A Facebook engineer and his family were shocked to find buried car during the renovations of their $15 million home in Atherton, California, a suburb of San Francisco.
Police investigating the strange find have been alerted to the possible presence of human remains by cadaver dogs, making the finding a potential crime scene, according to KNTV.
The vehicle was discovered 4 to 5 feet underground, according to a news release from Atherton police, who said the car had “unused bags of concrete throughout the vehicle.”
The discovery occurred on Thursday morning, according to the report.
The initial investigation has determined that the car has been there since the 1990s, well before the current owners.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported Friday that the property’s former owner, whom they identified as Johnny Bocktune Lew, had a “colorful history of arrests for murder and insurance fraud.” Lew was convicted in 1977 of two counts of attempted murder, and had been convicted of murder in a 1966 case that was later overturned, the Chronicle reported.
The newspaper quoted Lew’s daughter, Jacq Searle, as saying of Thursday’s discovery, “this wouldn’t surprise me, just based on how sketchy my father was.” She said her father died in 2015.
The Daily Mail said the current owners of the home are Paul Saab, a Facebook software engineer, and his wife, Christal Condon Saab, an angel investor.
The Saabs bought the 12,000-square-foot home, which sits on a 1.6-acre lot, in 2020. They had no idea the car was there.
The Daily Mail reported that the car is registered to a previous owner of the home.
The Lew family lived at the sprawling mansion from 1990 to 2014, the Daily Mail reported.
Commander Dan Larsen of the Atherton Police provided some details on the findings and the possibility of this becoming a criminal investigation.
“Cadaver dogs were called to the scene. The cadaver dogs made a slight notification of possible human remains,” Commander Larsen, said according to KNTV.
Atherton residents were both shocked and intrigued by the mystery of the car.
“It’s kind of strange,” said Atherton resident Peter Sun. “But usually, it’s pretty safe and it’s like everyone is kind of doing their own thing,” he stated to KNTV.
Resident Athena Ogawa took a more curious tone about the situation. “It’s a mystery in my own neighborhood … it’s strange, but it was really fascinating to see this all this happening. I just want to see how this plays out.”
The town of Atherton is one of the richest zip codes in the country; it has the highest per-capita income of any town with a population between 2,500 to 9,999 people, according to the Daily Mail.
The town has been, and is, currently the home of many famous individuals, including NBA star Steph Curry, late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, and former Fleetwood Mac frontman Lindsey Buckingham.
The neighborhood’s proximity to the Silicon Valley region has made it a major draw for wealthy tech workers and entrepreneurs.
