Thinking Sideways: Rebecca Zahau, suicide or murder?

to another episode of Thinking Sideways. I am Steve as usual, joint by and Joe, and once again we have a mystery for you. This week, we're going to talk of out the supposed suicide of Rebecca's a how or at least primarily, that's what we're gonna talk about. There's some other things that are tied in the story that will cover before I forget though. This story is a listeners suggestion, so it was suggested by at least the people that I saw on the list, which were Diane, Rebecca and Andy.

So he's usually about as long as we go on our list anyway. Sorry, Yeah, so I said that primarily we're gonna be talking about Rebecca's so how the reason that I said that is that we're also going to be talking about the death of six year old Max Shackni. So quick, little ear warning, this story is gonna it's gonna be dealing with suicide, the death of a six year old boy, and there may be some other graphic

conversation in there. So if you've got little ones around or if that that content is not okay for you, this is one to pause or skip for later. I would turn the volume way up. I don't know. Yeah, no, well, if skija out, don't listen to it. Alright, here we go. Story takes place in two thousand eleven between the eleventh

and of July. At the time, thirty two year old Rebecca's Howe was living with her boyfriend Jonash Shacknai, and they were living in his home, which was the Spreckles Mansion, which is in Coronado, California, which apparently is an expensive area. It is. Yeah, if people know the area, that will give you an income or an idea of his income

and the value of his home. But for those of you who don't know, Coronado is a high priced island just off of San Diego twem San Diego Harebor Yeah, it's it's actually more of a peninsula, but everybody calls it an island, so it's fancier to call it an island than it is to fancier to be like I live on this exclusive island exactly, and it makes the lot sport. Yeah. I And also if you probably everybody has seen pictures of the Coronado Hotel, which is the

big land mark. It's a huge you know you're seeing the Coronado Hotel, right, I'm pretty sure I have. It is on Coronado Island, and it's the one that's got white walls and this huge red conical roof with little dormers popping off the enormous structure. It woulden structure and beautiful. I was there once, like tenner or fifteen years ago. Really nice. You didn't stay at the hotel. I looked at it and they charged you for that. Yeah. I was there with a friend and we walked through and

looked around and stuff. But yeah, we're working about the stop for security would have come up on you. Okay. Well, Joda shack Kni he had a home on Coronado. It was actually the Spreckles Mansion that was actually kind of his vacation. It was. It wasn't his primary residently has too much money. Yeah, well okay, so here's here's an idea. This mansion at the time was valued at twelve mill, which wasn't that big of a deal for him because Joda shack Ny at the time was the CEO of

Medicea's Pharmaceuticals. I think that's how you pronounced it. But but he was pulling in eight mill annually at the time as a salary. So this was, you know, an affordable home for him, probably besides the salary, probably getting a boatload of like stocks and stuff like that. To boo. Yeah, oh yeah. Rebecca and Jonah they at this time had been dating for about two years. Uh. The other player that we talked about just a moment ago was Max Max shack Ni That is Jonah's son. It is his

son from his second marriage. He had I think it was two or three other children from his first marriage, but it was two, but Max was his only child from his second marriage. And Max was six, and I already said that, well, yeah, no, no, let's see this. This is perfect for kind of a brief rundown of our our characters. Here, Max six Caucasian boy. He weighs about sixty pounds or equates to he's three ft nine inches tall, which is one point one meter tall with cover.

Rebecca as well, because her build will play into the story. She was thirty two, as I said, Asian about a hundred pounds, which is she was five ft three inches, which is one point six meters tall. So she's not a big lady. And Max is, of course your average six year old kid. He's just a little kid. Can I ask the question, I'm going back a little bit. You probably know the answer to this, but I'm just wondering.

Jonah just had the two X wives, Rebecca presumably would have been the third ex wife eventually if they had gotten married, then that would be I just would make her in line for to be the third X wife. I figured that was the case, but I just for some reason, only only two. Only two? Well, apparently he had mentioned to some people that he could see the relationship going to a point where he and Rebecca would

get married. But you know, that's just conversation. There's hardly anything official, totally, not like they were engaged or anything. And she went and died, So what are you gonna do well. Yeah, so I got to find another ex wife. Let's let's start on the eleventh of July. Rebecca is at home with both Max and also her younger sister who was visiting. Her sister's name is Zina. Zina was thirteen at the time. Rebecca said that she was in the bathroom when she heard a loud, crashing noise and

she came out to see what it was. What it was was Max. He'd been on the second floor and he had somehow gone over the railing of the stairs and had fallen down to the first floor. Zena calls N one one while Rebecca tries to help. Max. Didn't really know what to do, but she's trying. She reportedly said that he said one word, which was the dog's name, ocean, or the same could be or that large body of water right across the street. He said ocean. He said ocean.

What he was referring to specifically, we do not know, because he then lost consciousness and he never regained it again. Sadly for Max, he was you know, the rushed him to the hospital. This is the eleventh. He would linger on for five days total, but he would pass away on the sixteen after being officially declared brain dead, they

turned off the machines. So there's a lot of questions surrounding Max's death, and we need to dive into that just a little bit more, just to explain a little more, because according to a lot of the official stuff, it's a major player in Rebecca's death. Some people think it is. Yeah, some people say that. The official people say that. Actually, well, the conspiracy theorists say it too, well, some of them. Okay,

let's start with the scene of the accident. The scene of the accident was for Max was in an interior stairway and it's it's one of those stairways where it goes up for half a flight. It took a nine new degree left hand turn. There's a landing, and then it makes another ninety degree turn and goes up and continue the wall right, So the walls on one side, banister on the other yep, and it in the middle yep. And then it leaves a cavity in the space. Yeah,

in around it. Um. Now, the stairs. When they came up to the top the balcony or the handrail, the guard rail continued to a wall that was several feet past the top of the stairs, so the hallway opened out into that open space, which you know, it's pretty and people liked it because then you can look down and you can hang a giant chandelier in the middle and it goes down two stories and it's beautiful. Well, and they did have a giant because they were rich

people in the early two thousand. Yeah. Interestingly, if you look at I saw a bunch of pictures of the side of the mansion and it actually is not that that's that's splendorous. It's it's actually the rooms are a little larger and the finishes are a little nicer. But really, you know, it's really it wasn't it wasn't that fantastic. But it has been redone because I found photos for

sale again and they've come through. They've stripped the carpet, they've redone a bunch of stuff to basically kind of scrub off this entire story out. Yeah, because I was confused when I found the photos, is like, no, that was carpet. Oh they redid that. Okay, never mind totally out of style. So there is the railing at the top and the whole thing is carpeted. As we're just talking about the second floor and the first floor, and the stairs and the surrounding landing at the bottom of

the stairs. It's all it's wall to wall carpet and at this point, so what happens is Max is on the second floor and he's writing his razor scooter around. I know, Devin knows what these things are. Do you know the razor scooter is Joe's really sharp? Yeah, actually they are. It's a rangers of scooter is It's basically like a sheet of aluminum or a bar of aluminum,

wheels on both ends and the little handle on top. Yeah. Yeah, Okay, So he's riding one of those around on the second floor and he decided to just ride it on the top of the railing like he saw you kN or somebody like that. Dude. Well, you know, that's one of the things that we don't know is we don't know what happened because some people say, well, maybe he was writing so fast that he hit the railing and he flipped over the railing and that's how he fell down

to the first typically is what. He's nine inches taller than there's a problem. Plus it's carpeted. It's hard to get going fast. On carpet, and this is this carpet in this house looked like it was pretty good pile and it's all all carpet like, the bedrooms are carpeted to everything looks like it was carpeted from the images that I found. So him being able to get up enough speed on carpet is questionable. Um, but as you said, he's a little too short to have a center of

gravity to be able to push him over. People have said, well, maybe he was running down the stairs and the dog came and knocked him over, and so that gave him extra a lift, which again the same problem. That dog really would have had to give him a serious push to shove him up over the railing. That doesn't work for me. Yeah, but yeah, if he was, he's six years old. Kids at age, and I'm not saying that Max was especially stupid, but kids at age do stupid stuff.

