No Foul Play Found in Newspaper Heiress’ Death

Newspaper heiress Margaret Lesher’s marriage to a man 27 years her junior was on the rocks before she drowned in an Arizona lake, two friends said Wednesday after an investigation found no foul play in her death.

Lesher, 65, drowned May 14 at a lake near Phoenix while on a trip with her husband, 38-year-old buffalo trainer Collin “T.C.” Thorstenson.

A seven-week investigation found no evidence of foul play in Lesher’s death, said Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. He said Thorstenson was not a suspect from the start.

Arpaio noted the couple’s age difference, the length of their marriage and Lesher’s wealth--an estimated $200 million from the sale of her late husband Dean Lesher’s newspaper empire to Knight-Ridder in 1995.

“Granted those facts caused lots of suspicion,” Arpaio said in a news release. “But it’s time for us to put those suspicions aside. [Lesher] drowned accidentally.”

But Jeff Kosta, Lesher’s personal assistant, and Marsha Adams, a neighbor, said they remained uncertain whether the drowning was an accident.

“She wasn’t happy,” Adams said. “She said on her birthday [May 4] that the marriage was a mistake.”

Nevertheless, sheriff’s investigator Capt. Tim Dorn said witnesses described her as happily married. Her husband had little to gain financially if she died, he said.

Lesher drowned while the couple were on a camping trip at Bartlett Lake, a reservoir not far from their Scottsdale home.