Coretta Scott King died at an alternative-treatment facility in Mexico run by an American with a criminal record and a history of trouble with medical authorities.

King died at Hospital Santa Monica, a beachfront "holistic health center" 16 miles south of San Diego in Baja California, Mexico, a hospital spokesman said. The hospital was founded in 1983 by Kurt W. Donsbach, a chiropractor and naturopath who employs a "very eclectic approach to the treatment of chronic degenerative disease, diseases by and large considered incurable by the orthodox medical profession," the hospital's Web site says. Donsbach founded a similar hospital in Poland.

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Donsbach, who does not have a medical degree, has faced charges several times in the United States, according to news accounts in California, court records and reports by patient advocacy groups. Regulators have challenged his credentials and the validity of his treatments for cancer and other terminal diseases.

He pleaded guilty in 1996 in California to federal charges of introducing unapproved drugs in interstate commerce and tax evasion, court records show. He admitted to smuggling unapproved medicines into the United States, and agreed to pay more than $150,000 in back taxes.

He was sentenced to one year and one day in prison. But, he never served time in prison, records show.

In 1985, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ordered Donsbach to stop marketing an unapproved drug called orachel, according to a 1990 article in The San Diego Business Journal. In another case, he agreed to stop selling products made from hydrogen peroxide that he claimed to be effective in treating cancer and arthritis, the newspaper reported.

In 1990, Oregon officials charged that Donsbach had obtained a naturopathy license after submitting a fraudulent diploma, the Business Journal reported. On his Web site, Donsbach cites a degree from the Hollywood College of Naturopathic Medicine.

Why and when King went to Donsbach's facility is not clear.

But Lynn Cothren, her former special assistant for 23 years, said today that homeopathic medicine was "something Mrs. King believed in."

"She was pure vegetarian," Cothren told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "She ate raw food for the past couple of years."

Since King became ill recently, she began eating cooked food again, he said.

"She really tried to take care of herself," he said. "She tried to treat various problems, as she got older, with [the homeopathic] method."

King began visiting alternative-health spas about 15 years ago, Cothren said.

"She went once a year," he said.

Though she usually waited until January, after the King holiday, to visit the spa, she did not wait this year. Instead, she spent the Christmas holidays at a Florida spa.

It is not known whether King had visited Donsbach's facility before.

His biographical material says Donsbach "led the way" in developing therapeutic uses of hydrogen peroxide and ozone. He founded his own school — Donsbach University — that offered mail-order nutrition degrees.