Unveiling what lies in (and out) Mormon temples' walls
One of America's most infamous serial killers, John Wayne Gacy lived at 8213 West Summerdale Avenue in Chicago, where he killed all his known 33 victims and buried them in the property's crawl space. He was executed on May 10, 1994. The house has since been torn down.
On November 13, 1974, Ronald DeFeo Jr. shot and killed six members of his family at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, Long Island. Two years later, George and Kathy Lutz and their three children moved into the house. Just under a month later, they fled the property, terrified by a series of alleged paranormal events. The large Colonial Dutch house still stands, and has become somewhat of a tourist attraction.
Albert DeSalvo, the man many believe was the so-called Boston Strangler, was convicted of murdering 13 women in the Boston area from 1962 to 1964. The crimes took place in various city locations including at 44-A Charles St on Beacon Hill, where Mary Anne Sullivan, DeSalvo's final victim, lived. The apartment block, pictured here, still stands today.
The Mount Carmel Center was a large compound building used by the Branch Davidians religious group located near Waco, Texas. On February 28, 1993, the building was raided by agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. In the ensuing siege, a fire broke out killing 76 members of the cult, including its leader David Koresh, and destroying the property.
On November 18, 1978, 918 members of a cult took their own lives at a settlement in Guyana known as Jonestown. Named after Jim Jones— the cult's leader and the man responsible for ordering the mass killings—the compound was abandoned to be slowly claimed by the jungle. Today, little remains of the compound aside from overgrown vegetation and rusted pieces of buildings and vehicles.
The following night, Manson Family members struck again, this time accompanied by Charles Manson. They murdered Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary in this property at 3301 Waverly Drive, California. The house still stands today.
Infamous American serial killer Jeffery Dahmer committed his first murder at his parents' home (pictured) in Bath Township, Ohio. He killed the majority of his victims at the Oxford Apartment building at 924 N. 25th Street in Milwaukee. While the parental home still stands, the apartment block was razed to the ground in 1992. Dahmer himself was slain by a prison inmate in 1994.
H.H. Holmes was a 19th-century serial killer who built a hotel in Chicago that he called the "castle," ostensibly to lure tourists into and murder them. Or so the story goes: there is no evidence to suggest anybody died in the building. Holmes confessed to 27 killings, but was only convicted of one—that of Benjamin Pitezel, although it is believed he also killed three of Pitezel's children and several of Holmes' own mistresses. The hotel was mysteriously gutted by fire in August 1895, with the site at 601-603 West 63rd Street in Englewood now occupied by a post office. Holmes was executed on May 7, 1896.
Tried and acquitted of the brutal August 4, 1892 axe murders of her father and stepmother, Lizzy Borden chose to continue living briefly in the family house at 92 Second Street in Fall River, Massachusetts, where the killings had taken place. Lizzie Borden died in 1927, the crime never solved. The house is now a bed and breakfast, the most requested room being that where Lizzie's stepmother Abby Borden was found murdered.
The mass shooting on April 20, 1999 of 12 students and one teacher by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who took their own lives in the incident, was at the time one of the deadliest high school shootings in US history. The school today continues to operate, though the library where most of the massacre took place was removed and replaced with an atrium. In 2001, a new library, the Hope Columbine Memorial Library was built next to the west entrance.
In a case that still remains a mystery, Nancy Spungen was found stabbed to death on October 12, 1978, in a room at the Hotel Chelsea in New York City. Her boyfriend, S** Pistols bassist Sid Vicious, real name Simon John Ritchie, was later charged with murder but died of a heroin overdose while on bail in February 1979 before the case went to trial. Speculation has since circulated that Spungen may have been killed by a drug dealer who frequently visited their room. The hotel, known for its celebrity clientele, is one of the city's most historic landmarks.
The main entrance to the Dakota Building, located on the northwest corner of 72nd Street and Central Park West in New York City, is where former Beatle John Lennon was shot by Mark David Chapman on December 8, 1980. The singer died on the way to the hospital. Chapman remains incarcerated for the senseless act.
Founder of the international luxury fashion house, Gianni Versace was shot and killed outside his Miami Beach mansion, Casa Casuarina, on July 15, 1997 by Andrew Cunanan, who later took his own life. The mansion now operates as a luxury boutique hotel known as the Villa Casa Casuarina.
Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C. is where President Abraham Lincoln was fatally wounded on April 14, 1865 by John Wilkes Booth. The presidential box where Lincoln was seated has been preserved as it appeared on the night. Today the venue is known as Ford's Theatre National Historic Site.
As the motorcade carrying John. F. Kennedy turned into Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas on Friday, November 22, 1963, two bullets struck the president, fatally wounding him. Dealey Plaza and the infamous grassy knoll, where many believe the second shot originated from rather than the Texas School Book Depository building, is now a National Historic Landmark.
The Villisca axe murders took place on June 9–10, 1912 at a house in the town of Villisca, Iowa. Eight people— six members of the Moore family and two guests—were found bludgeoned to death, victims of a heinous crime that remains unsolved to this day. The property, pictured here in a 1912 newspaper photo, has been preserved as the Villisca Axe Murder House and stands on a quiet residential neighborhood at 508 E. 2nd St. Image: The Day Book
Pictured: media gathers at the condominium in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles where Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were stabbed to death on June 12, 1994. O.J. Simpson was sensationally acquitted of the double murder. The condo at 360 N. Rockingham Ave. was demolished in 1998 to make way for a new home.
