It’s about to come to an end.
A San Diego jury in a case that has attracted nationwide attention and has been the subject of countless TV crime shows is about to start deliberations.
It’s the case of the Spreckels Mansion in Coronado, the case of a woman named Rebecca Zahau whose death in the mansion was officially called a suicide, but family members didn’t believe it then and don’t believe it now.
And there are a lot of people in San Diego and around the country who have kept track of this case who think the same way.
In the summer of 2011, Rebecca was found naked and hanging from a balcony at the mansion, the medical examiner and sheriff’s investigators ruling that she bound and gagged herself and hanged herself.
But over the month long civil trial that is now about to go to the jury, witnesses were called who cast doubt on the official conclusion. Her family claims she was murdered by the brother of her former boyfriend, a rich pharmaceutical company exec.
Adding to the mystery of the case and the official ruling of suicide was the death of her boyfriend’s 6-year-old son for whom she was caring and who died after falling from a stairwell inside the mansion just two days before she took her own life on the balcony of the mansion.
The jury’s decision could come down to what they think…of what experts on suicide think…about the reasons for it and the circumstances that can lead to it.
The trial in this wrongful death lawsuit will come to an end in the next few days, but it is unlikely to end all the questions about it that will remain.
(Photo credit Getty Images)