The Case of the Buried Ferrari Dino 246

How did a Ferrari Dino 246 end up buried in an L.A. backyard? Where did it come from, and why did it end up rotting beneath the Earth? In this episode, Scott and Ben investigate the mysterious case of the buried Dino.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car Stuff from house stuff Works dot com. I welcome
to car Stuff. I'm Scott, did you are do? We
are as always joined by our super producer Noel Brown,
and often on this show, Scott, we talked about digging
deeper into a topic. Very clever, be very clever segue.

(00:24):
Sometimes they're not they're not quite as smooth a lot
of the time, but you and you make note of that,
usually say oh, as way of an excellent segue, and
then you go into something completely non sequitur. But that
one actually worked. That was pretty good. And this is
something that I think we've talked about this in the past,
but only it's just a very brief mention passing yeah, really,
I mean we we um. We got a listener suggestion

(00:46):
that long ago from a listener named Seawan F. And
Sean wrote in I was in June of sen so
very recent for us anyways, and said, um, you know
you usually we wait like a year before we we
actually fulfill any of these requests we have, but here
we are. We have a wide margin of error since
the time. I feel like I have to come clean

(01:07):
every time you say that, like that's fast for us.
It's really fast. Okay. So anyway, Shaun writes in and says, Hi, guys,
I've recently, uh, I've recently discovered the podcast and I
can't get enough of it. Well, thank you a nice compliment. Um,
I didn't see this in the list of topics, so
I was wondering if you guys ever did a show
about the Ferrari dino that was found buried in a
yard in Los Angeles in eight. I came across the

(01:29):
story a while back, and it's pretty fascinating. Thanks a lot,
Sean and Sean. I think that I kind of just
mentioned this in passing, but I think we did give
us a quick mention in maybe in at least in
one other podcast, maybe in a couple of other podcasts, right,
we have we have earlier shows on amazing barn finds
and cars that were lost and recovered. Yeah. Also there's

(01:52):
the and I have a feeling we mentioned it in
the Miss Belvidere story. Remember the buried Plymouth Belvidere story
from back in November where they did kind of a
time capsule thing with the car in Tulsa, Oklahoma that
didn't turn out so well. That was a two part
episode and I have a feeling we mentioned it in there,
but if not there, I'm pretty darn sure that we
mentioned it. In the case of Sandra West and the

(02:13):
Ferrari coffin, Now, that was one that happened right around
the same time as this story. So that's gonna intertwine
with this tale that we're about to spin today or
about to tell today. Uh. And we did that episode
back in March, and that was that was a young
widow of socialite. She was like thirty seven years old,
um and oil oil heiress, I believe, and she died

(02:35):
of an over a drug overdose and wanted to be
buried in her was it a Ferrari California or something.
It was like a special edition Ferrari Blue one and
it made worldwide news. Really, but that was back in
nineteen seventy seven. What we're about to talk about today
really came to light in about nineteen seventy eight, and
it's something that Gelopnik has dug into. Uh. Well, actually

(02:55):
the ones who really cracked this whole thing wide open
because it was it was out of the news for
a long long time. Let's see the best I guess
one of the best ways to start this story would
be to cast our our memory back to the seventies. Yeah,
but before we do that, we we do want to

(03:16):
say that while some of the information we're exploring today
may have been in this earlier podcasts. Uh, the only
reason we know the dates of those podcasts are because
we had them written down. Those were our wild days,
you guys, Scott and I were like the Rolling Stones. Yeah,
we were covering a little bit of everything, kind of

(03:37):
playing it fast and loose, you know, with the topics. So, uh,
it's kind of a grab bag of stuff from magnet. Right.
But but but this story, um, you know, one quick
thing before we even start here, I think we better
give a little bit more credit to Dlopping for what
they've done here, because there was some major investigative work
that went on behind the scenes to make this whole
thing happen, and they wrote a couple of pretty good articles.
And I'll tell you how this kind of comes about

(03:59):
least online anyways, most everybody probably if if you followed
gelopniic and you know the blogs and everything, you probably
read this back when it was first written, um the
about in two thousand twelve. Around January, the title was
the true story of how a Ferrari ended up buried
in someone's yard. And then just a few months later,
in August of the same year twelve right, uh, they

(04:21):
they wrote another article that says, we solve the mystery
of how Ferrari ended up burying someone's yard. So there
was a lot of digging that went on after that,
and that's all because of some phone calls that happened.
There were some really interesting things that went on, and
they even included a well, actually there's a there's a
video online YouTube video that I recommend you watch after
you listen to this podcast. It's it was on gel

(04:42):
Opnick on Drive, and uh, it's just really the tale
of how this all happened. It's it's an easy, you know,
keyword search and you'll find it the buried Ferrari Dino
or something like that. You'll you'll find it very very interesting.
You get to see all the players involved and really, uh,
how all this this worked out, and you get to
see the Ferrari itself and some of the photographs and
things which we can't do here on this podcast, which

(05:04):
I wish we could, but you get to see some
of them. I don't know the work of the I'll
call them the resurrection men that brought this thing back.
And yeah, you know, like the restoration, working mechanics and
all that. But man, what an interesting story. And again
it starts. It starts really in nineteen seventy four with
the purchase of a Ferrari Dino out in the l
A l A area, right, a dino to six g

