Headlines released in July 2015 were not clickbait, though the stories inside were just as bizarre as the headlines.
The “Los Angeles Times” and the “Dailymail” reported the LAPD found more than 1,200 firearms , and over 6.5 tons of ammunition , as well as bows, arrows and knives.
Plus $ 230,000 in cash. The arsenal of weapons belonged to Jeffrey Alan Lash , a 60-year-old man.
His decaying body was found in a car parked on a street in his neighborhood, Pacific Palisades .
Then, The New York Daily News reported with all sincerity :
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 strange statement came, as the fiancée’s lawyer id’d the dead man about a week after he was discovered.
The incredible statements were made by Catherine Nebron, his fiancée of 17 years, who insisted he worked undercover for the government and was under constant surveillance, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The Palisades News noted police worked through the weekend and responded with numerous bomb squad personnel , recovering hundreds of guns and pallets of ammunition.
Images show at least, one .50 caliber rifle, which can no longer be purchased in California, as well as stacks of handguns being carted away by authorities.
However, some items were reportedly destroyed in place, by explosive demolition.
Staff at a local area restaurant classifies the behavior of Lash and his fiancée only as peculiar.
For example, Lash often claimed to work for the CIA and became upset if photographs were taken near him.
He told similar stories to neighbors at his previous residence in Sunset Mesa, where he lived for a decade with a roommate named Jocelyn.
Neighbors said, he just referred to himself as “Bob Smith” and also told them he worked for a government agency like the FBI or CIA.
His Sunset Mesa property manager, Paul Aguilar, said Lash drove a new vehicle almost every month which never had license plates, he always dressed in black and acted paranoid- checking out rooms before he entered.
Lash’s plans for his stockpile were unknown and no one knows how Lash Accumulated his wealth.
All of the purchases were legally made.
But Police said, there is no record that he ever filed a tax return or held a job, so the one mystery still stumping investigators, is where Lash got the money to purchase the weapons.
Lash left no will, so his only relatives are estranged cousins.
They stand to inherit his fortune worth approximately $5 million, according to Daniel Brookman, the attorney for the heirs.
Brookman said, the heirs would reject the inheritance to send a message against gun violence and plan to destroy a $5 million inheritance if they are granted it
“We don’t want it.
We don’t want money from these weapons. We don’t want these weapons out there.
We want them destroyed.”
According to court documents, fiance Catherine Nebron, Lash, conducted secret operations for the U.S. government, which were above the CIA, and he thwarted multiple attacks against the country, since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Yet, Nebron claimed, it was her bankroll, that paid for the guns, and the obsessive gun collector brain-washed her, “reducing her to a robot,” and conning her out of a small fortune.
So…she financed his government career?
Nebron’s lawyer, Harland Braun said, he would fight the claim by Lash’s relatives, demanding the magistrate, who signed the initial search warrant, to turn over the property to Nebron – as the rightful owner.
Nebron stated, she wanted to donate or sell the weapons to responsible parties.
Noted were other strange behaviors by Lash, like when he got in a wreck and damaged 4 cars, later paying off the damages and dealt in cash.
But hey, so did Whitey Bulger who lived for years on end, in Santa Monica, California, where Bulger lived as a fugitive for at least 15 years – only paying cash and, with an assumed name.
A reward of $2 million had been offered for information leading to capture Whitey Bulger – that amount was 2nd only to Osama Bin Laden‘s capture reward, on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list.
Except Jeffery Alan Lash left no fingerprints, he couldn’t be confirmed by DNA or Dental records.
Still, Nebron’s attorney highlights there was no evidence Lash was a drug dealer or had any source of criminal income.
LAPD Deputy Chief Kirk Albanese, also maintains there is no reason to believe Lash was connected to illegal activity and was likely just a firearms collector.
Nonetheless, the gun unit of the department’s Robbery-Homicide Division has checked the history and legality of each impounded firearm.
As for Lash’s ID
Coroner’s Chief Craig Harvey said, his office was working to obtain dental and medical records — including X-rays — that could help positively identify the remains, which were found around 5 p.m. Friday in the 1700 block of Palisades Drive.
