Some of the world’s most notorious murderers have lived – and killed – in perfectly ordinary homes. From million-dollar mansions and charming craftsman-style cottages to respectable apartments and sleepy suburban houses, even the most innocent-looking home can harbour a monster. Join us as we reveal the dark truth behind the doors of the world’s worst killers including John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Dennis Nilson and the Wolf Creek Killer. But, be warned, this article contains details which some readers may find distressing...
Powerful and affluent, Alex Murdaugh was born into a prominent legal family in the Lowcountry region of South Carolina. Such was their sway, the local 14th judicial district became known as 'Murdaugh country'. But power can corrupt and that may have been the case for Alex Murdaugh, who is suspected of widespread financial crimes and is linked to a string of suspicious deaths. He bought Moselle from his business partner, Barrett Boulware, a suspected drug smuggler who signed over the house to Murdaugh for just $5 (£3.86) in 2013, according to Fits News. Later, at Murdaugh's trial, jurors heard that he had stolen $750,000 (£580k) in insurance money from Boulware while he was dying of cancer. But it gets worse...
It's hard to believe this charming farmhouse lies at the heart of a dark and complex case with more twists and turns than a primetime thriller. Known as 'Moselle', the 1,772-acre South Carolina estate was home to Alex Murdaugh, once the heir to a local legal empire and now a convicted double-murderer. The story gained global attention as the focus of the recent Netflix documentary, Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal. Three more mysterious deaths are linked to Alex Murdaugh and his family, one of which took place right here on the front steps of Moselle. Let's take a look around...
With its wraparound porch and white weatherboard siding, Moselle appears the perfect picture of Southern charm. But it was on a rural road close to the hunting estate that the first murder connected to the family took place. In July 2015, the bludgeoned body of 19-year-old Stephen Smith was found by the side of the road. In a heartbreaking letter from the boy's mother to local authorities, she accused Murdaugh's eldest son Buster of beating Stephen to death because he was gay. The case went cold but has been recently reopened due to information that came to light during a later and separate murder investigation.
The next death to take place at the remote home was that of the family's housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield, in February 2018. The 57-year-old fell down the front steps of the house, hitting her head and dying in hospital three weeks later. As the Satterfield's lawyer, Murdaugh pocketed more than $4.3 million (£3.3m) in insurance, which should have gone to Gloria's heirs. Much later, it would be revealed that Murdaugh had a decades-long history of fraud and money laundering. The next death linked to the prestigious family was 19-year-old Mallory Beach, who died in February 2019 when Paul, Murdaugh's younger son, crashed their boat while intoxicated. Mallory was thrown into the water and her body was found eight days later. Her family filed a wrongful death suit against the Murdaughs, and that's where the story becomes even darker.
On 7 June 2021, while 22-year-old Paul was awaiting trial, he and his mother Maggie were murdered among the outbuildings of the family home. It was here, in the feed room by the dog kennels, that Alex Murdaugh shot and killed his son. He then turned on his wife, shooting her as she tried to take shelter beneath a hangar. Murdaugh claimed he had arrived home to find his wife and son dead, but blood spatter and cellphone footage placed him at the scene. Perhaps surprisingly, given the estate's dark past, it sold for $3.9 million (£3m) in 2023. On the banks of the Salkehatchie River, the estate has a fully stocked fishpond, rifle shooting range and a 20-acre dove field, for feeding doves for hunting. Murdaugh and his sons were keen hunters and regularly invited friends to go fishing and shooting. In March 2023, Alex Murdaugh was convicted of murdering his wife and son and is currently serving two consecutive life sentences without parole.
This Victorian-style home – complete with a charming porch and a miniature windmill in the front garden – was home to a community-spirited landlady who cared for the less fortunate in her quiet neighbourhood. What could be more wholesome? But all was not as it seemed behind the curtains of this house. The seemingly sweet old lady was Dorothea Puente, a ruthless murderer who killed as many as nine of her tenants and cashed in their social security cheques after burying their bodies in her garden.
Puente set herself up as a landlady in the Mansion Flats area of Sacramento in the early 1980s, housing vulnerable tenants whom she drugged and murdered. Between 1982 and 1988, nine of her lodgers vanished before police became suspicious. Seven bodies were unearthed in the garden of her pale blue boarding house, with a further three found in the Sacramento River. In 1993, the Death House Landlady was found guilty of three of the murders and she died in a Californian prison in 2011, aged 83.
