Stuff You Should Know - Two Times In the 70s When People Buried Ferraris

Episode Date: April 19, 2018

Not once, but twice in the 1970s people buried amazingly valuable Ferraris, arguably the greatest sports cars ever built. One was dug up after being secretly buried; the other was put in the ground forever. These are their stories. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hello, Australia. Hello, New Zealand. We're coming to see you. That's right. Are you psyched?

I'm psyched, man. I'm ready to encounter all the deadly animals that are gonna be in our way. I'm ready to hug a koala bear. Buy a giant knife. I'm ready to play a didgeridoo. Yeah. What other weird tropes can we talk about?

Well, we could probably drink a few oil cans of Foster, the national beer down there. Maybe a slab. I can't wait to get beat up by everybody for saying all the stupid stuff that we've said over the years. All right, everyone, we're super excited. Years in the making, we are coming to see you.

Saturday, September 1st at the Aster Theatre in Perth. Sunday, September 2nd, ICC in Brisbane. Monday, September 3rd at Goldfields Theatre in Melbourne. Thursday, the 6th at Inmore Theatre in Sydney, and we're gonna wrap it up in fine style at the Bruce Mason Theatre in Auckland, New Zealand. It is going to be a great time. Tickets are on sale now as of April 17th,

and you can go to sysklive.com for more info and buy tickets. See you soon. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant.

There's Jerry. Guess what Jerry's doing? She's eating her lunch, which is what she always does. So that makes this Stuff You Should Know. Just back from the road, the grueling two-city tour. It was kind of grueling, because I get really, really nervous before DC shows in particular.

Yeah, so thank you to Boston, Massachusetts, the Commonwealth. Making it nice and easy and relaxing. The Commonwealth and the District. We didn't go to a state. No, we didn't, did we? Yeah. You know, those poor Schmosen in DC can't even,

they don't even have representation. Yeah, but they can buy weed. Really, I didn't know that. I don't know if they have shops, but I know that DC is one of the places that supposedly voted it in. But it usually takes years after to roll that out. Sure.

To roll that up. It's a big thing. I read a really, really interesting article. I think it was in the New Yorker years back when, right after Washington and Oregon passed, they were the first to pass recreational, right? Yeah. And I can't remember who it profiled

or what state the guy was working for, but it was this guy who basically was like, okay, the voters voted this in, go figure out how to do this and do it right so that we actually get rid of illegal weed and organized crime and all that stuff, but also don't hurt the alcohol lobby. This guy had so many interesting balls juggling in the air

that it was a really great article. Check it out. I don't remember what it was called. I'm pretty sure it was the New Yorker. No recollection of the year. Go. Wait. I just left.

So we're talking today not about weed or the New Yorker or anything like that, even Jerry's lunch. Chuck, we're talking about Ferraris. One of the most beautiful cars, car lines. One of the greatest automotive manufacturers of all time. Yeah, it's funny. Dudes like you and I, obviously, there's one Ferrari to us.

Although I have grown to appreciate other Ferraris over the years, like the Ferris Bueller Ferrari. Sure. And some of those older cool ones. But for guys like us, the Magnum PI Ferrari is the Ferrari 2 Indel Ferraris. What is that, like the 330S, I think? I don't even remember.

I just, I call it the Magnum. Sure, that's all you need to call it. One of the greatest looking cars in the history of cars. And I'm not even a sports car guy. Right, no, I'm not either. But that is probably the greatest car ever made. It's dope, yeah. So Magnum could rock that thing.

And if you watch him get in and out of it. It's pretty funny. Just that alone is like, wow, it's a really well-made car. Well, yeah, and you're also like, it's Tom's like nine feet tall. Yeah, he kind of is. Are his shorts that small? But that Ferrari that, I think it's a 330S,

it was, yes, his shorts were very small for that. A lot of thigh on that show. It was like a clown car, basically, when he'd get out of it. You know, Higgins would come after and wreck. Man, what a show. But that's not the Ferrari that we're talking about today. No. And I want to say, so there's some numbers that are in here.

I went and looked up the real numbers. These are way, way, way low by the way. Well, as far as value of the car? Yeah, if you want to get fascinated, everybody, even if you're not into Ferraris, just type in some of the names of the Ferraris that we're gonna throw out there today in the years, and you will find an entire world out there

of breathtakingly rich people who buy. Greek tycoons. Half a million dollar cars. Yeah. You know? Yeah, I mean, people value different things, obviously. I've never been a guy that thought like a $75,000 car. I've probably just thought, why would somebody

spend that kind of money? But some people, you know, they love their car, so that's their jam, you know? That's kind of what this episode is for. It's a car episode from two guys who are not car guys. So dig in and prepare to be outraged moment after moment. I've got my kind of SUV that my brother thinks

is a minivan. It's a crossover. Is that what they're called? No, a crossover is like a car and an SUV. Yours is a minivan and an SUV crossover. Yeah, I drive a Honda Pilot now, everybody, and the Pilot underwent a change from looking like a forerunner type of SUV.

