 | | A Hollywood Hills mansion went up in flames, and decimated a priceless art collection. | |
 | | The owner, Brian Wetzer, took INSIDE EDITION on a tour of the remains of his house. | |
 | | Witzer shows INSIDE EDITION his destroyed Stradivarius violin. | |
 | | WItzer pointed out a 20,000-year-old mammoth tusk with 150-year-old engravings that was ruined. | |
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A spectacular fire tore through a $7 million mansion in the Hollywood Hills.
The fire destroyed one of Los Angeles's most prominent private collections of art, which included a priceless Faberge egg and a Stradivarius violin.
"It's heartbreaking...really heartbreaking," says the owner of the collection, Los Angeles attorney Brian Witzer.
He took INSIDE EDITION on an exclusive tour of what's left of his dream home.
Armed guards watch over the rubble that was once a collection estimated to be worth in the tens of millions of dollars.
Witzer points out a 20,000-year-old mammoth tusk with 150-year-old engravings.
"Every part of the wall was covered in important art," he says, pointing out the former location of a Winslow Homer.
A 150-year-old Austrian piano is charred; it's estimated worth was a quarter of a million dollars.
And inside a charred antique French desk was Witzer's Faberge egg, which was smuggled out of Russia before the revolution.
"Look at that... [it's] just horrific, [the egg] just melts. It's gone forever."
This is all that's left of the art and antiques that took a lifetime to collect and only minutes to destroy.
"This is the devastating results of a life altering situation," says Witzer.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation. The homeowner claims firefighters took too long to respond, but fire officials say they were on the scene within eight minutes of the call.
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