Julianne Rolle, a 39 year-old former Fox News producer, was found dead at the bottom of a 100-foot cliff last weekend in her hometown of Rancho Palos Verdes, California. Authorities now say she jumped to her death.

The local paper, The Daily Breeze, says Rolle's mother died two months ago, and she was "devastated."

Based on investigators' interviews with family members, the doctor ruled her death a suicide because she was severely depressed and because of where her body was found.

"When you go to these locations, you don't go for the view," [the coroner] said, of the 100-foot-high cliff where Rolle reportedly jumped off.

Rolle's father said that she had joined Fox News in New York as a producer after graduating from UCLA, and "traveled through Europe and worked as a bureau chief in Iraq, covering the war." We can't find any further information about her employment online, however. We've emailed Fox News for confirmation and we'll update if we hear more.

UPDATE: Fox News spokesman Brian Lewis tells us that Rolle was a staff field producer in the NY bureau, from May of 1997 to July of 2005. He says that she was "definitely not a Bureau Chief."

UPDATE 2: A friend of Rolle's writes us: "Her tenure at FNC did in fact include two different 'tours of duty' in Iraq. She volunteered to go and while perhaps not carrying the title, "Bureau Chief" she WAS the senior person working in the bureau calling the shots. Good to see how much Fox appreciates their former employees who risk their lives to feed their machine."

[via TV Newser]