Elliot Blair, the Orange County public defender found dead last month while vacationing in Mexico, was allegedly extorted by local police just hours before his death, according to his wife, Kimberly Williams. Williams has said from the beginning that it was murder, and she has now come forward with new details about the purported three-story fall from a resort balcony that Mexican officials say killed him.
After a dinner at a restaurant near their hotel in Rosarito, a small resort town south of Tijuana, the couple was pulled over by local police for allegedly rolling through a stop sign, Williams told ABC News. She says the cops demanded cash.
“We’ve never been pulled over before,” she said. “We were both rattled, but at the same time we both had this feeling of, Thank God they didn’t do anything more to us.”
The newlyweds had been celebrating their first anniversary at the Las Rocas Resort and Spa when Williams’ husband, Elliot Blair, supposedly fell to his death from a balcony.
She was awakened by a hotel security guard and a manager, asking her to identify Blair. “I turned to the side, I didn’t see him there, so I ran out the front door and they’re pointing over the side of our front door area to the ground,” she said. “Well, that was my Elliot down there.”
Williams—also a lawyer in the Orange County Public Defender’s Office—along with her lawyer, Case Barnett, has cast doubt on the circumstances of Blair’s death after Mexican authorities ruled it an accident. The State Attorney General’s Office of Baja California said that Blair’s death “was the result of an unfortunate accident due to the fall of the deceased from a third floor.”
Blair’s cause of death, according to those Baja officials, was severe head trauma. And their toxicology reports found that Blair had a “considerable” amount of alcohol in his body.
The family tried to have their own toxicology report conducted but Blair’s body had already been embalmed.
“They let out a primal scream when Elliot’s mom told them his body was already embalmed,” Barnett said. “I’ve never heard so much pain and screaming. It’s as if Elliot was dead again.”
Williams doubts that Blair’s blood alcohol levels contributed to his fall. She said that over a six-hour period, he drank five or six beers, and that she’s never seen him lose control.
“In my nine years of being with him and knowing him, I can tell you, I’ve never seen him sloppy,” she said. “I’ve never seen him not be able to stand. I’ve not seen him not be able to walk and care for himself.”
Barnett and Williams allege the likelihood of a more sinister explanation.
“It’s the physical evidence we’ve been able to obtain, the autopsy,” Barnett said. “The autopsy confirms that he, Elliot Blair, was murdered that night.”
Barnett believes that Blair may have been beaten and “was the victim of a brutal crime.”
An injury expert, Dr. Rami Hashish, with whom Williams has consulted, is also doubtful.“I think it’s relatively clear the injury pattern[s] just simply don’t add up with one another,” he said. “There’s bruising marks on the body. There’s indications of potential being dragged on the front of the body. There’s fractures to the back of the skull. Nothing really points to the fact that it was necessarily an accident.”
Elliot is survived by his wife, mom, sister, and nephew, according to a GoFundMe page. He was 33.
“He was my rock in this world,” Williams said. “Without him, I feel like I have nothing.”
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