(05:25):
t s specifically, and it was picked up by a
plumber as a gift for his wife. And and we'll
get to that in just a moment here, but it
really is. So here's the kind of the story that
goes along with this, and and I'll correct some of
this as we go and you'll understand when we get
to like the second part. Right, So, in February of
nineteen seventy eight, a Ferrari Dino two s gt S,

(05:46):
as you said, Ben, was found in the backyard of
an l A County home. Now, as I mentioned just
at the at the head of this podcast, this is
only about one year after the Sandra West burial in
nineteen seventy seven. That happened in May of nineteen seventy seven.
So right, Uh, this really get a lot of attention
because that's what course was in the news. Now they
found a buried Ferrari dino in the backyard of of

(06:08):
some someone in l A. Inexplicably. Yeah, so it's like,
what's with a couple of people burying ferraris that you
know all over the place. What's it? What's this is
really weird? So the story was a story that we
heard from the l A Times, was that a couple
of kids that were just kind of digging around in
the backyard they found what they thought to be the
roof of a car. They scratched something, they found it,
they kind of dug it up a little bit, found
that it was more substantial than just a piece of

(06:31):
metal that was there. It was something big and it
was it was green metallic. They didn't know what it was,
but they flagged down a passing sheriff's cruiser car and
the guy came back to investigate and decided that, yeah,
there's there's something here that's worth looking at. I'm gonna
come back with some detectives and we'll see what's up. Right.
This was at eleven thirty seven West hud nineteenth Street
in the West Athens section of l a. So they

(06:55):
got a team of guys together. They rounded up a
posse of a Scott calls the resurrection, and this was
the first wave, I guess the ones who actually dug
it up. Yeah, they had shovels um. The detectives who
came where Joe Sappas and Lenny Carroll, and they also
had a skip loader with them. And you can read
the l A Times article that that you're mentioning earlier, Scott,

(07:17):
where in the journalist initially describes the cars in surprisingly
good condition. Yeah, exactly right. And the estimated value they
said was right around eighteen thousand dollars in Now, if
you extrapolate that, that's something like sixty six thousand, three
hundred dollars. So it's a it's a lot of money.
I did the inflation calculator. Um, I would be willing

(07:39):
to bet that it's probably worth more than that at
this point. Not just it's not just a straight calculation.
There's also the appreciation for you know, the type of vehicle,
is the limited number that are left, etcetera. You know,
special editions, all that stuff. Because this was a special
edition car, we find out it had the flares and
chairs option, which is a factory option, and the flares
and chairs option, which is kind of a strange way

(08:00):
to very thing to call this, I guess, included fender
flares and special factory wheels and also Daytona seats that
you would have had to have ordered a Daytona model
to get. But this was an upgradest part of just
this one package, and very few of those were made.
So a lot of unique items on this vehicle that
make it very distinguishable. And they also found the serial
number and the license plate was still attached, and this

(08:22):
was key to their investigation because when they found the
license plate they were able to track it to a
purchase in October of nineteen seventy four by a fellow
named Rosendo Cruz of Alahambra. Now that's the l a
plumber that I told you about who purchased this as
a gift birthday gift, I believe, for his wife. And

(08:43):
this is so bad, this is really really dirty, Okay,
So he purchases this for his wife in October of
that year. Right, they drive it about It wasn't five
and one miles or something like that that was on
the dometer um in December on in fact, on December seven,
that very year of nineteen seve for cruise. UH makes
arrangements to have this thing stolen. While they're at dinner.

(09:06):
They're gonna go to the Brown Derby, gonna have you know,
some martinis and and uh and dinner or whatever, and
he arranges to have this thing stolen. He's got a
whole back story for us. So just three months later,
um again he's he's like trying to pull an insurance scam.
So you know, it's like buying the big gift and
then getting all the money back for the gift. And
I think I think the initial purchase price was something
like two dollars or something like that. It's a little

(09:27):
bit more than that maybe, but um, the thing is
like So here's the question, though, how did the car
end up in this backyard of this l a home.
Because if the plan was to steal it the well,
the initial plan probably would have been to you know,
chop it up, you know, get rid of the all
identify i'll identifying um plates and you know, serial numbers,
things like that. But none of that had happened to

(09:48):
this car. The most that they had done was they
had torched out the I guess the logo on the back,
you know, the where it said Dino g T or
GTS or something like that. There's a um a script
tag on the back that they they cut out with
a torch. But that was it. They left the license
plates in place. They left um they left the the

(10:09):
identification number that they didn't scratch the ven. Yeah, the
ven was there. Uh what a strange thing. Huh. So
so there's something else up with this, and and and
not only that. How did it end up underground? I mean,
you think it'd be like station, we had a garage
somewhere or something, or you know, well hidden. Get this, folks.
The of course, the detectives asked the tenants of the
house and the neighbors of that house if they noticed

(10:31):
anything unusual back in nineteen seventy four. The tenants were
no help. They said, hey, look, officers, we've only been
here for three months. And the neighbors said, uh, I
don't remember anything odd happening back in nineteen seventy four.
But that's the tricky thing with memory that happens in
the course of investigations. I mean, very few people will

(10:52):
actually be able to recall what happened. You know, this
time last year. Yeah, well I wonder because I mean,
someone's burying a ferrari in their backyard. That's a little
different than maybe, you know, somebody who you know, Oh yeah,
I think they maybe, um, you know, we're out there
chopping wood on that day in December of nineties. You know,
I'm not sure exactly what happened there, but that's that's

