>From the San Diego Union Tribune...
Katie
Tragic road to a treasured car
A suicide leads to a long-lost $4 million classic sports coupe, and a
looming court fight
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By John Wilkens
STAFF WRITER
August 1, 2001
Car collectors often fantasize about stumbling across treasures in unlikely
places. A rare Rolls in a barn. A priceless Porsche tucked under a tarp.
For the past 20 years, these fantasies have been attached to a historic race
car called the Cobra Daytona Coupe. Created in 1964 by maverick designer
Carroll Shelby, only six were ever built. But that was enough to topple
Ferrari and win a world racing championship, the first ever by an American
team.
One of the Daytonas sold at auction last year for $4 million. Another is in
a museum in Colorado. But for collectors, the coupe that mattered most, the
Holy Grail, was the first one built.
Known by its chassis number, CSX2287, that car won at Sebring, a 12-hour
endurance race in Florida. It was leading at Spa, in Belgium, when a
sabotaged fuel tank felled it. At Le Mans, France, it was winning again
until disqualified for a rules violation.
In December of 1965, the coupe was hauled to Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats,
where it set 23 speed records.
And then it disappeared from public view.
Over the years, rumors circulated about its whereabouts. Most of them
centered in Orange County on an increasingly reclusive woman named Donna
O'Hara, who lived in La Habra, had a fondness for opera and rabbits, and
worked as a clerk at a Sears warehouse in Santa Ana.
She supposedly got the car in the early 1970s from her father, who
supposedly got it from Phil Spector, the famous "Wall of Sound" music
producer. Cobra legend holds that Spector collected speeding tickets like
hit singles.
O'Hara's father, George Brand, was Spector's bodyguard/house manager. The
way he told it, Spector took the car to a mechanic for repairs one day and
heard this estimate: $15,000. Spector blinked and called the junkman
instead.
The junkman offered $800; Spector accepted. When he heard that, Brand bid
$1,000, and a deal was struck. He met the junkman at the gate and waved him
away. Brand eventually gave the car to his daughter.
Or so the story went. Enough of it circulated in car circles that suitors
would approach O'Hara from time to time. One offered $150,000 for the car.
Another bid $500,000. Last year, a broker hired a private detective to find
the Cobra, and when the trail led to O'Hara, he promised her $2 million.
She resisted them all -- even Shelby, the designer. He had sold the car for
$4,500 following the Bonneville exploits, but later decided he wanted it
back. He got nowhere.
"She just wouldn't talk about it," said Lynn Park, a Los Angeles collector
who tried to buy the car from O'Hara. "She wouldn't even confirm that it
existed. I think she knew it was valuable, but she didn't realize the whole
Cobra community was lusting after it."
Her reluctance just fueled more rumors that the coupe was buried in the
California desert or was in a private museum or had been destroyed.
Or was sitting in a storage shed somewhere, its tires flat, its paint
chipped, its mystique growing.
Sometime in the morning of Oct. 22, the 54-year-old O'Hara left home and
made her way about 2 miles to a horse path in a park in Fullerton. She was
carrying two pet rabbits and two jugs of gasoline.
There, in a culvert near a bridge, she set herself and the rabbits on fire.
It was about 7:30 a.m. when the first officers arrived. She whispered that
she had done this to herself, that she wanted to die. She wouldn't give her
name. When they persisted, she told them to shut up.
The ambulance took her to a hospital. Burned over more than 90 percent of
her body, she died at about 6 p.m., still clinging to her secrecy.
She stayed a "Jane Doe" at the coroner's office for six weeks. Thanksgiving
came and went. Her hands were so badly scorched police couldn't get
fingerprints.
Apparently nobody at work missed her; she'd walked away from her job five
days before the suicide. Nobody at home missed her, either. Divorced in 1982
and childless, she lived alone. It had been five years since she last talked
with her mother, Dorothy Brand, who lives in San Diego. Her father, George,
is in the early stages of Alzheimer's.
On Nov. 29, the man who co-owned the La Habra home where O'Hara lived
reported her missing. She had failed to make the mortgage payment. The cops
put two and two together and within days Jane Doe had a name.
Not long after, Dorothy and George Brand went to their daughter's home. High
school sweethearts, they had divorced in 1968 after 24 years of marriage but
remained on speaking terms. Now they were together again, sharing the
unspeakable.
A man met them at the house. Kurt Goss had known the family for more than 30
years, ever since a taste for billiards led him as a teen-ager to the Golden
Cue, a pool hall George Brand owned in Fullerton.
Goss kept in touch with George Brand over the years, but he and O'Hara had
little contact until the late 1980s. After a chance meeting at a store, they
became lovers briefly, then friends.
He went to her house after the suicide to help deal with all the questions
and details that linger in death's shadow.
O'Hara left no suicide note and no will, at least not that anybody has
found. Throughout her house, though, there were memos she'd written about
this and that, bequests and instructions.
There was mention of a dismantled 1969 MG, kept at a garage in Placentia.
There was paperwork for a 1969 Datsun and a 1992 Chevy. There were notes
about pool cues and a 150-year-old church bench and an antique sewing
machine.
And there was something about a 1964 Cobra Daytona Coupe.
