeah,
I know, kind of weird, but either way, they went
and met with like a Shabari bondage teacher to look
at if the way that she was tied up would
have been possible and if it was related to like
something bondage bondage community, something in.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
The bondage community. Ma'am what.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
And if it could have been related to that community.
This woman took a look and she was like, no,
they are just like half hitch knots. These are very
western style. They are not similar to the Shabari style
at all.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Sabari is beautiful. Yes, interesting, Okay, keep going.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
And then she goes on to say, actually, these look
like boating knots. She says, it almost seems like they
were cleaning a boat but had human limbs instead. Are
you human?
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Okay cool. Later on, well, I know it's like a
crazy thing to say, yeah, but it also just makes
you think about, geez, somebody else who might.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Know, yeah interesting, who was also looking up specifically fetish
porn relating to bondage and Asian women. Absolutely, I don't
think she fetishized herself, So that's an interesting tit to
put in there.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
And she carried she was a boat captain, so and
I will say Jonah did have a boat, and so
he claims, well, she she would have known how to
tie these ropes, blah blah blah. But Mary's like, absolutely not, dude.
First of all, my sister was a princess. She's not
getting out there, she's not tying note, she's not this right,
She's not pulling the boat in.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
She's not tugging the boat in.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Exactly, she's not tugging the boat in.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
No, she's not tying it off at the dog.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
And also I guess Rebecca was constantly just complaining to
Mary that they never take the boat out almost ever
because Jonah was too busy all the time.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
So I don't I don't know about that doesn't to me.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
During the civil trial, the prosecutor was like, hey, Adam,
do you know what kind of not this is? Would
you ever have any reason to use these half hitch knots?
And he's like no, no, no, They're like, but isn't
it exactly the same as this other type of like
a different word for it, and he's like, oh, yeah,
I guess it was grasslutely crazy.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
Oh wait, don't aren't you a tugboat captain? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Well, haven't you been in a tugboat captain for like
fifteen years? This is like what And at the end
of the day, none of this explains why she was naked,
Like even if, like let's say, she had been into bondage,
this was done in such a way to humiliate her
after death.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
I'm wondering if it was a sexual assault gone awry. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
And if you guys remember from the first episode we
mentioned that there was a knife found in the room
that was covered in what appeared to be her menstrual
blood on the handle up to the blade, it seems
more likely to me that she was sexually assaulted and
then strangled, and then the hanging aspect was part of
(28:58):
a cover up. I agree we mentioned Also the note
was another huge part of this case. We talked about
it a little bit earlier. She Saved him? Can you
Saved Her? Was in black paint. This note was near
the top of the door, so it wasn't necessarily Eige
level with Rebecca. There were two paint brushes at the scene.
One of them was loaded with black paint, and the
(29:20):
paint who had a single thro thumbprint from Rebecca on
the cap. Rebecca was known to paint, so the paint
was likely hers and from a shelf in the same room.
The message would have been written in third person if
Rebecca wrote it, which is odd as well very confusing. Yeah,
it did not have punctuation. It was written in all caps.
And additionally, she had a small brush of black paint
on her hand and on her nipples, almost like somebody
(29:42):
had like tweaked her nipples with black paint. If she
had done that herself, she would have seen black paint
on her fingers, which there was none. Handwriting analysis were
brought in to compare the handwriting of this note and
were able to confirm that it likely wasn't from Rebecca
and the police file the detective also calls into question
a single whole book on the bookshelf, which was a
book on magic rituals. Mary hates that this is brought
(30:05):
up because it's just like a random book in like
a thousand books that her sister had, So we're not
going to get into it. But I just want to
point out that it's BS.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
That's brought up because it's on the bookshelf. Yeah, and
how many things on your bookshelf would be brought into
question exactly.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Well, and I think it has some ritual about yeah,
like some.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Sort of ritual something.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
Yeah, committing suicide. So that's why they bring it up.
