This man called himself Bob Smith who died possibly from cancer in his vehicle in the up scale L.A. suburb of Pacific Palisades, had bought 1,200 "high end" guns and well over a ton of ammunition. He had to have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on his obsession with guns.
Mystery of dead man and his 1,200 guns deepens
By SARAH PARVINI, VERONICA ROCHA AND RICHARD WINTON
Once Los Angeles police were called, they traced the dead man inside the vehicle to a town house down the street. There, investigators found roughly two tons of ammunition and more than 1,200 high-end pistols, shotguns and rifles.
The cache of firearms and ammunition was so large that it took police days to remove several truckloads from the canyon home.
On Tuesday, police were trying to piece together how the dead man ended up inside the abandoned vehicle and determine why he had so many weapons. The coroner’s office had yet to formally identify him as of Tuesday, though law enforcement sources said detectives have a good idea of his name.
Several neighbors said the man was known only as “Bob” in the local area and described him as a gun fanatic who claimed to have worked covertly for either the FBI or the CIA. His fiancée had lived in the town home on Palisades Drive for years, they said.
“He'll say crazy things to people like he does night missions swimming to Catalina,” said one neighbor, who declined to give her name, saying she was afraid. “He would come … and tell us he would show us self-defense moves.”