More questions emerge after car is discovered buried in backyard of Bay Area mansion

Landscapers found a car buried in the backyard of a $15-million mansion in the Bay Area city of Atherton on Thursday, prompting a police investigation and raising questions about the estate’s previous and long-deceased owner and his violent past.

The car was discovered 4 to 5 feet deep in the ground behind the home in the 300 block of Stockbridge Avenue, police said. Unused bags of concrete were found inside.

Cadaver dogs were brought in to scour the scene and “made a slight notification of possible human remains,” police said. But so far no remains have been found.

In a news release, the Atherton Police Department said the car may have been buried sometime in the 1990s, before the current owner occupied the home. Authorities did not give a description of the car or its condition.

New information from the estate’s neighbors revealed a dark and complicated history of the previous owner’s past and piqued their curiosity about the car.

Neighbors told the Mercury News that the mansion’s previous owner, Johnny Bocktune Lew, had a history of violence. Court documents revealed Lew, who died years ago, was convicted of second-degree murder in the 1960s in Los Angeles in the fatal shooting of his ex-girlfriend, Karen Gervasi. He was later convicted on two counts of attempted murder in the 1970s, but details in that case were not readily available.

In the 1990s, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Lew was arrested again, this time for insurance fraud after he attempted to hire people — who later turned out to be undercover agents — to sink his $1.2-million twin-engine yacht off the Golden Gate, claiming it belonged to an Asian crime mob.

One anonymous neighbor, who has lived near the estate since the 1970s, told the Mercury News that the area of the yard where the buried car was discovered used to be open land with a stable atop a small hill. When Lew began construction of the French-style mansion, he dug out the hill, which prompted complaints from residents, according to the neighbor. But residents remain unsure whether the timeline fits when the car was buried.

A short drive from Silicon Valley, Atherton is one of the country’s most well-heeled towns, with a population of roughly 7,000 people and a median income above $250,000, according to U.S. census data.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported Friday that Zillow records showed the 12,000-square-foot home was purchased by the current owners in 2020 for $15 million, and was sold previously in 2014.