But Okay, Mary hates it, so I'm not going to
get into it.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Now, our dream team was able to find after zooming
in on these autopsy photos, what that was me zooming
in on her fingernail a tiny bit of black paint
that appeared to be from a glove and had a
glove like pattern, which would also explain the lack of,
you know, fingerprints in the room. The crime scene stager
(31:00):
that they went to so that this seemed to her
more like an emergency murder that's panicky and fast and
thrown together after something bad happens. Two pairs of gloves
were found at the scene. One was well, it's not
two pairs. There was one pair found in the living
room that was were like work gloves, and then there
was a latex glove that was found in the basement
in the crawl space. Creepy Yeah, but they couldn't pull
(31:21):
Dnai la I guess from either of them somehow someway
mm hmm. Again, I'll just mention one more time. Rebecca's
prince were found on the large knife, but not on
the handle, on the blade, almost like a defensive position.
And then there is quite a lot of blood found
on the carpet outside of the bathroom. So in the
initial report it was marked as a red stain, which
is just goofy. It suggested to be menstrual blood to
(31:45):
the lack of marks on her body. However, that would
indicate that she would have had to stood by the door
where the message was written after dropping her towel for
quite a while.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Maybe she saw it as she was coming out of
the bathroom and was.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Like reading it, Can I be for real with you?
In my opinion, that's where she was sexually assaulted. Yeah,
because if you think about when you're bleeding like that,
if there's something going into that area, you're more likely
to going to bleed quicker and more often with something
being you know, penetrating. In my opinion, that's kind of
(32:20):
what I'm thinking. Additionally, in the original report they said
that there was a small amount of blood on her
inner thigh and some blood running up her butt crack
right yep, indicating that she was laying down to me.
When they looked at the handle of the knife, it
was actually a direct transfer print on her inner thigh
(32:40):
that was nice lined up exactly what the print on
her inner thigh? Oh my god, I know, how could they?
Speaker 2 (32:46):
I don't know. So do you think she was hit
over the head because she had sustained four different blows
to the head.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
And yeah, they were saying that she bounced off with foliage.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Oh come on, how many You wouldn't bounce off for times?
Like you would bounce off once or twice and then
settle right. It just didn't make any sense. So I'm
thinking maybe she came out of the bathroom, he hit
her over the head, she felt to the ground. He
sexually assaults her accidentally, Maybe her when she tries when
(33:17):
she comes to.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Yeah, maybe she came to and he just panicked. I
don't know.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Interesting awful.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
I know the crime scene staging expert, she's the one
who helped like recreate the crime scene in person to scale.
She noted something interesting too, is that the police files
didn't know any blood on the bed in the sheets.
There was nothing about the bed at all, like they
just scooped right over it. There was also an overturned
chair in the room, like a chair had been knocked over.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
So signs of a struggles, of.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
A struggle, nothing, nothing was noted. She also mentions that
this victim was self disciplined. She was not an impulsive person.
You know, she worked very hard on like maintaining her
body in her image. She's not somebody who was just
going to impulsively do this.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Yeah. Well, especially if Jonah dealing with Max being in
the hospital and she's trying to comfort him, I don't
think it would be it would be a very selfish thing.
Which it doesn't seem like she was a very selfish
thing for her to just leave him while he's dealing
with that. On top of her death as well, Like
it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
And the gag in her mouth, like she's going to
kill herself. With the point of that, it's like she
can scream if she has a noose on her neck.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
Yeah, why would she be screaming if she was The
neighbor heard her, heard a woman screaming, help me, help me,
help me help me. Mm hmm, yes, sorry.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
No, no, I'm so with you on this. It's such
a freaky case. In the interview where Jonah ended up
saying that Dina was giddy that Rebecca was dead, well,
the prosecutor kind of like latched onto that and he's like, well,
we're going to file this civil suit against Jonah, against Dina, Nina,
and then against Adama. However, after getting all of the facts,
(35:04):
they were able to show that both Dina and Jonah
were in the hospital the whole night with their son. Okay,
that doesn't mean that Gina wasn't going in and out
making phone calls or Jonah wasn't going out and making
phone calls the whole night, but they were there, so
they were removed from the civil suit. And then Nina
was actually staying at Dina's house and there was evidence
showing that she was there the whole night except for
(35:27):
when she did stop by the shack Nai residents to
try to talk to Rebecca.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Oh, that doesn't look good if there's two wine glasses
in Adam's guest house too.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
In fact, so get this, Jonah asked Sheriff Core to
resolve this case quickly, right and that's on record. And
then he also indicated at the same time that the
back door of the mansion was always unlocked and that
Dina and Nina did know this.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
He then goes on to suggest that maybe Dina or
Nina got someone to do this to Rebecca, they hired someone.
