That Mercedes buried at a mansion? No human stays, however an attention-grabbing story

The thriller surrounding the burial of a stolen Mercedes-Benz subsequent to a California mansion deepened this week when it was realized that the person who constructed the home had an attention-grabbing legal historical past — serving time on homicide and tried homicide convictions.

In the meantime, police in Atherton, Calif., stated that no human stays or any suspicious proof was discovered within the white Mercedes convertible after it was excavated this previous weekend from a yard and transported to the San Mateo County Crime Lab for inspection.

Final Thursday, landscapers found the automobile buried about 5 ft underground and loaded with luggage of concrete. Police consider the automobile was buried at across the similar time it was reported stolen in Palo Alto in September 1992.

The mansion, valued at $15 million, was constructed by Johnny Lew, a person with a historical past of arrests for homicide, tried homicide and insurance coverage fraud, his daughter, Jacq Searle, instructed the San Francisco Chronicle.

Atherton Police Cmdr. Daniel Larsen instructed the Chronicle investigators had heard about Lew, “however we’ve not confirmed by way of our sources that he in actual fact owned” the Mercedes.

In 1966, Lew was discovered responsible of murdering a 21-year-old lady in Los Angeles County. He was launched from jail after the California Supreme Court docket reversed the conviction in 1968, citing rumour proof that ought to not have been allowed at trial, the Chronicle reported, citing courtroom information.

Data confirmed that in 1977, Lew was convicted of two counts of tried homicide, additionally in Los Angeles County, and spent three years in jail.

Within the late Nineties, Lew was arrested for insurance coverage fraud after he employed undercover cops to take a $1.2 million, 56-foot yacht “out west of the Golden Gate Bridge into worldwide waters and put it on the underside,” the Chronicle reported. The cops hid the boat and instructed Lew they’d sunk it. 

Searle stated she spent her childhood and teenage years visiting her father as he went out and in of jail. The one factor she stated that may trace to why he’d bury a automobile: “My father undoubtedly had emotional points … this wouldn’t shock me, simply primarily based on how sketchy my father was.”

The Lew household bought the property in 2014. Lew died in 2015.