A couple of years ago, I think, then they kind of shrunk it and squatted it to where it sort of looks like their minivan. Put a clown nose on the front. I tried to get a minivan. I tried to get the Honda Odyssey, and it was like, no, we're not getting a minivan. Well, I saw it just yesterday,

and I can tell you it's a fine-looking car. I appreciate it. And you look totally normal driver again. First time I've ever had leather seats under my butt. That is so nice. Here at 47 years old. And you're just like, fart. What?

That's how you fart in a leather seat, classy-like. Well, plus it doesn't absorb those cloth seats. They get a little stinky. Oh, they do. They do, and it accumulates over time, you know what I mean? Yeah. That's why if you're ever gonna buy a used car, everybody, which, frankly, I think you always should smell the seat.

No. Just do yourself a solid and splurge on the leather, because you can wipe those off. Right. But I do, everyone, take heart. It's still, I'm true to my roots, I have my pickup truck because it's paid for, and I still use it for hauling garbage.

That's nice. That's my side job. Is it? I didn't know that. That's cool, good to know. Do you have a card? No, you just flagged me down. I'll just drive around.

Yelling out the window. That's a good idea. You don't need a card. Why waste money on this? Exactly. So we're talking Ferraris today, and we're talking specifically a two-year period in the 1970s when not one, but two Ferraris made the news

for being buried. Kind of nuts. Yeah. If you want to terrify, horrify a Ferrari enthusiast, talk about burying their favorite car, especially how they did it the second way. All right, should we start out with the first one? Yes.

All right, 1977, Spring in Beverly Hills. Very lovely, I imagine. Yeah. I mean, it's always lovely out there. In Beverly Hills? Yeah. That's the slogan they put on the t-shirts. That's right.

There was a socialite named, and she was married to, well, the story's a little convoluted, but she was the widow of a Texas oil tycoon named Ike West, and this is the bare bones beginning. She was married to this guy, he died, and she had a car that she loved, a Ferrari America. 330. 330 America, 1964, and her wish was to be buried

in this thing, and we'll go ahead and leap to the end and say that did happen, and now we'll fill it in with all the exciting details. Yeah, so this lady, Sandra West, she actually was born and raised in Beverly Hills. That's right. Her parents owned a clothing store, and so she was like middle class, but she was a looker,

and she started dating like hunky stars, like Elvis. If she was hot to trot. And Sinatra. I think that's actually fair to say. She was a fun, loving person, but also a very lonely person, as we will see. So she starts dating around, and she ends up dating a guy named Saul West.

Yeah, a little weird how this all happened. So Saul West was a Texas oil tycoon, and he was actually, well he was in a way, but he was actually the younger brother of Iqwest. So Sandra West, when she meets Saul, she doesn't know that Iqwest exists, and she's not super happy with Saul. Apparently he ran around on her and everything.

Yeah, not a good guy. And she was like, wait a minute, you have a brother, and he's an older brother. We all know what that means. And he's the true heir to the family fortune. Where is he, do you say? And Saul was like, oh, he's just a washed up loser. He loves drugs and drinking,

and the parents, they're sick of him. So they sent him down to Mexico to live with his bodyguard. Yeah, that's where you go to clean up. That's another episode right there. We need to go, I looked into Iqwest. There's not a lot about him online. Yeah, I wonder, I mean, is it disparaging

to say that she was a gold digger? No, yes it is. She undertook and carried out a project successfully. Which is Mary Rich Guy? Right, but here's the thing, like she could have married Saul West. He was rich, it's not like he didn't have access to the family fortune, he was the one of the,

I think two brothers who was in the good graces of the family. Yeah, so it's not like he didn't have an allowance. Right, she apparently wasn't really happy with Saul West. So she went after Iqwest, and it wasn't like just picking the lowest hanging fruit, like she had to work for this, and she did. She like took this dude who was down and out in Mexico,

living with his bodyguard. Not down and out in Beverly Hills. No. That was McNulty. Yes, because his family kicked him out of the U.S. to go live in Mexico, and just basically do whatever you're gonna do. God knows what this guy did in Mexico.

Yeah, but she went down there like you said, cleaned him up, I guess got him off drugs, and he must have thought, you know, this is great, this lady came all the way down here, my brother's girlfriend came all the way down here to take care of me. I think she likes me. Well, she definitely did, and he turned over a new leaf.

