Convict owned Silicon Valley mansion where buried car was found

The man who once owned the $15 million Silicon Valley mansion where landscapers discovered a buried car that smells of human remains spent years in prison on murder charges, a report said.

Johnny Bocktune Lew lived at the Stockbridge Avenue estate in the exclusive Atherton neighborhood from sometime in the 1990s — which is when police believe the vehicle was filled with unused concrete bags and buried 4 to 5 feet below the dirt — through 2014, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Cadaver dogs alerted to possible human remains inside the car, though none have been discovered yet.

Lew, who died in 2015, has a long criminal history and spent six years in prison for murder and attempted murder charges. His murder conviction was eventually overturned.

While studying at El Camino Junior College in Los Angeles County in 1964, Lew met fellow student Karen Gervasi. They began seeing one another, though Lew was still married to a cousin he tied the knot with three years earlier.

The next year, Gervasi died from a single gunshot wound at Lew’s apartment. He alleged she accidentally shot herself while he was showing her a gun he used at firing ranges. But he was convicted of her murder.

Lew was sentenced to prison until the California Supreme Court reversed the conviction in 1968, citing hearsay evidence that should not have been allowed at trial, the Chronicle reported.

It was not the only time Lew was accused of trying to end someone’s life.

Lew spent three years in prison after he was convicted on two counts of attempted murder charges in 1977.

In 1999, Lew allegedly attempted to commit insurance fraud by sinking his $1.2 million yacht, but made the mistake of hiring undercover cops to carry out the job, an archived San Francisco Chronicle article states.

Lew, who was 62 at the time, allegedly gave officers $50,000 in exchange for taking his 56-foot twin-engine yacht, the “Norwel,” “out west of the Golden Gate Bridge into international waters and put it on the bottom,” the old report says.

Police hid the yacht and told Lew they had sunk it. The accused scammer paid them $30,000 in cash and $20,000 worth of gold watches before reporting the massive boat stolen.

Lew’s daughter, Jacq Searle, 34, told the Chronicle she was shocked to learn about the car buried beneath the home she once lived in with her father, who she says he built the mansion.

“I feel like all of us grew up with a certain amount of trauma in the household,” said Searle. “My father definitely had emotional issues … this wouldn’t surprise me, just based on how sketchy my father was.”

Searle told the outlet she spent her childhood and teenage years visiting her father going in and out of prison and spent her adult years trying to “get over” the pain and dysfunction of her family life.

The Lew family sold the property in 2014 for $7.3 million, according to property records. The current owners, who are not under suspicion, bought it in 2020 for $15 million.

Police have released little information about the discovered vehicle, and have not yet revealed any suspects.