Paul and Linda McCartney perform during a Wings show in London in this Oct. 1976 file photo. Linda McCartney, the American photographer, has died from cancer, the star's publicist said Sunday, April 19, 1998. She was 56. McCartney died on Friday at Santa Barbara, Calif., Geoff Baker said. Her husband and children were with her. (AP Photo/J. Glanvill)Β
Linda McCartney, wife of for Beatle Paul McCartney, passed away April 17, 1998. from breast cancer.
The early reports of her death said she died in Santa Barbara, California, but after reporters were unable to find a death certificate β public record in California β they turned to Tucson.
It took a while to get the truth. Death records are not public in Arizona. But the truth was eventually revealed.
From the Arizona Daily Star, April 23, 1998:
McCartney died in Tucson; locals kept site a secret
M. Scot Skinner
The Arizona Daily Star
Linda McCartney's family members cherished their privacy in Tucson, and locals helped them keep her death here a secret for almost a week.
An Arizona Cancer Center doctor signed the death certificate last week, and Pima County Medical Examiner Bruce O. Parks authorized her cremation, a local government official said last night.
The 56-year-old wife of Paul McCartney, a photographer and animal-rights activist, was diagnosed in 1995 with breast cancer, which spread to her liver.
While the media worldwide reported Monday morning that McCartney died while vacationing in Santa Barbara, Calif., officials and friends who knew she died here kept mum.
The director of the Arizona Cancer Center at the University of Arizona refused to comment yesterday.
"There are legal issues involved concerning patient privacy," said Dr. Sydney Salmon. "I really take offense at this type of thing. Patients are entitled to privacy, whoever they are."
Parks, who could not be reached for comment last night, on Tuesday declined to confirm or deny whether his office authorized McCartney's cremation.
The McCartney family spokesman said yesterday that Linda McCartney did not die in Santa Barbara, but in a location that was not disclosed so her family could return to England "in peace and in private."
"When Linda died last Friday with her family around her, it was in a place that was private to her and her family," publicist Geoff Baker said in a statement released to the British media.
"The family hopes that they can maintain this one private place that they have in the world."
That private place is the McCartneys' ranch in Tucson, sources said, where the McCartneys were staying since at least the weekend before her death. The McCartneys bought the eastside 151-acre ranch in 1979, more than a decade after Linda McCartney studied art history at the UA.
Half of her ashes were scattered at the Tucson ranch, a source close to the family confirmed, and the British press reported that her ashes also were brought to the family's farm southeast of London.
The McCartneys cherished their Tucson home because it afforded them a measure of privacy unknown to them in England, according to friends.
"They didn't want their sanctuary here to be desecrated," a family friend said.
However, when doubts began to surface about the Santa Barbara diversion, press attention turned to Tucson.
Yesterday, reporters from the United States and Great Britain began arriving here, looking for confirmation that McCartney had died in Tucson.
Producers with CNN said yesterday that the network would broadcast live from outside the McCartney property at 4 a.m. today.
Because death certificates are not public record in Arizona, officials would not publicly confirm or deny the existence of a death certificate.
The Pima County Attorney's Office on Tuesday was reviewing whether the county could legally verify if a death certificate had been filed here. However, yesterday the matter was turned over to State Registrar Renee Gaurdino, who would not release any information.
The Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department said yesterday that it was investigating why no death certificate had been filed for McCartney there. In California, death certificates are a public record.
"We would like nothing better than to call off this investigation," said Lt. Deborah Linden of the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department. "But we need official confirmation of the location of her death, and the family spokesman is not enough."
Santa Barbara was named as the place of death for the sake of the family, said Baker, the family's publicist.
"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," Baker said.
McCartney's Friday death was not reported until Sunday.
Arizona Daily Star reporter Jane Erikson and The Associated Press contributed to this story.