A kid Yeah, sorry, go ahead, No, I mean like just trying to like, you know, I'm gonna tight rope walk on the you know, on the on the banister or something like that, or slide down it or god does what you know. How big was the dog. It was a medium sized dog. I don't remember what the dog was. I know it's a medium sized dog. But the point is, well, I was going to say one

thing I know I've seen kids do on more tolerant dogs. Uh, six would be a little old for this, but maybe still is that we'll stand on them when they're like land. And then if you were like laying or you're you you were like I want to step on the dog, and you held the banister, and the dog was laying against the banister, and it got up while you were standing on it. You could totally trust give you a

nice upward thrust. You are already you know, half your body probably when you're three feet right, you've got another foot because so you're send of gravity is pretty close

to the top of the banister. Anyway, that would be something that I would think, I mean, I don't know, I'm actually inclined to think that it's more along the lines of something like what Joe was saying is that Max was playing on the banister or trying to slide down it like evil, just trying to balance on it, or even just reaching over and screwing around and for

some reason trying to get the chandelier. Maybe he thought he would try to like leap across like you see it in the movies where they grab it and swing by it and swing the other side total or I kind of like this bird, he's kind of leaning over as far as you can because he just wants to see if you can reach the chandelier. And then the dog comes up behind him just deliberately pushes him over. Yeah that's what that. Yeah, yeah, but so did the

sorry did the scooter go? Why did they think he's playing? I was like, yeah, the razor scooter would end up on the floor on the first floor with Max. So there's a lot of questions some people though, some people actually say that Max was assaulted and basically thrown over the railing. And this is the deep conspiracies, the theories. Conspiracists is the word I was trying to say but

apparently couldn't spit out. But they say, well, Max sustained a bunch of injuries, and those injuries were overlooked because of the injuries he sustained in the fall and and and and attemptory. I mean he didn't recover the hospital or like you know, again, it's one of those things right where like if she was trying to do CPR or even the first responder citation any kind of the

rescue process, because yeah, that will break stuff. So that's the deep theory side is they're basically saying that Max was murdered. But what we do know is, as we said, he went over the railing, he fell, and in the process of his fall, he somehow took the chandelier with him. Because the chandelier would come down, he would fall from the first the second story, and he would hit the railing that goes up from the first floors stairs because remember I said, it goes up for half of the light.

He fell far enough over that he hit the handrail and literally bounced off of it. He had, Yeah, he had some inertia to get all around across. I kind of feel like this, the fact that he brought the chandelier down with him kind of supports by Saria that he was actually leaping to grab the chandelier and swink from it. But why did him That's that's that's the

part I can't figure out. I don't know, Yeah, I don't know, But all I know is that in that fall he hits that and he gets a whole bunch of marks on his bath from hitting well, from hitting the railing. Those are the ones that people say, well, that's that's from the assault supposedly, But does happen is that he bounces off that second railing and he hits the first floor and he lands face first and it severs his spinal cord and it subsequently that's what basically,

it's what killed him. You know, his functions. He didn't have oxygen for like twenty some minutes because he stopped breathing um. That's why he eventually was declared brain dead. And that was like one doctor who said that there was evidence that he's been suffocated prior to his injuries, or are we going to talk about that later? We can. I mean, I there's one person who says that, but I really didn't understand how they how they could figure that out. Yeah, yeah, I know, I don't get it either.

I mean, that's that's part of That's one of the things that some of the because there are people who think that Max was murdered, of course, as he's already said, uh, and that's one of the pieces of evidence they site is that, you know, it a period he had already been smothered prior to be going over the edge smothered and then chucked over the edges, especially what it is.

I mean, I think there is there's a different pattern that presents mostly like around your face area, if you're smothered and struggling, like you're going to break a lot of capillaries and stuff like that, versus just like the instant your spinal court severed, your brain stops working, you know, everything like that, that that's not going to create those like struggle marks necessarily, although landing face first on the floor that could do that, or could masket I mean,

you know, so I can see I guess why somebody would argue that they could say whether he was strangled or supplicated prior, But I don't. I think it's unreasonable to say that you could do that. I mean, it appears from everything that I've read that while it is comforting and convenient to say that it's conspiracy, I feel like it probably was just a horribly tragic accident. That's scarier.

This is again one of those things right where it's scarier because it's like that could be anyone that just haven't just did a dumb thing, and and this razor or something. Yeah, yeah, it's kids get killed. Actually an accidents at home all the time, not unusual. Yeah, No, it's I mean, it's it's crushing and it's it's terrible. But all right, well let's keep going because um, obviously you know the family. They circle the wagon at the hospital the shock nuys. Jonah is there, his ex wife

Dina is there. That's back to his mother. Also there is Dina's sister, Nina, Nina Romero Yea Dina and Nina, and does that her parents. Nina had flown in that day and during this time, it's not as if Jonah is going staying at the hospital and then coming home

for the night. Now he's going to the Ronald McDonald's house that's crossed the street, shower and sleep, or if he can't get a room there, he would get a hotel just a couple of blocks away, because I think it was like a twenty to twenty five minute drive from their house to the hospital, and he didn't want to have that time barrier between him, so he's spending

all of his time at the hospital. We move forward to the very next day, this is gonna be the twelfth of July, and Rebecca takes her sister, Zena to the airport. Did Rebecca go to the hospital. Yeah, she's at the hospital with everybody else. She's she's she's with everybody. It's not like she's just hiding out everywhere. I mean, she's in the mix to the airport. But she says, hey, you's been probably send your home. This is not the time or place. So she takes her sister the airport.

Her sister flies out at the same day or on the same day, like with an hour or two of dropping one off. She picks up at the airport. Adam shack Night that's Jonah's brother, because he flies in usually pretty much just stay at the airport. Once from there, I'm sure that she probably you know, bellied up to you know somewhere and just hung out. And and so she gets at them, and they go to the hospital and you know, see Max and see the family and

all of that good stuff. Now Adam is going to be staying at the Spreckles mansion because it's a mansion. It's big enough, it's got the space, and the way this house is laid out when you look at it from the arials is it's kind of an l shape. And on the opposite corner from that, where the two the two ends of the l meet, there's a small or small it's a relative term, but there's a guesthouse's bigger than all of our houses put together. It's like

three bedroom, two bath. It's like, yeah, it's it's a huge place, but it's a guest house. And I think they have a guesthouse guesthouse there. Actually I wouldn't be probably still bigger than my house. So he's going to stay at the guesthouse. And the way this is, these two buildings are set up, they kind of make this inner courtyard, which is where a lot of our story is about to go down. But they're at the hospital. They leave the hospital and they get to the mansion

somewhere around eight o'clock that night. Adam says he said good night to Rebecca, and he went to the guesthouse and he went to bed, and he didn't see her until the next morning. Now people will say that it isn't important that Rebecca had been planning a party at the house that night. The party was for her sister, Zena, her thirteen year old sister. And yeah, I'm pretty sure they canceled caau Zina's gone. But people say, well there was loud music, and Adam shocked, and I said, yeah,

I heard some music. And I don't know how loud loud music is, but especially in her community, Like I don't know, I play my music pretty loud, especially when I'm upset about stuff or whatever. You know, you just sometimes you just gotta dance it out or I mean, you know, just like sit in a dark room and blast like really loud music and try to forget everything that's happening. Yeah, I don't think she was having a party. I don't think she was either. Next morning, so this

is this is gonna be the thirteenth of July. Six am, a call is placed by Adam to one saying that there is a naked woman hanging from a balcony in the house. Of course, is Rebecca. Did he he just did her. Yeah. He just immediately said it's a naked woman, or he said it's it's I'm trying, I'm trying to describe the scenario. Rebecca was hanging from a second story balcony in that inner courtyard space, and she was naked,

it's Adam calls. He then goes and grabs a table and he dragged like a lawn table, drags it out, goes and gets a knife and cuts her down. And he does some things that maybe he shouldn't have, but it's understandable in the time and the place. Oh yeah, I would do exactly the same thing. Yeah. He pulls the noose in the shirt wrapped around her throat away to look for a pulse. He does the same same thing to the ropes on her hands. Did he untie the ropes or just push them away? He moved them around,

is the way that I've heard it describe. But I'm assuming he was pushing them apart to try and get them to find a pulse. Okay, I feel like you need to pause here because because yeah, you heard me right, Yeah, yeah, ropes around her wrists. Yeah, but she's a suicide. Yeah, so she's say she's tied up. So let me let me just talk about saying because this is the thing about the story that is the w DF moment for everybody when they read about like what what what? That

doesn't make any sense. By the way, before you any further, you can you can't. It is on online. You can find Adam shack one call the recording of it. Have you have you guys listened to it? Yeah? I listen to it once. I don't listen to nine one one calls like as a practice. Yeah, I can't. I also watched his interview with the cops. I mean, the guy's it's kind of a weird dude. So for our listeners

who can't, just like random, pull up aee. Do you gonna talk about it after you describe the scene or now, let's just keep going okay. I mean the nine one one call isn't all that pertinent. I don't feel to you, Joe, No, No, it's just it's just for me. It was kind of remarkable. He calls it. I found her. She's hanging that somebody's hanging by, you know, hung yourself. I don't know if she's a live or dead. And he said, Sarah, what is your address? He's going, uh, I don't know. And

actually I can see where he might not know. I wouldn't yeah, And then he's say like, well, can you at least get an ambulus going now? And she's like, Sarah, I can't help you will tell I have your address? And he's like, oh, going off, And this goes on for a couple of minutes, he's like, you can hear him pupping and pupping and moving around. He's like probably running around to the front of the house and like panic, looking for male, looking for maybe the numbers on the

front of the house. Whatever. It takes him several minutes to find the house number, and he could he keeps and he's occasionally say something like, can't you like send the standard ambulus now and I'll give you the number later, not sir, I have to have your address, sir, which makes it does on the one hand, but on the other hand, it's like, if he's it, I'm on Coronado Island, at least that would have given them a start. Well, no, I think he knew the street. He knew it was Coronado.