(11:14):
a that's a huge thing to see happening. And it
seems like it would take longer than um, you know,
an hour or two. It seems like it's a huge project.
Now was I don't think it was an empty pool
or anything like that. It wasn't like something where it
was gonna be filled in any ways. The neighbors just
kind of expected that to happen. I think it was
just a whole And the detectives didn't by the neighbor's
story either. They thought that was weird. Yeah, like maybe

(11:36):
they were covering something off or they just didn't want
to snitch or something. Maybe that was the deal. Maybe
that was. But but the thing is, the question is
like whoever, whoever buried it, they found certain things that
were there were a little bit inconsistent with the the
story that was being or the uh, the story that
had played out in their head. You know that this
is gonna be an insurance scam or whatever. But because
they had placed rugs over the top of it, they

(11:59):
had six cheating plastic sheeting inside. They had stuffed towels
into the vents to keep the worms from crawling in. UH.
They had covered certain key areas of the vehicle to
try to maybe preserve it a bit well as underground.
I know, it's a funny thing to think of, but
you know, because it's just being buried with dirt. It's
not in case in anything, it's not um in a
shell of any kind. This was just simply buried. They

(12:19):
just put dirt all around it. And uh. And there
were other problems later that will tell you about. It's
really stupid, stupid thieves. That's always the case, isn't it.
It's always okay. So they didn't have any kind of
leads at all at this time. And actually what had happened,
I guess was they decided that um years before you
in nineteen seventy four. So this is, you know, four

(12:40):
years later, they're finding the car in nineteen In nineteen
seventy four, Uh, the insurance company, which is Farmers Insurance Group,
had decided that it was what they called a righteous theft,
you know, that something had just simply happened. You know,
they got the story from the original owner. There's no
way to track or find out where the vehicle had gone.
They investigated, but couldn't find the vehicle, and they paid
off the loss of twenty two thousand five dollars to

(13:02):
the Dino's legal owner, which was at the time the
Hollywood branch of the Bank of America. So I guess
the current owner or the owner at that point then
once they cut that check would be uh, the Farmer's
Insurance Group. Okay, So so they have the car, right
and uh and they want to recoup their loss. Well, yeah,
that's right. And of course, you know, the story, of
course is as we said, it's drawing press because of

(13:23):
the recent Sandra West burial story. But that kind of
fizzled that again. But there was some some kind of
like play back and forth between the two stories, and
you know, like what's with all the Verry ferraris that
kind of thing, and a lot of jokes and things
that were going on with you know, like, uh, I'm
interested in that Ferrari dug up and or I'm interested
that Ferrari and then they'll say like I'll see what
I can dig up on the thing, like you know,

(13:44):
talgue and cheek that stuff that's happened. So but there
are a lot of requests for information about this thing
because a lot of people wanted to buy it, you know,
sight unseen. They just heard that there's a Ferrari dino
that was you know, unearthed, and it could be worth something,
could not be you know, they didn't know the condition
or anything like that. But there's there's more to tell
about that story anyways. Um. Yeah, we also see some

(14:06):
great investigative work by other journalists. A guy named Greg
Sharp writing for autoweek. Yeah, and that happens a lot
later later later in nineteen six that someone from autoweek,
you said to Greg Sharp was writing wrote something about
the dino and mentioned some stuff about like it's pre
burial life, you know, like what had happened to it before.

(14:27):
And he told the whole thing about you know, where
it went to. There were ten vehicles that were sold
to a certain dealership in the San Francisco Bay area,
and you know how how it had been sold I
guess and who it went to and what had happened,
But it was still left with kind of a mystery, right, Um,
they knew that, you know, it had been sold for
five hundred dollars to this plumber as a birthday present
for his wife. And then they drove a five five

(14:49):
one miles and then the story of the you know,
the the I guess the theft, you know, the evening
of the theft and what had happened, and and then
the story that the guy gave you. And we didn't
really say this at all, but the story is that
he was going and he had this well planned out, uh,
you know the plumber cruise did He said that he
was going to drive up to the brown derby on
Wilshire Boulevard and then he was going to hand the

(15:11):
keys off to the valet. But then he got a
like he said, he said, he was gonna say that
he saw a gleam in the eye of the valets
as he was handing the key over, and he decided
against handing the keys to these guys because he didn't
know what would happen to it. So he parked it
out on Wilshire Boulevard. On his own. He just self
part and then when he came out from dinner, lo
and behold the cars gone poof. Yeah, so that's what happened.

(15:32):
So then he didn't have to have anybody, you know, Uh,
he didn't have to frame anybody. I guess, you know
what I need the valets, I guess for taking it.
And it seemed like we worked out, okay, I guess,
because he ended up was sort of okay. He ended
up you know, with his jack, you know, paying off
the debt for his righteous that for the righteous that
I guess, and the thieves whoever they were, got away
scott free and sharp is also the person who gives

(15:56):
a more realistic look at the state of the Bary Dino,
because surprisingly good condition for a Barry car does not
in any way mean drivable or safe. Uh. If we
can just take a closer look at some of the
damage of this car. So at twenty one layers of paint,

(16:17):
they have white pox on them. There was rust throughout
the body and it had spread almost everywhere, and it
was there was also rot inside the leather interior. So
get this, Scott, speaking of goons, these thieves stuffed towels
in the windows. Smart, Yeah, in the vents, right, yeah,

(16:40):
in the windows, vents, any any area where something going. Sure,
but that only works if you remember to roll the
windows all the way up. Boy, So they left the
windows down, so the interior was completely open to the well,
I guess underground burial area. You know, like all the moisture,
all the dirt, all the sex, everything else would get

