Police Find Car Linked to Arson and 2 Slayings

Long Beach police have found the car that has been missing since last week from a hilltop mansion in the Lemon Heights neighborhood near Tustin, where a 49-year-old man and his mother were shot to death and the house set ablaze.

The 1995 Ford Mustang, with license plates removed, was found at 11:23 p.m. Sunday by officers on routine patrol in Long Beach, near the border of Signal Hill, said Long Beach Officer Maria Luisa Mendez. The vehicle had been the subject of an intense search since Wednesday, when it was reported missing after sheriff’s investigators found the charred bodies of John Tyler Hancock and Helen B. Hancock, 76.

Orange County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Lt. Ron Wilkerson said that Hancock and his mother died of “strangulation and bleeding as a result of gunshot wounds” in their rented million-dollar home about 12:30 a.m. Wednesday. Authorities said the killers set fire to the home and the bodies.

Authorities hope the car will contain clues to the identity of the killers. The car was impounded by sheriff’s investigators and taken to Santa Ana, where it was being examined Monday by forensic experts.

Mendez said Long Beach police found the car parked on a street, which they would not identify. On Monday, Wilkerson said, sheriff’s investigators were walking through the area interviewing people in search of possible witnesses.

“We’re working the area right now,” Wilkerson said. “It’s possible that the suspect or suspects may still be in the area.”

Investigators do not know if the killings were committed by one or more people, or whether they were related to John Hancock’s financial problems, Wilkerson said.

In 1988, Hancock was sentenced to three years in prison for failure to pay $3 million owed to banks and other lenders.

At the time of his death, he was under investigation in Arizona for allegedly running up a $40,000 bill on a credit card he obtained in the name of another person.

The fire that gutted the 4,000-square-foot home in the 11300 block of Dannen Drive was intentionally set, Orange County Fire Authority spokesman Scott Brown confirmed Monday, but he would not say how it was started.

Last week, authorities said evidence at the scene indicated that fires were set upstairs and downstairs. Both bodies were burned beyond recognition, authorities said. Helen Hancock’s body was found in the kitchen, and her son’s body was found in the backyard.

His two teenage children, John and Ashley, were not home at the time. The Mustang belonged to Ashley Hancock and had personalized Arizona plates that read “Ashley.”