Police Investigate Beverly Hills Man for Involvement in Wife's Death

A Beverly Hills lawyer whose wife died unexpectedly at age 41 in 2009 has been under investigation by police ever since, .

Rina Pakula Klein died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center two days after initially believing she had suffered a stroke. Her mother and sister wanted an autopsy, according to court records obtained by the Los Angeles Times, but husband Gary Klein said he begged them not to let anyone "cut up my beautiful Rina." Her doctor refused to sign the death certificate, and Klein agreed to a partial autopsy after meeting with a rabbi, he told the newspaper.

The initial autopsy showed she died of Lupus. Since his wife's death, Klein has been questioned by Beverly Hills police and sheriff's detectives, the Times reported. His home has been searched three times, and his wife's body was exhumed for a second autopsy.

Klein, who also has been at odds with his late wife's family, filed a complaint against detectives and created the website http://www.beverlyhillscopsgonebad.com.

"I am just trying to do whatever I can to end this nightmare," Klein told the newspaper. "I don't want my children to grow up thinking Daddy possibly murdered their mother. I can't let it sit."

Anita Pakula called it "awfully coincidental" that her sister collapsed and died just as she was about to divorce her husband, according to court documents. Rina Klein's estate is worth about $2.8 million. The couple had been married almost eight years.

Klein, 58, and his attorney have gone to court six times to learn the evidence against him. Judges, siding with police, have prevented him from seeing the final autopsy report or records supporting searches of his home, though he has not been charged with a crime.

Rina's mother and sister declined to discuss the death with the Times, saying police urged them not to. Their comments come from public records. Police also declined to comment.

On the day Rina Klein collapsed, her husband came home at about 1 p.m. His wife was in the kitchen with another woman whose child was there for a play date, and 911 had already been called.

"Gary, I know you don't believe me," he recalled his wife saying. "I have had a stroke. We have to go," Klein said, adding that she looked to his side, her focus impaired.

In the emergency room, Klein said, a doctor told him tests ruled out a stroke and asked to see Rina's medications. She was taking prescriptions for depression, anxiety, lupus, a thyroid disorder and excessive sleepiness, Klein said.

The doctor, he said, told him the drugs should not have been taken together. One doctor asked him about diet pills because a urine test indicated amphetamines, Klein said. He said he told the doctor she did not take them but that she had started medication for narcolepsy three months earlier after falling asleep while driving.

Rina Klein's parents sued for and won visits with their grandsons and challenged their daughter's will, which left her community property to Klein and their sons. The probate litigation revealed that Rina had kept assets secret from Klein and put them in a separate trust for the boys, disinheriting Klein and naming her mother as trustee. She also had safe-deposit boxes that Klein didn't know about, the Times reported.

Results of a second autopsy have been sealed at the request of police. Klein said mothers at his sons' school told him detectives were still questioning them last fall.

In December, while Klein and his boys were on a Disney cruise, detectives went again to his house with a locksmith, Klein said. A search warrant record showed police were looking for evidence of computer hacking. Klein said he had searched Rina's email—he knew her password—after hearing in court that she wanted a divorce and had a boyfriend. The emails showed no evidence of either, he said.

Klein said he wants to clear his name so that his sons don't suspect him of killing their mother. He "needs to know he is not being hunted for a murder he didn't commit," said his lawyer, Mark Werksman.

According to the Times, Beverly Hills police spokesman Lt. Mark Rosen noted there is no legal deadline for investigating slaying cases.

"We are not going to do anything that jeopardizes the investigation," Rosen said.

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