He said, you know what, I'm gonna come back to the United States, and I wanna take the reins of this company that is rightfully mine, and this is my wife, or my wife to be, I'm gonna ask her to marry me, and they got married. Yeah, so she cleans the dude up, they get married, and then first thing is she's like, okay, now we're moving to Beverly Hills.

And I want a Ferrari. And he bought her a Ferrari, bought her that 1964 Ferrari America 330. Good looking car. And I looked, and it was the Ferrari 330 SN, what Chuck? 5055. And I was like, what is SN? I can't see, I can't, yes.

So I looked, there are so few of those maids, Ferraris, like these vintage Ferraris, that they'll actually put the serial number after it. And the serial number is usually a very small number, it's not like one of these ones that they ran out of numbers, so they started using letters. It's like four, five numbers usually, right? Yeah, like my Honda Pilot, when they gave it to me,

they were like, here's your Honda Pilot serial number. Right. 809 slash AJ2 912. You just checked your watch in the middle of it? Yeah, I was like, that's the one I want. So they will actually, if you look, they'll add the serial number after the name of like, this specific car is what they're talking about.

And they can do that because this particular Ferrari America, the 1964 that she had was one of just 50 ever made. So it was a hot car. Right out of the gate. Yeah. All right, so they're in Beverly Hills. He has health problems because he had that history of abusing his body.

He had some rapid weight fluctuations, which is never great for your health. And he ended up dying in Las Vegas at the Flamingo Hotel, what a way to go, in 1968, under what is labeled here as mysterious circumstances. That's all it's labeled anywhere. I can't find anything out about it. I wonder how many people have died at the Flamingo Hotel

under mysterious circumstances over the years. Whose family successfully covered it up so that a couple of schmoes like us years and years later, 40, 50 years later, can't find out what happened. Right, so how long were they married? Do you know what year they got married? So, I believe in 1964. Okay, so they were married a short four years.

Yeah. But nevertheless, Sandra West became Eris to that fortune. Yeah, she got Ike's claim to the company. His share went to her after he died, right? And that's the thing, you can say what you will about her setting her sights on the true heir and him living pretty fast. But they appeared to very much love each other.

He left her his share of the family fortune. She took his last name. She said that when she filled out a will, she wanted to be buried in Texas next to her husband, not in Beverly Hills where she was born and raised and spent most of her life. So, they were like an actual real couple. So, I have the impression that when he died,

like there was something missing for sure in her life, especially considering that she is roundly known as a fairly lonely person. Yeah, it was like me and Emily, I married her for her dowry. Right. As the daughter of a central Ohio auto glass magnate. Right, but it's real, you know?

That's right. So, well maybe we should take, what are you about to say? I was laughing at auto glass magnate. That's what he does. Okay. Cineco Glass, everybody, plug-in father-in-law's company. Nice job. If you need someone to come out

and you had a tree fall on your window, Rick will take care of you. That's nice. That is nice. Which he's gonna be at our Cleveland show, by the way, which is great. He should be, it's like right there. Yeah.

All right, maybe we should take a break because I see the words Engelbert Humperdink in front of me. We'll come back and reveal the secret right after this. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slipdresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster?

Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s.

Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God.

Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one, kids relationships life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life.

Just stop now. If so, tell everybody everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. What's secret? Well, she dated Uncle Bert Humperdinger. Okay. Yeah. After Ike West died, right, she basically made the scene.

She became a Hollywood socialite. Yes. And I went to see him in concert when I was a little kid. Oh, really? Yeah, it was one of those, like, I always say my first concert was cheap trick because that was the first one that I paid to go see. But my parents, as much as they didn't like music, they weirdly took me to see Kenny Rogers, uh, uh, Uncle Bert Humperdinger. And I think Bobby Goldsboro. Nice.

Those are the three shows that I have some faint recollection of being in the building for. Wow. Those are some good early shows. And my mom saw Elvis, I didn't go, but yeah, I think you told me that one on that very last tour. Yeah. I think that was in the Graceland episode. Probably so. So, yes, Uncle Bert Humperdinger is one of the people she dated.

She made a name for herself dressing up as the Texas rodeo queen, wearing, like, fringy stuff with rhinestones and a cowboy hat. She went out to rodeo drive and... We should say that she was, like, a genuine, legitimate, dyed-in-the-wool car enthusiast. Not only did she have that America 330, she also had a, uh, GTS. Yeah. Uh, no, I'm sorry, a 365 GT and a Dino. Or is it a Dino? Do you know?

I think it's probably Dino. Okay, and a Dino. She had three Ferraris, plus also a Stutz Blackhawk. I didn't look that up. What's that? It is, uh, so Elvis liked that car a lot, actually. It's a, it looks like a luxury land yacht married a muscle car, and that's what came out. You should look it up.

