Two days before his next court appearance in the dismemberment of his wife and his in-laws, the son of a once prominent Hollywood producer was found dead on Saturday at a Los Angeles jail, according to the authorities, who ruled the death a suicide.
The inmate, Samuel Haskell, 37, had been scheduled to return to court in Los Angeles on Monday morning for a preliminary hearing to determine if he should stand trial in the 2023 murders.
According to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, detectives from its homicide bureau were called on Saturday to the Twin Towers Correctional Facility to investigate the death of an inmate whom the agency identified as Mr. Haskell.
The Sheriff’s Department did not say how or when Mr. Haskell, the son of Sam Haskell III, an Emmy-winning film producer and veteran talent agent, had died.
But the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office confirmed on Monday that Mr. Haskell, who could have faced life in prison if convicted, had killed himself.
“Instead of standing before a judge and answering for the crimes he’s been charged with, the defendant managed to escape justice,” Nathan J. Hochman, the district attorney, said in a statement. “This is one last cruel act by someone who did the most horrific things for reasons we will never entirely know.”
A lawyer for Mr. Haskell, who had pleaded not guilty, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.
Prosecutors said that they had been preparing to present evidence on Monday that Mr. Haskell had murdered and dismembered his wife, Mei Li Haskell, 37; her mother, Yanxiang Wang, 64; and his wife’s stepfather Gaoshan Li, 71, in the Tarzana, Calif., home they all shared on or about Nov. 6, 2023.
The next day, Mr. Haskell paid $500 to several day laborers to haul away several heavy black plastic trash bags from his home, according to the district attorney’s office. When they looked inside one of them, they found human body parts, prompting them to return the bags and money to Mr. Haskell, whom they photographed — along with the bags — and reported to the police, prosectors said.
That same afternoon, investigators said, Mr. Haskell was seen in security camera footage removing a trash bag from the trunk of his Tesla and disposing of it in a dumpster in a parking lot in nearby Encino, Calif. A person sifting through the dumpster the next day found a beheaded torso, which the authorities said were the remains of Mr. Haskell’s wife.
Additional security footage showed Mr. Haskell transferring other trash bags to a rented S.U.V., where investigators found a loaded .357 revolver, 32 rounds of ammunition, a blood-encrusted military-style knife, a headlamp, a firearm sight and passports for Mr. Haskell, his wife and their three children, the police said.
The blood on the knife matched all three victims, according to prosecutors, who said that investigators also found trash bags at the family’s home containing bloody bedding, towels, a large machine saw, a machete and canes that belonged to Mr. Haskell’s in-laws.
When investigators searched Mr. Haskell’s phone, they discovered that he had been having an affair with a 27-year-old woman whom he had wanted to accompany him on a trip to Japan, prosecutors said. He bought a one-way ticket for himself before his arrest, the authorities said.
He was charged with three counts of murder, as well as the special circumstance allegation of multiple murders.
During an initial criminal proceeding in December 2023, Mr. Haskell appeared shirtless in court, wearing a smock intended to prevent inmates from using it to hang themselves. At the time, his lawyer told Fox News that the Sheriff’s Department had forced him to appear that way, creating speculation that Mr. Haskell might harm himself. The lawyer, Joe Weimortz, disputed that his client was a suicide risk.
Mr. Haskell’s father was an executive vice president at the William Morris Agency in the late 1990s. He had several A-list clients, including George Clooney, Ray Romano and Whoopi Goldberg.
As a producer, he oversaw a number of television pageant shows and several films and shows about Dolly Parton, including a 2019 Netflix series inspired by her songs.
He was also the longtime head of the Miss America Organization until 2017, when he resigned amid reports that he and other pageant leaders had made misogynistic and derogatory comments about the competition’s contestants.
Samuel Haskell’s mother, Mary Haskell, is an actress who has appeared in a host of television shows and movies beginning in the early 1990s. She also played a character in one of the episodes of the Dolly Parton Netflix series.
If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources. Go here for resources outside the United States.
Neil Vigdor covers breaking news for The Times, with a focus on politics.
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