(17:01):
in there. Man, what a mess. Like I said earlier, right,
I was alluding to this earlier. Just stupid thieves. Yeah.
And this was discovered by a guy named Tom Underwood
I believe, right, was that his name? Uh, hang on
a second, Tom, Yeah, he was an insurance investigator, right,
because he was was interested. He thought, well, you know
it's reporters being in this condition, but I'm gonna go
really check this thing out and see what kind of

(17:22):
condition is in So as you said, uh, not in
good shape. And there's not only that, but you know,
the the engine and of course the exhaust were completely
plugged solid with mud um. Also, you know, just hauling
it out of there with a chain with this what
they called a skid loader or something, a skip loader.
Hauling it out with the chain had done a lot
of body damage to the thing as well. Um, there

(17:42):
were there were scratch marks and gouges and uh, you know,
the windshield was smashed. There's just all kinds of problems.
So it's really in poor, poor condition. And Tom, it
was Tom Underwood's um assessment that unless this car would
shipped back to the factory, this thing was never going
to see the road ever. Again. It was really unrestorable.
There's just no way to do it. It's it was
beyond repair because there's a little bit of archaeological recovery

(18:05):
that goes into this kind of thing. When you're exhuming
or disentering any any sophisticated mechanical device, you have to
be very careful because the odds are that you could
destroy it trying to retrieve it. And and this poor
Dino man, it took some damage just on the way

(18:28):
out as well. Well. Sure, yeah, And so with this
report in hand, you know this this uh, this Tom
Underwood report in hand, Farmers Insurance had a plan because
they had so many calls to purchase the car, and
they thought that, you know, this is gonna be a
big pr part crisis for us. We're gonna have a
lot of issues if you know, it's where we said
initially are The initial reports were that it's in good
shape and a lot of people are offering a lot

(18:48):
of money. So they thought, well, we need to put
this on public display so people can get an idea
of what they're buying, because they might lower their bids
a bit, you know, we don't want to gouge anybody
for something, you know, and ended up being the bad guy.
So Underwood has an idea. He puts the car on
public display and they take it to a warehouse, a
private warehouse in Pasadena, and it stays there for two weeks.

(19:09):
But the problem was anybody that was invited to view it,
who could, you know, then submit a sealed bid. Um
apparently was allowed to really look this thing over, and
they took just about everything off the vehicle that was
you know, loose, that wasn't bolted down, including the dipstick. Yeah,
so this is a lot like um. Sometimes the cars

(19:30):
auto shows suffer this as well. People will steal shift knobs,
they'll steal cigarette lighters, you know, covers to any kind
of area. You know, it's the craziest stuff comes missing
on auto show cars. It's the same way. So they're
they're they're they're looking at this this car is to
be auctioned off, and they're stealing all the stuff from it.
So when they get it back, it's in worse condition
than ever. I mean, it's missing now, a bunch of pieces, um,

(19:53):
you know, pieces that they can easily, you know, put
in their pocket and carry away. I guess, nothing huge really. Um, anyways,
it comes back, we're us than ever before. And eventually
they get it down to the point where there's a
high bid that's reached between somewhere between five and nine
thousand dollars. They didn't really say. And then it was made.
It was it was made the property of a very
young mechanic who had his own garage out in Burbank Burbank, California,

(20:16):
I'm sorry, in San Fernando Valley on Burbank Boulevard. And um,
I guess he apparently got the thing to start finally,
and it must have been a talented mechanic. Well, well learn,
we'll learn more about this guy later, but it's a
talented mechanic. But they do say that in this story, Uh,
they got it to start, and uh, and that's the
end of the story. No one really knows much more
about it than that, because the dino at this point

(20:39):
of this story, you know, in February of uh at
that point in the story, no one really knew where
this thing ended up because it was unlisted on any
kind of dino registry, and no one had really heard
about it. You know, no one had really bothered to
investigate what happened to it, even though they knew it
had some vanity plates that were pretty unusual. Yes, any

(21:00):
plates read dug up. Yeah, you would think you would
put that together. Right, here's a green metallic green for
our dino with a license plate dug up in that
area because it never left the area. You think somebody
would have put that together, but no one did get
a custom package on it too. Now, and well, here's
the thing to put the cap stone on this story.
So this talented mechanic does labor of love, puts a

(21:24):
new alternator distributor, and that's when he gets it to start.
And then what happens the cylinder ring stick. So as
of that time in two thousand twelve, the story is over. Yeah,
that's it. So it's just it disappears because I think
the guy also closed up a shop and move somewhere
else's you know as well. So, uh, you know, it's
just it's an intriguing story, of course, you know, because

(21:46):
the car disappears, and we love stories like that where
it's worth out there somewhere but no one knows where.
And here's a restored Dino, you know, because it has
been restored at least somewhat as far as we know,
right and uh, and that was it. But they dug
a little bit deep or then you know, the gelotnic.
So Mike Spinelli, the guy that wrote this article, he
was I think the editor in chief at the time.
Of great work, Mike, if you're listening, Yeah, very good

(22:08):
work on this, because he dug around, made some phone
calls and there were some uh you know, incorrect names
and original articles things like that. He really pieced together
quite a bit here. Pretty impressive, but he gotta He
also did get a phone call from one of the
investigators on the case, I believe, um well, actually he
spoke with the dino's current owner, and uh, you know,
also one of the investigators in the case, one of

(22:29):
the original guys from the case. So this guy, as
he said, you know, I was there, I was when
I was the one who went down to the hole
and made sure that there were no corpses or no
contraband in the car, because that was one of the
initial fears, was that this was probably someone trying to
hide a body, right, which reminds me of one of
my favorite yet darker podcasts that we covered, which was

(22:52):
about all the cars that are found when water recedes
in lakes across the US. Wasn't there there was something
in in in the Houston area recently they were finding
via sonar I believe it was. They were finding dozens
and dozens and dozens, if not, you know, hundreds of
vehicles that had been sunk in these levies outside of Houston.