Do you believe him? Does he look familiar? He should…
Investigator Craig Harvey provides forensic advice to Hollywood for TV shows including :
“JAG”, “Boomtown” ,“Southland” “NCIS,”, “Pathology”,“Deja Vu”,“Street Kings.” Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King , The Autopsy of Jane Doe, 15 Unforgettable Hollywood Tragedies, 20 Most Horrifying Hollywood Murders, Is O.J. Innocent? The Missing Evidence, and Prophets of Science Fiction
But his expertise has been questioned several times.
His coroner reports have even had a breach of security.
Outgoing LA County coroner describes department in turmoil: ‘It’s nuts’
LA CHIEF CORONER CRAIG HARVEY was also used as part of a comedy bit.
The celebrities Coroner Discusses
Here: in 2016 he gave this story to Los Angeles Daily News :
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Coroner’s Staff Warned About Jackson Death … – NBC Los Angeles
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Coroner: Cause of Michael Jackson’s death deferred – The Mercury
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Craig Harvey Archives | Michael Jackson Death Hoax Investigators
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Coroner’s Office: Michael Jackson’s Family Wants Second Autopsy
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LA County coroner sells its own line of merchandise – Washington Times
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Coroner: Pneumonia Killed Brittany Murphy – CBS News
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Brittany Murphy’s Dad to Coroner: Proof of Poisoning Is in the Mail …
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L.A. County Coroner — Whitney[Houston] Was Coked Up At TMZ.com
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L.A. Coroner: Whitney Houston died from drowning, heart disease
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In Los Angeles, Dealing in Death, and Trying to Make a Living
-
ETC
Still, because of the condition of the remains, fingerprints could not be obtained, Harvey said.
The autopsy yet to be released, at the time of the initial reports, the body was held as John Doe.
Naturally, a John Doe moniker fuels speculation.
Investigators continued the search and found the congestion of Jeffey Lash’s items, caused Lash to ask his neighbor to stash $230,000 in cash.
Some possessions are expected to be in additional storage units, which are only the locations known prior to Mr. Lash’s passing.
- A second possible related,
- THE LATEST: MAN ARRESTED, 1,000 GUNS SEIZED AT LA MANSION
Some of the thousands of guns ATF agents found on Wednesday at the Bel Air mansion owned by Gordon Getty’s former mistress Cynthia Beck. Authorities discovered the weapons stash after obtaining a search warrant for the $7 million home in Los Angeles in May of 2019.
‘I had never seen so many weapons in my career of 31 years,’ said LAPD Lt Chris Ramirez. ‘That’s such a big arsenal in a residence like this, in this type of neighborhood. It’s astounding.’
Another unknown is exactly how many relationships Lash was in at the time of his death.
LAPD said he was in deep relationships with at least 4 women.
They were found due to stored love letters, Christmas cards, and other correspondence.
However, it’s Catherine Nebron, he left notes around her house to, with the words,’ if he can, I can,’ repeated 3 times per note.
The same Nebron who was with Lash when he became ill on July 4 in the parking lot of a Bristol Farms grocery store in Santa Monica.
During the searches Police discovered a Toyota SUV designed to drive underwater among the 14 vehicles registered in his name, all have no plates, and some contain bulletproof glass, which he purposely parked in various places around his neighborhood.
According to neighbors, he often said, he would train by repelling these vehicles off cliffs and mountains.
Lash’s stories about his covert missions ranged from saying he did night missions, like swimming to Catalina, to stories about getting shot in the head, and being in a coma – for a long time.
However, other people have more creative interpretations of the truth behind Lash’s story.
Baby, I’m a Secret Agent, Alien-Hybrid Here to Save the World…
Dawn VadBunker, an employee of Nebron’s, claimed Lash was an alien-human hybrid, KTLA reported.
“The story itself sounds totally crazy, but then how do you explain all this?”
“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.“
“I can’t believe this,” Laura VadBunker, Dawn’s mother told KTLA.