It was like Oceans, you just didn't know the number. And so it's kind of frustrating. Actually gives her the number. It's like, okay now, and then she says, okay, sir, I'm transferring her to the fire department now, and so she transfers him, and then and then the next person it's like, okay, Sarah, now, can you tell me your address? Seriously? I love a bureaucracy the time, I was like, why didn't you transfer me the other you didn't need the address.

I guess I must have glazed over and not have applied the importance of the humor importance show that that you did, because it's like, are you gonna learn when it wasn't that big of a deal now that you are told that, I get it. Yeah, I can see why it wouldn't listen to the whole thing because it's mostly mostly just him hupping and puffing as he's running around trying to figure out what what is addressing and

panicking because he I mean, he clearly stated right. I mean it sounds like he said, like I don't know if she's alive or dead, Like he's probably like freaking out panicking, like maybe she's alive. I should be helping her, but I can't get the ambulance here until I have the g D number. And he actually he kept as cool. He wasn't screaming at her or anything. Oh god, I would have been. I wouldn't. Okay, So let's let's get

back to Rebecca. Okay. So her body is hanging, like I said, from a balcony on the second story, the rope and it's it's facing into that inner courtyard and is it. Ah, there's so many different kind of balconies, Like my parents have a balcony with like would Okay, So it's it's a it's kind of like a concrete it's a platform. It's got tile on it on the top, it's probably concrete, and it's got a metal railing. Metal. It's kind of got the you know, not the particle

bar brought iron workers. What I was gonna say, but iron but yeah, okay, yeah, so it's that kind of thing. So it's gonna it's gonna hold up the weight. So, like I said, she's hanging from the second story the rope that is used to hang Rebecca. Presumably she is the one who did this. She tied it off to the corner the leg of the bed that was in that guest bedroom that the balcony looked off of. We know that. Um she okay, so wait, no, okay, So she tied it there and then it goes up and

over the railing. This is an important part. So it kind of goes up at an angle and then back straight back down. It would have to well, I mean, technically, she could have run it flat on the ground and but that would have been right. So we know though that she did it this way because when the bed itself had originally been a flat against the wall, but when responders got there, it was not. It was actually

moved forward. Uh, it had been moved forward about seven and a half inches, which is nineteen centimeters, and that is presumably from the force of the body hitting the end of the rope. We know the original position of the bed because it was deeper pile. Again this house, great pile in this carpet. It left deep in the bed landed deep impression in the carpet was very easy to see where it was. And there's been recreations of this, and we'll talk about the recreations. But they have put

the weight of that bed at about three poundsds. She weighed a hundred pounds, and that will that will become important later on when we talk about some of the theory stuff. All right, So her body, Rebecca had a

long sleeve shirt wrapped around her neck. I'll be honest here, I'm not sure if the shirt was put on before or after the news after and so what happens she takes a long sleeve shirt and if you think about this from if you put the shirt behind you and you've got the sleeves coming in front of your neck.

She then wrapped some back or around her neck, so she makes a kind of a sloop saies and then takes the what would be the cuff tails of that shirt, ties him in a knot, and sticks that knot in her mouth as a gay I love you describing this like it's she did it herself. Continue, No, I do it. I know, it's just he's presenting it as a suicide. People. I don't know it is, but I don't know how else to describe. No. No, I think it's prefect. Yeah, okay, sorry.

Was she wearing other clothes on except for a long sleeve shirt actually a rope to a couple of pieces. Okay, so she's got the shirt on her neck and then the noose around her neck. What I always find weird is that her hair is actually underneath all of that. She's got long, you know, kind of down to the middle of her back, straight black hair, and that stands

out to me. And I'm not trying to sound sexist or anything like that, but it sounds strange to me because you have a wife no, because that would pull your hair. And Rebecca's how was obviously aware of her appearance. She's pretty lady. She's well put together, she works out, she dresses to it. She knows the power of her looks and she's working it. So it seems like a weird thing that you want that. I don't think that's weird at all. That because at that point she's coming

to suicide. She doesn't care about that. Okay, I'll disagree wholeheartedly on this. I agree with Steve that it's weird because I will tell you someone with long hair, I just instinctively pull my hair out things when I put something on. I don't even realize I'm doing it. Like you guys know, I was in this car accident recently, and it hurts for me to do that. But I I still like I hurt myself every time because I'm like, oh yeah, I'm gonna oh dang it like her right,

Whereas like I don't need to. It's just kind of sitting there. I'm just sitting at home. It I just very It's very instinctive for me, and it may not be for everyone, but for me, like it's just automatic. So you would think that at least one of those times she might have just automatically And this will come up later on, but it's a pretty clear to me that this stuff took a while, so she would have had plenty of time to go this is freaking uncomfortable

and try and move her hair. The gag isn't uncomfortable. Let's let's let's keep talking about the rest of the scene of her state of her body. Yeah, back to the body. Sorry, yeah, yeah, totally back to the body. Okay. So Rebecca's hands were bound and they were bound behind her back using a hitch style, not like a hitch or what I So, I don't know exactly what kind

of not this is, Joe. Essentially, what it is you take the loop of the rope and she put it around or whoever did this, so keep doing it like that. We'll talk about it later. Put it around the wrist, the loop around the wrist, and then it is woven back and forth from wrist to risk several times, like making eight or nine loops back and forth. And then the slack that's between the wrists is that the tail of the two tails of the rope are used to tie that clothe it. Sorry, are you laughing at me

doing this? Now? I'm mostly laughing at trying to imagine doing that to myself. Okay, Well even crazier is um, she did this, and the official accounting is that she did this while her hands were in front of her and one of the loops, I think it's the left hand loop was loose enough, left loose enough that she could slide her hand out of it and then she would stick it behind her back and slide that hand

back through those loops. Well you could, I mean, you could do it in front of a few and then just I mean, if your legs weren't tied, you could but then step through your arms. Yeah, like, sit down. I mean, she's a baby. And we'll talk about the sea quence of how it's believed that she did this, because the thing is, her legs were also abound, her ankles were bound in much the same way. Because when I'm thinking about hanging myself, yeah you want to hang yourself?

Yeah you want to? Yeah, I mean this is like, this is crazy, how much it is. The rope that is used, it's a red nylon rope. It's it's actually a boat toe rope. You know. The thing that you see people on the lag pulling their kids around on

the inflatable doughnut or dinosaur whatever. That's that really crappy plastic rope, which I because you can't, but it's it's well, you know that, I don't know if apparently you can, because it was pretty well in this case you can, but it's like it's just harder, a lot harder to do a good knot in that rope. And yeah, so hands bound, feet bound, gagg in mouth hanging off the balcony.

There is also in the bedroom that this all took place from, or in all of the tying ups, there was a strange note painted on the door in black paint. It's done in block letters, which the door that came into the bedroom from the rest of the house. And it was on the outside or inside of the door. I think it's on the inside, Yes, I believe it was, so the bedroom side of the door. Um, sorry, our listeners can't see the fun faces I'm making right now.

This is why we've got to do live shows more often. Yeah, yeah, there we go. So the note says she saved him, can you save her? Which is cryptic and I don't even know if it's supposed to mean anything. What people will point to is weird is that this was a frame and panel door, you know, so it's got multiple smaller panels in it, and this was written on one

of the upper panels of the door. But Rebecca being five three, that means that she would have had to youn think, if somebody's gonna paint a note, you would just reach forward and do it. But to do it on that panel, she would have had to reach up to head height or higher to have done that. So that is noted as kind of an odd place. I don't know why there's it's just it's, yeah, okay, there's a whole bunch of this stuff that I just got.