It's a neat, neat car. Yeah. But apparently it got, like, eight miles to the gallon. Well, that's also why Elvis loved it. And it weighed, like, two and a half tons. I don't want an efficient car, man. That's pretty good. Uh, so, you know, she would do crazy things, like, well, I mean, this isn't super crazy,

but she would bop around town in that Ferrari and, like, go to the, uh, Chasens in Beverly Hills and order a burger to go and speed out of there in her Ferrari and her rodeo outfit. So she was sort of well-known in town as a bit of an eccentric. And by that, I think we mean she liked pills a lot, too. Well, sure. It was the 70s. So, uh, yeah. So she lived fast, but she had fun, I guess, is the way to put it, right?

The fast. Died young. She did die young. So in her America, she, uh, got into a car wreck and sustained some injuries. And she seemed to be on the men. She was getting better. But she, from what I understand, she was given a nurse and a doctor to oversee her, the drugs that she was taking as a result of the car wreck while she was mending.

Then one night, I guess she had taken too much or else she got her hands on some other drugs and she overdosed, apparently, on codeine and barbiturates from what I saw. Yeah, very sad. However, this is where the story gets a little strange. That was in 77 when she passed. And in 1972, five years previous, she actually thought ahead of time and said, I want to be buried next to my husband. See?

In my lace nightgown by Porter Loring, who was, I guess, just the- the go-to mortuary mortician. Hot mortician. In San Antonio. And I want to be buried in my Ferrari with, and this is a quote, with the seat slanted comfortably. Yeah, she didn't want to be sitting straight upright for eternity. Of course not.

So here's the thing. For her will to be carried out, it fell to her brother-in-law slash ex-boyfriend, Saul West. Saul was not very amused by the prospect of having to do this. Oh, I'm sure he was like, are you kidding me? So after all this? Yeah. Because not only is it burying a Ferrari, the other Ferrari's got auctioned off

for a ridiculous amount of money. Some of her jewelry after her death was auctioned off for things. One, I think one of them was like $350,000 in 1977 dollars for one of her rings. Another one was like $150,000 for another ring. And her Ferrari's were auctioned off. So her estate was being liquidated. The idea of burying one of these cars with her, who I would guess he probably didn't like very much, that was bad enough.

But on top of it, this funeral was going to cost about $15,000 in 1977 dollars. So he went to a judge and said, this lady was wacko. There's no way I should have to do this. Judge now. And the judge was like, all right, wait, we're going to put a hold on all this. Let's put Mrs. West on ice in a mausoleum. I think literally. And we're going to sort all this out.

So they did. Yeah. So her physician, Dr. Raymond Weston, had to testify and says, well, she was a bizarre woman for sure. And he described her as a psychotic with a tendency toward paranoia and hallucination. But the judge was like, you know, it really doesn't matter if these were her wishes, then it's legally, we have to carry them out. So the final ruling came down that, yes, we are going to bury this woman in her Ferrari.

Right. And by we, I mean, you saw. The judge was not involved in that part. Man. So Saul did it. He hired Porter Loring as Sandra had stipulated. And they shipped the Ferrari out from Beverly Hills to be outfitted with Sandra, who was wearing her lice nightie, put into the car and then put into a casket, an enormous

giant casket, and then taken by train out to the graveyard where a crane was waiting to. Oh, the Ferrari was in a casket? Yeah, they put the whole thing in a casket. Wow. Well, I guess that makes sense. Sure it does. It's a big old casket. Was it the, didn't Elon Musk send up?

Oh, no, of course that was a Tesla. Right. It's like, wait a minute, wasn't there a Ferrari in space? No, it's a Tesla. Yeah, that would have not made it any since whatsoever. No. And it makes you wonder, like, who really is Starman? Which of his enemies was unlucky enough to be shot alive into space to die out there

while the whole world was watching, you know? In that suit. Because he's got to touch a supervillain to him. Oh, you think? Yeah. We're just all very fortunate that he's not 100% supervillain because we'd be in big trouble if he was. He keeps it all in check.

Sure. So the story very sadly sort of ended, although she got her wish, she didn't, she didn't have a lot of friends. Like, apparently the people that attended her funeral were her attorneys and nurses and doctors and stuff like that. So it was sort of a sad ending to this lady's wacky life to be buried in a 19 foot long, 10 foot wide, 9 foot deep grave in her Ferrari. Right.

Which they filled with cement around so nobody could try to get the Ferrari out. Sure. Or that nightgown. But she got her wish, her wish came true. Yeah, so happy ending? Sure. Sad ending. Happy.

