by Emerson Morley and Lucy Holland

Graphic Design Editor & Sports Editor

On Mon. Mar. 2, Los Gatos residents were shocked by some unsettling news. Police in downtown Los Gatos dug for a body behind Gardino’s Ristorante Italiano.  The search was said to be linked to a 1982 homicide, in which a man was accused of murdering his wife and sentenced to death for his crime, but the police never found her body. 

The excavation began when the friend of an alleged accomplice came forward to the police, claiming he remembered strange activity in this location around the time of the murder. He believed that there might be a body buried under a store on North Santa Cruz Avenue. 

In the quiet and safe community of downtown Los Gatos, business owners were surprised and worried. Gardino’s owner Pete Jillo said, “I would never imagine a body next door, that’s crazy.” Jillo was startled by “about fifteen, twenty people back there just digging up mud and going through all the forensics and dogs, the whole nine yards,” when he came into work on Monday morning. 

Megan Kunis, another business owner, told reporters that it was “frightening, I wonder how long ago it was, that’s scary. It’s such a beautiful area.” And Los Gatos resident Debra Chin said, “It’s troubling because you kind of wonder how they picked that spot and why. You have to imagine, did they have connections or was it somehow related to some other construction that was going on?”

Although residents are nervous about this news, overall they are grateful that the victim’s family might get the closure they deserve. Chin told reporters “I think the family deserves some peace and resolution, and if they can find a body and put that to rest then that would give the family a great deal of satisfaction.” 

(Sources: NBC Bay Area, CBS San Francisco,  Mercury News, KPIX)