I don't know how it's why. So aside from the note, um, there's the state of her body, there's also some things. There's a lot of cuts and abrasions. There are four marks on the right side of her head, between her ear and the top of her head, and they kind of almost make a square pattern, you know, the four points. Well, the official accounting is that that happened when she went over she hit the railing, but there's other things. There's some abrasions on her stomach. Yeah, no, I don't, I don't.

There's some abrasions on her stomach. And there's a series of wounds and abrasions down her back, running from her neck all the way to her butt. How are those explained? Those aren't by anybody but me that I have ever read. And we'll talk about them when we get into theories. Okay, we got a couple of the things that are in the condition of the body, and then we'll we'll be moving on. There is some dirt on her feet, now, I will tell you right now that when you read

about the story online, you will see it called mud. Okay. According to the autopsy, which is completely available on the internet, it says that it was a quote moderate amount of gray brown dirt on the base of the feet, mostly around the basis of the great toes, the great toes toes. I'm gonna start calling them that they're great, the awesome. The point is is that it's it's dirt on her feet, on the bottom of her Yes, it's not as some of these places will make it out to be, that

she had great wads of mud. And then then right, well, why isn't there no mud somewhere else and well, yeah, it was a dirty balcony, by the way, I'm going to give that away now. Part of it could come from the bal I mean. Also when Adam cut her down, presumably didn't he didn't just drop her face first on the ground. Presumably he set her on the and it was a lawn first, and you know, I mean, so it might have come from that. Also, you know, like, I'm a barefoot kid and your feet are nasty. Yeah,

I wish you'd quit playing with him. I'm kidding, I can't stop on stop, Okay. Other things that are noted. Since we've talked about the autopsy, let's talk about it a little more. Other things that are noted is the black paint on her body. Autopsy says there's a small bit of it on her face, on a couple of her fingers on her right hand. There's also some on her left breast above the nipple, and some on the

nipple of her right breast. So it appears that she did the painting because she's got the paint on her and they're like drips of paint on her. What it's on it? Like, Yeah, it's it's just small amounts, a little painting. Apparently, which is weird. Um okay uh. The investigators eventually they put Rebecca's death her time of death at about three o'clock in the morning, which means that by the time that Adam found her, she had been dead for almost four hours, so she was quite long gone.

There's you know, you think about, Okay, well, if there's so much weird stuff and there's so many things, you know, why has this homicide not been found figured out? And it's because, of course the officials report of the uh conclusion that's sort I'm looking for. The conclusion from the San Diego Police Department, as we've been talking about this whole time, was that she committed suicide and she was not killed by anybody else, but that she took her

own life. I'm so stoked to hear the official story on this because I know, I know, and for our listeners right now, I know that you're frustrated, but please don't throw down your phone because if you don't have interests, they're expensive to replace. Instead, waited out, We're gonna go through all of this and we're gonna uncover it in theories. Okay, but we'll do that in just a minute. First, let's take a quick break. Hey, gang, there's a new Tom

Cruise movie coming out on it Meet Tom Cruise. Oh my god, you might just get your chance. But Tom's going to reunite with his Edge of Tomorrow director Doug Lyman in a movie called American Maid, which is based on the outrageous true story of Barry Steal, who was a hustler and a an airline pilot who was recruited by the CIA to run one of the biggest covert

operations in the US history. Barry Steals was, as I said, was a pilot, decided he wanted a little more adventure and money in his life, and so he started smuggling drugs for a South American cartel. He made some money, and boy did you get excitement. Plus rumor has it Barry Seals was, as I mentioned before, recruited by the sage performed certain covert tasks, the eddy being I guess, WI fi all the way to South America with an empty plane, right, why not stuff some guns in there?

Sounds reasonable to me? And as you can imagine, various careers a smuggler took him on more than a few outrageous adventures and he made some interesting friends, like say, Pablo Escobar. What could go wrong there? So American made directed by Doug live and starring Tom Cruise, is in theater September twenty nine. So it gets you to New York theater and starts standing in line. Now it's definitely not top Gun two and we're back, okay, So let's

jump into the theories. Theory number one. There's really only two theories here. There might be a third one you never know that is true, but in my stuff here, I've only got two because it really could only find too. Okay, there's really only two. Okay. So theory number one is that indeed Rebecca's a how committed suicide and that's just what it is. So let's walk through what it is, what the details from the official accounting all that kind of stuff is. Deevin doesn't like this so well, I

once I hear it, maybe I will. So here's the the narrative of how this whole thing went down. From the time that Rebecca entered the bedroom. According to the cops, she goes to the guest room, she gets naked, and she takes the paints, which, by the way, I received for the paint was found in her car, so she did purchase it. And by the way she did she was a painter. I mean, she wasn't artist, and you

know that. So the handwriting is an issue because if she signs her paintings, they say it should look to say but anyway, I don't agree with that. But she gets into the room, she gets naked, she starts doing some painting, which is a cryptic message on the door. She then ties the rope to the bed frame and makes the noose. She then ties her feet so she sits in a chair to do this presumably, and ties her feet up, and then she puts the noose in

the shirt around her neck. Then she takes and ties the rope around her hands, slips that one hand out and puts her hands behind her back and slips it into the loops again. And then when she's sufficiently restrained um which by the way, they say, she would have done so that she could stop herself from fight, from having that automatic reaction of saving herself change her mind. Right, she couldn't grab the rope or kick or try and stop it. That's why she would bind herself, which people

do do. It's not heard of, but not to this level, But then, according to the cops, she then hopped out to the balcony, and once she was at the balcony, she then leaned over the railing until her center of gravity was high enough that she could literally fall over the railing, and then she fell to her death. So she went head head over heels. Maybe maybe that's They don't know exactly how she went down. Did she go down head first? Did she roll and go sideways down?

Did she maybe somehow climb up and jump feet first? Which did Sorry, I'm not sure exactly how much of an athlete she was. I mean, some some people, very few could actually probably leap from a standing position, leap up and stand on top of the rail, and then she would being tied together. You couldn't had excellent physical I mean, you see this, if you see some of the pictures this woman, there's some photos of her, she's kind of ripped that well. I just I don't think

there's anybody who could do that. I mean, maybe somebody proved me wrong. Fine, send me a video of you doing this all restrained and everything. You know, I don't think that she went over feet first, and and yes it does. It sounds crazy. And it feels crazy, but again it's not crazy because of the fact that she's bound, because, like we said, people have done that before. But the cops to to firm up their case, they put out a video showing how Rebecca could have tied herself up

and done all of this. A TV station does the same thing, and I actually I preferred the TV station footage because it's just the lady was actually she wasn't. It wasn't. It wasn't now, but but it's just you could see, I mean, the police video, it was obvious that the person who was doing it had rehearsed it

several times. The TV station footage this gal I don't think she had rehearsed it several times, so so to me it felt like maybe more accurate because it took her about thirty minutes to do it all, from writing the note in paint to the and making the news and making the gag for her mouth and tying her legs and tying her hands and getting over the railing. There was some time. And that gives to you know, that's a lot of time because she died at three am and she did all this. I mean, she started

at two or two thirty in the morning. That gave her a lot of time to think about it. I mean, there's a lot of time to back out and just say, you know what this is maybe not what I should be doing, that that should well, that's it. That shows determination and commitment to the act um. Now. They also we talked about Max. The police report also says that, you know, her mental state was one of she's in

upset because Max was hurt under her watch. She said, well, at this time, she doesn't know that he's you know, Max is still alive. She supposedly had gotten a voice smell, saying that the doctors didn't think he was gonna make it. But he's still alive at this point. But he's hurt under her watch. And there's some conjecture of what the hell she was doing at the time of the accident, because she says, well, I was in the bathroom. We don't know if that's really what she was doing. We

don't know though. Frankly, you know, you can't watch a kid, you know, I really so. I don't think it's suspicious that the kid was out of her sight. I would I would not disagree with that at all. Uh Oh, here's the other things that that they say for her mental state. Nina God, it was Nina the sister. Dina's sister said that she had sent Rebecca a text message saying that she wanted to come by and talk that

night about Max. She sent her that message at like nine thirty or nine forty and showed up at the house at ten o'clock. She never talked to Rebecca because Rebecca never answered the door. She ducked her, She dodged her entirely. And Nina freely admits that she went to the house, so she's not saying that didn't happen. She

totally says I went there. As we talked about, there was also that voicemail that said that when the voicemail was deleted from Rebecca's phone and the cops didn't think fast enough or to whoever it was to say, please retrieve that deleted voicemail. So we don't know exactly what was said on it, but Jonahs has said it was him, and he said that he's the gist of it was. He just said the doctors didn't think that Max was

going to make it. Yeah, but he didn't say said anything else, like you know, pack your stuff and get the hell out of my house, right or you better not be there or I'll kill you, know, like none of that kind of stuff. He doesn't say he said anything like it. Do we know what time that call

was placed? Oh? We do, and it well, the voicemail was it was checked it like God, I want to say like eleven thirty, maybe twelve thirty somewhere, and that when I don't have it here in my notes, I know it was somewhere in the later hours of the evening. I think. Um. Now, her family they don't believe that it's suicide because you know, I mean, we see this all the time. Families don't want to think that their

loved one did that. Well, and admittedly it does look a little suspicious, I mean yeah, although it's and it's also possible besides feeling guilt or just feeling like kind of bad about him being injured, it might be that she might have had a hand in injuring him too.