“It’s worse than a Twilight Zone movie. He was part alien and part human and was out to save the world.”
Nebron’s lawyer warned the world: “He could have been working for anyone.”, leaving behind an eerie feeling – this sheltered community was no longer hidden from the outside world because Lash was known to claim, he worked with a black ops agency—one that dealt with aliens.
Lash managed to somehow convince multiple women, he was an alien hybrid super-spy fighting to save the world, who confided in a trusted few.
That he was sent to earth and was working with the CIA, to save humanity.
The alien talk about the dead man came from Laura VadBunker, the personal assistant’s worried mother.
She told the press, that she was frightened for her daughter, because Dawn Marie VadBunker told her, her boss was an alien.
In fact, she’d said, he and his fiancee were Reptilian from a water planet .
She even claimed, she’d seen him change into his alien form.
She said, ‘You know [my ex-husband] wouldn’t be able to see me, if he drove by , because I would be invisible.’ ” Laura pressed Dawn for answers but got none.
A few days later, police located them in Oregon.
Then she went dark.
Interestingly, it is possible to see that the disappearance of Dawn VadBunker was reported by the American press, well before the news of Lash’s death, well earlier this month.
Maybe it was the disappearance of Dawn, which led to an even greater investigation, at least by the eager press.
It’s hard to say what really triggered this whole investigation, and for how much longer the body of Jeffrey Lash would be left in a utility without raising suspicion of a community in which everyone knows each other.
At least strange, is not it?
Laura VadBunker doesn’t believe Lash’s alien-spy hype, but doesn’t rule it out.
But one thing has always bothered her.
“To tell you the truth, no matter where we traveled, there was always a blacked-out helicopter hovering overhead; that’s one thing I can’t explain,” she says.
“All the way to Santa Monica, all the way home“.
I said, ‘Guys, what’s with the helicopter?‘
They said nothing. I said, ‘
No, really.’ it bothered me. I mean, what are the odds? No matter where I traveled, with Dawn, there would be that damn black helicopter. I cannot explain that away.”
When Laura is asked, point-blank if she thinks Lash was an alien or not, Laura demurs.
She won’t say no, her answer is an odd mix of skepticism and belief.
“Our government says there’s no Area 51. Our government says there’s no UFOs.
Our government says we’ve never recovered aliens. Well, we all know, if you do research on it, that’s a 100 percent lie.
Because, apparently, we, as humans, cannot accept the truth that we are not the only ones here,” she says.
Of course, it’s no great surprise, that one of America’s most covert intelligence agencies will not confirm or deny the existence of a possible operative, (the standard glo mar response), even if he’s now deceased.
Her fiancée is dead, her personal assistant is missing or on the lam, and she is at the center of one of the strangest cases to happen in Los Angeles, since the ’70s.
The LAPD was quick to determine, there was no foul play involved in the death of Jeffrey Alan Lash, so at least, Nebron is not a murder suspect.
Meanwhile, the LAPD is sorting through the $5 million dollars worth of guns in her condo.
Once a probate court determines, how it will divide up the estate of her dead fiancé, perhaps then she can return to the business of getting on with her life.
But was Lash really just another obsessive gun-stroke, an American eccentric who wrote for obscure websites, shrouded himself with lawyers, and abused people’s desire to feel important, as he seductively spread fear – a sociopath who enriched his life, using his very human powers of manipulation?
A woman who knew him said,
” it’s either one or the other. There is no third way.”
Years passed since, Lash was found and now, one woman from the dead man’s past had vanished, with no apparent explanation.
For now, a menagerie of cousins (nine, at last count) came forward – to lay claim to the estate of their dearly departed cousin -the mystery man at the middle of this tale, because a $5 million headline tends to grab hold of folks’ attention.
And an additional woman pops up, who was also involved romantically, Michelle Lyons.
She and Catherine Nebron, are now fighting in court, against his cousins, represented by an attorney, Daniel Brookman, to recoup what they say, is their share of millions.
