Car Found Buried in Yard of $15 Million Calif. Home Is a Mercedes Benz Convertible Reported Stolen in 1992
A mysterious car buried under the backyard of a multi-million-dollar home in Northern California has been identified as a Mercedes Benz that was reported stolen more than three decades ago.
Landscapers found the car buried four to five feet underground in the yard of the $15 million mansion in Atherton on Thursday morning.
According to the Atherton Police Department, the car — a convertible Mercedes Benz — was likely buried on the property sometime in the 1990s after it was reported as stolen to the Palo Alto Police Department in September 1992.
"The possible owner of the vehicle is believed to be deceased," the department said in a recent update. "We are waiting for DMV records that are being retrieved in the DMV archives."
Police said the vehicle was buried before the home's current owners moved in.
The department said unused bags of concrete were found "throughout the vehicle."
Though cadaver dogs called to the scene "made a slight notification of possible human remains," no remains have been found, police said.
"They are going through a landscaping project, so it's quite possible it could be a worker who got cut and dripped some blood on the ground. We just don't know what the dogs are reacting to until we discover it," Atherton Police Cmdr. Daniel Larsen said, per CBS News.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the mansion was built by Johnny Bocktune Lew in 1990, who lived there with his family until it was sold in 2014.
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Lew's daughter, Jacq Searle, told the Chronicle that she did not know about the car but said it didn't surprise her based on her father's troubled history.
"I feel like all of us grew up with a certain amount of trauma in the household," Searle told the outlet. "My father definitely had emotional issues … this wouldn't surprise me, just based on how sketchy my father was."
Lew was raised in Hong Kong, where he served as a police officer, before moving to the U.S. in 1959.
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He reportedly married his cousin in 1961, but just a few years later, he had an affair with Karen Gervasi, a student he met while studying at a community college near Los Angeles.
According to the Chronicle, Gervasi was fatally shot in Lew's apartment in 1965. Lew was later found guilty of the murder but had the conviction reversed in 1968, citing hearsay evidence.
Lew was convicted of two counts of attempted murder in 1977. In the 1990s, he was arrested for insurance fraud after approaching undercover officers to sink his $1.2 million yacht.
According to the Associated Press, Larsen said that police have heard Lew's name "come up" but have not confirmed that he owned the unearthed Mercedes.
The motive and circumstances surrounding the incident are still under investigation, police said on Monday.
