I considered it. But found it unlikely.
IMHO this is what happened.
He knew the PC's were full of incriminating evidence. So, he put them in water (likely the bathtub). Then he took them to the repair shop so they could try to fix them, but would end up just junking them because they were not repairable. That way, the evidence was no longer in his possession, and no one would know of it or be looking for it and if they did, he would tell them the laptops died and had been junked.
HOWEVER, one of them was repairable... and that is how all this came about.
You may be right. There are a ton of ways to quickly destroy a computer. How about going into the woods and digging a hole and burying it?