Long Beach Police Find Car Linked to Arson, 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 p.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.