Since then, even more, romantic entanglements with other women have emerged, though they are not involved in the legal case.
When Lash spoke to Lyons, he would grow tense.
If asked about his family and said, “it would be safer to keep them separate from all that, in the event of some calamity.”
Faced with this opposition, Lyons relented – it was clear he had more than a few eccentricities.
His “work” as a counter-terrorism operative was what was central to his identity.
Almost immediately, Lash drew borders within their personal life, that reflected this.
He revealed little about his past and showed no inclination to include her in it.
He forbade people from taking his photograph, had credit cards, but always paid in cash.
Though in other ways, he seemed sane and rational, so she looked past his oddities to his “better qualities“.
She thought people had a right to privacy – Lash, it turned out, had better reason than most:
he was a former government agent with top-secret clearance and performed counter-terrorism operations, hostage rescues, anti-harassment missions, and, on occasion, rescued people from cults.
Or you know, a charming and deluded man who exploited and abused the women in his life to feed his dreams and gain access to money and power. Then he died.
He told these lonely women they were vitally important.
He said they were essential to helping him save the world.
There are more than 50 ways to identify a cult leader. Here are just a few of them, and you will notice – Lash fits into all of them.
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Requires blind and unquestioning obedience.
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Requires excessive admiration of followers and outsiders.
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Has a sense of entitlement – expecting to be treated in a special way at all times.
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Explores other people, asking for their money or relatives, and putting others at financial risk.
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Is arrogant and haughty in his behavior or attitude.
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Has an exaggerated sense of power (right), which allows him to circumvent rules and violate laws.
When Lash died, his would-be bride and personal assistant mummified his body as instructed and abandoned his dead body so superior powers could take him away.
He was dead and gone, and yet they did exactly as he had instructed.
Whatever skepticism Michelle Lyons harbored, she found ways to justify it. ,
Jeff Lash went to “work” every morning and came home, like everybody else, though there was plenty of training, plus the occasional mission involving members of his anti-terror team, whom he referred to as his “upper staff.” – brave, lethal and, above all, loyal to Lash.
If anyone harmed him or stood in his way, he told her, his team would come – they’ve killed people before for disloyalty and would do so again.
Lash also told her about a psychic healer who had been one of his
“most valuable colleagues. Tara was her code name, for national security reasons, he said he couldn’t reveal her real name. Lash taught “Tara” to go dark and live off the grid.”
Tara was the 4th woman.
“He had this way of making you feel like the only person in the room, to respond right to your heart — you can’t fake that,” she says, “But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t evil.”
His threats grew menacing and he exerted pressure on her.
Lyons paid for virtually everything, including military-grade material, needed for his ongoing missions.
He had shown his fury enough, she knew what lines not to cross.
His behavior, so unsettling, Lyons took smaller and smaller opportunities to assert her independence.
Still, after nearly 13 years together, Lash informed Lyons that he would be moving out of her apartment,
“for a while”.
A national security emergency had arisen – it required immediate attention.
He’d be gone for 2 weeks, living at the Pacific Palisades home of Michelle’s close friend, Catherine Nebron and her husband, a dentist with a practice in Brentwood.
Weeks turned into months, which turned into years -Lash never returned to live with Lyons.
Yet, Lash told Lyons, she was his true love, and she reciprocated the sentiment.
Michelle Lyons and Catherine Nebron spoke on the phone constantly, often about Lash and his needs as a government operative.
However Lyons and Nebron, never spoke of their relationship with Lash.
From 1998 to 2008, Lyons showed up, at Catherine Nebron’s apartment every night and picked him up for dinner.
Afterward, dropping him back off, but she was reaching a limit and harbored doubts about his work.
His threats about loyalty frayed her nerves. She thought about running away, but she feared, for her life. “
When you hear these stories, and you see all these weapons and know there’s a trained team out there, you don’t just hop in your car and drive away.”
However, Lyons and Nebron didn’t confide their deepest fears to each other, and Nebron didn’t tell Lyons about her own burgeoning relationship with Lash.
