A Beverly Hills oil widow's will told her brother-in-law to bury her in her Ferrari or lose his inheritance, and a court held her to it

Sandra Ilene West was a Beverly Hills socialite and the widow of Texas oilman Ike West. She died in California in 1977 at about 38. One report gives an accidental overdose as the cause; others mention injuries from a car crash the year before. Her handwritten will asked that she be buried in her blue Ferrari "with the seat slanted comfortably." It named her brother-in-law, Sol West, to carry out the burial and largely disinherited him if he did not. Reports give the terms as $2 million if he complied and $10,000 if he did not^†. She had written several wills. Lawyers argued first over which was the last one, then over whether she really wanted to be buried in the car. The court ruled that the wish was genuine. She and the car were flown from California to San Antonio. On 18 May 1977, dressed in a lace nightgown and seated in the reclined car, she was placed in a wooden crate. A crane lowered the crate into a grave about 19 feet long, 10 feet wide and 9 feet deep beside her husband in the West family plot at the Alamo Masonic Cemetery. Cement trucks covered it with concrete to stop looters. Sources disagree on the car: the San Antonio Express-News said a 250 GT, other sources a 1964 330 America.