Jacqueline Falk, the adopted daughter of Peter Falk and Alyce Mayo, died by suicide Monday in a Los Angeles home at 60, according to the Los Angeles Medical Examiner’s Office.
TMZ was first to report the death on Wednesday. It was not clear whether Jacqueline Falk left a note.
Jacqueline Falk and her sister, Catherine, were adopted after Peter Falk and Mayo married in 1960. Jacqueline largely stayed out of the public eye, while Catherine later became a private investigator and pushed for legislation on familial visitation rights after becoming estranged from Peter Falk near the end of his life.
Peter Falk and Mayo were married until 1976. He married Shera Danese in 1977, and they remained together until his death in June 2011. Danese became his conservator in 2009 after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, and she frequently worked with him on “Columbo,” which premiered on NBC in 1971 after Lieutenant Columbo first appeared in the “Prescription: Murder” pilot movie three years earlier. The NBC run ended in 1978, and the ABC revival lasted from 1989 to 2003.
Falk’s headstone reads, “I’m not here. I’m home with Shera.” With Jacqueline Falk’s death, another branch of the actor’s family that long lived outside the spotlight has been pulled back into the painful public record that followed him after his death.