Why no one noticed the death "is a question that we have," said Beverly Hills Police Lt. Gary Gilmond, noting that officers were finally alerted only because Schlessinger had not been seen recently.
Police said Friday that they found Yolanda Schlessinger's body Monday afternoon when officers responded to a request for a check on her welfare.
The victim had been dead "for a substantial period of time," Gilmond said.
The coroner's office said an autopsy Wednesday did not immediately reveal the cause of death, and that more tests will be conducted.
Gilmond said, however, that police "have sufficient information from the coroner that we are handling it as a homicide at this time."
The case presents detectives with difficulties because so much time has passed, Gilmond said.
Laura Schlessinger, 55, has long been one of talk radio's biggest stars, internationally syndicated since 1994. In September 1997, Jacor Communications Inc. paid a then-record $71.5 million to buy the show from Synergy Broadcasting Inc.
Although not a professionally trained psychotherapist, "Dr. Laura" (she has a doctorate in physiology) specializes in a sort of tough-love approach to counseling. The Dr. Laura Schlessinger Show began in 1990 on KFI in Los Angeles and is now heard on more than 300 stations worldwide.
With her stern morality and emphasis on traditional family values, Schlessinger has long been the darling of conservatives and religious conservatives -- called "a positive voice for positive values without equal in our time" by the Rev. Robert Schuller.
But Schlessinger's popularity has waned somewhat in recent years. She angered supporters of gay rights several years ago by calling homosexuality "a biological error."
Afterward, she issued a statement saying that she was sorry for causing hurt, but did not retract the substance of the remark.
A syndicated television talk show, "Dr. Laura," was canceled in 2001 after one season, and Schlessinger blamed an advertising boycott encouraged by gay rights groups.
She has publicly acknowledged on numerous occasions that she has been estranged from her mother, who she said was "Sophia Loren-like," since sometime in the mid-1980s.
Her early family life in Brooklyn was troubled, Laura Schlessinger has said.
She has said her parents fought constantly, and her father was physically and emotionally abusive. "I have a background that would curl your hair," she said in a 1998 interview with The Times.