(23:14):
And I think it was Houston. I have to have
to double check that, but they said, oh, but yeah,
it was Houston. They found like a hundred hundred seven
cars out in the bio when they used sonar to
try to to try to fix it. Yeah, but the
problem was they didn't know if they had enough money
to search every one of these vehicles because it would
take a huge effort. Yeah, it's like, uh, well, they're

(23:37):
still raising funding, but they have four dk and wasn't
enough isn't that crazy. So, I mean, they're trying to
read license plates, but I bet a lot of those
are missing because this is clearly insurance type stuff. But
they're they're wondering maybe there would be some bodies in
these vehicles, and maybe there would be some contraband it
was it wasn't just a I don't think all those
are gonna be cases simply of a vehicle theft, you know,

(23:58):
of just stolen cars. Actually not, I don't think so.
I have a bad feeling you're gonna find some really
awful stuff there. But they're to find somebodies, tell homicides, accidents.
You're probably right, Yeah, you're probably right. So I think
time will tell in that story. But we'll we'll kind
of keep an eye on that one, right, Yeah, this
is this is reminded me that, yeah, this is a
tame one in comparison. So so Mike Svanilli is tracking

(24:21):
down these leads, and he's learning that some of the
names were initially incorrect. For instance, the detective he talks
to is actually named Dennis Carroll, but in the Times
he's referred to as Lenny, which led to I guess
a career long nickname for him of Lenny from that
point forward, right, even though his name was you know, Denny,

(24:44):
but it was just miss you know, misrepresented in the
in the newspaper article. And you know how guys are
on the office are so um. I don't know, to
be called Lenny is not terrible, but I guess if
it's not your name, it's kind of like, you know
what they're That's exactly what they did with the Denny's
restaurant commercials, remember, Yeah, don't you remember? It was always
they were always saying, uh, you know, the real name
is Denny's. Of course, Denny's Restaurants, and the joke was

(25:06):
that they would call it Lenny's. Do you remember those
those old commercials. Yeah, it was just I don't know
why that struck me just now, but it did. It's
weird because I'm missing a piece of I realized a
missing piece of fundamentally American culture. You know. I was
out west recently in California, and what struck me, man,
which I didn't realize before, was that there are Burgery

(25:28):
King's and Denny's everywhere. You can't walk down the street
without tripping over a Denny's. Yeah, and they're they're fairly
rare sight here. I don't even know if we have
them in Georgia. Now I think, yeah, interesting, Okay, well, anyways,
there's there's old commercials where Denny's and Lenny's are mistaken.
But that reminded me exactly of this. So okay, so
here's the here's the scoop after So so we get
the second article from Gelatinic and and it's kind of

(25:51):
like it says, we solved the mystery, but this is
this is what really happened. Now. I find this fascinating
cause right in the very beginning, there was a white
lie told. And the white lie was that when they
were unearthing this car back in uh an l a
Times reporter was kind of poking around, you know, like
what's going on. We know there's their unearthened car back there.
What's happening And the police said, well, they did tell

(26:12):
him what kind of vehicle, of course, but uh they
you know, just said, oh yeah, a couple of kids
digging around the backyard found it, and that was that
was what happened. That's what we told you right early
part of the podcast initial report. That's not what happened
at all. Apparently there was a snitch involved, and the
snitch pointed out that house instead. If you dig in
the backyard, you're gonna find a Ferrari Dino. And so

(26:33):
the kid they made up the story just to kind
of throw the reporter off track, just to kind of
give him a little bit of breathing room on the
story because they didn't know what was going to happen
with it yet. So the snitch um took them right
to that, to that spot. Um, where was it in? Uh?
You said it was in It was in Los Angeles County,
but I can't remember exactly where. Um. But they found
this car exactly as this guy would describe they would

(26:55):
find and it was in fact on the l A
p D stolen less. So the guy said, you know,
I know this as part of an insurance scam, and
here's where you're gonna find it. Um. So they got
away with the insurance scam because the whole thing was
paid off, as we said back in. So here's the thing.
Although Mike is able to track down the retired detective
Dennis Carroll, he reaches out to him an email and says,

(27:18):
I'm hunting this down. Carol initially doesn't want to speak
to him at all. He has retired. He's seventy four
at the time, and Mike learns that Dennis Carroll doesn't
want to talk to him because he believes that this
journalist has been in touch with the car's original owner. Yeah, Cruiz.
He thinks he's talked to Cruz. And of course, if

(27:40):
Cruise finds out that they're learning all the details about
this insurance scam that he pulled back in the seventies,
that he's gonna be in trouble. He's gonna serve jail
time for this. So that's what that's what the investigator
was fearful of. And he said, and Mike Spinelli said,
no, no no, no, I've talked to you the current owner already.
I've already pieced that together over the last several months.
And so then, of course, you know, the investigator then