Still, she persisted, and Lyons made the nightly trip to the Palisades to deliver whatever Lash and Nebron needed, including cash, food, ice, and merchandise purchased from Amazon.
He required a special chef, which cost $1,785 a week. It was supposed to last for a few weeks, but Lyons shelled out the money, for 7 yrs, plus another $9,800 a year in storage fees, for a decade.
In all, Lyons, who runs a successful computer consulting firm, estimated she shelled out $1.8 million.
In exchange, Lash and Nebron gave Lyons trash bags, which were sorted and labeled in one of three ways: “normal,” “elsewhere” or “elsewhere separate” which had to be distributed widely to dumpster locations across the Westside.
Lash told Nebron and her husband, a version of the story, he had told Lyons, and he began to isolate them, inside their own home.
In legal documents filed in 2016, complaints against Lash’s estate, alleging, he waged a campaign against them – combined charm, intimidation, and outright threats.
Soon after moving in, Lash constructed a virtual labyrinth inside their condo, restricting their movements, to a tiny subset of space.
Nebron claims she slept on a yoga mat in the bathroom with a bath mat as a pillow.
She alleges that Lash hit her several times, threatened her with “fines“, if she misbehaved, required her to always stay in the house- guarding his belongings.
Nebron says she took out personal loans for hundreds of thousands of dollars, to pay Lash’s fines, and material demands.
When Lash spoke to neighbors, he told everyone, his company was responsible for thwarting upward of two-thirds, of the post-9/11 bomb and terror threats.
A neighbor once questioned Lash and Nebron about why they were sitting in their car for such a long time.
“National security!” the pair had howled back in unison.
There were snickers and raised eyebrows, but also shrugs -anything was possible, after 9/11.
According to a creditor’s complaint filed in 2016, Nebron’s ex-husband alleges, Lash placed a gun against his head and demanded cash Lash needed, to carry out missions.
He forked over much of his life’s earnings, some $2.5 million, and had to move into his Brentwood dentist’s office for 9 years, financially destitute, and psychologically wrecked from Lash’s abuse.
Lyons called her old friend Catherine on the night of July 4, 2015.
No one answered- highly unusual, but she thought there must be a good reason.
When the same thing happened the next several days, she began to worry.
Maybe, she thought, the answer lay in Lash’s secret room.
Lyons said she wanted to get in touch with what Lash called the “upper staff “- they would know what to do.
She finally broke in, using a credit card to slip the lock, it wasn’t the national security headquarters she expected.
It wasn’t neat and tidy, the way Lash had been in the early years of their relationship.
It was a hoarder’s pit.
As she dug into the room, Lyons found traces of people connected to her boyfriend, whose real names she finally learned.
But the people she found weren’t government operatives- they were other women.
At least six of them. “Right there and then, I knew he was a liar,” she said.
But she still didn’t know where he was or what to do with herself.
She called Gorin, she didn’t know anything, only Lash was dead.
He had been dead for two weeks.
(Soon after that, Nebron returned to L.A. and, seeing that Lash was still in his car, called her lawyer, who told her to call LAPD.
Then the news reports started and the scope of the lie Lyons had been living, began to crystallize.
“I couldn’t believe what I was reading, when they were calling Catherine his fiancee, I thought it was a mistake,” Lyons says. “It wasn’t.”
Also, 5 of the 6 women names Lyons found in Lash’s secret room, were still alive, and she tried contacting all of them, eventually reaching 4.
Their stories mirrored her own
Michelle Lyons letters to Lash
But one name that stood out, “Tara“, among Lash’s papers, Lyons found Tara’s real name and set about trying to locate her.
Lyons even paid a private investigator, who provided a background report, she also searched on her own.
According to Lyons, Tara seems to have vanished around 2005.
Lyons claims there is no death certificate, no missing persons report, just a paper trail that goes cold.
Lyons did find a friend of Tara’s, who confirmed Tara had, in fact, been in a long relationship with Lash and told her, Lash had grown increasingly angry with Tara, in the months before she disappeared, because Tara had been unable to “cure” Lash, of his physical ailments.
