Fatal Friends, Deadly Neighbors (20 page)

Only one person said that he saw her as the sun rose; only he came forward to speak about discovering the horror of her death. He told Coronado, California, police detectives how she was when he first observed her, and recalled the sequence of events rather dispassionately. Shock, of course, makes different people react in different ways. One couldn’t even attempt to know how he felt on this Wednesday morning of July 13.

Her name was Rebecca, and she was the girlfriend of billionaire pharmaceutical tycoon Jonah Shacknai. She was thirty-two. He is Adam Shacknai, Jonah Shacknai’s brother. He is forty-eight.

When Adam talked with investigators about “Becky’s” death, they were puzzled by what dark force loomed over Jonah’s home. The discovery of the exquisite woman’s corpse was a second shock. Becky Zahau had been vibrantly alive only hours before. Her death was an unfathomable blow to two already grieving families. It made no sense.

It made just as little sense as when Jonah’s small son fell from an upper-story landing of the mansion, apparently clinging to a huge cut-glass chandelier for seconds before he crashed down to the foyer, unconscious and terribly hurt, only two days before Becky’s death. Jonah’s son’s full name was Maxfield Shacknai but his family usually called him Max or Maxie, and he was only six.

At the time of Becky’s death, Maxie, the youngest of Jonah’s three children, was still alive—but in extremely critical condition in a drug-induced coma. Doctors warned Jonah and his ex-wife Dina—who was Maxie’s mom—that it was unlikely their son would survive.

And now Becky was dead.

*   *   *

The very wealthy are not immune to scandal, tragedy, and police investigations. Consider the Kennedy family and their trials for alleged crimes behind the walls of luxurious estates in Florida and Connecticut. Or the 1966 murder of Illinois senator Charles Percy’s daughter Valerie in the Percy family’s estate in a suburb of Chicago as her twin slept nearby, unaware.

Being rich doesn’t assure safety—not at all; sometimes it attracts aberrant minds. And sometimes it seems that those who have too many wordly goods pay for it with terrible losses that they could not foresee.

Jonah Shacknai owned what was known as the Spreckels Mansion. Jonah, fifty, was rumored to be a billionaire, an entrepreneur much like the Spreckels sugar barons generations earlier. He and Becky and Jonah’s extended family used the mansion as a summer place, arriving from Scottsdale, Arizona, on Memorial Day and returning to Shacknai’s even more lavish desert home around Labor Day.

For the very wealthy, the Coronado mansion was the equivalent of a summer cottage. It was a little worn around the edges, and some rooms hadn’t been redecorated since the mid-twentieth century. But it was as cozy as such a huge property could be, and the breeze off the ocean across the street was a welcome change from baking Arizona in the summertime.

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor stayed at the Spreckels Mansion once—probably in the 1930s or ’40s—and their bedroom suite was completely redone for the occasion. That bedroom was still in pristine condition, with especially made twin beds joined by a lavish double headboard of imported wood. The rest of the mansion is genteelly shabby, and in need of repair—or at least it was in 2011. The guesthouse was in better shape.

Jonah Shacknai’s mansion had five stories. The lowest level was the basement; the first floor/main level consisted of a foyer, living room, sunroom, dining room, sitting area, butler’s pantry, kitchen, laundry room, and a half bath. The second floor had two bedrooms (an office and guest room/office) and a bathroom. The master bedroom and en suite bath were on the third floor, along with three smaller bedrooms—one each for Jonah’s children: Max, Cameron,* and Josh.*

And the top floor was the attic.

The guesthouse was bigger than many families’ homes. It had a living room, three bedrooms, a kitchen, and three bathrooms.

The history of the Spreckels estate is well-known, with so many memories and tales of generation after generation of an impossibly rich, famous and infamous family written about in books, newspapers, and gossip columns.

With two disasters in as many days, one might wonder if the place was haunted, cursed by something that emanated eerily from events that had happened a century earlier.

It seems unlikely; what occurred in 2011 couldn’t have any connection to the original owners. Indeed, it was John Spreckels who built Jonah Shacknai’s summer place; the other Spreckels mansion, in San Francisco, was constructed to suit the taste of his brother Adolph Spreckels, who, along with his descendants, was far more involved in scandals and violence. John was the brother and uncle whose life was more circumspect.