This never really goes anywhere, of course, it doesn't. In fact,
another witness noticed that there was a woman walking around
the outside of the mansion late at night and was
going up to the door like they were test siding
whether or not to go in or out. The police
obviously assumed, well, this is Nina, but when he was
(36:19):
shown photos of the women, he said, oh, no, no, no,
that's Dina. That was Dina. It was not Nina. Nina's
got blonde hair. This was a dark haired woman. I
think it was. It was the other woman, Dina. Obviously,
Dina was shown to be at the hospital the whole time,
So who is this woman if it's not Dina, and
it's likely not Nina.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
Did he just get to her being at the hospital
the whole time? Does Jonah just corroborate that she's there
the whole time?
Speaker 1 (36:45):
They have footage at the door, so who's this lady?
Speaker 2 (36:48):
I was gonna say the B word.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
Who's this lady?
Speaker 2 (36:51):
Who is this late?
Speaker 1 (36:52):
This this old lady?
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Interesting, yeah, so very interesting. The officers just decide the
investigators is, oh, well, he must have just had his
eyewitness account wrong and it was just Nina there. Should
try to talk to Rebecca where she tries to talk
to her, can't get a hold of her, and just
leaves allegedly the heck so, because there was no way
(37:14):
to physically show that those people were there, they were
removed from the civil suit. There's just so much going on.
I will say that after Adam shackna I was found
guilty in the civil suit, it was also time to
re elect sheriffs in this area in San Diego, and
the guy running against Sheriff Gore was like, the first
(37:35):
thing I'm gonna do is reopen this case.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
And he didn't, obviously, and.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Guess what happened. Sheriff Gore was like, based on this
new uh, this you know, guilty verdict, I'm going to
reopen the case. We're going to look at it again.
And then after he got invested, he got re elected,
he was all, yeah, we just looked up the old
notes again and we just don't feel like there's anything there.
So they actually didn't do any additional testing. They didn't
(37:59):
look at the fact that DNA testing has come so
far since back then. They didn't test anything else. They
just looked at what was already done and.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
Just said the police for already.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Yes, indeed looks good. And then they close the.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
Can confirm that are our crappy notes.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
Yeah, I'm blown away.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
Investigation was thorough what a d.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
Bag I know well, And it's crazy because doctor Phil
had them on right, yes, right, And at the time,
Doctor Phil heard their case and he said, you know what,
I will pay for a new autopsy to be done.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
And DNA analysis to be run.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
And so he did pay for a new autopsy. I
don't think they paid for the DNA analysis. They did
pay for the new autopsy. And the guy that he
pulled on was this guy named doctor Cyril wetch So
he's pretty famous for doing like celebrity autopsies. And doctor
Cyril was the one who was like, this looks very
(39:04):
much like a strangulation. There's a lot of things going
on here that I just it's hard to say one
way or another, but I would mark it as undetermined
and as.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Opposed to suicide. Yeah, which is the safer route to
go when you're.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
Un sure, right, And it makes sense, that's the whole
reason it's there undetermined, so that you can keep looking
at it, keep it open.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Absolutely, So he's obviously cited the throat fractures, the potential
sexual assaul YadA, YadA, YadA. They brought that back to
the Sheriff's department, and the sheriff's departent was like, that
guy's just an actor. He's an entertainment guy.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Like he's a celebrity, celebrity medical investigator examiner.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
So he just like talked so much crap about it
and like basically refused to take it into consideration. Isn't
that crazy?
Speaker 2 (39:50):
Yes, well, he's trying to cover his own but so
it makes sense. But at the same time, like, really, dude,
you're gonna accuse this dude of not having qualification when
he literally goes and investigates celebrity deaths.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
Yeah right, you're like, sir, it's not.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
An actor portraying a doctor.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Oh my god, oh lord. So how the Sandy Grochireff's
office treated this family is honestly in my opinion, criminal
you can hear in the way that Mary writes this
story that she is just desperately begging them to give
her family some solid proof that their suicide theory is correct,
but they just won't budge. They honestly talk so much
trash about this family. It's so it's so sad. The
(40:29):
family isn't interested in the money. They want it on
record that someone killed her.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
They want justice for their daughter, for their sister. M hmm. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
So in twenty eighteen, when Adam Chekna was found responsible
for the wrongful death, they did award this Zahal family
five point two million, but it was later settled for
six hundred thousand and the judgment was vacated. The reason
I believe that that was done was just so that
they could keep it on file that he was guilty
mm hmm for her wrongful death.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
Uh. Well, it's just so interesting to me that he
was not guilty of a wrongful death, bro when it
was allegedly a suicide.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Because right, I have to tell you something else. The
dream team down but I forgot to tell you, sorry everybody.