“We know that Tara feared for her life,” says Lyons.
She is exploring the possibility that Tara is dead and Lash was somehow involved.
“That’s the question everyone has,”
, “How could one person entice these people to do what they did?”
All relationships require certain amounts of flexibility.
We often see only what we want to see; we find excuses for the things that don’t fit.
We justify the bad and focus on the good.
“Maybe the notion that we’re not immune to crime, to frightening things, to the things we usually see in other parts of the world,” she says.
“It could have been worse, of course.
Lash could have gone on a rampage, the guns could have fallen into the wrong hands, the house could have exploded“That’s frightening.”
“I think he’s one hell of a con person,” says Laura VadBunker.
He had an ability to keep those who knew him longest, forever confused.
“Maybe he did do national security missions,” says Anderson. “The government doesn’t always tell you everything they know, either.”
The likeliest scenario is also the simplest, however:
There was no government work.
Anderson confirmed, there had been no vast inheritance, as some speculated.
The coroner found Lash died at age 60, of natural causes, but his corpse was so decomposed, a conclusive determination of what ailed him in his final years, was problematic.
In certain cases, diseases like cancer and ALS can cause psychotic episodes and hallucinations, but Lash’s manipulative behavior went on for so long, and seemingly so calculated, that the brief episodic explanations seem to fall short.
Kevin J. Fleming, a former neuropsychologist, turned entrepreneur who runs Grey Matters International, a global neuroscience-based advisory firm, speculates, Lash could have had any number of personality disorders, ranging from narcissism or sociopathy to full-blown psychosis.
But he had no criminal record and no sexual offenses.
Lyons doesn’t know what to believe, any longer about the man with whom she shared a life.
“I think he was either evil or delusional or somehow mentally unstable,” she says.
“He was definitely a narcissist, but I didn’t recognize it fully at the time.”, but for Michelle Lyons and many others, Lash’s lies are really lost lives.
Still, have you noticed something…Relief.
This was the main word chosen by Catherine and Michelle to define the absence of Lash.
No one ever mentioned that they missed Lash, that they missed his affection, his embrace, his kiss, or even his sex, on the contrary, they gained freedom, they breathed life again.
The point is : Catherine and Michelle were relieved.
Lash had finally died. But did they kill him?
Where was the deposition of Catherine’s ex-husband, the one who was a doctor, but who later became a dentist and would have tried to revive Lash?
Where were the recordings of the security cameras at the Bristol Farms supermarket in Santa Monica?
Apparently, there was no interest in disclosing these details.
You see, this does not mean that Lash was something more and not even extraterrestrial.
The focus of the legal world bigwigs was on the equity left by Lash- that’s all.
It could be anyone else.
By the way, who guarantees that any other citizen in California does not own hundreds of guns at home, but who is not a “Don Juan” like him?
Weapons and ammunition laws have been “slightly modified” by popular vote in these last California elections, but they are far from preventing anyone from having a war arsenal at home.
Lash just found the opportunity to live the American dream, and did not waste a single second of that dream.
The web sleuths online have speculated on whether Nebron and Lash were espionage partners.
Perhaps she was his fixer.
Others felt she was his operator, and he was a deep cover mind control agent.
Maybe she was his contact.
Everyone on the forums worked so hard with so little information that it often sounded like someone trying to describe the 1970s, in a single episode of The Brady Bunch.
He could have been a future presidential assassin, they say.
Theories abound online.
You see where they’re going….
How could a guy buy that many crazy-ass guns and not catch the attention of the FBI or the ATF?
How the hell, can a man build a huge arsenal in a condo, without anyone ever noticing?
In California, where Lash presumably bought his guns, all firearm purchases require an FFL (Federal Firearms License) including gun shows and private sales.
How does someone like Lash stay off of everyone’s radar? What sort of national gun registration records does the ATF keep and monitor?
Davis’s answer is to the point
. “There’s no gun registry. It is not permitted by federal law for us to keep any type of electronic firearms records or registry.”
