Johnny Bocktune Lew: Killings, Insurance Fraud, and a Buried Mercedes

Johnny Bocktune Lew was a former Hong Kong police officer who built a multimillion-dollar life in California while leaving behind a trail of violence and fraud: he fatally shot two young women in separate incidents five years apart, fled the country for six years before being caught in Canada, orchestrated a $1.2 million yacht insurance scam from his Atherton mansion in 1999, and buried a Mercedes-Benz convertible in his backyard that landscapers would not uncover until 2022, seven years after his death.

Who He Was

Lew grew up in Hong Kong and served several years on the local police force before immigrating to the United States in 1959.¹ In 1961 he married his cousin, Marguerite, in South Carolina, and by about 1963 the couple had settled in Los Angeles.² He studied police science at El Camino Junior College and later attended California State College in Long Beach, telling jurors at his 1965 murder trial that he was preparing to apply to the FBI. At various points he used the alias “John Reads.”

The Killing of Karen Gervasi (1965)

On December 14, 1965, Lew’s 21-year-old classmate and mistress, Karen Gervasi, was fatally shot in his Los Angeles apartment. She died during surgery from a single gunshot wound to the left temple.¹ Lew testified that the two had been handling a .32 caliber Savage automatic pistol when it discharged accidentally.

Prosecutors argued otherwise. The weapon required nine pounds of trigger pressure, a paraffin test found nitrate deposits on Lew’s left hand but none on Gervasi’s, and before the shooting Lew had placed his financial papers and the titles to a car, boat, and trailer into an envelope addressed to his wife. Multiple witnesses testified that Gervasi had said Lew threatened to kill her and had once displayed a firearm during a parking-lot confrontation. The affair had grown volatile after Lew’s wife discovered it and after Gervasi falsely claimed to be pregnant with his child, something the autopsy later disproved.

A jury convicted Lew of second-degree murder and the trial court sentenced him to state prison. The California Court of Appeal affirmed, but the California Supreme Court later reversed the judgment, finding that the hearsay testimony about Gervasi’s fear of Lew was inadmissible and irrelevant given that his defense was accidental discharge rather than self-defense.³ The autopsy surgeon himself could not rule out accidental death. Lew served roughly three years before the conviction was overturned.²

The Killing of Marsha Dwyer and the Six-Year Manhunt

Fourteen months after the Supreme Court threw out his conviction, Lew shot two more people.⁴ On February 3, 1970, at the Lew family home in the Westchester neighborhood of Los Angeles, he killed his 18-year-old girlfriend Marsha Dwyer, a UCLA freshman, and shot her father Leslie Dwyer in the chest, wounding him. Marsha’s 15-year-old brother ran out the back door to a neighbor’s house to call police.⁵

Lew fled to Hong Kong, setting off a nationwide manhunt that ran from Hawaii to Baltimore. He lived under the name “John Reads” for six years until May 1976, when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police identified and arrested him at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg.² In 1977 he was convicted in connection with the shootings and sentenced to five years to life. He served about three years. Reports describe the conviction variously as murder and attempted murder or as two counts of attempted murder; what is consistent is that he killed Marsha and wounded her father.⁶

The Atherton Mansion

How Lew financed what came next is not explained by any available record. In 1990 he built a 12,000-square-foot mansion at 351 Stockbridge Avenue in Atherton, California, on a 1.63-acre lot held through a family trust.⁶ His daughter, Jacq Searle, later told the San Francisco Chronicle that she and her siblings “grew up with a certain amount of trauma in the household,” spending parts of their childhood visiting their father in prison. The Lew family sold the estate in 2014 for $7.3 million.

The Yacht Insurance Fraud

In July 1999, still living at the Atherton mansion, Lew tried to recruit people he thought were criminals to sink his 56-foot yacht, a 1997 Viking Sport Cruiser named the Norwel valued at $1.2 million and docked at the Redwood City Marina.⁷ He offered $50,000 to have the boat taken past the Golden Gate Bridge and scuttled so he could collect on the insurance. The people he approached were undercover investigators with the California Department of Insurance.

