2 Found Dead as Hilltop Mansion Burns

Two charred bodies, feared to be those of a man and his elderly mother, were found in a burning hilltop estate Wednesday in a neighborhood of million-dollar homes, where a neighbor had heard shouting and gunfire.

The bodies were too badly burned for identification, but a teenager who lives in the two-story home with his family said the victims are his father and grandmother.

“All I know is my father is dead, my grandmother is supposedly dead, and it was not an accident,” John Hancock said from a neighbor’s driveway while his house still smoldered.

The fire at 11301 Dannen Drive, in an unincorporated area near Tustin, is being treated as a homicide and arson “until we can prove that it is not,” said Lt. Ron Wilkerson, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. He would not elaborate.

Hancock said his family had received threatening telephone calls during the past few months. His father was “more or less worried about our safety,” the teenager said.

The woman’s body was found in the kitchen. The man’s body was found in the backyard, which investigators considered unusual, Wilkerson said. Neither the boy nor his teenage sister, Ashley, were at home when the fire began.

Wilkerson said he could not confirm the identity of the victims, but added that investigators have not been able to reach either John T. Hancock, the teenager’s father who is divorced, nor Helen B. Hancock, the teenager’s grandmother.

Neighbor Robert Dever, a retired aerospace worker, said he heard shouting and what sounded like gunfire shortly after noon, about an hour before the fire was reported.

“All of a sudden I heard some loud voices,” said Dever, who lives on the other side of a small canyon across from the Dannen Drive home. “Then I heard three shots that sounded like pistols. Two were muffled and one was louder. I know guns; the sound was very distinct. It really startled me, because it really did sound like gunfire.”

Dever said he also heard loud voices after the gunfire and saw smoke coming from the house soon after.

The fire caused an estimated $1 million in damage to the 4,200-square-foot, two-story home, which has a castle-like tower faced with gray stone, five bedrooms and four baths.

Landlord Jack Datt said he leased the mansion to the Hancocks, who were moving from Arizona, about six months ago. He estimated the father’s age at 50 and the grandmother’s at 75.

Datt said that about two weeks ago, Orange County and Arizona law enforcement officials forced open the front door of the Dannen Drive house to deliver a subpoena to the family, and that he had to repair the door. Datt said that Hancock was a businessman but did not elaborate.

“He was a pretty happy-go-lucky guy,” Datt said. “I was slightly concerned after the door was bashed in. This is a big tragedy. His kids are very nice kids.”

Sheriff’s officials would not comment on whether they had delivered a subpoena to the home in recent weeks.

Another resident of the Dever home said she had heard loud voices coming from the area of the Hancock house shortly after midnight Tuesday. Sheri Knott, 38, who lives with her parents, said she was awakened about 12:30 a.m. by the sound of a dog barking and heard the sound of “shouting and yelling.”

Wilkerson said the immediate focus of the homicide investigation will be to determine whether the two victims died before or after the fire began.

“That’s kind of the key to it,” he said. “That’s why we have the investigators out here, to determine exactly what happened, when the time of death was, if we can determine that, and what the cause was.”

Sixty-five firefighters, 11 fire trucks and one helicopter responded to the blaze. Fire investigators said late Wednesday that the cause of the fire had not been determined. It was also not known where the fire began.

Robert Wallace, a neighbor, said he had offered to buy the house, which has been assessed at $732,000, about eight months ago without success. In a community hidden by a maze of narrow, winding roads where many of the homes are gated, Wallace said many of his neighbors had not met the Hancocks.

“I never met them,” Wallace said. “The house has been for sale for a pretty long time.”

Dever said the neighborhood normally was quiet.

“That’s why we like it; it’s very exclusive here,” he said. “I guess tragedy has no social standards.”