The Southern California public defender who mysteriously died while vacationing with his wife at a popular resort town had reportedly been extorted by Mexican police officers hours before his death, according to media reports.
Elliot Blair and his wife were stopped by two police officers in Rosarito, Mexico, some 25 miles south of the San Diego-Mexico border, about two hours before his death for rolling through a stop sign while driving from a restaurant to his hotel, The Orange County Register reported, citing a source.
MEXICAN OFFICIALS FIND 14 BODIES IN OVERTURNED PICKUP TRUCK SUBMERGED IN CANAL
They didn't have the desired sum but gave the cops around $160 and were let go. They were also asked where they were staying, the report said.
Mexican authorities have said Blair had alcohol in his system and fell from a balcony outside his hotel room at the Las Rocas Resort and Spa, but his family believes he may have been the victim of a crime.
On the night of Blair's death, his wife was asleep and apparently woke up to hear two employees talking through the open door of their hotel room. They repeatedly asked if Blair was her "boyfriend," at which point she woke up, went outside, looked over the open-air walkway that police described as a balcony outside their room, and saw her husband on the ground, attorney Case Barnett explained.
Blair and his wife, Kimberly Williams, also a public defender, were celebrating their first wedding anniversary when he died. His family has since hired their own private investigator after expressing frustration with Mexican authorities and their probe into his death.
Authorities in Mexico said an autopsy found no signs of violence. A private autopsy ordered by Blair's family determined he was murdered.
"The autopsy confirms that he, Elliot Blair, was murdered that night," Barnett told Good Morning America on Thursday. Preliminary results from a private autopsy suggested the murder was possibly committed by multiple people, Barnett added.
Barnett said the autopsy showed multiple fractures to the skull and said full results from the autopsy will be available in five weeks.
Barnett, who is representing the Blair family, previously told Fox News that they received a phone call from the local coroner's office after the 33-year-old's death saying his cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head.
Fox News' Christina Coleman, Andrew Mark Miller and Audrey Conklin contributed to this report.