In August 1999 the investigators staged the yacht’s disappearance by towing it to dry dock while Lew was traveling in China. On his return, he paid the undercover agent $30,000 in cash and gold watches, reported the yacht stolen to the Redwood City Police Department, and filed a claim with American Yachts Ltd.⁸ Along the way he boasted of ties to an Asian organized-crime group he called the “Triad,” claimed the yacht belonged to the group, and threatened to kill anyone who exposed the scheme.⁹ No evidence has surfaced that those claims were anything more than bluster.

Lew was arrested on October 1, 1999, and booked into San Mateo County Jail without bail. Deputy District Attorney Franklin Stephenson called it “the largest single fraudulent insurance claim that I know of that’s been submitted.”⁷ With two prior felony convictions, Lew faced a possible life sentence under California’s three-strikes law. He pleaded guilty to insurance fraud and solicitation to commit a felony, and San Joaquin County Superior Court Judge Thomas Teaford sentenced him to seven years and four months in state prison.⁸

The Buried Mercedes-Benz

On October 20, 2022, seven years after Lew’s death, landscapers excavating in the backyard of 351 Stockbridge Avenue struck metal four to five feet underground.¹⁰ What they uncovered was a 1991 Mercedes-Benz 500 SL convertible packed with bags of unused concrete.¹¹ Police matched the vehicle to a stolen-car report Lew had filed with the Palo Alto Police Department in September 1992, and its customized plate was linked to him.¹² According to one account, Lew had collected roughly $87,000 from his insurer after the car was reported stolen.

Cadaver dogs signaled at least twice at the site, raising concern that the car might contain human remains. The Mercedes was fully unearthed on October 22, 2022, and transported to the San Mateo County Crime Lab for forensic analysis.¹³ Investigators ultimately found no remains. A cadaver-dog specialist said the alerts could have come from biological traces such as bodily fluids left by someone who had been in the vehicle, degraded by three decades underground.¹⁴

San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe laid out the possibilities plainly: “It may be a fraud case, maybe foul play. Hey, it could just be an eccentric who thought it would be fun to bury a car in the ground.”¹⁵ Lew’s daughter was not shocked. “My father definitely had emotional issues,” she told the Chronicle. “This wouldn’t surprise me, just based on how sketchy my father was.”⁶ The homeowners who bought the property in 2020 were cleared; the car had been buried long before they arrived.¹⁰ With Lew dead and no body in the car, the investigation closed without criminal charges.¹⁶

Death

Lew died of lung cancer in 2015 in Washington state at age 77.¹⁷ The exact date and the specific location within the state were not publicly confirmed. His family had sold the Atherton estate the year before.

1
Findlaw. People v. Lew, Cr. 13183
2
Palo Alto Online. Criminal Details Emerge About Man Who Owned Home With Buried Car
3
vLex. People v. Lew
4
PA Daily Post. Previous Owner of Home Where Buried Car Was Uncovered Had Been Convicted of Second-Degree Murder
5
Almanac News. Criminal Details Emerge About Man Who Owned Home With Buried Car
6
San Francisco Chronicle. Atherton Buried Car: Home’s Former Owner Has Colorful Criminal Past
7
The Record. DA to Prosecute Huge Insurance Fraud Case
8
Insurance Journal. Yacht Fraud Sentencing
9
Almanac News. Atherton Man Charged With Insurance Fraud
10
Palo Alto Online. Buried Car Case: Former Owner of Atherton Home Had a Long Criminal History
11
KTVU. Car Buried at Atherton Mansion Possibly Concealed for Insurance Fraud
12
Sports Car Market. The Case of the Buried Benz
13
Almanac News. Buried Car: Forensics Team Analyzing Vehicle for DNA
14
ABC7 News. Atherton Buried Car: No Human Remains Found
15
NBC Bay Area. Atherton Estate Former Owner
16
The Business Journal. Police: No Remains in Car Buried Behind California Mansion
17
NHPR. A Car Was Found Buried at a California Estate Once Owned by a Man Convicted of Murder