American Murder Houses Read online

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  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  Copyright © 2015 by Steve Lehto.

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  eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-59301-1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Lehto, Steve.

  American murder houses : a coast-to-coast tour of the most notorious houses of homicide / Steve Lehto.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-0-425-26251-1 (paperback)

  1. Murder—United States—History. 2. Crime scenes—United States—History. I. Title.

  HV6524.L44 2015

  364.152’30973—dc23

  2014035749

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Berkley trade paperback edition / February 2015

  Cover photo by Getty Images.

  Cover design by George Long.

  While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

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  Version_1

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Foreword

  Lady Nero Tortures Her Slaves

  The LaLaurie Mansion

  The Infamous Axe Murders—But Did She Kill Her Parents?

  The Lizzie Borden House

  “Cosmos Mariner—Destination Unknown”

  The Conrad Aiken House

  Gruesome and Unsolved—Axe Murders on the Plains

  The Villisca Axe Murder House

  Frank Lloyd Wright’s Masterpiece—Turned into a Gruesome Crime Scene

  Taliesin

  Where Only Death Can Remove a Curse

  The “Hex House”

  The Murder House Immortalized by In Cold Blood

  The Clutter Farmhouse

  Born to Raise Hell

  Richard Speck

  Helter Skelter Houses

  The Hinman House

  The Tate House

  The LaBianca House

  The Murder House Where the Mass Murderer Was Killed

  Dean “The Candyman” Corll

  Real Murders in a Fake Haunted House

  The Amityville Horror House

  America’s Worst Family Mass Murderer

  James Ruppert

  The Unicorn Murder

  Ira Einhorn

  The Murder of John Lennon

  The Dakota

  The House from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

  The Mercer-Williams House Museum

  The Dark Side of Hollywood

  The Wonderland Murders

  The Death of John Belushi

  Chateau Marmont

  The Poor Little Rich Kids

  The Menendez Family Home

  The Suburban Serial Killer

  Joel Rifkin

  Getting Away with Murder

  Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman

  The Unsolved Christmas Murder of the Child Beauty Queen

  JonBenét Ramsey

  Murdered in the Haunted Inn

  The General Wayne Inn

  The Ultimate Random Murder

  Andrew Cunanan Kills Gianni Versace

  America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer

  Gary Ridgway—The Green River Killer

  Postpartum Depression on Trial

  Andrea Yates

  Mob Hit in the Victorian Mansion

  The Kreischer Mansion

  The Murder House Where No One Was Murdered

  The Gardette-LaPrete House

  Afterword

  The Sale of a Stigmatized House

  Photos

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Foreword

  On a sunny weekend in January 2013, I visited Miami Beach and had lunch with a friend at the News Café on Ocean Drive. I was in the process of finishing this book on American murder houses and knew that one such house was within walking distance of where we were sitting: the home that had been owned by Gianni Versace. In fact, Versace had walked from his home to the News Café on the morning of July 15, 1997, and it was on his return trip that he was gunned down on his front steps by a serial killer named Andrew Cunanan. After lunch, my friend and I walked up the street toward the mansion, the same path Versace took that fateful day. Versace’s walk would have been a little easier; he was walking on a Tuesday morning when the foot traffic would have been a bit lighter than what we encountered.

  Ocean Drive along this stretch of Miami Beach is a beautiful wall of Art Deco buildings facing the water, most of them restaurants and hotels. Tucked in among them is one home: the mansion where Versace lived. The day we walked by, the mansion was being operated as an upscale hotel and restaurant. I wondered if many people would know or remember that Versace was murdered there fifteen years ago?

  As we approached the house we noticed people standing in front of the mansion’s black iron gates, posing for pictures. A security guard stood just inside the gates, keeping an eye on the visitors and the front of the building. As one group of tourists would leave, another would wander by. Invariably, the passersby would look around, pose for pictures in front of the gates, and move on. Did all these people know about Versace and that he had died here? Apparently so. There were no signs on the spot and nothing to indicate who used to own the home or who might have died here. And still, there was a steady stream of visitors to the front steps, many getting their pictures taken in front of a pair of otherwise bland-looking metal gates.

  This, a decade and a half after Gianni Versace’s murder, was a testament to the attraction of the murder house. There is no question that Americans are fascinated with murder houses and always have been. After a murder hits the news, people are seemingly drawn to the scene of the crime. One of the most common postmurder images on the news is of the curious gathered in front of a house, sometimes holding a vigil in remembrance of the dead. Some may be there to comfort survivors, and sometimes friends and relatives comfort one another. Neighbors often join those who have traveled to come see the crime scene. Eventually, the number of people in front of the home will dwindle, but the murder house will always retain a certain stigma and attract attention long after the vigils end. Nowadays, websites are devoted to murder houses, with aficionados often checking in and telling of recent visits and observations.

