The Hanging Question of Coronado

Rarely has Coronado been so abuzz. In the early morning of July 13, a young naked woman hanged herself (or did she?) at the Spreckels mansion on Ocean Boulevard. Two days before, a six-year-old boy fell down the house’s grand staircase (or did he?) and was put in a coma from which he never recovered.

Sensational mystery deaths are a rare thing on the isle. The last great murder-or-was-it-suicide drama took place in 1892, when Kate Morgan died of a self-inflicted (or was it?) gunshot wound to the head at the Hotel Del.

Reaching Jonah Shacknai, the wealthy CEO father of Max and lover of Rebecca Zahau (she had dropped Nalepa, the surname of her ex-husband), will not be easy. He has turned over management of his media relations to Citrick and Company, a PR/crisis management firm.

So, meantime, I went around seeking not the truth, but the buzz. These are transcripts with, in most cases, changed names. The opinions and theories are all over the place because there is so little information.

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KELLY and JAN are bank employees. It’s Friday night. They’re closing up. ALICE is their friend and last customer.

KELLY: It’s horrible. Just horrible. The first couple of days, every customer was saying, “What do you think?”

Also, if I was in a horrible frame of mind because my boy, my son, had just died, and I felt it was my fault that he fell down the stairs, why would I get naked?

Read the entire San Diego Reader article here.