The wife of an Orange County, California public defender who died in Mexico last month is sharing new details about their final moments together and the mystery surrounding his death.
Elliot Blair, 33, was found dead at Las Rocas Resort and Spa in Rosarito in the early hours of Jan. 14. He and his wife, Kimberly Williams, were celebrating their one-year anniversary.
Mexican authorities said Blair was intoxicated and fell from a fourth-floor balcony. His wife and attorney, however, believe he was killed.
“I still can’t go in a bed. I sleep on the couch because the last time I was in bed I was woken up to find my husband dead,” Williams told ABC News in her first interview.
Williams, who is also a public defender in Orange County, said she and her husband had gone out for dinner, drinks and dancing that night and were driving back to the resort when they were pulled over by police in Rosarito and shaken down for money for allegedly running a stop sign.
“Elliot had told him we don’t have the amount of cash that you want,” Williams told ABC News Chief National Correspondent Matt Gutman. “The other officer came up and started talking to us, (asking) where are you staying?”
Williams says her husband told the officers they were vacationing at Las Rocas.
“Elliot kind of stood his ground, showed him his work badge, and said, ‘Look we’re attorneys. We’re not down here to mess around, but we’re also not going to be taken advantage of.”
Williams says they eventually cobbled together $160 from their wallets and paid the officers. They drove back to the resort and spent time at the lobby bar before returning to their room.
“I put on my pajamas, turned the TV on and I got in bed. He went to take a shower and I fell asleep.”
That was the last time she saw him alive.
“What’s the next thing you remember?” Gutman asked Williams.
“Two people in my room, waking me up … a security guard and the hotel manager in my room. And they’re saying, ‘Excuse me, miss. Is this your boyfriend down here?'”
Williams ran outside the front door and saw her husband lying on the ground several stories below. He was already dead.
She says authorities rattled off a litany of explanations.
“Accident, suicide, gunshot wound, it was a rollercoaster… everything under the sun, except for what I think happened. Someone did this to him,” Williams said.
Although she admits they had been drinking that night, Williams insists her husband was not heavily intoxicated.
“In my nine years of being with him and knowing him, I can tell you I have never seen him sloppy,” Williams said.
The family, which has commissioned its own autopsy, believes injuries to Blair’s arms and legs are evidence that he did not die from a fall.
ABC News says the autopsy results are expected within the next five to six weeks.