SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (Reuters) - Linda McCartney, wife of Beatles legend Paul McCartney, did not die in California, as the family's announcement of her death stated, the Santa Barbara Sheriff's office said Thursday.
The statement, which appeared to back up reports that the cancer-stricken McCartney died in Arizona, quoted her doctor as stating "unequivocally and factually" that McCartney "did not die in the county of Santa Barbara, or the state of California."
The statement did not specify where McCartney died, but the family had hinted strongly it was at the McCartneys' ranch outside Tucson, Arizona.
"The family hopes that they can maintain this one private place that they have in the world," Paul McCartney's spokesman said on Wednesday.
The Sheriff's statement said Dr. Lawrence Norton of New York's Memorial Sloane-Kettering Cancer Center had contacted the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Coroner Bureau by telephone to say he was McCartney's oncologist/physician.
"Based on Dr. Norton's statement to us, the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Office believes that we do not have any jurisdiction in the death of Linda McCartney," the statement said.
It added that Norton was not the attending physician at the time of McCartney's death, but that Norton had spoken to the attending physician "who confirmed to him that Linda McCartney died of natural causes as a result of cancer."
The Sheriff's department in Santa Barbara, 100 miles north of Los Angeles, started an investigation when it found no record of a death certificate even though the family originally said she had died there.
In Tucson, Ariz., television and newspaper reports said McCartney had died on a ranch outside Tucson which she and her husband bought nearly 20 years ago, and that some of her ashes were scattered there.
Tucson television station KVOA and the Arizona Daily Star newspaper said that Pima County Medical Examiner Dr. Bruce Parks authorized Linda McCartney's cremation, and the newspaper said her death certificate was signed by a doctor at the Arizona Cancer Center in Tucson.
A spokeswoman in the Medical Examiner's office and another at the cancer center refused to confirm or deny the reports, citing the fact that death certificates are not public record in Arizona.
In London, Paul McCartney issued a statement to the Press Association, Britain's domestic news service, saying, "We know that ordinary people would want our request for simple privacy to be respected. This is a personal request from me."
It was announced last Sunday that Linda McCartney had died the previous Friday of complications of breast cancer while vacationing in Santa Barbara, but no death certificate was filed in Santa Barbara County, which would have been required by law had she died there.
Death certificates are a matter of public record in California.
The Arizona Star, quoting unnamed sources, said half of Linda McCartney's ashes were scattered over the family's sprawling ranch outside Tucson, which the McCartneys bought in 1979.
British newspapers had reported that the ashes were also scattered over the McCartneys' farm in southern England.
The mystery surrounding McCartney's death was compounded by confusing statements from McCartney's spokesman, Geoff Baker, and denials that it was an assisted suicide.
Baker hinted strongly in a statement issued Wednesday that McCartney did not die in Santa Barbara.
"Everyone always assumed that it was Santa Barbara, California. So in an effort to allow the family time to get back to England in peace and in private, it was stated that she had died in Santa Barbara," he said.
Believing that to be true, 600 people, including former Animals lead singer Eric Burdon, a contemporary of Paul McCartney, attended a memorial service for Linda McCartney in Santa Barbara on Tuesday night.
On Wednesday, Paul McCartney issued a statement saying any suggestion of assisted suicide was "total nonsense," and Norton issued a statement saying McCartney "died of natural causes of metastic breast cancer."
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