“Federal law requires manufacturers and importers put the manufacturer’s name, a serial number, the model, the caliber or gauge, then the city and state of the manufacturer or importer on every gun they make.
Also, the country of origin, if it’s imported.
Because the manufacturers are required to put this on there, we can perform a trace.
In this case, we’re talking about Mr. Lash, but this could be applied to anyone, and any gun you find in the street.
You pick it up. You see that it has Colt on the side of it.
You call Colt and they say, ‘Yeah, here’s the serial number.
And this is who we sold it to or who we shipped it to.’
So, we contact the gun store. And the gun store identifies who the last legal purchaser was.
In a perfect world, that person is in possession of a firearm, but it’s not a perfect world.
In California, if it was sold again, there needs to be another 4473, if it was a private sale.
But the ATF are fans of the state-based program called E-trace because federal law prohibits a national database.
Though, if a state opts into the registry, the state must collect its own records and make them available to federal agencies such as the ATF.
The E-trace program allows for faster processing than sorting through tangible records.
Davis explains in calm, “You can purchase as many guns as you like.
There is no federal law about how many guns you can purchase at one time, and there’s no federal law about how many guns you can have in your home, office or boat.
There just isn’t but, states can regulate that.”
“If it’s perfectly legal for someone to amass an arsenal of 1,200 guns, how do you guys distinguish someone with malicious intent, who hoards a bunch of guns, and someone who happens to be a gun collector?
“We do monitor what we call multiple sales,” Davis says. “If a person purchases two or more handguns–a pistol or a revolver–within a period of 5 consecutive business days, a multiple sales form needs to be filled out.
We’ve found that the preponderance of the evidence is there, that people buying more than one handgun at one time, may be involved in some sort of illegal activity, that needs to be monitored.”
Until , it’s the feds themselves.
This “multiple sales monitoring” seems to be aimed at gangs buying guns.
But if someone like Lash is patient and buys a gun every week, no one would ever need to fill out this form.
If someone’s smart enough to avoid the multiple purchases reporting, and he’s not issued a deny/delay from the FBI because he doesn’t meet any of the nine reasons to disqualify him, in effect, an American citizen can stockpile guns forever, or at least, as Lash did, until the day he died.
“What about ammunition? What if someone buys copious amounts of ammunition?”
“Ammunition is not something that’s serialized or recorded like firearms are,”
Davis says, “If a dealer feels that someone is purchasing it for nefarious reasons they’ll usually call.”
“There’s an ATF tip line,” she says. “Employment is not one of the prohibitors to a gun purchase.”
Obviously, this guy wasn’t a domestic terrorist, maybe he was just a gun lover.
“This is not the first person that I’ve encountered with that many guns,” she says. “The number is not astounding to me at all.”
near the time of the incident
As soon as we came to the Lash weapon issue, I started with a simple matter of jurisdiction,
‘Why is this a case of the Los Angeles Police Department and not the FBI?’
‘Why do you think it would be the FBI and not the Los Angeles Police?
From my point of view, I do not see why it would be the FBI, ‘Davis dodges easily from my question. ‘You’re right, there’s no specific crime. There’s only one corpse.
However, there was the search for a missing Oxnard woman who drew national attention to the case.
Are you guys seeing this?
It’s not the dead body they’re worried about, it was only the missing person report.
Of course, she was found without any injuries, so there was no crime either.
But what do you think about such a well-armed person?
Maybe he was one of the West Coast’s top distributors for amateur shooters, survivalists, and paranoid extremists.
Is that Hollywood stuff, too?
“I asked. “I do not see any federal crime. Who would be the accused in this case? “Davis said, refusing to accept any futile speculation without proof.
It adheres to the reality of concrete evidence by saying:
“There is no need for further investigation into something legally obtained.”
“For a wealthy individual who is a hobbyist in firearms to have a collection of up to 2,000 guns—I have seen that, a handful of times, but I’ve seen that,”
Davis says.