The Spreckels family had no connection, of course, to those who lived there a century later. Nonetheless, the magnificent grounds and huge, once-luxurious rooms seemed steeped in the Spreckels’ stories, too. For more than a hundred years, the mansion has stood through storms, earthquakes, baking sun, stock market upswings, depressions, and wars. Surely the stoic walls had absorbed a sense of history.

But, of course, the walls said nothing. The old trees had grown above the roofline and the lush foliage sheltered the mansion more every decade. It seemed to be an estate that anyone might envy.

Chapter Two

When I first heard about double tragedies in the wealthiest enclave of posh Coronado, California, I found them both appalling and intriguing. I still do.

I’ve been to Coronado a few times, although I never got to stay at the fabulous Hotel del Coronado, which is located close by the Spreckels Mansion. I’ve only driven through the circular driveway to view it close up. It is a luxurious and expensive place to stay—and on the book tours that took me to Coronado I was housed farther down the road, at more mundane hotels.

A few miles south of those and closer to Mexico, the odor of sewage drifts up from Tijuana. I had little choice but to keep my windows closed and air conditioners on.

But the Hotel del Coronado has remained majestic and sacrosanct. It has been featured in any number of movies—many of them horror based. An historic edifice, the hotel is said to have its share of ghosts.

Coronado itself is rife with millionaires’ estates. And along Ocean Boulevard, the real estate is prime. Huge homes rise in stately profusion with wide and deep velvet green lawns, fragrant night-blooming jasmine, bougainvillea, camellias, hibiscus, bottlebrush, and other exotic trees bursting with blooms. Most of the mansions are built of stucco with tile roofs; there are many outbuildings that sprawl across the large lots: separate guesthouses, servants’ quarters, pool houses, and, of course, aquamarine pools. Many of the properties are protected by delicately filigreed iron gates with sturdy locks, closed off from the traffic along Ocean Boulevard and keggers on the beach.

Just beyond the busy street, the Pacific Ocean pushes against the shore, later to ebb as the moon’s cycle changes.

John D. Spreckels, born in 1853, created the Coronado mansion where Maxfield Shacknai and Becky Zahau were to die mysteriously. He was at first a newspaperman and millionaire sugar baron, and he branched out into many other fields.

The Spreckels clan have lived in luxury to this day, and yet some of their ancestors exhibited bizarre, almost psychotic tendencies. Some wonder if a black cloud might have remained in their grand houses long after they died off.

The more shocking scandals appear to have trickled down through Adolph’s line. In 1884, Adolph shot Michael de Young, the cofounder of the
San Francisco Chronicle,
because he was furious about an article suggesting that Western Sugar Refiners, the family corporation, had defrauded their shareholders. Charged with attempted murder, Adolph pleaded temporary insanity and was quickly acquitted due to his “mental incapacity.”

Adolph and Alma had three children—two daughters and a son. Adolph Jr. was a disappointment, said to have a mean streak, often acting out with violence. That may have been because most of his family called him “Little Adolph.” A daredevil, Adolph Jr. was piloting a hydroplane on Green Lake in Seattle in 1936 when his throttle stuck and the boat went airborne over the crowd, fatally injuring a bystander in a wheelchair. Little Adolph himself was badly injured and had to have a series of surgeries on his arm and face to
almost
restore them.

Adolph Jr.’s seduction of women wasn’t hampered by his scars. He had half a dozen or more short-lived marriages, and many affairs with beautiful actresses. His sixth wife was movie star Kay Williams, who left him after an unfortunate vacation on Balboa Island, where she complained that he’d beaten her. The story made headlines all over America.

Kay Williams Spreckels had two children with Adolph Jr.—Joan and Adolph III, known as “Bunker.” Bunker was born in 1949 and he was five years old when his mother divorced Adolph Jr. He admired his mother’s new husband, movie star Clark Gable, who was kind to him and taught him about guns, hunting, and women.

Bunker lived a life most teenagers wanted to emulate. The handsome youth was a champion surfer. He went steady with Miss Teen California. He expected no inheritance because his father, Adolph Jr., was spending millions at an alarming rate. Bunker was sure it would all be gone before his father died. But Adolph Jr. passed away unexpectedly before he could spend all his money; at twenty-one, Bunker Spreckels rented an armored car and went to the bank where he had $51 million waiting for him. He demanded it in cash and took it to a secret location he called his “Bat Cave,” where he kept treasures he didn’t want anyone to see.