So they sent out the nine on one call that
Adam Shack and I made to a team to like
clean it up and get some of the background because
it was like he was like breathing a lot and
like moving around a lot. And they found that there
was probably another person there at the time he made
(41:34):
the call.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
Okay, so I already thought that that was a possibility.
Here's this dark haired woman a b yeah. Yeah, according
to the belonging to right, Okay.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
They believe that they heard him say during the thing,
hold her still, and then the person responds to him,
and they kind of break it down like here is
you know, this person's vocal signature, and then here's another
vocal signature here, like somebody's responding to him. So during
his polygraph, he compares a bat combative and like self absorbed.
He doesn't have any empathy for Rebecca. He's like, well,
(42:07):
of course she would do this to us, and like
just things like that, you know what I mean. His
toll his test result was inconclusive. And like you said,
polygraphs may.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
Yeah, but you can tell a lot about a person
whether or not they're cooperating, whether or not yeah, like
you said, showing signs of empathy, Like everyone deals with
trauma and grief differently.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
Sure, but well and he goes in there and he's like, well,
I wasn't worried about this, but now I am after
what these what the cops were saying to me, and
blah blah blah, and I'm.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
Looking untruthful and his and like you said, combative, combative
and defensive.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
Defensive, Yes, that's the word. His follow up polygraph was
never rescheduled because her gath was worked to suicide and
the dream Team had his polygraph re examined by a
different a different person, and he failed horribly.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
No, it's not just inconclusive. It's an epic failure.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
This guy was like, I would have failed the crap
out of him. So he failed it. The following two
questions and the death of Rebecca, did you yourself do
anything to her that resulted in her death? Regarding the
death of Rebecca, do you know for sure if anyone
did something that resulted in her death? Those two the
guy who was reading his paperwork his biological results, was
like at those two questions, he shot out sweat. He
(43:26):
was nervous. He failed those questions.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Little lines. It was.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
No, of course polygros.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
So they're not admissible in court, and they're not, but it.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
Is something interesting. Another something interesting that Mary writes about
is that when she first spoke to Adam on the phone,
he said he didn't want to push another person over
the edge, which is a pretty shocking thing to say
to her family. I don't want to push another person
over the edge. I shouldn't even been talking to you.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
I would have verbally slapped the crap out of him.
I don't want to push another person wording phrase, come on, dude.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
And then get this. The practice of the San Diego
Sheriff's Office at the time was to use a single
swab okay for every item they tested for DNA. So
this comes out during the Dream Teens investigation. Every item
they tested for DNA, AKA, they used one swab for
the message on the door. Put the whole message on
the door one swab. It was just their policy.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
Why doesn't make any sense? I'm so it's so hard
for me not to just go off on a full.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
On cursing tangent.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
Yes, if you're wondering why we're not as mad as
we usually are, it's because we can't be so mad.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
That's when my voice is instead of just burbal diarrhea
I feel like I'm just screaming.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
Yeah, so a swap can only pick up so much
before it just mirror stuff around.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
Yeah, it would be contaminated. Like that doesn't cross contamination
like that doesn't.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
Well, let me rephrase. It's a single swab for each thing.
So one swab for the door, one swab for the
whole knife, one swab for the whole banister. You know
what I mean.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
I would still say that there it would be intaminating
if you're not doing it and like more of a
localized area.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Oh, I completely agree, yeah, yeah, yeah, So he said
what should have been done is each area should have
been gridded off. Yes, single swap should have been done
per one spot of the grid exactly. That's how it
should be done. They didn't do it that way, so
no wonder the only freaking DNA they had was Rebecca's.
Because a, if you do this, you have if you
have like a major in a minor DNA donor in
one area, the major donor DNA will become preferentially seen
(45:28):
and the minor donor basically disappears, It's wiped out. And
that explains why we wouldn't see any other DNA especially
if they're using one swab for an entire area.
