“Death on Ocean Boulevard: Inside the Coronado Mansion Case” by Caitlin Rother: A Review
An In-Depth Look at the Deaths of Max Shacknai and Rebecca Zahau in the Wealthy Resort Town of Coronado
“I got a girl. Hung herself in the guest house.”
So starts the investigation into the death of Rebecca Zahau, a beautiful young woman who was the live-in girlfriend of the wealthy and older Jonah Shacknai. According to friends and family, Rebecca was not the type to commit suicide, much less by hanging. She, like the crime scene, seemed to be a bundle of contradictions, from a smart, ambitious professional to an estranged wife with a tale of kidnapping in between the reconciliations with her husband. What made Rebecca’s case so newsworthy was not only the unusual way in which she died, be it suicide or homicide, and the location — a historic beachfront mansion built in 1908 by one of San Diego’s most powerful men in the affluent resort city of Coronado — but that the six-year-old son of Rebecca’s boyfriend suffered a fatal fall in the same home only two days before Rebecca’s death.
How could this lovely home be the scene of two deadly incidents within two days? Were the deaths of Max and Rebecca related? Did the authorities do their jobs in both cases or did they close the…