(28:01):
opens up and says, and that's when he tells him
about the snitch and how it wasn't the kids that
were involved in all that, so that that's all brand
new information. And I guess he tells them the initial
the uh, the real plan as well. Now that the
initial plan was that the guys would chop up the Dino,
as we said earlier, fence the parts and then sink
the rest somewhere off the coast. And then Cruis was
supposed to get a check from the farm's insurance company,

(28:22):
just like he did, and then he would give, you know,
the guys that did this their cut of the the
insurance scam money, and then everybody would be happy, you know,
a few few thousand dollars richer I guess in the end,
and everything would be fine. And it kind of worked
out that way, except the guys, the bad guys, when
it came down to time to destroy the vehicle and
give rid of the evidence, they found that they couldn't

(28:43):
get rid of it. They could They thought that it
was too beautiful or too special of a vehicle to
just simply destroy it or you know, sink it off
the coast somewhere as they were told to do. And
they tried to hide this thing. They tried to uh
preserve it, as we said earlier, in a way that
they could come back for it later, which is this
is crazy, I mean, and they never did. They never
came back for it, so it was just left there

(29:04):
for all these years, and that snitch knew about it.
And I don't know how that happens, but I I
envisioned Ben that they they're sharing a cell. You know,
they've they've done something on some petty crime, right, and
they're sharing a Yeah. Or maybe they're you know, like
talking to each other with like holding the mirror out
of the bars, like looking over in the other cell
next to him, and they're they're talking to the next guy,
whispering at night, you know, like what had happened. They're
flying and kite. Yeah that's right, Yeah, that's that's possible. Yeah,

(29:29):
that's like passive messages between the cells. Yeah, exactly. So
I've got all these like, you know, very detective book
ideas in my head about what's going on. But it's
probably a lot less glamorous than than that. Not that
that's glamorous, but it could have also been. Uh. The
problem is that weird not probably not going to learn

(29:53):
the motives of the snitch. No, probably never. I mean
we probably won't ever. I'm sure that he was cut
some kind of deal in order to give them this
information or or whatever. He just you know, the the
the lead kind of is as so weird. You know,
what if he was arrested for something else and he said, uh,
and he used it as a bargain each ship. Well,
that's likely what happened. I mean, I'm thinking that's probably

(30:13):
more likely than than the scenario that I just played
out for it that you know, it's a it's a
jailhouse whisper at midnight or something. You know, it's not
it's not usually that way, but sometimes it is jailhouse whispers. Well,
you know they that sounds like the title or something. Well,
I don't know if I want to go down to that. Yeah,
what kind of what kind of literature you reading? All right?

(30:35):
So alright, so anyways, it does. It does actually happen
to hear about people that talk in jail and then
they are given some kind of deal in order to
rat out the other individual. And that happens often. There's
a lot of snitches in jail. So if you ever there,
keep your mouth shut about whatever you've done in the past.
That's my advice. Sor right. So what happens is that,
you know, the guys that are are supposed to, you know,

(30:57):
chop this thing up and destroy it and get rid
of the whole thing. All they really did as they
cut out that badge that we mentioned before. It was
kind of a souvenir. Maybe they said, like they called
it in this lapping article, and maybe a claim check,
like they're gonna come back for it. This is the
matching piece, right to prove that it's mine. And uh,
and then they never ever came backward. They said it
might have been like an old mechanics pit, or I
had mentioned that it could have been a dry pool,

(31:17):
but I don't think it was because they never mentioned
anything about that in the articles or or anything. But
they did keep a few details quiet. I don't know
just where they were digging it. It was right next
to the house though, so probably not. It just seemed
like it was maybe a patch of yard. So when
the real story was finally told, you know, this is
like May of May of two thousand twelve, so you
know a few months after the initial article, just before

(31:39):
the last article from glatning Um, Mike Spinelli went out
to Los Angeles to do some interviews with these people,
and that's when we get all this. Uh this video
that's in the YouTube video, it's really kind of they
laid out really well. It's it's it's an interesting piece.
It's only about twenty minutes long. I think you should
definitely watch it. But um, this guy Dennis Carroll, who
is now retired and seventy four, It does some pretty

(32:00):
good sit down interviews with him, and that he was
kind of laughing because he almost didn't even remember about
this car, you know, and when they first asked about it. Right,
There's a great statistic here, which is, at the time
that the detectives were working on this, an average of
three thousand cars were stolen in Los Angeles each month. Yeah,
and not only that, this guy says that, you know,

(32:21):
I've been on the force for thirty four years. I
had a thirty four year career with the you know,
with l A, with l A. And he says, I've
seen every single ride in Los Angeles. And he said,
you know, there are murders and arsons and robberies and
drug felonies and everything. He said, a buried car is
sort of like you know, a cat in a tree.
It just doesn't mean a whole lot in the in
the grand scheme of things, when you know, I've got

(32:43):
all this other stuff going on, some bigger issues. Unless
there is a body or something inside of it, Yeah,
then it might stick out in his head. But he said,
you know, I vaguely remember this story, and I'm sure
he had to research it just a little bit to
remember what was going on. But he said, what I
do remember about that thing, and this is probably what
after the memory alive for him, was that he said
he got so many phone calls about that vehicle. He said,

(33:05):
it seemed like everybody and their mother wanted that car.
That's a weird expression to by the way, doesn't it
is it usually everybody and their brother car? He said,
everybody and their mother wanted that car. There's go everywhere
you could pull inting family relations with Scott, everybody in
their second cousin. I guess other things work out there anyways.
So here's the big question. Yeah, what happened to the cover? Okay?

