When a neighbor heard that a Mercedes Benz was unearthed final week within the yard of a 12,000 square-foot Atherton mansion, and the previous proprietor had as soon as been caught up in an insurance coverage rip-off to sink his million-dollar yacht off the Golden Gate years earlier, she speculated that he buried the automotive for insurance coverage cash, too.
Seems, she could also be proper.
Not solely did Johnny Bocktune Lew, a person with a nefarious previous of homicide and fraud earlier than he died in 2015, report the automotive stolen in 1992 from the Stanford Buying Heart, however he collected $87,000 from insurance coverage for it, San Mateo County District Lawyer Steve Wagstaffe stated Monday. The convertible Mercedes Benz was almost new, he stated.
However that also doesn’t clarify why cadaver canines continued to choose up on the scent of human blood or bones over the weekend after the Mercedes was towed away from the almost two-acre property on Stockbridge Avenue. Investigators discovered no indicators of human stays whereas excavating the automotive buried with the highest down and loaded with luggage of cement. So what’s behind the scent?
“It’s going to be very disappointing if our investigators someway don’t provide you with a solution right here. The crime lab goes to be key,” Wagstaffe instructed the Bay Space Information Group.
The case of the buried Mercedes has all the weather of a real crime novel, Wagstaffe stated. “This guide has 15 chapters in it and we’ve solely received two chapters. I don’t know if we’re ever going to get the opposite chapters, however I positive hope we do as a result of it's an attention-grabbing story.”
When panorama crews first struck the buried Mercedes final Thursday whereas doing work for the house’s new house owners, the invention made worldwide information, drew throngs of reporters in addition to curious neighbors shocked that one thing so intriguing and presumably dastardly would occur behind the excessive partitions that line so many Atherton streets and conceal so many mansions. That is the tony city the place the tech elite and sports activities legends elevate their households and host charitable occasions, in any case.
After crews towed the automotive away on Saturday and used “floor penetrating radar” to look at beneath the 5-foot gap on Sunday, they nonetheless didn’t discover something. However cadaver canines continued to hit on the odor of human stays all through the weekend.
The shortage of a physique doesn’t imply there wasn’t against the law, Wagstaffe stated. “For all I do know, he may need killed someone and disposed of the physique. However why wouldn’t you then do away with the automotive elsewhere? It’s unusual.”
Wagstaffe stated he had obtained emails over the weekend suggesting Atherton police and county investigators hand over on the case.
Lew offered the property in 2014 and died within the state of Washington in 2015. He was 77, and had not been concerned with legislation enforcement since his sunken yacht scheme failed within the late Nineteen Nineties, Wagstaffe stated.
“The man’s useless. There’s nothing to it, transfer on,” Wagstaffe stated the emails steered. “I ignored them.”
Whereas one cadaver canine would possibly make a mistake, “with a number of canines, it appears uncommon,” he stated. “So I’m wanting ahead to seeing in the event that they discover any hint DNA or blood or something like that across the automotive or with the concrete that’s in there.”
Apart from, he stated, the straightforward story of insurance coverage fraud doesn’t add up.
The Mercedes was not more than a yr or so outdated when Lew reported it stolen in 1992, Wagstaffe stated. If he collected from insurance coverage the quantity he paid for it, “what have you ever gained?” he requested.
“That is not sensible to me by any means, except he someway bought it with one thing phony,” he stated.
Lew bought the almost two-acre flag lot with the newly-built French-style mansion simply off Stockbridge Avenue in 1990, stated Nancy Goldcamp, an agent with Coldwell Banker who instructed the Bay Space Information Group on Monday that she first listed the house in January 1990 for $3.9 million.
She remembers Johnny Lew and his spouse visiting an open home, however they didn’t purchase it till after her itemizing had expired. The couple purchased it instantly from the builder later that yr, she stated.
“It wasn’t landscaped hardly in any respect,” Goldcamp stated. “I feel it perhaps had a patio.”
A neighbor stated that she had complained about “all that digging” happening on the property. The property modified arms twice extra, most not too long ago promoting for $15 million in 2020. The brand new house owners are constructing a granny unit and re-landscaping the yard, which led to the subterranean discovery.
By the point Lew purchased the home in 1990, he had already served time behind bars for homicide.
Within the Nineteen Sixties, Lew was convicted of second diploma homicide within the taking pictures loss of life of his girlfriend in Los Angeles – a conviction that was overturned after issues surfaced with proof. Within the Seventies, he served a brief sentence on two counts of tried homicide, and in 1999 was charged with insurance coverage fraud after paying what turned out to be undercover brokers $50,000 in money and jewellery to sink his yacht. At the moment, based on court docket paperwork on the time, he stated he was related to a mob and had threatened to kill anybody who revealed his plot.
Is it any marvel that authorities are reluctant to surrender on the investigation?
For a county that's usually shadowed by greater information tales in San Francisco and Santa Clara counties, San Mateo has handled 4 circumstances this yr which have drawn nationwide consideration.
In February, boxing legend Mike Tyson punched out a fellow passenger on a flight that landed at San Francisco Worldwide Airport. In September, a person was arrested in San Carlos for beheading his girlfriend with a samurai sword, and later that month, the district lawyer’s workplace declined to file legal prices in a case involving a Woodside man upset that he didn’t obtain the Batmobile he had ordered for greater than $200,000.
Now, the thriller of the buried Mercedes.
“We might not have the crime like the opposite counties round us,” Wagstaffe stated. “However we’ll outdo them each day of the week in bizarre circumstances.”