Jacqueline Falk, daughter of the late “Columbo” star Peter Falk, died Monday by suicide, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner. She was 60.
Jackie Falk died at her Los Angeles residence, the department’s website said. The case is still listed as open.
The Times was unable to obtain further information about Jackie Falk’s death Wednesday as the medical examiner’s public information office was closed because of staffing issues.
Peter Falk was 83 when he died at his Beverly Hills home in June 2011.
He and first wife Alyce Mayo married in 1960 and later adopted sisters Jackie and Catherine. The college sweethearts divorced in 1976, but according to Catherine — who was around 5 when her parents split — they remained “best friends.”
“I remember watching my mom and dad laugh and tell stories about their college years,” she told Closer magazine in 2023. “It was nice as a teenager to experience that.”
Peter Falk would bring both her and her older sister Jackie to movie premieres and set visits, and loved to take them ice skating, Catherine Falk said.
In 1977, he married actor Shera Danese, who he met while making the 1976 movie “Mikey and Nicky.”
“He saw me walking down the street, and that was it,” Danese told The Times in 1991. She said with a giggle that at 15 years or so into their marriage, “I tell him what to do.” Danese has not acted in film or TV since the year before Peter Falk’s death, according to IMDb.
The family story grew complicated when Catherine Falk alleged that Danese hindered access to their father.
After what she said was an expensive legal battle to gain visitation late in her father’s life, Catherine Falk has a website dedicated to the passage of laws to guarantee a new spouse can’t prevent children from a previous marriage from visiting an incapacitated parent. She said on the site that her dad maintained a 30-year loving relationship with her and Jackie despite alleged interference from his new wife.
In 2009, after petitioning the court to have her ailing father placed under a conservatorship, Catherine was permitted to visit Peter Falk, who was suffering from dementia. Danese was named the “Columbo” actor’s conservator. Jackie, who did not join the court fight to have access to her father, was not able to visit him during the three years before his death, the Catherine Falk Foundation website said.
The women found out about their father’s death via media accounts, the website said.
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