Month: October 2025

From Popular Mechanics: “Megan Barroso was looking forward to her Fourth of July plans in 2001. Perhaps because the 20-year-old Moorpark College student had no intention to be alone: She was going to attend a friend’s family barbecue in the suburbs northwest of Los Angeles, then watch the fireworks with friends at Silver Strand Beach. The gatherings began to blend into one another, in the way college-age social events do: The friends got milkshakes; they ended up at another party at a friend’s house in Thousand Oaks. Somebody sprinkled red glitter over everyone’s heads.Around 2:45 a.m., the group decided to head home. Barroso departed in her Pontiac Sunfire, a rental she was driving while her car was in the shop, and drove about 15 minutes before a friend called to let her know she’d accidentally left with someone else’s cellphone in her purse. Barroso turned around to bring the phone back. She never made it.”

How did an expensive Ferrari sports car wind up buried in someone’s backyard?

From Now I Know: “In early 1978, a couple of boys were hanging out in their yard in Los Angeles, digging in the dirt. Their family had just moved into the home – a rental – a few months earlier, and the kids were exploring as kids do. As they dug, they hit something oddly metallic and definitely not something that should have been buried in their yard: a 1974 Dino 246 GTS, an expensive sports car made by Ferrari. The car was wrapped in plastic, albeit imperfectly. Towels were stuffed in the exhaust pipe, as if to keep soil-dwelling bugs from getting in. There was even a carpet placed along part of the top of the car, to protect it from, well, who knows what. It looked like whoever buried the car had tried to preserve it, in hopes of recovering it later. But who, and why? And how do you bury a fancy sports car in the middle of Los Angeles without anyone noticing?”

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