Murder, thieves, and a $15m mansion: California police dug up a buried car and found themselves in a mystery

Homicide, insurance fraud, and a Chinese crime syndicate may all be tied to a buried car in one of California’s richest towns, Graig Graziosi writes

(AP)

It wouldn’t be shocking to see a Mercedes Benz convertible parked in the driveway of an Atherton, California, home.

A short drive to Palo Alto and San Francisco, where some of the most profitable tech companies on the planet reside, Atherton houses tech moguls who have an average household income that the US Census Bureau estimates to be more than $450,000. Surely these high-paid residents would want a car that would allow them to enjoy that California sunshine that they pay so much to enjoy.

But the Mercedes Benz convertible in this story was not found in a driveway or cruising along a California highway — it was found buried under five feet of dirt in the backyard of an Atherton mansion. It had been reported stolen in 1992.

Landscapers were tending to the rear grounds of the $15m mansion on Thursday when they made the curious discovery. Hidden not even a grave’s depth below the ground was a car. Odd as that may be, they were further perplexed to find the car had been weighed down with unused bags of concrete mix.

Local police were alerted to the find and descended on the mansion later that day. Officers brought cadaver sniffing dogs along on the inspection and the canines’ reactions indicated the possibility of finding human remains.

When it comes to cadaver sniffing dogs, "human remains" takes on a broad definition. A positive woof could indicate anything from a full corpse to the presence of bone, blood, vomit, or any combination of viscera and humour.

"They are going through a landscaping project, so it’s quite possible it could be 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 told CBS News.

Adding to the mire, police officials noted the dogs’ reaction was far from definitive. The dogs — whose noses detect scents at anywhere between 10,000 and 100,000 times that of humans’, according to the Florida State University Sensory Research Institute — barely registered possible remains.

A full excavation was necessary and scheduled for the following days. In the meantime, police ran the information they could pull from the vehicle and found that it had been reported stolen in 1992 in Palo Alto. This led them to the conclusion the car was likely buried sometime in the 1990s.

With a stolen car buried in the backyard of the mansion, police turned their attention to the homeowners. They quickly hit a dead end when police learned the owners only came into possession of the property after the car would have been buried.

They then examined the home’s previous owner and builder, who officials determined to be Johnny Bocktune Lew. Lew, unfortunately for police, was not available for questioning, as he died in 2015 at the age of 77.

However, his daughter, Jacq Searle, was able to offer some insights into her father to the San Francisco Chronicle that could shine some light on the mystery of the buried car.

Ms Searle said her family lived at the property in the 1990s when the car was surmised to have been buried. Her father had a history of arrests for murder, attempted murder and insurance fraud dating back to at least 1966.

That year, Lew was convicted of murdering a 21-year-old woman in Los Angeles County, for which he went to prison. He was released two years after the murder when the California Supreme Court reversed its decision, citing hearsay evidence leading to his conviction that should not have been included in the trial.

But that wasn’t the last time Lew would see the inside of a prison cell. A decade after the first murder, Lew was convicted on two counts of attempted murder, again in Los Angeles County, and spent three years in jail, between 1977 and 1980, as a result.

In 1999, Lew allegedly hired people to take a 56-foot, $1.2m yacht “out west of the Golden Gate Bridge into international waters and put it on the bottom," the Chronicle reports, offering the men $30,000 in cash and $20,000 in gold watches as payment.

Lew, who was raised in Hong Kong and claimed he had connections to the Chinese Triad organised crime group, reportedly told his would-be accomplices that if they ratted him out, he’d have them killed.

Unfortunately for Mr Lew, the men he thought he was hiring to sink the yacht were actually undercover California Department of Insurance agents, according to Recordnet.com. The agents took the yacht onto the water as though they were going to sink it, but brought the vessel back under the cover of night to place it in dry dock storage for evidence.

Lew was in China at the time the sinking was scheduled to occur so upon his return, he allegedly reported that the ship had been stolen to American Yachts Limited, which insured the craft, in an attempt to cash out on the loss.

"This is the largest single (fraudulent insurance claim) that I know of that’s been submitted," then-Deputy District Attorney Franklin Stephenson, said at the time, per Recordnet.com

He was arrested for the attempted crime, but it’s unclear if he was ever prosecuted.

San Mateo County District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe told the Chronicle that Lew had never been prosecuted for a crime in the county, and said the San Joaquin District Attorney’s Office handled the insurance fraud case.

The Independent has reached out to the San Joaquin District Attorney’s Office for comment.

With one insurance fraud case on the books, a murder, and two attempted murders, that brings us back to the car. Did — and if so why would — Lew bury a car?

Ms Searle could not answer that question, but told the Chronicle that Lew’s involvement "wouldn’t surprise me, just based on how sketchy my father was."

On Monday, two days after the car was successfully exhumed, police provided an update on the vehicle. No human remains were found. Police said the current occupants were not considered connected to the car beyond sharing a yard with the vehicle.

But was it connected to Lew? Investigators aren’t saying, at least not yet.

"We have heard that name come up, but we have not confirmed through our sources that he in fact owned that vehicle," Mr Larsen said, according to the Press Democrat.

For now, the mystery continues.