On October 20, 2004, at 4:49 a.m., a resident of the city of Escondido in southern California called 911. She reported that a car was on fire in the field behind her apartment building. The police and fire department responded to the call. After the firefighters doused the fire, the police found a body in the driver's seat of the car.
The apparent crime scene offered several clues even though the body in the car was burned too badly for the police to immediately determine a cause of death. The car was a 2005 Mercedes E500, which the officers knew cost around $60,000. The vehicle has an automatic transmission and was found in "neutral" gear. The car's tires seemed to have pushed down but not broken or uprooted much of the grass in their tracks. Documents in the glove compartment indicated the car was registered to John Carew, a 32-year-old White male Escondido resident. The address to which the car was registered was another apartment building a mile away. Also, the car's license plate was missing, but police were able to retrieve the Vehicle Identification Number from inside the driver's side door.
Based on their observations at the scene, the police come up with a working thesis of what occurred. They did not know whether the body was that of registered owner John Carew, but they believed it was. In particular, they did not believe the car had been stolen because of the tire tracks. There were no skid marks leading off the road into the field, suggesting the car was not traveling at a high rate of speed when it veered off into the field. Moreover, the blades of grass in the tire tracks were not broken, strongly suggesting that the car was not traveling at a high rate of speed when it went into the field. Also, because the car was found in neutral, the police at the scene believed the car had been pushed from the roadway into the field and set afire once there. Finally, the fire started in the driver's seat of the car.
The fa...