And apparently now there, it is still visited by people, where is it San Antonio? People go by and see where this Ferrari is buried. Yes. You went to San Antonio, did you go by there? I didn't, and I knew about this, but I didn't realize she was in San Antonio. We would have totally gone. That sounds like something that you guys would put on your list. Totally.

Well, it's on the list now, I'll tell you that. Should we take a break? No. Should we barrel into the second one and then take a break? Yeah. All right, we stay in California because that's where this kind of crazy stuff happens. Well, we have to go back to California because we were just in San Antonio. Good point.

Watching the 300 spectators watch Sandra West get buried. It was really weird. That's right. So we go to South Central Los Angeles, the West Athens part. And I didn't know where West Athens was until I looked it up. 119th Street, roughly. By the 110, right? Yeah, it's kind of like East of Hawthorne.

I have no idea what you're talking about. I just made up that 110 thing. I looked it up, too, though. I was like, because I had seen it referred to as South Central, but then everything else said West Athens. And I'm like, what is that? And there were Beverly Hills and Hollywood Art, and that's it, right? Pretty much. In Venice.

Sure, plus by the water. But it's like in the South part of South Central. The Southwest part of South Central, I think. That seems about right. Near, yes. All right, so we're oriented. And there's a staff reporter from the LA Times named Priscilla Paynton who's going to figure in because she kind of covered this story in depth. And while this story is a little weird, we're going to tell you the story, but the story is not quite accurate.

Not quite what it seems. Yeah, we're going to go ahead and tell it as it was originally written. Which is what people thought it was for decades and decades. That's right. So there were some kids digging around in the dirt in their neighborhood, which is what kids are to do. There's probably a little horse play. I'm sure one kid was probably self-conscious. There was a lot of kid stuff going on. Lots of kid stuff. They were digging around and they felt something not too deep that felt hard and said this.

I guess they probably brushed in dirt away and said, this looks like maybe the roof of a car. That's a weird thing to find at 119th Street. That's kind of a weird thing to find anywhere, buried underground. Yeah, so they got a cop involved pretty quickly, which was a great thing for these kids to do. I wouldn't have done that. I would have gotten a shovel and seen what was going on. Oh, sure. These kids were a little more doogreater than you, apparently.

They flagged down a cop and then the next thing you know, there's two detectives on the scene. Detective Joe Sabus and Detective Dennis Carroll, who would become forever known around his precinct as Lenny Carroll, because Priscilla Painter painting called him that accidentally. She put down that was his name in the story. Oh, if only Joe had become Carl. Yeah, Carl and Lenny. That would have been so wonderful. So Dennis Carroll and Joe Sabus were working this thing when Priscilla Painter comes out.

And she's watching this whole thing going down. And this is what she's seeing. She sees all of a sudden now there's an earth mover. There's a whole bunch of sheriff's deputies with shovels. Also earth movers? Sure, but different kind, you know. And they're digging around this car and they're getting more and more dirt off of it. And Sabus and Carroll see that there's a car under there, but it's covered in like rugs and plastic.

Somebody tried to kind of entomb the car, mummify it, I guess, is how one of the guys from Jalopnik put it. Yeah. And what it was was a Dino 246 GTS, and this also had a serial number, 07862. And they kind of dug through the car, they eventually got it out, they dug through the trunk. There was no one buried in it. No. No drugs or big suitcases of cash or something you might expect to find in a buried Ferrari. Yeah, like who would just bury a Ferrari?

This became an actual like huge question. Well, they ran the plates and found pretty quickly that it had been stolen, that it was listed as stolen. And so they started digging into it, right? Literally. They did. That was a good catch. Yes. So they found that back in 1974, this was 1978, in 1974, the car had been reported stolen by the original owner.

A man named Rosando Cruz, and Rosando Cruz and his wife had gone to dinner at the Brown Derby on Wilshire for their anniversary. Yeah, well, we should point out though, as originally reported, they said that it was in surprisingly good condition. Okay, this is Priscilla Payton saying that in the Los Angeles time. Kind of an important key little clue here. Right, okay. So at the Brown Derby, Rosando Cruz and his wife were celebrating their anniversary. And he had just bought her recently a car, I think for her birthday or something like that. And he was doing pretty well apparently, he was a plumber by trade, I would guess he owned his own company.

But he had bought his wife a Ferrari that at the time had cost about $22,000 is how much it had sent him back, which is well over $70,000 in 2017. Yeah. Okay, so when they got there, he had noticed that the valet was looking a little too anxious to get the keys from him. And he was like, I'm not letting these guys get Ferris Bueller my car. And his wife was like, what does that mean? He's like, just give it a decade or so. Yeah. And you'll see.