  But what makes anyone want to go and look at a murder house, after
the police tape has been removed and the reporters have moved on to other stories? It is hard to say. Americans have a fascination with crime. True-crime programs on television are quite popular and there is always a certain amount of drama in any murder case. What would drive someone to kill another person? What if the accused didn’t do it? Imagine the horror of being charged with a crime you didn’t commit. What about the unsolved crimes? If the murderer is still out there, will he strike again? Each murder seems to raise questions like these and more. Once the crime scenes have been studied and the trials completed, all that remains for the curious is the murder house.

  This book is a collection of twenty-nine well-known murder houses from around the country. They run the spectrum of time, from the 1830s to the twenty-first century. Some were home to famous people who were murdered; others were homes for regular, nonfamous people who only became famous for how they died. In some, the killers were much more famous before the murders than the victims. Not all the crimes were solved. For example, people still argue about whether Lizzie Borden hacked her parents to death with a hatchet. Not all killers were brought to justice; many people have strong beliefs about who killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, but no one was ever convicted for their murders. The Los Angeles Police Department famously announced it had no intention of looking any further for their killer; to them, the case was solved.

  Some of the murder houses have murkier histories. At least one famous murder house is on lists like these only because of a hoax. The legend surrounding the house was invented from thin air; we do not know who started it or why, but today people go and look at the house where no one was murdered—because they have heard that people were killed there in a most spectacular and gruesome manner. In that instance I explain what we do know about the home and where the story most likely sprang from. If I hadn’t, it would have appeared to be a glaring omission to those who had heard of it but did not know it was a hoax.

  Some murder houses became famous only because of books written about the murders that occurred in them. Truman Capote thrust the Clutter house of Holcomb, Kansas, into the public eye with his book In Cold Blood. The family that briefly lived in the DeFeo house in Amityville, New York, wrote a book—which they claimed was a true story—about their former home and how it was possessed by evil spirits. The evil spirits were not real, but the DeFeos, who had been murdered in the house before the Lutz family “fled” from the house, were all too real. The story of their murder house’s alleged haunting has overshadowed the DeFeos’ own sad end.

  Many other murder houses have been demolished or are long gone. A few of them are mentioned in this book but are not featured. Some probably would have been knocked down regardless of their history, but others most certainly were leveled to erase the stigma of the home’s past. The Hale-Bopp “Heaven’s Gate” house is one example. The Sharon Tate murder house was razed decades after the Manson Family killed its occupants, and the home owned by John Wayne Gacy has long since been replaced with another home on the same lot where Gacy buried many of his victims. More than a few famous murder houses have burned down, some under mysterious circumstances. That of Ed Gein, for instance, burned down not long after he was arrested. Arson was suspected, and considering the gruesomeness of his crimes—he killed and gutted one victim, and also admitted digging up and stealing bodies from the local cemetery—no one in the community bothered to find out who did it.

  As of this writing, the homes described here are still standing. The following accounts and descriptions of the most well-known American murder houses and the murders that put them on this list are as factual as possible. Each chapter is followed by a reference or two indicating a good starting place for a reader who wants to see more information on a given murder house.

  Keep in mind that most of these houses are owned by private individuals who are not seeking any particular attention. Still, many of these houses can be seen without intruding onto the property. If you choose to go look at any of them, you should be careful to remain on public property. The few houses that are open for tours are noted, and, of course, you can inspect those houses to your heart’s content. Included here are the addresses and many other details of the houses, all available from public sources with a little bit of digging. These cases were well publicized and the information is public and out there for anyone to obtain. Even so, please respect the privacy of the owners. Their homes have been through a lot.

  Lady Nero Tortures Her Slaves

  THE LALAURIE MANSION

  1834

  1140 Royal Street

  New Orleans, Louisiana 70116

  On April 10, 1834, smoke poured from the LaLaurie mansion, a huge home in the French Quarter of New Orleans owned by socialite Delphine LaLaurie and her wealthy husband, Dr. Louis LaLaurie. The fire had started in the kitchen and spread quickly through the house. As flames engulfed the two-story structure, the LaLauries ran into the street and implored neighbors to help them retrieve their furniture and antiques from the inferno. As volunteers rushed forward, someone in the crowd stepped up and asked: Aren’t there still people in the house as well?