“Now, these are very wealthy hobbyists. They don’t have a yacht. Some people choose to have a yacht. Some choose to buy unique and custom firearms.
That’s not inherently illegal.
They’re written into the Constitution, Guns are things that have always been part of our culture. It’s not an illegal commodity. It’s just what he chose to spend his money on.”
This rationale comes up often when explaining Jeffrey Alan Lash.
That case has nothing to do with his death.
It’s just evidence the LAPD was aware of – Jeffrey Alan Lash was one well-armed citizen.
Because he spent quality time with the mystery man at the center of all this madness,
“What was Jeffrey Alan Lash like?”
“When we went out to the Lost Hills Station to recover—what I think was a couple of hundred guns at that time—they actually had inmates loading the truck when we arrived.
Not the sheriff’s personnel but the people who were in custody. They were handling the weapons. That just blew my mind,”
Rentzer says.
“But all of the guns were wrapped in wax paper and then sealed.
They’d never been fired. Never been cleaned, total collector’s items.
He was upset because he saw that they’d unwrapped one. And he said: in his mind, that destroyed the pristine and original condition of the gun.”
So Lash was one of those kids who preferred to leave his toys in their box, in order to protect them from—this is where his psychology gets tricky.
Rentzer continues, “He asked me, ‘I don’t want to have the LAPD come and take my guns away again… What do I do? I want to be low-profile.’
I told him, ‘Get a storage locker and don’t tell anybody where it is, including me. I don’t want to know where they are.’”
It appears Lash did just that.
The story ricocheted across Southern California and the next morning international headlines blared: 1,200 guns. $230,000 in cash.
Neighbors described, Lash as a gun fanatic, who claimed to work covertly, for either the FBI or the CIA.
It was a neighbor who sent the Palisade’s Post, a picture showing a cop placing a rifle atop a huge pile of stacked guns, just some of the hundreds Lash, had stockpiled.
For what purpose? nobody knew. ..
(Is it weird, the hazmats do not have uniforms or even protective gear and the agents don’t seem gloved?)
A white tent was erected, an ad hoc government headquarters, a K-9 unit, and even a hazmat team assembled.
Police cleared the closest neighbors and found enough high-powered weapons to stage a rebellion, while men in civilian clothes milled around.
LAPD Deputy Chief, Kirk Albanese told, The Los Angeles Times Lash’s cache appeared to be a private collection and there was no evidence, he was selling the weapons or a licensed firearms dealer.
Many of the guns had never been fired, some still had their price tags attached, none linked to crimes.
It was soon reported, the dead man might have had multiple storage units around Los Angeles.
No one knows for sure how many, but they were thought to contain more guns, along with survivalist toys like amphibious assault vehicles and modified SUVs with bulletproof glass, which police seized along with a number of SUVs modified for use, on different types of terrains, including an amphibious vehicle.
The longtime partner of Lash’s late father, Shirley Anderson said, she hadn’t heard from Lash in five years, but was called by the L.A. County coroner’s office and was told a body had been found, believed to be Jeff Lash.
UPDATE: Deadman with a cache of 1,200 guns identified — ‘He was just a loner’
In addition to the stock of weapons, the police also counted and withdrew thousands of dollars in kind.
The removal operation lasted for much of Sunday, largely due to what police called the “extreme storage situation.”
Inside the 185-square-meter house with 2 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms were weapons, ammunition boxes, and random items found stacked in each room.
The inventory of stuff police discovered was a broad range which included:
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lethal, high-powered sniper rifles with military-grade scopes
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50,000 music CDs
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roughly 1,000 Palm Pilots.
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medieval broad swords
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machetes
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crossbows
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Harry Potter books
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laptops
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DVD players
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athletic gear
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Gore-Tex jackets
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Nikon cameras ….etc
some of Jeffery Lash’s gun cache
- sources:http://www.assombrado.com
- http://heavy.com/news
http://ktla.com/
http://www.latimes.com
http://www.nydailynews.
http://www.playboy.com/articles/jeffrey- alan-lash
http://abc7.com/
http://mynewsla.com