(33:29):
So the real deal is that, um, you know, okay,
this is the way it comes from the current owner
and the guy's name is Brad Howard, and Brad Howard
says that Gelatnank got most of the story right, but
not everything. It's one crucial thing that was wrong. He
said that in nineteen sent four, I'm sorry, the the

(33:50):
to the nineteen Dino was registered to him almost immediately
after it was found, so in was it was registered him.
So it wasn't like owned by this mechanic, and it
wasn't lost a time or anything from the right from
the get go, almost it was owned by Brad Howard,
and not exactly right from the beginning, because the way
um this all piece together was that you know, of

(34:10):
course Farmers Insurance sold a car to UM somebody who
who bid the high bid? I guess they said between
what five and nine thousand dollars and that was Los
Angeles businessman named Era Manugian. Yeah, And so Brad Howard
was going doing a real estate deal with Aura Manugian,

(34:31):
and while they were in the course of the steal,
Howard overheard and talking to this mechanic he had just
hired about the Dino. But howard spider sense made him think, oh,
this guy doesn't actually want this car. Yeah, they were
arguing about it and the condition of the vehicle, and
you know, saying like well, you know they're talking about
the poor condition of the vehicle and how it was

(34:51):
difficult to get it started. So he hears all, you know,
what's going on, but he's interested because he you know,
he's a he's a young single guy in l A.
He's a he's a real estate mogul. He wants to
get something going there for himself. He wants to buy
this vehicle. He knew about the Dino. Would you rate
the great vehicle? I think I stopped making it at
seventy four. I believe so was the last year. Um,
but he knew. He wanted to make an offer for
the car, and he did. He made He said, you know,

(35:12):
I'll buy that car from you, but only if you
can get it running. And so Manugian has it at
this shop that's owned by a guy, a Ferrari expert
as a matter of fact, name Giuseppe camp who I'm
gonna talk with. The little last name Giuseppe cape longa
nice maybe these people have some great names. So he
gets this guy and says, look what I need to

(35:34):
to go all in on this engine. I need you
to give it the attention that you can, if it's possible,
restore it. M M yeah. So it transfers over to
Brad Howard, the current owner. As as Manudian had, you know,
deal with it, made the deal with him. I suppose, uh,
you know, he honored that deal since it was running
and uh and and I guess, um, well, Howard had

(35:56):
this guy, this this Ferrari expert Giuseppe go through the
whole thing. You know, he did the engine work that
you mentioned before with you know, some of the unseen
issues you know that he handled, so it was running
like a top by the end. But he also had
him do the full body restoration, I mean everything, you know,
replacing metal where the Dino badge had been, replacing interior
components and yeah, all that stuff that had to be replaced.

(36:19):
But it's it's original you know, factory equipment because you
could still get that stuff at that time. Um, you know,
he he was able to save the wheels. I think
he had to buy a set from you know, three
of them from somewhere else or something that there's there's
more information in the in the video that that that
is not in this article. But um, he did a
complete restoration on this thing. And I'll tell you it's
it's on the road right now. Um. He almost immediately

(36:42):
got the vanity plates that said dug up, as you
mentioned earlier in the podcast, been and has had them
on there ever since. But a couple of things. It's
for one it's a beautiful car's spectacular vehicle. I mean,
it really is pretty. It's a it's a nice color,
it has a beautiful interior, it's spotless. You'd never ever guess,
other than those license plates, that this is the car

(37:03):
that was buried under under you know, and under someone's
backyard for four years in Los Angeles. Yeah, because that
is a terrible, terrible thing to do with the car.
We've seen repeated instances of someone trying to enter a
car and just how quickly nature will take that thing
from us. Uh, even if there's a time capsule. Remember

(37:26):
we looked at time capsules. It seems like, okay, well
we'll seal a car in some concrete room. What could
go wrong? The answer is everything. Yeah, there could be
a water main leak which fills the evern but that,
you know, I want to give that that story away.
I mean, there's a lot more to it than that.
But here's there's one good thing for this vehicle. And
around that time, around you know, the nineteen even, uh,

(37:49):
there was a drought in Los Angeles and that helped
preserve this car to a level that it wouldn't have
been otherwise. You know, if they got their normal amount
of rain, this car would have been probably a complete loss.
But this car was sort of saved by the drought.
And you know, interesting point of reference here, a point
of that time reference, I guess is that, uh, they
said that this was right around the time when um,

(38:11):
all the Los Angeles ski crews were you know, starting
to do like their swimming pool skating, you know, when
because no one had the the water to fill their pools.
So there are a lot of empty pools all over
Los Angeles, all over the West coast. And that's when
that whole thing that that really took off, when people
decided that, you know that, you know, we're not using
this for swimming this summer, let's do something else with it.
And it really led to the whole skateboard culture out

(38:35):
in the West coast. But yeah, yeah, I'm sure Dogtown
and all those guys. Anyway, So the other thing is that,
and you'll learn this by watching the video, is that
it escaped about four years of Los Angeles small and
pollution that it otherwise would have endured. Now I know
that's funny to say, like, well, yeah, but it's underground
and it's still you know, it's it's probably far worse underground,

(38:57):
not necessarily the case. And the reason that they say
that is that apparently when you compare it to other
dinos of the same era, you know, same location in
which they're they're a bunch of them out there on
the West Coast. I guess, um, the effects of poor
air quality on on these vehicles, you know, like the
places that you can see in places that you can't see,
you know, whether it's smog and you know, whatever's floating