So he decided to just go park it himself on Wilshire Boulevard. Much safer. Yeah, good idea. Yeah. And so when he came back, the car was gone. That's right, the car was gone. There were no leads as to who took it, as far as the detectives were concerned. And the farmers insurance group said, you know what, we're going to pay this thing off at a loss of that $22,500 dollar to the legal owner, which at this point was the Bank of America.

Very big point as well. Yeah. Okay, so basically what you just said, the upshot of it is they said, okay, we looked into it. The car was stolen. It's gone. Farmers insurance, you need to pay the owner of the car, which is the bank, and it's all just done. This is four years prior, right? That's right.

So when the car turns up, like you said, Priscilla Payton, well, you want to take a break? Nice cliffhanger. Okay, on the podcast, pay dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey, dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey, dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co stars, friends and non stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to blockbuster?

Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial up sound like poltergeist? Also leave a code on your best friends vapor because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey, dude, the 90s called on the I heart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new I heart podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay. I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help this. I promise you. Oh, God.

Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Hey, that's me. Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids relationships life in general can get messy.

You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I took nice cliff ranger as a yes. You meant yes, right? Yes.

Okay, good. Well, we're back. So, like you said, Priscilla Payton had said the car seemed in surprisingly good condition. She painted a good picture. She did, but an incorrect picture. That's right. So basically, she set off this huge frenzy among Ferrari enthusiasts. A Dino, a 1974 Dino had been discovered underground.

Yeah. Had been written off by an insurance company and was in surprisingly good condition. That meant that they could probably get a pretty good deal on it and everybody wanted it. And everybody started lighting up the switchboard at Farmers Insurance. Yeah, and I get the idea that not only could they get this Ferrari and do whatever little restoration it needed, but there's also just the story behind it made it kind of a cool thing. Yeah. This was the car buried in South Central Los Angeles.

Yeah, and I look at it now. This made national news. Oh, yeah. It also, Sandra West's burial made national news, and that had just been several months before. Yeah. So, you know, the two were compared. It was buried Ferrari fever in the US in the late 70s. Oh, yeah.

And how close that was. Very close. Interesting. I mean, different years, but she was buried in May, and this happened, I think, in the following year. Like, less than a year later. Okay. Okay. All right.

So, the car actually was not in good shape at all, to say the least. There were, and boy, I love this. This is why it's a Ferrari. 21 layers of paint. 14 layers of primer, seven layers of paint. They were, it was in bad shape. The paint was freckled. It had white spots all over it.

Yeah. Rust, of course. You can't bury a Ferrari and cover it with rugs. Right. And expect it to, you know, that'll take care of it. So, rust had eaten through it, through the body. The leather interior was in bad shape. What did the thieves do with some towels?

So, they were smart enough to stuff towels into the intake to keep dirt and worms and stuff from getting into the engine. Oh, okay. But they neglected to do that in the exhaust pipe. They had put some towels in between the window cracks. Uh-huh. I guess to hang it, I think to dangle the towels over the outside. Oh, okay. But then didn't roll the windows all the way up.

So, they weren't doing a very good job, but in their defense, they had to bury a Ferrari in the middle of Los Angeles. How did this not get noticed? I don't know, but the cops, when they canvassed the area, the neighbors were like, we have no idea. That's nuts. The residents of the house were renters, and they'd only lived there for three months. They had no idea. So, the cops basically were like, well, it's a stolen car that was already written off. It's a done case.

We're not going to break our backs trying to find out what happened here. It's pretty obvious what happened here. So, they sent it off to farmers. That's right. In very bad shape. Even pulling this thing out of the dirt, obviously, the engine compartment got crushed. All scratched up and gouged. The windshield was smashed, which Rick's in a bogey.

It's in a coke glass. Could have fixed you right up. Fixed you right up in an afternoon. Actually, probably not, because I imagine a Ferrari windshield like that is pretty hard to come by. Sorry, Rick. But the idea that someone could restore this thing was not true, seemingly. Yeah. Farmers was getting so many calls, and we're having to deal with the public on such a large scale that they decided to just put it on display.

Right. So, anybody who called in inquiring about it, they said, well, here's the address. You can actually go bid on it if you want it. People did, but they didn't really make too many serious bids. They mostly just stripped the car as best they could. Yeah. Somebody took the dipstick, even, this Jalopnik article said. I wonder if that was just, let me get a piece of this saying, or if it was, like, I can't find a dipstick for my-

Maybe both. Dino. Or eBay doesn't exist yet, but it will someday. I'm going to sell this thing for a million bucks, you know? Yeah. So, this was a couple of weeks on display in Pasadena, where, as this article says, everything that was not bolted down was kind of nicked from it. I can't believe they just didn't have security or something. Yeah, I guess they weren't doing a very good job.

