LAST October 21, 3:30 p.m. The Atherton Police Department held a press conference on Friday afternoon. Few new details have been released about the car which was filled with unused concrete bags and buried 4-5ft deep in the yard of a $15million home on Stockbridge Avenue.
The department reiterated that although the cadaver dogs “made slight notification of possible human remains,” no remains were found.
Dogs “could react to human remains, blood, old bones, vomit,” said Dan Larsen, public information officer for the Atherton Police Department. “It could be any of those things. At the moment we don’t know exactly what they react to.”
San Mateo Crime Lab technicians continue to search the vehicle, which has been identified as a Mercedes convertible. The car was buried with the roof down. Larsen said the excavation team had already accessed the vault; the space inside was mostly filled with the roof of the car and unused bags of cement. The focus is now on the passenger area, and the majority of it has been searched, he said.
“We don’t know if this is a criminal or non-criminal investigation,” Larsen said.
Police said the car had been buried on the property since the 1990s and was reported stolen to the Palo Alto Police Department in September 1992. Larsen said the owner has not yet been identified, but that he would be dead. Police requested records from the DMV.
The next update is expected on Monday.
Oct. 21, 2:40 p.m. Atherton Police Department published more details Friday afternoon on a car filled with bags of concrete and buried 4 to 5 feet deep in the yard of a $15 million home on Stockbridge Avenue.
Police said in a news release that the buried vehicle is a “Mercedes Benz and was reported stolen to the Palo Alto Police Department in September 1992.”
The owner is likely dead, police said, and the department is reviewing DMV records for more information.
At 11 a.m. today, the department recalled the dead dogs to the scene, where they “made a light notification of possible human remains,” police said. The dogs had made similar indications after the car was discovered by landscapers on Thursday.
Excavations at the scene continue Friday, and the department is expected to make another announcement at 3 p.m.
No human remains have been found at this point, the department said.
October 21, 8:35 a.m. Police are investigating why a car was filled with concrete bags and buried 4-5ft deep in the yard of a $15 million house in Silicon Valley.
Landscapers discovered the car while working Thursday morning at a home in Atherton, a wealthy enclave about 30 miles south of San Francisco, police said.
The Atherton Police Department said in a Press release that he responded to the report at 8:50 a.m. in the 300 block of Stockbridge Avenue.
Dead dogs were called to the scene. When the animals “made a slight notification of possible human remains,” technicians from the San Mateo Crime Lab were contacted to help search the vehicle, police said.
The department had not confirmed whether a body was discovered in the car Friday morning.
Police said they suspect someone buried the car in the ground in the 1990s before the current owner lived there. Large bags of unused concrete were stuffed into the car, they said.
The Atherton Police Department said the investigation is ongoing and the motive remains unknown. A spokesperson told SFGATE on Friday morning that there were no updates since the first report was released on Thursday afternoon.
Atherton, home to about 7,000 people, is one of the wealthiest cities in the United States with an average home valued at $7.7 million, according to Zillow. The home where the car was discovered last sold for $15 million in March 2020, according to red fin.