Bunker Spreckels was a brilliant, blond youth who believed in living fast, dying young, and making a handsome corpse. Sadly, his prediction came true. Despite his multiple skills and Adonis-like looks, he died at the age of twenty-seven.

His grandfather Adolph built the Spreckels mansion in San Francisco, a spectacular structure now the home of author Danielle Steel. And his uncle John designed the Spreckels estate in Coronado, on Ocean Boulevard. John spent many happy years there. He also had another home in Coronado, his “bay-side” property, which is now the Glorietta Bay Inn, and he called that his “beach house.”

As of this writing, the house on Ocean Boulevard where Jonah Shacknai and Rebecca Zahau lived has been sold to a corporation. The asking price was $16.9 million!

*   *   *

Becky Zahau came from modest beginnings, and she was a little dazzled by the beach estate with its main house
and
guesthouse, twenty-seven rooms in all, and a northeast wing with two apartments and a six-car garage. A mixture of Italian Renaissance and Beaux-Arts architecture, 1043 Ocean Boulevard boasted an exercise room and a ballet studio, and the basement had not one—but
two
—wine cellars.

The path up the wide sidewalk to the mansion, with its carefully trimmed low hedges and a hundred feet of purple flowers on either side, was like an entry to paradise. Inside there were marble fireplaces, winding stairs, thick carpets, chandeliers, and balconies. Windows gave a commanding view of the Pacific Ocean.

By the summer of 2011, even though the last of the Spreckels family had long since moved on, the grand estate, in a gentle state of disrepair, was still called the Spreckels Mansion. It probably always will be.

And this was where half the family who occupied it suffered disastrous fates.

Chapter Three

Jonah Shacknai shared custody of his son Maxie with his second ex-wife, Dina, who lived close by. Becky Zahau loved the little boy as if he were her own. Jonah also spent a lot of time with his two older children by his first wife, Kim. His daughter, Cameron, was fourteen, and his older son, Josh, was eleven. They, too, lived most of the year in Scottsdale. Jonah’s older children were not as accepting of Becky as Maxie was. That was to be expected—especially with a teenage daughter who wanted her father to herself.

According to Jonah’s close friends, he was very happy to be living with Becky, and had achieved a serene and loving relationship after two rather chaotic marriages—the most combative one with Dina, who was a child psychologist.

When Jonah and Becky were traveling or at their home in Arizona, a couple who lived in one of the apartments oversaw the estate. They also cleaned, and supervised garden workers.

On Sunday, July 10, 2011, Becky’s younger sister, Zaré,* arrived for a three-week visit. Zaré adored her twenty-years-older sister and was delighted to fly from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Southern California for a long visit. Becky was just as happy to see her little sister, and Jonah was always gracious to members of her family.

Becky’s background was as different from Jonah’s as it could possibly be. She was born in Burma, the second daughter of a man who worked with Christian ministries. He was imprisoned by the military regime there for fighting for religious freedom in Burma. He later sought political asylum in Germany so his family would have the chance of a better future. Becky was quite young at the time, and she and her older siblings grew up there. They were raised in a Protestant church.

Most of Becky’s immediate family migrated to America—to the St. Louis, Missouri, area.

Jonah was born on the East Coast to Gideon and Selma Shacknai and raised in Suffern, New York. He and his brother, Adam, were from a tight-knit, high-achieving family. Selma was an educator and therapist during most of her adult life. Gideon came to America as a young man of twenty-one, and soon got his citizenship.

Jonah and Adam grew up in the Jewish faith. Jonah is a handsome man, with dark hair, tall and charismatic. His acumen for business is remarkable, and he became wealthy at a comparatively young age because of that.

*   *   *

Jonah and Becky had been together for a little less than two years when Maxie fell on Monday, July 11.

In the tense days while Maxie fought for life, Becky did everything she could to make things a little easier for Jonah.

Jonah himself was staying at the Ronald McDonald House across from the Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego, so that he could be close to Maxie, who hadn’t regained consciousness since his terrible fall.