I mean, she might have actually done something. She might have been screwing around with him and he fell, or it might have been screwing around, or maybe she lost her temper and just threw him up with the railing who knows uh, and then she suddenly realized afterwards that you know, I'm probably gonna wind up getting busted for this. She's on the hook. Yeah, no, that's true. Um okay, So what else? What else do we have here that

is pointed to? Well, there's the lack of d n A that the police point to the fact that nobody else's DNA is on is at the scene. He can't find anybody's DNA, although I will point out nobody else's DNA was found on anything, including the rope that Adam shack Ny grabbed to cut her down, and the rope and the gag that he moved to look for a pulse. And that's important because not every time you touch something do you leave DNA behind something. Even think, but did

he grab the rope when he cut her down? He would have had to, not necessarily, even if she's hanging out and putting intention on it. I would think he would put one hand around her waist so she wouldn't fall down, and then reach up with the other one to cut the rope. I would think, as hard as those ropes are, that you would have to grab the rope. You know, it's a nylon rope, and it's a pretty thick one. I it seemed to me like that would

be a rope that you couldn't just saw at. And I mean, if you're after speed, you're gonna grab it so you can go through as fast as possible. But I don't, I don't know. You may be right, Joe, maybe he did. But Okay, so if he put an arm around her waist to hold, there's still there's no DNA there either, so that would have been on her body. They checked her body for d N A L said, one would perceive they did, but there's a bunch of stuff that they didn't check. Maybe their test kit was

just like kind of like on the frit set. Well, there's a whole bunch of things that they didn't check. There's a whole slew of things that were in that room with that she uh that she the balcony is on that guest bedroom. Trying to think of an elegant way to say that there wasn't one. Okay, but let me give you a list of just a short list. I mean, we're not gonna read through the whole laundry list, but there are two knives that were in that room.

Both of those were used to cut the rope. And by the way, it was that rope was one continuous piece of rope that she or whoever did this had cut into three individual legs. All that crappy land, it was all one giant long toe rope. It was the same rope the whole way. That's kind that's got the comes from the factory with a loop already break up and then sealed in with some kind of you know, adhesive rubbery thing on it to keep it from sliding around. Um okay. So also in that room there is a

pair of black gloves and a single rubber glove. Some people say that the cops didn't test that stuff. I don't know if that's true. Rebecca's cell phone is there, the paint and the paintbrush. There's a couple of cameras, her clothes. There's a clump of hair with some blood on it found in the bathroom of that suspicions. Well yeah, and I mean that that is a little weird. Then the police say they that that was menstrual blood. Well not if it had hair on it. See I got okay,

Now this is this is a good point. I presumed I understood what that meant as it was a load of hair that had been pulled from the scalp that had blood on it. But you might have the right idea. It might be hair that like, you know, hair falls out all the time, so there's some hair and also some blood. I don't know where it was just into. Yeah, if it was in like the drain, well the you know,

the hair, everything goes into the drain. Yeah, if you're looking at my drain now you'll probably find about that out of hair. And now you don't want to believe me. Yeah, not look at that. Um, So I don't know. I mean some of the stuff that'll makes sense if this is a suicide. Some of these things kind of makes sense. Uh, you know, the paintbrush. If she's writing the message her cell phone would make sense because she's checking her phone camera.

Maybe if she was like looking at photos that were saved on it, what were on what was on the cameras. I can't tell you that. Great, I don't know. Great, Um, that seems like it would be important. Yeah, I mean maybe, I'm sorry. I keep just kind of circling back now that I've Joe's brought up the my misconception of possibly how the blood was there there is. I think that she was on her mentoral cycle at the time, so that might also explain some of that. I don't know

if that's if that's completely true. I know in the autopsy they identified blood in uh in in her vagina and there was no sexual assault. So that's why I'm suddenly thinking maybe that's where that came from. Sorry, I got side railed by that. Well you're looking at me with a weird face. I just think they can tell. But yeah, it's fine, Okay, okay, okay, Well let's let's do this. Let's go to the last thing that is brought up in the suicide theory, which is the marks

on her body. So there's the marks on her head, back and the back of her legs. And the police, like I said earlier, they believe the wounds on her head are caused from rolling over the railing and banging

into it and the balcony on her way down. And I could see that if she went maybe head first, and maybe more so if she rolled so her body was horizontal, because then of course she would she would start to just tumble with you know, no control whatsoever, and that could be how she collided with something and that caused those went down. You bang into something, you bang it to the edge of the balcony, which is

concrete um. The rolling off the balcony also explains some marks on her neck because there was a secondary review of everything and it indicated that there were marks on her neck that were more consistent with a strangulation than a death by hanging because the location of those. So if you think about where your collar bone is in that area, that's more likely when somebody's putting their hands across your throat. For a guy, that's where your Adam's

apple kind of is. That's where the strangulation is going to happen, whereas with a news it's going to be more up around your chin because the rope is going to be pulled up and taught. I could see. I don't think that she was actually strangled. I think that if she rolled over, or more importantly, if she went over head first, that means that when she hit the end of the rope, she was traveling head first and that would cause the rope to pop tout around that

collar bone area before her body flipped degrees inverted. I think that might explain some of that, but there's no official consensus of why the hell she has these extra would appear to be strangulation marks on her neck. They

never confirmed exactly which way she went down. It seems like that one like pop. I mean, you know, you got it's pretty significant pop against a collar bone, But it does seem like it would be way less pronounced than somebody looking at it saying it looks like strangulation marks. But one of the one of the bones in her throat was broken down in that area. I can't remember what. Yeah,

well it's it's kind of a wishbone shaped bone. Yeah, but it always gets broken when you get strangled, strangles somebody that gets but when you hang yourself, I assume it gets broken. Also, I think, well, I don't think that particular set would, because maybe the set up higher would. But you know, I'm not forensics and that's not my gig. But this is just what I can tell um. The other thing that people point to as weird and I don't think actually are that weird are the wounds on

her back and her her from her neck to her butt. Okay, again, there's no delicate way to say this, so I'm just gonna say this, if when she went down and she hit the end of the rope, she's gonna do so with some force, and her body is going to be

swinging around. Okay, Well, if you look at the photos of the balcony and you look at where what's under it and where she is in relation to that, you'll see that on the left there's some normal, big, woody green shrub that's about six plus feet tall, and on the right there's this crazy, weird cactus thing, And if her body is swinging around, she's going to be scraping into those things. The cactus would explain there's these series of parallel marks or scrapes on her, which I kind

of think would account for that. There's no official accounting of how she got these wounds on her back, but I'm looking at the scene and just going that part seems kind of explanatory to be at a certain point, you probably really can't come up with a good scientific theory as to how every single mark got there. You know, it's just about impossible. Yeah, even though on c s

