Details of the past owner of a $15 million mansion have come to light after police uncovered a decades-old car buried in the back yard of the property - and are now searching for possible human remains inside.
Landscapers had been digging up the garden of the mysterious Silicon Valley mansion as part of a project when they uncovered the car four or five feet beneath the ground.
Investigating officers reckon that the car was buried in the backyard some time in the 1990s, and was filled with bags of concrete.
Things went from freaky to truly frightening when police confirmed that their sniffer dogs found a 'slight notification of human remains'.
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Now, local reports have confirmed that the man who once owned the California mansion had a pretty lengthy criminal history.
Johnny Bocktune Lew built the 12,000 square-foot mansion in 1990, and had been living there with his family until he sold it in 2014.
Lew, who died the year after he sold the property, had a history of murder and attempted murder charges, and spent six years behind bars before his conviction was overturned.
He had his first brush with murder charges back in the 1960s, when he was dating a woman named Karen Gervasi, who he had met in El Camino Junior College.
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About a year into their relationship, Karen died in Lew's apartment, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
The cause of death? A single gunshot wound.
Lew insisted that his girlfriend had accidentally shot herself while he was showing her his gun, but he was convicted of her murder and sentenced to prison.
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In 1968, he was released when California Supreme Court overturned his conviction due to evidence that should not have been allowed at trial.
But Lew wasn't in the clear for long.
In 1977, he spent another three years in jail for two counts of attempted murder.
A few decades later, Lew allegedly attempted insurance fraud, when he hired two people to sink his 56-foot yacht, worth $1.2 million, so he could cash in on his insurance.
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Unfortunately for Lew, he had actually hired undercover police to do the job. When they hid the yacht and told Lew they had sunk it, Lew reportedly payed them $30,000 in cash and $20,000 worth of gold watches.
When local reporters got in touch with Lew's daughter Jacq Searle this week, she said that she was genuinely shocked to learn that a car had been buried under the property she was raised in.
"I feel like all of us grew up with a certain amount of trauma in the household," she told the Chronicle.
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"My father definitely had emotional issues… this wouldn’t surprise me, just based on how sketchy my father was."
The current owners of the property bought it in 2020 for $15 million. Police are satisfied that they had no idea the car was buried on the property and confirmed that they're not under investigation.
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Ali Condon