Darr Jon Weagraff

Unexplained Death

A Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery

Darr Weagraff died when he was 58 years old, and the recently released coroner’s report said his cause of death was inconclusive.

The former Jaguar restorer and martial arts instructor had hip-replacement surgery on February 13, 2009, and seemed to be recovering well, but mysteriously became agitated and paranoid on February 18. Neither doctors nor the County Coroner’s Office — which immediately began investigating the suspicious death but only wrapped up its report this month — could explain why his mental status changed so dramatically so quickly.

Whatever the cause, Weagraff acted out violently by ripping his room’s dry erase board off the wall and smashing a window. Security personnel — including guard Steve Sherwin — forced Weagraff into restraints, but he continued to resist into the next day, kicking and screaming. When a nurse noticed the next night that Weagraff’s right leg was “swollen and shortened,” it was discovered that his femur had snapped four inches above the knee. A doctor concluded that the break was caused by “torsion type force” — as if the bottom of his leg was kept still while his body turned — and that it had nothing to do with the hip surgery.

Hours after it was noticed, Weagraff went into cardiac arrest and became unconcious. After a week, he was taken off life support and, shortly therafter, died. The final coroner’s report, which includes accounts from nearly two dozen doctors and nurses, ruled the cause of death “undetermined,” pointing to a long list of previous health problems: degenerative joint disease, Hepatitis C, and a history of skin cancer and polio. “There is no significant evidence to support, or completely rule out, any cause of death,” it states, nevertheless noting that Weagraff “was a well-developed, well-nourished adult” at the time of his death.

But the coroner’s report also notes that Cottage failed to produce information that could have helped the Sheriff’s Department in its investigation. When detectives tried to ask guards about the broken femur — the cause of which remains unknown — they were only allowed to speak with them after speaking with Cottage attorneys, who were present during the actual interviews, as was an attorney for the county. None of those interviews were recorded. And when more data did arrive, it came in a jumbled mess. “The decedent’s vast and voluminous medical records from Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital were not in chronological order, and they were only available in a way that made them difficult to understand. Some of the medical records were illegible,” the report reads. “In addition, the Coroner’s Office was denied access to Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital’s internal review of the incident and any additional records beyond the decedent’s initial care records.” The Coroner’s Office also wasn’t notified about Weagraff’s death until three hours after he died (via a brief call from a hospital staffer who reported “a suspicious death”), and it was unable to get good toxicology results because hospital staff didn’t take a blood sample during the critical time frame.

Even getting this confusing mountain of material proved unusually difficult for the Sheriff’s Department. In the year following Weagraff’s death, Cottage was slow in turning over documents to the Coroner’s Office. In time, the county asked a well-known private attorney, David Nye, to restart negotiations with Cottage because communications had virtually ceased. Nye was a half-step from subpoenaing Cottage’s records (the Sheriff’s Department doesn’t have that power, and must use a lawyer or judge to launch such an inquest), but was eventually able to broker an agreement to restart the information sharing. Had Nye filed a subpoena, it would have been the first time the Sheriff’s Department had had to take that route in decades.

Michelle Beechly, Weagraff’s longtime partner, and their son, Beau Beechly, are convinced that security guards were directly responsible for Weagraff’s broken leg, and ultimately his death. As a result, a lawsuit was filed in June 2010 against the hospital. Both Beechlys have been struggling with personal problems and failed to show up for subsequent hearings. Consequently, the case was dropped. The lawyer who filed the original suit, and who asked to remain anonymous, did so pro bono because, as he put it, “It had nothing to do with money. I thought there was misconduct.”