I they do it, but yeah, probably not well. On c s I they also take care of the crime scene and record time, which is not what happened in this case. Rebecca's body was left laying on the lawn for something like thirteen hours uncovered medical examiner's report, and it was like he didn't get there until like that evening, like about SIXXCI, like twelve hours later or something like that. Yeah, and they just left her in the sun. They didn't

cover up. There's all kinds of photos from the helicopters that were circling. Some jerkquad neighbor was allowing people with telephoto lenses to come up to his second floor balcony because they could see into that courtyard area and take photos. Like the police didn't do a very good job with with that angle of things. That definitely they typically cover the body. That's a little weird. They Yeah, usually you show some respect for dead people, but maybe not in

rich neighborhoods. Yeah. Maybe that's all I have for the suicide theory. So that means now we're going to go into the it was murder theory. Murder, Yeah, there's some people more than more than one. So the people who one of the main proponents of it was not suicide, it was actually murder. Is Rebecca's family um, and they have. They've made that statement publicly and eventually they would make that statement legally. Yeah, they file the suit against the

shack Knight family. So, um, they they said the shack Knight family is involved. So they file suit against Nina, Dina and Adam shack Knui. So Nina or Dina shack Knight, Nina Romero and then Adam shack Knuy. I'll tell you now that lawsuit has fallen apart because the footage has been brought up that shows that those ladies were somewhere else at that during that night. Yeah, but I think it's been modified. I think it's still going and I'm going against Adam, right. I believe it's been modified so

that it is now only Adam. And I'm curious to find out how they change their theory because there's some things we'll talk about in here of how the ladies were involved. They all participated in this conspiracy, correct, And I'm I'm curious to see how it's gonna gonna change. Okay, So now the does how family, Like I said, so they're doing all of this. They say that there is no way that Rebecca could have killed herself because she was a Christian, and she knew that if she committed suicide,

she could not actually get into heaven. They also say that the fact that she decided to leave this world in her birthday suit doesn't make any sense. That's not like her. They say, the handwriting on the door where that weird message was painted doesn't match her handwriting. And as we talked about before, she did paintings and would sign her name, and the handwriting was not the same at all that she signed her name and like one inch brush, no sign her name in like six inch

tall like letters or anything like. No. I have a real issue with that handwriting analysis. But hey, there's now there is. So the whole birthday suit thing, the whole being naked thing from the murder conspiracy people have put that out there is saying that, you know, she was kind of a modest person to a degree, and she wouldn't want her body seemed like that, And so the fact that somebody did this to her and made sure she was naked is yet another way to shame or

humiliate Rebecca. I don't know about that, but she's trying to make it look like a suicide. And if being naked is kind of a kind of a red flag. Yeah, then it doesn't really make a lot of sense if you murdered her to make it look like and making it you're making it look like a suicide. To strip her naked, well really make total sense unless you're using it. I mean, you know, unless it's out of like extreme anger and knowing that it would shame her even more

to be found naked, expose her. But number one, the whole world. But number one, she's dead. You can't care. Number Two, you want to murder her, yes, but at the same time, another huge priority is not to But you're you're smearing her name. Gonna say, I don't think they like murdering her, so she's not so she doesn't care.

I don't think that comes in when there's like a revenge murder and you know what I mean, maybe not, but I mean still, I mean, I mean, honestly, it's like, okay, so like you're doing a revenge killing that person that died, doesn't care that that person lives or not. Do you know what what I mean? I suppose that's true. Yeah, but there's not a lot of rational but I still any of it, there's not a rationale, none of its rational yeah, okay,

so let's let's keep moving on. Murdering people is not rational, kids, sometimes it is. No, let's keep moving on. So we talked about earlier in the suicide theory the fact that there was some re enactments done. Yeah, so the TV station that did the re enact but they actually did their their homework and they found out what kind of bet it was, and where it was made, what its weight was, what they expected the weight of the mattress

to be. The tough part was actually finally the volunteer to put the rope around her neck and jump off the balcon well, and not surprisingly, nobody actually volunteered for that. Well. They Yeah, they found a punching bag who was happy to stand in. But the point is they got a bed, they got a balcony. There was a house that was right nearby, so the circumstances were similar, with the pile

on the rug the same. No thank you for taking stealing that thunder No, okay, So here's the deal is that this guy's house everything seems the same, and the cops are like, well, you can't recreate exactly, so your recarnation is flawed. And I don't disagree because as Devin pointed out, there's a problem with the carpeting in that

house if you look at it. When they do this, when they take a hundred pound punching bag with three hundred pounds of weight on the bed and they roll it off the balcony, that bed moves twenty one or twenty inches, which is fifty and there are three times as far. Yeah, but there was carpeting on floor. Yes, there was carpeting on the floor. Looks like commercial grade carpet. It's a carpet. It's it's a real I mean, it's almost like the carpet where we've gotten this room right here.

It's very thin, it's very low pile. It's not going to resist it. And they kept upping the weight on the bed in an attempt to hold the bed steady, and they could never get it to stay anywhere near the numbers that were recorded in the Spreckles Mansion as what they were doing. So they really should have selected a different carpet to do their their experiment on. Yeah, yeah, I would. I would say that that's a that's a big problem. I mean, I would say it's a problem.

I don't I don't necessarily think it accounts for the bed moving like three times as much in well, okay, so if you if you think about it, though, that that leg is firmly embedded in the rug, you know, I mean you picked up furniture after it has been sent there for a year. Sometimes it's pain to get

it started, and so that's the resistance. So people saying that that combined with all of the extra weight, which we'll talk about the extra weight in a moment, they're saying, that's why this is murdered, because that bed should have moved so much farther based on this recreation. I I don't know, but but also the bed didn't move. I think that. I think what happened is mostly the bed

state that stayed. But the basically the footboard, the right hat, the right side of it, you're sitting on the bed, the right would be the right side popped off the frame and came forward about seven a half inches. That's what I understand. I don't think the frame actually came apart. I think the bed the bed twisted so it turned from a rectangle into a parallelogram. That's the kind of thing. Okay, yeah,

it's perfect. I was that's the word I wouldn't have been able to come up with my math terms are not that good. Well, I don't know. I still think, yeah, okay, well here's the difference. Is too big totally? It is. It is too big, and they're the original the original lawsuit against Nina Dina and Adam said. Yeah, I just like saying at that said that the ladies were sitting on the bed while Adam tossed her over the railing.

You know, that's the thing about these entitled rich women and just sit there and well he's doing all the heavy left, you know, and I'm saying I hate people like that. Well, that's so that's why the it was important. I think that they kept adding so much weight, and then we find out the ladies weren't there, So that kind of debunks that part of it. But there's some

other things about Rebecca's body that raises questions. One of them is the tape residue, because there is there is tape residue found by the medical examiners on her leg or on one of her legs, and I believe it was on the calf, on the back of a calf. Nobody knows where that tape residue came from. People have said, well, maybe she decided she was gonna duct tape herself first and then decided against that. But if that's the case, where's the rule of duct tape and where's the tape

that she decided to cast off and not use? So that doesn't hold up. I actually kind of wonder if when somebody else is also There's also been theories that, well, maybe she had a band aid on for several days and the adhesive was left behind. But if that was the case, there was no wound noted underneath that, so

that doesn't make sense. I actually know. I mean sometimes I've actually put band aids on my feet, Like if I got a new pair of shoes I haven't been broken in yet, I'll put a band aid on the back of my heel to stop it from digging into the back of my foot. Well, but this is on the back of her leg. But I actually wonder is that you know she was she was an athlete, and it's not uncommon for people to tape themselves when they're

exercising too. If you know, if you've pulled a muscle and you've hurt yourself so that you can't move too far, and therefore re injure yourself. And I almost wonder if she's done that. I mean, that stuff is huge these days, that the colored atchy tape that people are putting on themselves all the time, and you can just do that with basic medical tape. And maybe that's what it was. But this is a guess on my part. We have no idea where the whole tape thing comes from. And

it was on the back of her leg. It was on her leg, and I believe it was on the back of her leg. I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it was on the back of her her calf. And just one like that, right, yeah, just one of them. So I don't know what to make of that. Possibly most likely entirely unrelated. It probably is. Let's so let's keep going in the murder theory. We're gonna talk about the balcony that she went over. Apparently the maid didn't do a very good job because the balcony was dirty.

