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Feds Raided a Pacific Heights Mansion and Found 70 Tons of Weapons.
In 1966, federal agents raided 2801 Broadway in San Francisco's most exclusive neighborhood and discovered the largest private weapons cache ever found in American history. The owner was William Thoreson III, a charming heir with a face like a movie star and a mind like a serial killer. He never answered for it.
Mansion Photo from noehill.com
The homes on this block sell for $30 million, $45 million, $71 million.
Tech billionaires. Oil heirs. Silicon Valley royalty. The 2800 block of Broadway in Pacific Heights is the most expensive block in one of the most expensive cities in the world.
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One of those mansions once held 70 tons of weapons.
On December 20, 1966, federal authorities raided 2801 Broadway and discovered the largest private arsenal in US history. The weapons inside included 37-millimeter cannons, anti-aircraft guns, machine guns, submachine guns, mortars, anti-tank rifles, grenade launchers and 668,000 rounds of ammunition.
Seventy tons. In a Pacific Heights mansion. On Billionaires Row.
The man behind it was William Thoreson III.
He was the son of William Thoreson Jr., the multimillionaire owner of Great Western Steel. He grew up in Kenilworth, Illinois, which Forbes called the second most affluent neighborhood in the United States.
Charming. Handsome. Dangerous.
By his teenage years he was breaking into homes, shoplifting, fighting and warring with his parents. At 17, they had him committed to a series of mental institutions.
At 21, he broke into a vault and stole $650,000 in securities his parents had kept from him.
He got worse from there.
His brother Richard was found dead in his car with a bullet hole behind his right ear. Authorities were uncertain about the cause of death.
With the inherited money, William moved to San Francisco.
He bought the mansion at 2801 Broadway, discovered Haight-Ashbury and began hosting LSD parties for his Arizona friends at his Pacific Heights home.
Then the crates started arriving.
William and his wife Louise traveled around the country making huge purchases of both legal and contraband arms. Mysterious crates began arriving at 2801 Broadway.
His neighbors had no idea what was being stored next door.
When authorities finally raided the house, his defense attorney Jake Ehrlich characterized William as "kind of a screwball who just likes to collect old weapons." William himself called a 37-millimeter cannon a "lawn ornament," adding: "Every lawn should have one."
If you have followed this far, here is where this story stops being darkly funny.
After the raid, William became furious and blamed Louise for the arrest. He began beating her regularly. The family relocated to Fresno as they fought the weapons charges in court.
His behavior deteriorated further. Louise begged him to get psychiatric help.
He refused. And he told her exactly why.
"If they use any of those truth drugs on me they will never let me out," he said.
That same night he told the real story of his brother's death.
"It was Stoney Richardson who killed Richard," he said. "I paid him to do it." William later admitted he had also killed Richardson himself, tried to murder his parents and had planned to kill Louise.
The next morning he told her she knew too much to live.
As he got out of bed she grabbed a gun and shot him five times. He died instantly. At trial, a friend testified that William wanted to die but could not bring himself to commit suicide. He had deliberately pushed Louise to do it for him. The jury acquitted her on grounds of self-defense.
He never answered for the weapons. Never answered for his brother. Never answered for Richardson.
He engineered his own exit instead.
In 2014, forty-four years after his death, William Thoreson III emerged as the prime suspect in the 1966 unsolved murder of Valerie Percy, the daughter of US Senator Charles Percy. The murder had occurred less than a mile from the Thoreson family home in Kenilworth.
The case remains unsolved.
The mansion at 2801 Broadway still stands. It fits right in with the neighborhood now.
It always did. That was the point.
Editor's Note: The story of William Thoreson III and the mansion at 2801 Broadway is a reminder that wealth and address have always provided cover for what happens behind closed doors. The largest private weapons cache in American history sat in the middle of San Francisco's most exclusive neighborhood for years. Nobody noticed until the crates stopped arriving and the agents showed up. The Percy murder case remains open.