The Holy Grail, as it turned out, was in a storage garage in Anaheim. Goss
went there early in December with O'Hara's cousin. They opened the door and
there it was, under a sheet. It hadn't been moved in almost three decades.
Goss paid about $300 in back rent on the garage, then returned a week later.
His curiosity was more than idle. As far as he was concerned, the car was
now his. O'Hara, he said, had given it to him.
This, from court papers, is how he claims it happened:
O'Hara phoned and asked him to come over on Oct. 17. He went and she told
him that she wanted him to have the Cobra, that she had always thought of it
as his.
She told him that "in the unlikely event anything should happen to her, that
she wanted me to look after her personal effects," Goss said.
The unlikely event happened five days later.
After the suicide, Goss, at O'Hara's house, found an incomplete DMV Transfer
of Ownership document listing him as the recipient of the Cobra. There were
notes addressed to him. "I did this to avoid losing anything to probate,"
one read. "I still haven't found the Cobra poster," said another. "Don't let
the house go until you do."
Back in the early 1970s, Goss had driven the coupe a few times, when George
Brand was working for Spector. He said he loved the car. But he also knew
what it was worth, and he started hearing offers.
One of the bidders was Steve Volk, president of the Shelby American
Collection museum in Boulder, Colo., which already has one of the Daytonas.
(The other four are in private hands.)
"We've been tracking that car for 15 years," Volk said. "It's one of the
cars that helped Carroll Shelby put American racing on the map. Before that,
we weren't a contender."
On Feb. 17, Goss went back to the storage garage for another look at the
treasure. The Cobra was gone. All that remained were four stains on the
floor from where the tires had sat for all those years.
In the weeks after her daughter died, Dorothy Brand heard about a man named
Martin Eyears, a broker of rare automobiles who lives in the Santa Barbara
enclave of Montecito.
He's the one who had hired a private detective in March 2000 to find the
Cobra. The detective traced it to O'Hara, and Eyears offered her $2 million.
O'Hara ignored him.
Dorothy Brand didn't.
"She is a little old lady, in her late 70s," said Brand's attorney, Milford
W. Dahl Jr. "She is very nice but extremely unsophisticated in these kinds
of matters. She's very emotionally disturbed by the death of her daughter,
and all she knows is there's this car that somebody wants to buy for a lot
of money."
Brand called the broker. They talked and made a pact on Dec. 16. For $3
million, Eyears would get the coupe.
They met at the storage garage in January so that Eyears could see the car.
It wasn't much to look at, with its flat tires, dented nose and chipped
paint. But it was undeniably CSX2287, the first Daytona.
There were a few details to be worked out. Dorothy Brand came back to San
Diego and filed a power of attorney form for George, her ailing ex-husband.
It enabled her to sign for him on the sales agreement.
Eyears wrote a check and took possession Feb. 7, loading the car on a
trailer and heading north. Within days, it was for sale again, and the
collecting world was abuzz. Photos were posted on the Internet. Potential
buyers flew to Santa Barbara.
Steve Serio, a resident of Milton, Mass., was among those who saw the car.
He went with a friend, Alex Finigan, a Cobra enthusiast. Serio said in a
court declaration that Finigan characterized the discovery of the car "as
the most significant find in the United States in 30 years."
By Feb. 18, Eyears had an offer. It was from Volk, the Shelby museum
president, for $3.75 million. "It's a museum piece," Volk said. "Future
generations should get a chance to see it in an unrestored condition, close
to what it was like originally."
But there was another bidder: Frederick Simeone, a Pennsylvania neurosurgeon
and respected collector of vintage sports cars. He reportedly offered $4
million.
Simeone sent a check the next day. And the Cobra was on its way across the
country, to the doctor's private garage in Philadelphia.
Everybody has lawyers now, and nobody's talking, at least not to the media.
Two days after Eyears sold the car, Goss filed suit in Orange County. He
wants the Cobra back and "would like for it to be displayed publicly," said
Robert Lavoie, his attorney.
It's clear, Goss argues in the legal papers, that O'Hara intended for him to
have the coupe. She put his name on the transfer document. She added his
name to the lease at the storage garage, granting him access.
The Brands and Eyears argue that O'Hara never filed the DMV paperwork, or
gave it to Goss, and that she could have changed her mind. As her only
heirs, her parents had every right to sell the car, they said.
Spector has re-entered the picture, too. After a hearing in April, his
attorney, Robert Shapiro -- yes, that Robert Shapiro, of O.J. fame -- said
the producer never gave the car to George Brand, and that he has always
assumed it was in storage somewhere, an investment gaining value.
A trial is tentatively scheduled for November. A judge ordered Dorothy Brand
not to spend any of the Cobra money, but she's already given $1 million to
relatives and charities. Charges of deceit and counter-charges of deception
are flying.
"I think this case is so sad," Volk said. "Things could have turned out a
lot better. It's a tragedy that Donna O'Hara didn't sell the car. Maybe she
could have used the money to turn her life around."
In the wake of their daughter's death, Dorothy and George Brand are planning
to marry again. "I've seen them together, and they are like a couple of
school kids," said Dahl, their attorney.
Love can do that. So can an unexpected windfall. Or both. It might be as
close to a happy ending as the story of a lost Daytona Coupe -- and a lost
daughter -- gets.
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Copyright 2001 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
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