People often find interesting things buried in their yard: old coins, buildings, or fossils from long ago. But what these two boys found in the late 1970s — in their yard — tops everything!
In 1978, a family moved to a new, beautiful home on the outskirts of Los Angeles. The couple’s two sons enjoyed being able to play outside and explore their new yard.
One day, for fun, they started digging a hole in the backyard. The parents weren’t very happy about it — but they would soon change their minds.
When the boys suddenly found something hard buried under the ground, it was the beginning of a story that would fascinate the entire world.
The two boys were very excited when they noticed the hard object, deep in the ground. Had they found a treasure?
They both dug as quickly as they could and they soon discovered something that every boy dreams of: under the layers of grass and dirt was a Ferrari!
When the boys showed their discovery to their parents, they couldn’t believe what they were seeing. Unsure of what the boys had found, they immediately called the police. The police brought in excavators and dug up the car.
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As the police looked closely at the car, they noticed that there were towels in the car. When the door was opened, the policemen immediately smelled a horrible stench. Was it possible that there was a body inside the car?
Fortunately, after the police lifted the car from the hole, it was found that there wasn’t a dead body in the sports car. In fact, the car was completely empty.
Other than dirt and soil, it was a practically brand new 1974 Ferrari Dino 246 GTS that the boys had found.
The police also realized that there used to be a swimming pool exactly where the car was found. The car had obviously been put in there somehow.
However, it wasn’t clear exactly how the expensive sports ended car up at the bottom of a pool.
The police soon found out who had owned the car. An investigation showed that the owners, two elderly men, had the car stolen from them while they ate dinner at a Los Angeles restaurant.
The police suspected that the thieves planned to hide the car and pick it up later. Apparently, something unexpected happened, because the car disappeared and was hidden underground until the boys dug it up in 1978.
Another mystery in this strange case was that the owners of Ferrari were unable to be found.
The insurance company, which at the time that the car was stolen, had paid the insurance amount to the couple, was then forced to sell the car to the highest bidder.
That’s how Brad Howard came into the picture. He bought Ferrari for about $ 72,000, ridiculously little compared to the current value of the car.
”I always wanted a car like the Dino. It’s fast, but easy to handle.”
Dino is the name used by the Italian car manufacturer, Ferrari, on its smallest models of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Brad was not put off by the car’s odd past and managed to get the Ferrari road-ready, with lots of help from a restoration mechanic. He repaired the car’s exterior damage and upgraded the engine, which had miraculously survived being underground.
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But, as if this story wasn’t bizarre enough, there was a new twist a few years later. Jalopnik covered the further development of this crazy tale.
A magazine wrote about the Ferrari’s history and got in touch with Brad. He told him how he had come across the car, but the story wasn’t finished, yet.
Journalist Greg Sharp of AutoWeek, who wrote the report, continued to investigate the matter and got to the bottom of the Ferrari Dino’s mysterious story.
So what had actually happened?
After closer investigation, it was found that a crime did take place, but something different than the police had initially suspected.
It turned out that the couple who owned Ferrari were bankrupt. They had no money left and definitely couldn’t afford a luxury car anymore.
“It was like in the story of Snow White and the Huntsman. The Huntsman failed to kill the beautiful girl but let her go and killed an animal instead and took its heart to the queen,” is how a reporter described the situation.
The owners were so attached to the car that they wouldn’t return it, even though they couldn’t afford it.
The two gentlemen then decided to “park” the Ferrari in the empty pool and covered the car with dirt so that they could get money from their insurance while still keeping the car.
They got the money, but no one knows why the car stayed buried for all those years.
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What an incredible story! If you had told the boys that their little adventure in the backyard would trigger an avalanche of events and stories, they would probably think that you were crazy!
Brad Howard, however, is just happy to have a Ferrari with an unusual history! Like and share this story if you thought it was fascinating.
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