Quote:Man found dead in car with 1,200 weapons at home thought he was a spy

Authorities' tentative conclusion is that Jeffrey Alan Lash was a rich eccentric so caught up in his make-believe world of spying that his fiancee believed it, too





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[/URL] Police inspect the cache of weapons found in Jeffrey Alan Lash's home on 17 July 2015. Photograph: Linnard Lane/Palisadian Post/EPA Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
Thursday 23 July 2015 19.03 BST Last modified on Thursday 23 July 2015 19.25 BST

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Inside his own head, Jeffrey Alan Lash was a secret government operative under constant surveillance by the CIA, the FBI or both.
He spent lavishly to build up an arsenal of 1,200 firearms, six and half tons of ammunition and explosive-making materials, which he piled high in every room of the small condominium he shared with his fiancee in a well-heeled hillside enclave high above the Pacific Ocean in Los Angeles.
He had twelve cars, including one reported to be bullet-proof and worth around $100,000. When he and his fiancee went to dinner at the local Italian restaurant, they drove in separate cars, and always paid in cash.
Any time Lash saw a camera, he would get upset. He told people his name was Bob Smith. Then he died, and things got truly strange.
Police in Los Angeles have spent several days figuring out why Lash's body ended up in a car outside his house and was left to decompose for almost two weeks. They found it last Saturday not because of a tip-off from the neighbours, who appear to have been oblivious throughout, but because a lawyer representing his fiancee gave them a call.
They also deployed a bomb squad and chemical experts in Hazmat suits to go through his vast arsenal of weapons and explosives all of it, to judge police photographs and initial reports from the investigation, acquired legally and left untouched.
Some chemicals were too unstable to transport, so the police blew them up. The tentative conclusion is that Lash was a rich eccentric so caught up in his make-believe world of spying and derring-do that he had his fiancee, Catherine Nebron-Gorin, convinced it was real.
When he was diagnosed with cancer a year ago, he reportedly told her it was the result of chemical weapons exposure on an old mission.
On 3 July, the couple and a friend were shopping at a supermarket in Santa Monica, a few miles away from the house, when Lash became unwell and died in the outdoor parking lot.
Nebron-Gorin later told a friend she had specific instructions from Lash on what to do if he died. Don't call the authorities. Leave him in a car. Get out of town, and let his minders take care of the body. So she did that.
The friend, a doctor who did not want to be named, told the Palisadian Post newspaper he spent 90 minutes trying to revive Lash in the passenger seat of an SUV outside his house on the night he died as Nebron-Gorin was "wailing and grieving".
Nebron-Gorin left for Oregon and when she returned she was stunned to see Lash's body where she had previously left it. She called a high-profile criminal defence lawyer, Harland Braun, whose previous clients have included Dennis Rodman, Roseanne Barr, Gary Busey and Robert Blake, the actor eventually acquitted of murdering his wife in circumstances almost as bizarre as the Lash case.
Braun told the police about the body and warned them the house was stuffed with weapons. And the police immediately evacuated the neighbourhood.
Lash grew up in a modest home near the Los Angeles international airport and had ambitions at one point to become a microbiologist like his father. Then, according to his stepmother, he largely cut himself off from his family and became secretive about what he was doing. "He was just a loner, as far as we were concerned," Shirley Anderson told the Los Angeles Times. "He just became weird because he changed all of a sudden."
There was no immediate explanation of how he obtained his money or what, if anything, he had done for a living. According to police estimates, Lash spent at least half a million dollars, and perhaps more than twice that, on his weapons stash. The condominium, which is in Nebron-Gorin's name, last sold for $440,000 in 1991.
Braun, the lawyer, said he doubted the story about working for the government was true. "Whether he really was working undercover for some government agency or not," Braun told the Palisadian Post, "he was convinced he was and he had my client convinced."
Lash's neighbours said they too were told Lash had worked for the CIA and found him odd. One employee of the Casa Nostra restaurant said Lash and Nebron-Gorin had eaten most of their meals there for the past seven years. Invariably, Lash would order raw filet mignon.

Quote: Dead LA man who had 1,200 guns, underwater car identified; believed to be part alien' secret government worker

BY Melissa Chan
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Published: Thursday, July 23, 2015, 9:39 AM
Updated: Thursday, July 23, 2015, 11:05 AM
Dead Man With Hundreds of Weapons Linked to Disappearance of Oxnard Mother
KTLA - Los Angeles








The mystery behind a Los Angeles gun fanatic found decomposing in a car last week has deepened as his fiancée's family said he was an alien-hybrid secretly working for the government.
The bizarre statement came Wednesday as the betrothed woman's lawyer identified the dead man as Jeffrey Alan Lash almost one week after he was discovered rotting in his car parked on the street in the tony Pacific Palisades neighborhood.
Los Angeles police found more than 1,200 guns, nearly 7 tons of ammunition, bows and arrows, knives, machetes and $230,000 in cash inside Lash's home last Friday.
They also discovered a Toyota SUV designed to drive underwater among the 14 vehicles registered in his name.
The collection was as odd as Lash's confessions to his soon-to-be-wife Catherine Nebron that he was working as an undercover operative for multiple unnamed government agencies, according to her defense attorney Harland Braun.
"The story itself sounds totally crazy, but then how do you explain all this?" Braun said. "There's no evidence he was a drug dealer or he stole these weapons, or had any criminal source of income, no stolen property, all the stuff you'd look for."

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LINNARD LANE / PALISADIAN POST HANDOUT/EPAPolice inspect some of the 1,200 guns found in the condo of a man who was decomposing in a car down the street for about two weeks.


Lash was also believed to be an alien "sent to Earth to protect us," according to Laura VadBunker, the mother of 39-year-old Dawn VadBunker, who used to work for Nebron.
"I can't believe this," Laura VadBunker told KTLA. "It's worse than a Twilight Zone movie. He was part alien and part human and was out to save the world."
Authorities are still working to confirm the man's identity and figure out why he possessed so many cars and firearms, many of which were still in boxes or had price tags.
LAPD Deputy Chief of Detectives Kirk Albanese said he does not believe he was doing anything illegal with the weapons.
He had been decomposing inside his car for nearly two weeks before police found him on July 17.
Facebook Dawn VadBunker, 39, who used to work for Lash's fiancee, believed Lash was a "part alien" hero sent to save the world, her mother told KTLA.


Police do not suspect any foul play involved in his death, but there is an investigation into the cause.
Braun said Nebron parked him in a car down the street from the condo they shared after he died. He had trouble breathing but refused to go to the hospital or call 911, the attorney said.
The longtime girlfriend of 17 years then left for Oregon, believing government agencies would come for his body and the items in his house.
With News Wire Services
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mchan@nydailynews.com
Related Stories Decomposing LA man had 1,200 guns, two tons of ammo in home

Quote:Same story. Can wait for the autopsy report