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PCH Delivers Twists, Turns
POSTED: 6:15 pm PST March 2, 2006
UPDATED: 5:35 pm PST March 3, 2006
LOS ANGELES -- The plot continued to thicken Thursday in the mystery surrounding the crash of a $1 million Ferrari on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, a sheriff's sergeant said.
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"It's like a James Bond story," said Sgt. Philip Brooks, of the Malibu/Lost Hills Station traffic detail. "But I just want to find out who was driving the Ferrari."
Brooks is heading up the investigation to find out if Stefan Eriksson, of Bel Air, was at the wheel of the red Ferrari Enzo when it crashed into a pole off Pacific Coast Highway on Feb. 21 at an estimated 160 mph.
The impact caused the car to split in half and nearly disintegrate, but Eriksson suffered relatively minor injuries.
A bloodied Eriksson was found in the passenger seat and told authorities that the driver was a German man named Dietrich who fled on foot into the Malibu hills.
"Yesterday, Eriksson came to the station with his attorney, David Eldon, and voluntarily provided a DNA sample taken with a mouth swab," Brooks said. "We want to see if his blood matches the blood in the Ferrari."
Results are expected for a few weeks.
The blood was found only on the driver's side of the car, not the passenger's side.
On the advice of his attorney, Eriksson did not make a statement Wednesday.
After the crash, Eriksson told deputies examining the wreckage that he had been a passenger in the Ferrari and there was a street race with a Mercedes.
Brooks said that Eriksson had told deputies of his friend Trevor, who was a passenger in the Mercedes.
"Based on the evidence, we don't believe there was a Mercedes or any race. There was a sole vehicle driving too fast on Pacific Coast Highway," Brooks said.
He has not been able to prove that Eriksson was the driver of that Ferrari.
But he said that "the plot thickened" as the investigation continued.
He said that Trevor -- he has a last name but is not releasing it -- said he was a friend of Eriksson and gave as his home address a boat slip in Marina del Rey.
The boat in that slip was a $14 million yacht, maybe the biggest in the harbor. And the name of the registered owner is Carl Freer.
Eriksson's name was linked by several European newspapers, including the Guardian of London, to Freer for their involvement in the collapse of a prominent video game company in Sweden in which investors lost millions of dollars. Eriksson was reportedly sentenced to a long prison sentence in that case.
Another unnerving development -- Trevor was at the scene of the accident on PCH and asked a good Samaritan to use his cell phone to report the crash, Brooks said.
"An hour later the good Samaritan found a magazine to a 40 mm Glock which had been stuffed under the car seat and reported it to us," Brooks said.
Brooks said the investigation also revealed that in September, Eriksson had brought two Ferrari Enzos into the country in San Diego -- one a red one and the other a black one. He also brought in a Mercedes SLR, a $600,000 vehicle.
Brooks said that the red Ferrari and the Mercedes have since been described as stolen, because the initial down payment on them was allegedly a fraudulent one through a company owned by Freer.
Federal authorities said Freer and Eriksson have connections to the Swedish mafia.
And then there's yet another wrinkle, Brooks said.
"At the scene of the accident, two associates of Eriksson showed up flashing badges from Homeland Security. Obviously, at the time the deputies were overwhelmed and didn't check out the badges. Eriksson also produced a business card describing himself as a deputy police commissioner with the San Gabriel Valley Transit," he said.
That entity is actually a privately owned security company, Brooks said. It consists of two vans used for paratransit working out of a garage across the street from the Monrovia Police Department.
The badges were apparently issued by the paratransit company, Brooks said.
Trevor told the deputies that Eriksson was part of the agency's anti-terrorism forces and that he was working on new facial recognition software for Homeland Security, Brooks said.
The sergeant said there was one additional piece of information.
The Ferrari company in Italy told Brooks it could fix the broken red Ferrari for a mere $200,000 to $300,000.
Many people had been upset at the destruction of the $1 million Ferrari, which is regarded as one of the finest cars ever made.
Brooks said that if it is determined that Eriksson was indeed the Ferrari driver, the most with which he could be charged is possibly misdemeanor DUI and reckless driving, along with providing false information to authorities.
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