Editor's Note: The following story includes descriptions some readers may find disturbing.
The family of Rebecca Zahau, whose bound and nude body was found hanging from a balcony at a historic Coronado mansion more than a decade ago, will petition the San Diego County Medical Examiner's Office to reclassify her cause of death, an attorney representing the family announced Thursday.
Authorities determined Zahau's 2011 death to be a suicide, a conclusion Zahau's family has vehemently contested over the years.
Zahau, 32, was found July 13, 2011, hanging by her neck above a rear courtyard at her boyfriend's beachfront summer home. She was gagged, with her ankles bound, her wrists tied behind her back, and a cryptic message scrawled on a nearby door: "She saved him, can you save her."
Though never criminally charged, Adam Shacknai, the brother of Zahau's boyfriend, was found liable in her death by a San Diego civil jury, which awarded Zahau's family more than $5 million in damages.
Despite the civil victory, the family has continued to push for a criminal case to be filed and later announced it would offer a cash reward for anyone offering new information that could lead to Shacknai's arrest and conviction.
Zahau's family also sued the sheriff's department for the release of its records into the death investigation, but that suit was dropped earlier this year.
The Zahau family's attorney, Keith Greer, said he will file a petition to have the cause of death reclassified from suicide to either homicide or undetermined. The petition will be served on the M.E.'s Office and Jonathan Lucas, who was the San Diego Chief Medical Examiner at the time of Zahau's death, Greer said.