  There were. It would be a few decades before slavery was abolished, and the LaLauries owned slaves. They called them “servants” and the community knew all too well about them. Delphine had even been brought to court, charged with abusing her slaves, and now it was only natural to wonder where they were as the house burned. They were not outside. Why weren’t the LaLauries in a hurry to rescue them along with their other belongings? It seemed very odd. If nothing else, the slaves could be helping to empty the house. The LaLauries were hiding something. Louis responded to the neighbor by saying, “Never mind the servants, save my valuables.” For reasons no one can fully explain, that comment would later be attributed to his wife, Delphine. And slaves were valuable. Why wouldn’t they want to save them?

  People in the crowd became enraged when they realized there were servants in the house whom the LaLauries were willing to let burn to death. Many had heard about Delphine’s earlier court case, but rumors had traveled through the neighborhood that the LaLauries kept their slaves chained in cramped quarters within the house. Some men ran into the house specifically to find the slaves the LaLauries had condemned to death. Kicking down locked doors, they barged into the slave quarters. There, they found slaves chained to the floor, with iron shackles around their necks and ankles. The local New Orleans Bee newspaper reported, “Seven slaves more or less horribly mutilated were seen suspended by the neck, with their limbs apparently stretched and torn from one extremity to the other. Language is powerless and inadequate to give a proper conception of the horror which a scene like this must have inspired.” The paper reported the slaves were not just being mistreated—they were clearly being tortured. Some were in such bad condition that rescuers feared they might die from the injuries they suffered before they had been rescued from the fire. The townspeople were convinced that Delphine was the guilty party and that her husband, the doctor, had little responsibility for the crimes. Again, we do not know why this was the consensus at the time. The rescuers removed the slaves from the home and took them for medical treatment and then to the police station. Authorities were trying to determine what steps they should take next. The cause of the fire was never determined, but many people said it had been started by an abused slave to spite her cruel master, Delphine LaLaurie.

  Medical personnel were shocked by what they saw when treating the LaLaurie slaves. Some of the slaves bore festering wounds infested with maggots; others had obvious signs of intentional injuries inflicted upon them, such as drill holes in their skulls. At least one slave could not walk because of severely injured legs. The scandal mushroomed as word spread through the community of the bizarre and cruel injuries the slaves had suffered before the fire destroyed much of the LaLaurie mansion. The New Orleans Bee reported that thousands of people came by the police station to view the slaves, having heard of the atrocities and wanting to see if
the story was true. The paper then reported that many of the angry citizens made their way to the LaLaurie mansion, where they “demolished and destroyed everything upon which they could lay their hands… . the mob remained still unabated and threatens the total demolition of the entire edifice.” The police were called to restore order. The house was not destroyed by the angry mob, but the paper reported that much of what the LaLauries had saved from the fire was.

  The mob was not content to just smash the LaLauries’ furniture. Calls went up for Delphine to come out and answer for her actions. Realizing there was no way she could remain in her home, and fearing the crowd outside might turn into a lynch mob, she hitched up a carriage and she and her husband raced away from the city, escaping some who tried pursuing them. They were rumored to have fled to the docks, where they had paid a handsome amount in gold to a ship’s captain to take them immediately to either New York City or Paris. From there, the LaLauries faded from history. Stories persisted that they lived in exile in Paris, and that possibly, in her old age, Delphine had returned to the city in secret, where she finally died with no one taking notice. The house remained as a gruesome reminder that even in the homes of the rich, unspeakable things might be happening behind closed doors.

  Despite its lurid reputation, the house was eventually sold to others and repaired. The tales of torture and murder would follow the home from owner to owner through the decades.

  From time to time the story would reappear in local papers, discussing the history of the house and its former owners. They had dubbed Delphine “Lady Nero,” and the LaLaurie mansion became renowned as a house of horrors. The legend of the house grew over time and, as so often happens, the story was embellished and exaggerated, becoming more horrific with each telling. Dozens of people were said to have been killed in the house, making Delphine one of the most reviled characters in Louisiana history. She was said to have hidden corpses in a well on the property and to have buried murder victims in her courtyard.

  The LaLaurie mansion still stands in the French Quarter, but how much of Lady Nero’s story is true? Delphine’s marriage to Dr. Louis LaLaurie was her third, but the French doctor, who was twenty years her junior, provided a lifestyle unlike any she had been able to afford previously. The house they purchased on Royal Street in 1831 was palatial—although it was only two stories tall then—and Delphine would soon become known for her extravagant parties, to which she invited the better elements of New Orleans society. At the time, New Orleans was the fifth-largest city in the United States, with a population of more than forty-six thousand. To maintain the residence and throw the huge parties, Delphine kept several servants—slaves—in the house.