SAN DIEGO - The family of Rebecca Zahau is dropping their lawsuit against the now-former San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore.
The lawsuit was filed in an effort to force Sheriff Gore, who retired earlier this year, to provide access to all of the records connected to the investigation into the death of Zahau, whose body was found at the Spreckels Mansion in Coronado in 2011. The family and attorneys argued the Sheriff's Department only released records that supported the belief that Zahau's death was a suicide.
The family will now focus its efforts to get the San Diego County Medical Examiner to change Zahau's cause of death to homicide or undetermined and then attempt to get the criminal case reopened.
Zahau lived at the Spreckels Mansion with her boyfriend, Jonah Shacknai, and her death came days after Shacknai's six-year-old son Max also died at the residence. Her boyfriend's brother, Adam Shacknai, was found responsible for her death in a civil suit in 2018, which was settled out of court.
Rebecca Zahau appears in this undated photo. Zahau's death was ruled a suicide in two separate investigations by the San Diego County Sheriff's Department.