English serial killer Fred West and his wife Rose lived at 25 Cromwell Street in Gloucester. It's here that many of the couple's young victims were murdered and then buried in the cellar or the garden. West took his life in 1995 while on remand in prison; his wife is currently serving a life term behind bars. The property was demolished in October 1996, and the site later redeveloped into a public pathway.
On February 28, 1986, Swedish prime minister Olof Palme was walking home from a cinema in Stockholm with his wife when he was fatally shot. The only suspect in the murder, Stig Engström, died before ever being charged. A memorial plaque marks the site of the shooting.
Sources: (Biography) (Britannica) (The Mirror) (Rolling Stone)
Scottish serial killer and necrophile Dennis Nilsen was a prolific murderer who preyed on young men in North London. He dispatched several of his victims in the attic apartment of this house at Cranley Gardens in Muswell Hill, and it's here that he was eventually caught after neighbors complained of a dreadful smell emanating from the drains.
Nilsen had begun his killing spree earlier while living at 195 Melrose Avenue in Cricklewood, London. It's at this address where he killed up to a dozen men and disposed of them in the back garden. Both properties still stand today and are occupied, their owners fully aware of the buildings' dreadful history. Nilsen died in prison in 2018.
The bullet hole created by the shot fired by Robert Ford that killed legendary Old West outlaw Jesse James is still visible in this historic home museum in St. Joseph, Missouri. The property originally stood at 1318 Lafayette Street but was moved to its present position at 12th St. and Mitchell Ave. in 1977.
Located at 429 Bull Street in Savannah, Georgia, this house was the scene of the 1981 shooting to death of Danny Hansford by the home's owner, Jim Williams, an event retold in the book 'Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,' itself later adapted into a 1997 film directed by Clint Eastwood and starring John Cusack, Kevin Spacey, and Jude Law.
On July 4, 1954, Marilyn Reese Sheppard was found murdered in her Bay Village, Ohio, home. Her husband, respected neurosurgeon Sam Sheppard, became a prime suspect and was eventually jailed for life. However, after 10 years behind bars, he was acquitted at a second trial. The case inspired the 1960's TV series 'The Fugitive' and the 1993 film of the same name. The Sheppards' lakefront home (pictured being visited by jurors during the first trial) was demolished in 1993.
In a case as notorious for its brutality as much as its celebrity, the Clutter family murders of November 15, 1959 were committed by two ex-convicts, Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, both of whom confessed to killing Herb Clutter, his wife Bonnie, and their teenage children Nancy and Kenyon at their rural farm just outside Holcomb, Kansas. Smith and Hickock were executed in 1965 before Truman Capote's non-fiction novel 'In Cold Blood' detailing the murders was published. The former Clutter family home (top right) survives much as it looked over 60 years ago.
Notorious murderer and body snatcher Ed Gein lived a bizarre secret life in his dilapidated house outside Plainfield, Wisconsin. It's on this property in 1957 that police uncovered a gruesome cache of human body parts collected as souvenirs by Gein from local cemeteries. The property was destroyed by a suspicious fire in 1958. The surrounding land, however, and other buildings associated with the case still attract the morbidly curious.
10 Rillington Place in Notting Hill, London, has gone down in British criminal history as one of the most notorious addresses associated with serious crime. An apartment in the building was home to serial killer John Reginald Christie, who murdered at least eight people and hid some of their corpses within the property. The building no longer exists, having been torn down in 1970, but not before the producers of the film '10 Rillington Place' used the location as a real-life backdrop.
Posh and fashionable Belgravia in London is an unlikely setting for a murder. But on November 7, 1974, Sandra Rivett, the nanny of John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan's children, was found bludgeoned to death at the family home, 46 Lower Belgrave Street. Lucan was the prime suspect but disappeared before police could interview him. He has never been found and is now presumed dead. The townhouse remains in private occupancy.
The White House Farm murders refer to a crime committed in 1985 by Jeremy Bamber who killed his parents, Nevill and June Bamber, his sister, Sheila Caffell, and his sister's six-year-old twin sons, Daniel and Nicholas Caffell. The property, located at Tolleshunt D'Arcy, near Maldon, in Essex, England, is today occupied by extended family members.
The horrific murder of Hollywood actress Sharon Tate and her companions Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski, and Steven Parent, by members of the Manson Family during August 8–10, 1969, took place in this house at 10050 Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon, California. In 1994 the property was demolished and a new house was built on the site.
The morbid fascination with those who murder often extends to learning more about the locations in which the killings take place. Houses, apartments, compounds, highways, theaters, and schools are among the places where some of the most heinous crimes have been committed. Many of these properties are rightly demolished after the event, their continued existence otherwise providing an all too painful reminder of what took place inside. But there are scenes of crime that have survived, some as private residences, others as historic landmarks.
Intrigued? Click through and discover houses of horror and other true crime locations.
Houses of horror and other true crime locations
Places where unfortunate victims met their horrific end
LIFESTYLE Gruesome
The morbid fascination with those who murder often extends to learning more about the locations in which the killings take place. Houses, apartments, compounds, highways, theaters, and schools are among the places where some of the most heinous crimes have been committed. Many of these properties are rightly demolished after the event, their continued existence otherwise providing an all too painful reminder of what took place inside. But there are scenes of crime that have survived, some as private residences, others as historic landmarks.
Intrigued? Click through and discover houses of horror and other true crime locations.