I mean, it was a junked Ferrari, so. But still, I mean, they were taking bids on it. It wasn't like, you know, come take what you want sale. It's not like a starving artist's sale at a hotel conference room or something, you know? All right. So, the long and short of it is, in the end, they did take some bids after it had been scrapped and gouged by onlookers. Right. So, here's where the legend kind of picks up again, right?

You've got this car that has like a legendary status already, but it's also totally tragic. Yeah. If you are a Ferrari enthusiast, this is a sad, sad story. But it's purchased by somebody, some unknown person. Actually, like a mechanic, I think, who owned his own garage. Yeah, in Burbank. To start it, and like for some time, there were some dispatches coming out of this restoration project, because the public apparently knew that this guy had actually gotten it to start,

but then the engine just collapsed. Yeah. And it didn't look very good, right? Yeah. What do you pay between five and nine grand? Yeah. It's a pretty good deal, but it was in pretty bad shape. Yeah.

So, after that, the Ferrari just kind of disappears for a little while. And then somehow, the Ferrari enthusiast public could confirm that the thing had been resurrected. Mm-hmm. It had been licensed. It had been restored to its former beauty. They had a new plate called Dug Up. So great. Right?

Yeah. But then it just is gone. It's not listed on any of the Ferrari registries or the Dino registries or anything like that. It's just, they know it's out there, but they don't know where it is. It just becomes like this phantom, which makes it even cooler. Yeah. And that's where the story ended. Originally, there were a couple of Jalopnik articles.

It's a good website. It really is. It's a great website. And there was one Jalopnik writer in particular who was like, that was a pretty good article, but I want to know more about it. His name was Mike Spinelli. And he did a follow-up. He dug in even further to this legend.

He wanted to find that Ferrari. And he actually ultimately was successful. But what he turned up, Chuck, was an even bigger twist to this story than digging up a Ferrari in the middle of South Central Los Angeles. That's right. He ultimately found Dennis Carroll, that one of the originally detectives, Lenny and Carl. He was Carl.

And he learned the true story, which was kids did not find this thing playing in the dirt. That didn't happen at all. It was actually discovered because of a tip from a CI. And if you've seen the wire, you know what that stands for. It's a confidential informant. He was a heroin addict. And I want to say he, I assume it was a guy for some reason. Yeah, it could go either way.

Yeah. I just hear a confidential informant heroin addict. And I think, dude, not fair, ladies. I'm sorry. Right, yeah. Don't leave us out of that circle. So he and his partner had made a... Lenny had made up that story about the kids finding it.

I guess because it was a police matter. It was a confidential informant. Right, that's why. So they had to cook up this fake story. I don't know if they had to, but they wanted to sniff paint off the case. That's right. So they, yeah, they just protected their source and said it was kids playing. And that became how this car was found for decades.

That was the story. Anyone you heard that story from, unless you were probably the wife of Joe Sabas or the wife of Dennis Carroll, they would say, they would start with some kids were playing in a yard and found this car. Totally made up, right? So that's twist number one that they found. Twist number two is actually the fact that this was all a set up job to begin with. Yeah.

By the owner. Did we say he was a plumber? Yes. Yeah, the plumber basically, I mean, what, could he not afford it? So he decided to have it professionally stolen to get an insurance claim? Yeah. That's my impression. That's what he did.

We don't know the reason behind it. I think my interpretation, and it's up for interpretation because he was never charged with this crime. Oh, really? Yeah. Okay. It was written off as a loss, right? Right. Which we all pay for, let's be honest.

Right. The, this is my, this is the Josh Clark interpretation of this crime. Okay. Cando Cruz very much loved his life, his wife, so he bought her a Ferrari that he couldn't afford. But did I say he very much loved his wife? Yes. He didn't want to tell her that he needed the Ferrari back. Ah.

He arranged for it to be stolen and maybe make some money on the side as well. And then he could pretend to be mad that the Ferrari was stolen and all of his problems would be solved. Right. Which is why he cooked up the story about being wary of the valet parkers. So this is why I needed parking on Wilshire and that's where it was arranged, prearranged to be taken. And he kind of thought like, oh, you're going to like strip it for parts and then drive it into a ravine. Yes. Which makes sense.

Yeah. In a weird way. Right. Then you could fence the parts so you got some extra money and then he would pay them out of the insurance claim. That's not how it went down. He didn't say bury this thing in South Central LA. Right. He didn't say bury it of basically any parts.

I think they took the Ferrari logo off of the back of the car. Oh, sure. But everything else points to the idea that the thieves were going to... That became a necklace. It did. Mike D's first necklace. But all of the way that the car was buried points to the idea that the thieves were going to come back for it someday. Right.