There was a layer of dirt all over it, because footprints could be seen in the dirt. And it's of small balcony. It's only about it looks to me to be about maybe three foot wide at the most let's say more than that, more like five or six ft. Okay, it maybe, and maybe I'm reacting to the photos because they get lined us. Yeah it's a small balcony. But but what happened is photos were taken of the dirt because footprints were seen in the dirt, and there are

several identified footprints. One happens to be Rebecca's. It's her left foot. Okay, so her left foot, the ball of her left foot or the and the heel are seen in one place, and then the ball is seen in another. But her right foot isn't ever seen in the dirt. There is a bootprint in the dirt which is very quickly identified as belonging to one of the officers who

responded to the scene. Um, I don't know, I guess it just that doesn't make logical sense to me that there's only one yeah, I mean her feet, and that it would be clear enough to be you know, towball, ball toe. I think the very first one is the nearly a full foot. It's after that that you start getting just the ball of the foot, as if she was hopping on the ball of her feet. That's that may also be why on that one but I'm just ensitioning her, like tying to out there, pogo stick her

way out there. We're gonna talk about that in a second here, Okay, so let's let's talk about this though. Um well, actually let's just talk about that. I don't so people have said, well, where the hell is her right foot in the dirt? And I almost I wonder if she may because there is a little bit of slack in the rope between her legs. I mean, she can't get them apart, but it's not as if they are bound together and they're gonna lose circulation in any

time soon, So it's possible between the ankles. Yeah, so it's possible that she could have. I mean, I don't know if you've ever done this, but if your legs are you even done a potato sack race or things like that where you're in kind of a weird confined space. I've done it before, and I found that it was sometimes it was easier to basically have one point of contact, which was one foot, so I you put the other foot on top so that your right foot is on

top of her left foot. Maybe she was pogo sticking along that way. The other thing that I think he might be the only human in this entire world who does that. Maybe the other I don't, You're just mocking me. The only other thing that I will point out is that people are like, well, she it would have been so hard for her to hop out there, and why

didn't she fall down? Remember, she didn't necessarily have to have put her hand back through the loop of the knot behind her back until she got to the railing, so she could have you know, hopped out, leaned forward, grabbed the railing, hopped to the railing since her hands between her behind her back, and then gone forward. Okay, so this is in support of the suicide, but in support of the murder, people are saying, oh no, she was tied up and basically, you know, kind of frog

hopped out there before being shoved over. And the thing that cinches that for people is that supposedly there's a third set of footprints in the dirt. They are very faint and hard to see, so hard to see that the cops didn't see them, right, that's right. Well, sorry, just to go back to your theory that she was just hopping on the one foot, she had dirt on

both feet. She did she did have dirt on both feet, and I'm just thinking that maybe that's why one made, you know, a noticeable impression and picked up enough in the other. Dude, I I don't know, Devin. I mean, this whole thing, this entire story has gone so cookie Ville on me because there are so many things that don't make sense that I don't know. I really have no idea about the footprints on the balconies. You don't know that it had a perfectly, evenly distributed layer of

dirt and dust to the balcony. You don't really know that. I mean, it could have just been scattered here. When you go to clean things, they are perfectly and evenly covered in dirt to make it as hard as possible to clean them. But when you're walking across them, when you want to examine it later, that's when they're uneven

like that. Here's what I will say about the third set of prints, even before we go into it, is that we also don't know like how long that balcony had been dirty, how many people have walked out there. And that's exactly right, Like I said, maybe the maid wasn't doing a good job, or maybe somebody else had walked out there at one point because the impressions. Okay, there's a guy named Dr Maurice Godwin. He's the one

who found these third prints. He took the photos and he enhanced them using air quotes here to find those shoe prints or those footprints. Now what how he managed to get them to come out, I don't know, but it's entirely possible that the person who cleaned the balcony stepped out there and left of innt and that is what he is picking up. Maybe somebody out there. What's that? What size were the prints? Um? I think you were

large enough. He pretty much conclusively thought that they were a man's shoe, right, Yeah, I don't know that we have a I was gonna say, I could have been Rebecca walking out there with her shoes on before she decided. Yeah, I don't think it was. I don't think it was

Rebecca's because those I don't think she had those. Because the shoes, the pattern on them, it's this, so it's a tread pattern that goes, you know, from one side of the soul to the other, and it's it's a series of wide bands like kind of you know, arcs, and then they there's narrow bands and then white arcs. Again, it's that kind of sandal or flip flop. You see this on flip flops a lot. They have that they're not meant for traction, but they give you a little bit.

But it's entirely possible that somebody just walked out there weeks or maybe even months prior, and he just in his enhancement process managed to bring that forward. But he says that that no, that means that she she did it, she or somebody else was there and helped kill her. Basically, he's insinuating that somebody was intentionally stepping in her footprints because they kind of seemed to follow behind her, at

least in one spot. The problem I have with this theory about that is that it would be the obvious assumption, if you're in this match, in this home way, a stick and rich guy, that the help would would keep that thing clean, the balcony that and that there wouldn't be a layer of dirt out there. So why would you be worried about footprints to begin with? I mean, it'd be more worried about footprints and evidence in the carpet in the room, which is much more likely to

retain evidence. I think that the walking in her footprints, it's not so much saying that they were doing it to hide their footsteps. It's that they were behind her, marching her forward and holding her upright. In other words, she's not exactly compliant to what's about to happen, and so this person is holding her and you know, hops her forward, takes a step forward, it just coincidentally happens to land in the same spot. Yeah, yeah, I know,

I know. Um, okay, So we talked about the lawsuit and the fact that this is more stuff in the murder section, and that the combined weight, you know, the two women on the bed, we that's unsubstantiated. Now we know that's not the truth. People that they were sitting on the bed and that's why it only moved seven and a half inches. How do how do we know that they weren't on the bed? Well, because there is

footage of them in other places that night. They're saying that, like I should know that, but you haven't said that yet. So oh I thought I said that we were talking about the bed earlier, is that there they weren't. Well,

we know that they weren't. The case was modified against Nina, Dina and Adams, so that Nina and Dina are no longer being charged because footage was found that showed that other than Nina having been at the luson knocking on the door and getting no answer, neither of them were there. They were in other places. There is CCT footage and stuff like that. Said, and I wasn't paying at sorr um. Uh,

so we know that that that couldn't have happened. But now it seems the theory has modified a little bit because they're saying that the damage that was done to Rebecca's head that rendered her basically unconscious because she wasn't drugged, There was no booze, there was no drugs in her alcohol. So to make her compliant to this whole scenario, she would have had to be knocked in the head and basically unconscious. Did you say there are no drugs in

her alcohol? Well, if I did, she didn't have drugs in her alcohol. She didn't have any alcohol in her drugs. She didn't have either of those in her system. I just I might have misheard you that, probably because I have battened a thousand to night. But yeah, so so they're saying that you know she was struck and then whoever it was, took her and shoved her over the balcony.

Now again, it took like thirty minutes for the re enactment to tie her up, So that's a hell of a whack to the head to knock her out for

the period of time. What I don't really get is if you're not your unconscious, why you need to tie her up anyway she's unconscious, just put a noose around her neck, and you know, especially Spence, it would looks less suspicious, especially the hands type you had, the back, the fewer red flags there, it just looks like a Okay, I'm not I'm not putting down suicide when I say this, but it's a run of the mill, your standard what you expect to see in a situation where someone has

hung themselves. If the hands and feet aren't tied, the whole shirt and news gag thing is not there. It's just a standard basic hanging. Instead, she looked like she was lynched. Do yeah, she does, just it's just a question who did yeah? But or and also well there's a question of what you lanced. I mean obviously too. Yeah,

even though it does look that way. It does. Yeah, okay, so the so the soul, the sole person left over in that lawsuit is Adam shack Ny, and Adam's got some things that are going not so well in his favor. Uh there. So there's the the knots that were used to tire up there. You always see them referred to as nautical style, and then everybody says, oh, and by the way, he worked on a tugboat, it was like it was or something. He totally could have been the

one that tied these knots. He knows how to tie those knots. I gotta tell you, it's it's too bad. I can't see that much. I've seen some pictures of some decent pictures of a few of the knots, but not all of them. And I gotta tell you, I don't recognize any nautical knots in there. Yeah. Yeah, than the fact it's a cinch not that there's nothing insanely I see very common, simple little knots, and in fact,

and mostly no knots whatsoever. I mean, like the when she tied the rope to the bed, she didn't actually tie it to the bed, she just it's got it's got a loop in the end. She passed the rope around the bed post and then pulled the rest of the rope through that. So not it's not even technically a not. Yeah. And she did the same thing with the one that the piece that went around her neck. Same things. And so there was another one that looked like probably so sort of a double half hitch possibly,

which is again not a hard knot. It's not exactly you need to be a salty old sailor of tying on like that. So I'm a little I'm a little skeptical about the whole k not thing. Yeah, I am not going to disagree with that. Okay, Well, aside from the kno thing, there's another thing that's going against Adam shack Ny and that that's poured. Actually, actually, I didn't want to say one other thing about about the knots. Yeah, what's that? Well, I did it was you already know

from what I said earlier. I hate that crappy plastic rope. Really, would you is not easy to tie in? No, And I think that if the guy truly was a typeico of captain, he would not have he would not have stooped tying seriously, I think he would have gotten hiself a decent piece of rope. This is this rope is crap, all right? Yeah, okay, and also also by the way, and also by the way, also if whoever tied her up was indeed an artful not tire, then he wouldn't

have tied her up the way he did. Yeah. I know, if this was somebody who was into bondage or something like that, they would have done something much more elaborate. I will, I will agree with that, or more much more simple. I mean, it's not it's not really necessary if you're tying somebody have to pass the rope back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth between both arms to tie them

up securely. And if the guy knows his ropes is not, he doesn't need to do that, which is why I'm kind of like, I'm kind of doubting at him as a suspect here, and for a murder. Yeah, yeah, any way, that's at least as far as the knots go. Okay, but I know there's some others. There's some I all tied up with it. Okay. So the other thing that

we got going on here is porn. Because when police searched the computers in the guesthouse, they you know, they're thinking, okay, well, maybe like she looked up the internet searches of how to tie a noose. Well, instead what they find our search terms. And by the way, this is on both a computer and then eventually they look on his iPhone, but they find things like raped sexy Asian girls and

bondage anime. And he, of course, initially he denies that, oh no, it wasn't me, but eventually he fesses up and says it was him. There's if you look at it, if you look at those search terms and like there's this this whole Asian bondage thing going on, you could see possibly how if it was Adam, there's a weird sexual element to tying her up. Now, there was no intercourse, you know, there was no penetrave sex. So that doesn't mean that she wasn't sexually assaulted. That it does not.