Speaker 2 (45:38):
This is so frustrating.
Speaker 1 (45:39):
It's so frustrating, and like we're in the air twenty
twenty five. If they still have these swabs, we need
to look again, because now maybe we could see this
minor donor DNA. Right, we've come so freaking far out.
Speaker 2 (45:50):
Yeah, oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
So in conclusion, was this suicide? Was it a homicide?
I have always been pretty secure on the idea that
this was a stage. Absolutely, this was a homicide. Something
went wrong. I don't know for sure. Okay, if it
was Adam Shackney, I don't know if the shack Knights
were even involved. This could have been an outside person.
(46:14):
Nobody's ever even talked about somebody else showing up and
doing this to her, that maybe.
Speaker 2 (46:19):
Had been a guest the house at one point and
knew that the back door.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
Was obsessed with her or something. There was nothing ever
done because they never looked at it outside of this
is a suicide. Right, So is it possible that Adam
Shakne is not involved?
Speaker 2 (46:32):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (46:32):
Is it also possible that he is involved? I think so.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
I don't know. I think all points, like all signs
point to Adam, and that's just, like I said, my opinion,
because there's just too much circumstantial evidence that's thinking to him,
like the handwriting analysis, the boat knots, the bondage, porn
on his freaking computer right, specifically fetishizing Asian women. And
(46:59):
she there alone and he's in the guest house. They're
the only two people.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
And him and his brother have always had kind of
like a tumultuous relationship.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
Right, So maybe he was jealous of the fact.
Speaker 1 (47:09):
That his brother now had wealth and a hot girl.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
And that was just an opportunity to where his brother
wasn't at the house because he's at the hospital with Max,
which also rip Max.
Speaker 1 (47:19):
Yeah, I mean, gosh, poor Max too. It's like this
whole case was ri just terrible.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
It's awful. Yeah, I don't know, I say, and conclusively
it is.
Speaker 1 (47:33):
It's there's so many inconsistencies. I feel like the data
is suicide process appropriately. Yeah, And I cannot get behind
the idea that this was a suicide. I can't do it.
I can't. I also want to just point out that
the sheriffs, the Sheriff's office, when they re quote unquote
reopened their case and then quote unquote reclosed their case.
They took excerpts from her text and her phone and
completely misrepresented her state of mind. Oh good, So they
(47:57):
went out of their way to make her look classy.
They use sections where she was complaining about the fact
that she felt like she gave up her life to
take care of Jonahs spoiled kids, and they twisted it
to make it seem like she was suicidal. So they
used to text, it's my own fault. I've allowed myself
to be completely cut off from my own life. My
life does not exist. But in all actuality, that was
the last sentence of her being like, I am angry
(48:20):
that I am being treated like this, and I want
to walk away from this.
Speaker 2 (48:24):
Relationship, right she wants to live for herself again.
Speaker 1 (48:27):
Exactly. It was so sad to watch them twist her
words and make her look like she was not stable
when I think it was very clear that she was stable.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Well, they're just interpreting it the way that they want to,
so they're portraying it in a light that makes it
seem like they're correct, and obviously it It's just such
a trashy and awful thing that they did, right because
clearly this woman had so much to live for, and
(48:56):
like you said, she was very, very disciplined and had
a lot going on her. She's intelligent, beautiful. I don't know.
It just doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
It doesn't, it doesn't and the way that it happened,
like I don't know anyway. So that is the horrific
case of what happened to Rebecca. So how how her
family is still fighting to try to get her justice,
and how this freaking San Diego Sheriff's Department is still
refusing to reopen this investigation. This should be marked as undetermined.
(49:30):
It really should fin at the very least. So if
you guys have any other case corrections, anything you want
to add, you have things you want us to look into,
potential other cases, things like that, just hit us up
on Instagram at scream dot and Dot Sugar Dot podcast
on Facebook, Scream and Sugar, True Crime Copy Hour on TikTok,
Scream Dot and Dot Sugar on Gmail Scream and Sugar
(49:52):
Reno at gmail dot com. You can also hit us
up on our voicemail at.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
Seven seven five three eight six two one eight five.
Speaker 1 (49:59):
Awesome. Thank you all so much for hanging out with us,
and we'll see you in the next one. Remember to
stay spooky y'all.
Speaker 2 (50:06):
By bye bye bye
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