(39:17):
around the air. I don't know if it's like an
acid rain or whatever that that hurts the finish. Um,
this car is in a remarkably good shape for the
era that it's from. I know that it's got a restoration.
I know it got new paint and all that, and
we we had no idea how much that all costs. Yeah, well,
that car, that car, the paint that you see on
it right now was put on there in it's in
unbelievable shapes. So now the guy keeps it in a

(39:38):
garage and undercover, I would guess, uh, so it's rarely
subjected to anything, you know, outside of the garage environment.
But it does. It makes just shows and things. But um,
it has been said that you know, this thing skipped
some of the worst years of Los Angeles. Uh, you know,
small pollution problem in the mid to late nineteen seventies.
So there's another benefit. And it's it's strange to think

(40:00):
about it that way, but you know that. You know,
of course it's underground and dealing with all the other stuff,
you know, the moisture and the bugs and all that.
But um, in some way it escaped some of the damage,
maybe some of the small pocketing that happens or something
like that. So what do we learn from this, yeah,
astonishing journey of his car. First we learned that crime

(40:24):
may appear to pay. I'll bet you want to say that, really,
but it doesn't. Initial reports will have you believe that
crime pays. But the wheels of justice, as is so
often said, grind slow but exceedingly fine. And uh you
can tell just by the way that Dennis Carroll was

(40:44):
not going to communicate with this guy because the case
was still possible, possibly um in a state where it
could be resolved. What's interesting we don't really get in
this in this article, at least, we don't really get
the complete wrap up. We don't really know what the Cruise. Yeah,
exactly did he ever pay for this or what is
he is? He has he passed away? Is he gone?

(41:05):
I mean so that he can't can't pay for this
crime anymore? Or is it that uh, you know, maybe
there's a statute of limitations on this thing or something
like that. But they never found the guys that actually
took the car. They never found who buried the car.
Um It's kind of it's still kind of an open
interesting case to me. I mean, I'd like to find
out more about it. I wonder if there'll ever be
a book written about this. Yeah, one of Cruise's was

(41:27):
somebody claiming to be one of Cruiz's children responded in
that article. If you check out the comments, and they said,
I'm the I'm the child of the original purchaser or
send a Cruise And I don't know if they followed up,
but Mike gave them his email address, so I would

(41:48):
be very interested to hear what, you know, what came
next with that. Yeah, we didn't hear any of that.
I I didn't read down far enough in the comments
to to get that, But I wonder what happened like that.
They didn't they didn't even allude to anything like their
their father is no longer around, or you'll never you'll
never find him or something like that. Ye interesting, that's strange.
So yeah, I just thought this was a fascinating story,

(42:10):
and so did so did Sean FF apparently and who
wrote in and wanted to hear more about it. Hopefully,
um listeners will dig a little bit further into this
by watching that twenty minute video because there's more information
there and you get to see it in action. You
get to see the car and you know the twisty
roads out and you know the hills of l A
but pretty fascinating. You get to see the characters involved,
you get to hear the engine run a lot of

(42:31):
driving shots. It's it's really it's pretty fascinating. So so
check it out if you get a chance. Yeah, it
will go ahead and post it on our Facebook and
Twitter that you so that you can check it out
just by visiting us. There we're car stuff. Hs w
at both of those. Man, I'm killing it with the
smooth segways today, so work thanks. Uh. We still have

(42:53):
to do another show though, so we can't go out
and search for a buried automotive as you're just yet.
You however, can and if you have a story about
an amazing barn find or you have a story about
another uh automotive. Lazarus were funny story. By the way,

(43:13):
My I think I don't remember if we talked about
this on air, but we definitely did off air. So
my father has this for a long time. He had
this reputation when he just loved beater cars, cars that
were just not that great, and become very attached to him.
And will Win Kia first started producing the Sepia, he

(43:35):
bought one and he drove that thing into the ground
and my mom, no, Mom, I I hope I'm not
misrepresenting if you're listening to this. She hated it, and uh,
they had they had a really weird conversation when he said,
like he liked this car so much that when the
engine went to put he got a refurbished engine, put

(43:59):
it in and and and changed the cars named the Lazarus.
Oh my gosh. Not many people would put an engine
back in that vehicle, a new engine. I know, I know,
well it was. It's like it's like refilling a big lighter,
you know, That's what it seems like, don't you know?
You're reminded me when in this in this Ferrari story, Yeah,
in the in the in the video, the mechanic that

(44:21):
eventually went through the whole engine. He he referred to
Manugian as and he was, you know, kind of been
broken English, but he said, he is how you say,
very economical, you know, I thought it was a good
way to put it, like he's cheap. Yeah, And if
you want to, if you want to check out the
other shows that we mentioned in the course of this podcast,

(44:43):
you can find every single episode of our program at
our website car stuff show dot com. Back to the
stories that you have about finding buried cars or cars
hidden barns. This is an excite a thing to us
because you never know when something amazing will pop up.

(45:04):
They can find buried audio treasure. Yeah, yeah, our website, Yes, yes,
you're doing it. I don't know. I thought it was
pretty good. Yeah, I'll work on it. So we want
to hear your stories while we're working on our segway
then our next episode. We'll be back next week. In
the meantime, if you have a tale of astonishing automotive recovery,

(45:27):
we'd love to hear from you. You can email us directly.
We are car stuff at how stuff work dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics is
how stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think,
send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com.