There was an attempt to preserve it. Let me throw some rugs on this. And not only are we getting paid for stealing the Ferrari, but we're going to dig it up and drive it out of that whole one. Yeah. Wow. Because it's got all-wheel drive probably. That's pretty amazing. So from what I understand, Rosandro Cruz was never charged with this crime, even though the cops knew.

Good for him? I guess. Yeah. And that was just my interpretation. I don't mean to cast any shade on him. But just from my research, if that's not the case, my apologies, but that is what it looks like to me. Here's the thing. He didn't get the check.

The Bank of America got the check. Well, yeah. But that was the point. He didn't think it through very well. Well, but he was out from under those payments, at least. Right. That's why I think he did it. You didn't have to pay like $700 a month?

I can't imagine, though. I mean, just think about buying an $80,000 car. Yeah. That's a lot of dough. That's a lot of dough. It's a lot, Chuck. But now that car would be worth about $300,000. Well, it's still around, though, right?

Yes, it is. Sorry. There's still more to the story. The guy named Brad Howard actually owns this car that was buried and trashed underground, which is a pretty amazing end to this story, is that this thing is actually restored to its former glory and still owned by a guy. Yeah. And the guy, Mike Spinelli, makes this point that when the Ferrari was found, it was in

pretty bad shape, despite what Priscilla Payton said in the article. But it could have been in way, way, way worse shape. And the reason why it wasn't in worse shape than it was was because those years, between 1976, 1977, and most of 1978, there was a huge drought in Southern California. Oh, yeah. The same drought that actually created skateboarding, because nobody could fill up their pools. So skaters started skating the Z-Town Dogtown Z-Boys. Yeah.

That's it. There you go. They started skateboarding because of this drought. That same drought preserved this car underground, more than it would have been had it rained a lot. Right. And that's the end of that chapter. Paul Harvey style.

So you got anything else? No. I mean, I wonder if this has happened again. Maybe we'll do a whole suite on buried cars. I would love to know that. Yeah. If you know that there's, especially if somebody buried another Ferrari, let us know. We'll add it.

Make it a hat trick. Please. In the meantime, you can go look up buried Ferraris all over the internet, and on Jalopnik in particular, who did a great job of digging the story up. That was unintentional. And since I said it was unintentional, it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this another teacher rights, and we always like to feature teachers in their classes.

Hey, guys. Long time listener, first time writer. Just listen to how the sun works episode again. I wanted to thank you for selecting it as a stuff you should not select. Did you do that? I did. Oh, why'd you do that to it? I don't know.

I just thought it should be out there again, because it's a legendarily one of our most troublesome shows. Yes, it is. She said it brought back awesome memories, though, how the sun works was my very first episode that I listened to, and it's the one that made me decide to continue listening. How about that? To give you a second chance. And she's like, are these guys for real?

I think it was your disclaimer that you were not professionals, wanted corrections, and that your continuing remarks for that were badly screwing this up, and it made me want to keep listening. For the record, I thought you were charming, relatable, and delightfully human, and wanted to hear more. Every time I listened to the show and hear you mention the awful sun podcast and where I write it in and tell you that that's the one that actually started my eight year in Counting Love Affair.

Wow, we... How about that? That's something. Like many others who've been listening, your show has become very special to me not only because it's helped me through many long car trips and intensive home projects, but because I've listened through some very formative years of my life. I started listening as a teenager, and I feel like y'all are friends who have been with me through high school, college, and my early married years.

And now I am a teacher. What? I'm in seventh and eighth grade math, science, language arts, and social studies, and I feel like I'm constantly telling my students facts and tidbits that I learned that week from your show. And now I am middle aged. And now I'm retired. Now I'm dead.

Seriously, it never fails, guys. Thanks again for all you do. Looking forward to many more years to come. That is from Hannah Barton and Ms. Barton, or Mrs. I don't know what you know about it. It's probably Ms. Barton's class, right? Yeah, Ms. Barton and your class. Hello. Thank you for listening.

Ahoy. Thank you for giving us a second chance after that being your first episode. Yeah, that was a great email, Ms. Barton. Thank you very much for writing it. Good luck to you and your class. It's going to be a great year next year. That's right. If you want to tell us about your class, we'd love hearing from teachers like Chuck said.

You can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K Podcast. I'm at Josh M. Clark. Chuck's at, well, Chuck's at Movie Crush on Twitter, too. You can get to him there. You can also get to him on Facebook at facebook.com slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant or slash Stuff You Should Know. Send us all an email to StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. As always, join us at our home on the web, StuffYouShouldKnow.com.

For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. Find a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.