Tech Exec Found Dead Hours After Kidnapping

A wealthy tech executive was kidnapped from his oceanfront home in Santa Cruz at 3am Tuesday and found dead later that day, police in California say. Police say they received a 911 call reporting a kidnapping and home invasion early Tuesday from the home of Tushar Atre, the 50-year-old founder and CEO of a website building and marketing firm, the Guardian reports. He was last seen getting into a white BMW SUV that belongs to his girlfriend. Police say Atre's body was found near the vehicle around 10am in a remote and secluded area of the Santa Cruz Mountains. "This is still an ongoing investigation, but we have reason to believe the motive was robbery," the sheriff's office said in a Facebook post.

Police have not disclosed a cause of death. Atre's business, AtreNet, says it has large clients including Hewlett Packard and Symantec, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. People in Atre's Santa Cruz neighborhood say there was "questionable activity and illicit behavior" at his home, which they believe made him a target, ABC7 reports. "Santa Cruz is notorious for different things going on," one resident says. "And you know, people with money sometimes get sucked into interesting situations." (More California stories.)