But what I'm getting at is, we know that they didn't go about it in the traditional manner. But if it's him and he tied her up and got his jolly's off by seeing her all tied up, that's you know, this,

this search string lights up all of those alarms. Yes, um, I will, however, I will play Devil's advocate for a second and say that it is entirely possible that he used some bad judgment that night and decided to go on the computer and look for some regular porn and kept clicking links which were starting a new searches, which you know, it goes on and on, and suddenly he's in the world of gonzo porn. And this has happened to me. And I'm not talking about porn youtubeers, so

don't give me that look. But I have. I mean, we've done to make those in pots in your house. And the next thing you know, you're reading about lamas and can they turn cannibalistic and you're like, how don't get from theirity here? But okay, it happened. Yeah, it's still like the eat you you're gonna regret it. It's still really it's like it a lot. It's a little scheezy. I wouldn't say it's damning, Yeah, I mean not enough to secure a conviction. I don't think. I guess you

know I can. Okay, the rape and the bondage, like the bondage, fine, like that's a pretty normal vanilla kink as far as things to go. But you know, even the like Asian stuff, Like she was Asian and it's totally possible that he just had a huge crush on her. She was just super attractive. I've known white guys who really were into Asian girls at all. No, that's true, but the right part. Yeah, but the what the Yeah, yeah,

there's what what dude, You've you've read by stuff. There's a whole bunch of WTF spread all through this set of notes. So the last thing that I have on the it was murder section is something that we covered in the suicide section, and that is the DNA or

the lack of d NA. Like, if if Adam were doing this because he was going to get back at, you know, her for hurting Max, then he must have gone to you know, he must have got into a full on chemical biohazard suit to have not you know, to have interacted with her for as long as he would have had to have and yet left no fingerprints

or no DNA behind. Lucky Well, because here's what I'll say about that is that he could have not done that because he knew he would be the one to find her, and thought, I will be able to explain every bit of DNA of mind they find on her and the crime scene by saying I saved her, I caught her down, I touched the rope, I went into

the guest room, I did all these things. Well. But if they found DNA, he could have said, oh, yeah, I like must have run, you know, he could have said he could have come up with an explanation given that he was like basically living there right for the last twenty four hours, so some way to explain it. I mean, it's possible that it just happened that there was no DNA, but that his plan was if they do find DNA, I'm not gonna, you know, try to

cover it up. I just know that I'm the one who will find her so well, and in support of that, if you watch his interview with the cops, he does a lot of I don't know, man, I just know that this happened, and then I was over here doing that and and he swears like a tugboat captain through the whole thing. But um, you know, he does a whole much I don't know, I don't know. I just this and then it was this, and so he could

I mean in support of that. If he did get lucky, he could have said after the fact that, like, you know, it's weird we found your DNA in the tub too, Like I don't know, I just ran up there and I you know, I mean, or I took a shower up there last night. Oh yeah, alright, I stay. You know I was hanging out with her, and I know I had some DNA sort of happened, you know, can

I get that on a shirt? D you could? But um, I mean even more than that, even if he did like sexually assault her, right, he could have said it was mutual, yeah, right, which is yeah, there was no sex apparently, so well there was no there was no trade of sex sex, so there's no traditional way I was framing it. No traditional sex, no found. But yeah, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I don't, I don't. I don't know. It's hard because I don't think she was murdered,

but I don't think she killed herself. You know. It's such an extreme Okay, so the way that she was bound in the series of things that appear to have happened, it is it is such an outlier, such an extreme way to go about it. That it's boggling, it doesn't make sense. Well, actually, in once, in one respect, it could make sense if well, if you want to make it, if you want to commit suicide and make it look like somebody killed you, that's one reason to do it

that way. I don't know what possible reason she would have for that, though. Well let's let's say, let's give a hypothetical. I mean, let's say Jonah calls her up and says, it doesn't look like Max is gonna make it, and I want you to pack your crapping at the hell out of my house. I want you to be gone when I get back tomorrow, you know. And she's feeling all the sparing because, let's face it, she had her She found herself a pretty sweet little gig there

she did. She she hid herself a good thing going. And I'm not saying she was a gold digger, and I'm not even saying that that this is what happened. This is just a hypothetical. So she decides to kill herself. But at the same time, she's feeling a little bitter about the whole situation because she feels like it wasn't entirely her fault, if at all, And so she decides, well,

I'm gonna kill myself. That'll show him. And as she starts thinking, hey, why not while I'm Matt really soil that really soiled his nest a bit because he's a big CEO for a company and everything. And I'll make it look like maybe somehow somebody possibly killed me, and I'll do so. I'll paint a weird message that makes ut only know sense. I'll strip naked, I'll tie myself up and hang myself and make it look like he

killed me. Then delete the voicemail because the voicemail gave her good motive for suicide for trying to frame him. You know, she might have just done it out of share habit. I haven't heard any stories that said that she was vindictive or manipulative in her behavior. I would expect that somebody to the length of what you're describing would have exhibited that kind of behavior in the past,

and those stories would have surfaced maybe. But here's the thing, when when I've been reading about this story, everybody ascribes all kinds of motives to the shack Nights, which we really don't have any reason to actually believe everybody says, oh, you know, Max had this this fatal accident, the whole family wanted to murder Rebecca because everybody was angry. Well, you don't actually know that anybody in the family blamed

her at all. You don't know that. I mean, there's there's absolutely no evidence that anybody was even angry with her, much less murderously angry and ready to kill her. Similarly, though, there's no evidence that says that she was angry enough at herself to have killed herself over it. You know what I mean. I mean, I think I think it goes both ways. Well, no, that's that's exactly what I was just saying. What I was saying is, yeah, you're saying, well,

there's no evidence for that. I was saying, Similarly, there's no I agree. That's why I think. That's what I was saying. It's where it's crazy, where it's like, I don't think she was murdered, but I also don't think I think suicide fits suicide. Although I guess there's a third kind of third theory here, is that you know that they were both murdered. Yeah, that occurred to me too, that somebody was trying to get to Jonah and murdered the kid and then murdered her. Maybe she saw something

so they were like, well, okay, here we go. I gotta kill you too, because you're about to squeal. I think it was probably something like something like you know they do this to Max, and and then do you want to get the phone? Did you get the message? And Jolie says, yeah, screw you. Click, Okay, Well kill a girlfriend. Okay, I mean it's not Yeah. TV tells us that at the perfectly plausive, just as crazy as everything else we've talked about. Yeah, I think I think

suicide is really the least crazy thing. I don't. There's not much here. I don't. I'm not really seeing any strong motive on the family's part, and definitely if they wanted to kill her, if they were that angry about it. Number one, let's not forget Max was not dead yet. Yeah, that's the that's the whole problem with why she would kill herself because Max hadn't actually died. She didn't know that he might if he would or would not recover. She had been told he probably wasn't, but that didn't

mean he was going to. That's that's again, this thing is just full of so many loop you lose. We could do this for another hour, but I think we should probably just wrap it up. I think we should say I'm voting suicide. Okay, I'm vote and I don't know, all right, So, if you want to read any of the links about this story, we'll have some of that on our website, which is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. Uh. The episodes are you can download and listen to them

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the Facebook page and the Facebook group. And of course, if you want to get in contact with us because you have thoughts on the story or you have story suggestions you'd like to send in, send us an email at Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com. And that is all of the good bits and pieces that we have to share. So I think that we can put a bow on this one and be done. Agree and we'll talk to you guys next week. Bye guys,