Puente’s infamous house still stands today, although the interior is a far cry from the dark rooms depicted in the crime scene photos. Built in 1968, the house is now a five-bedroom, two-bathroom duplex. The current owners, Tom Williams and Barbara Holmes, bought the wood frame home in 2010 for $226,000 (£180k). “We were never creeped out about the murders,” Williams told Newsweek in 2022. “Not one bit. Neither was Barbara's mom… She always joked: ‘When I die, bury me in the backyard.’”
“Our bedroom was her (Dorothea's) utility room, where she laid out the bodies of her victims after she killed them,” said Williams, who has updated the entire house. “The whole floor has been cleaned and remodelled since, so it doesn't bother us.” The one thing that has remained the same is the stairway. “Puente used to drag bodies down it and into the yard,” Williams adds. “We suspect she must have had help; I wouldn't be able to carry a body down those stairs.”
Today, the garden is adorned with lighthearted nods to its dark past. One sign reads 'Trespassers will be drugged and buried in the yard' and a shovel-wielding, grey-haired figure guards the remodelled deck. The owners have given not-for-profit tours of their home, one in aid of a homeless shelter. “It's a slap in Puente's face, helping the kind of people who would have fallen victim to her,” said Williams. Today, the house is valued at $655,900 (£523k), a healthy sum considering the macabre history.
On Boxing Day 1996, the body of six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey was found in the basement of her family’s home in an affluent suburb of Boulder, Colorado. Her parents and her nine-year-old brother became the prime suspects. The family moved away and, according to The Denver Post, in 1998 they sold the house to investors for $650,000, that's $1.2m (£960k) today, $100,000 more than they paid for it. The police are no closer to solving the crime today than they were then, but the house is on the market once more.
While the child beauty queen’s parents were identified as suspects, police were unable to find enough evidence to charge anyone with her murder. According to The Independent, new DNA technology finally cleared the family in 2008 but that may not be the end of it. The district attorney’s office announced that they would be consulting the Colorado Cold Case Review Team in 2023, which will guarantee a renewed interest in the tragedy, as well as the infamous house.
On the market for $7 million (£5.6m), the five-bedroom home is described as a "stately and modernized 1920s Tudor estate" with beautiful views of the Flatiron mountains. Fully remodelled, the luxurious home has a wine cellar, media room, private deck and gourmet kitchen, as well as eight bathrooms and a catering kitchen. The home’s upmarket Lower Chautauqua neighbourhood is described by its residents as "peaceful" and "safe", with a "family-friendly" feel, according to nextdoor.com.
Decorated in a light and airy style, the house betrays no hint of its tragic past. Even the basement, which was once used for laundry and storage and was the location where JonBenét’s body was found, has since been remodelled to include stone-clad archways, a bar and multiple seating areas. Only the basement windows are recognisable from the time of the killing. They were subject to intense police and media focus as a potential entry point for an intruder.
The current owner, Carol Schuller Milner, bought the house in 2004 for $1.1 million, which is $1.8 million (£1.4m) in today's money. “It’s our home, and we really, really love it,” she told Westworld.com in 2023. “The minute we walked across the threshold, there was such a whoosh of peace… we never felt the Ramseys were involved." While we may never know the identity of JonBenét Ramsey’s killer, we do know that interest in the impressive property, and the heartbreaking story that made it famous, shows little sign of fading.
Jeffrey Dahmer may be one of America’s most infamous serial killers but the unassuming 49-apartment block he lived in has been wiped from the map. From May 1990, Dahmer lived at No. 213 Oxford Apartments in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, committing his first murder there just a week after moving in. In total, he killed and dismembered 12 men in the apartment, preserving their remains there until he was arrested on 22 July 1991.
Dahmer preyed mostly on Black and Latino men, picking them up in gay bars and on the street, luring them to his home with the promise of alcohol, money or sex. In addition to the 12 people he murdered at the Oxford Apartments, Dahmer killed three more men at his grandmother’s house, just 15 minutes away in West Milwaukee; one man in his parents’ woodland home in an affluent suburb of Akron, Ohio; and one man at the Art Deco-style Ambassador Hotel in Milwaukee. These three properties remain standing today.
Although scattered with items he used in his killings, it seems Dahmer took a surprising amount of care over the decoration of his apartment. Crime scene photos taken by the Milwaukee Police Department at the time of his arrest show the living room was furnished with matching floor lamps, a clean fish tank, blue curtains and a healthy-looking pot plant on a black plinth. On the walls, Dahmer had hung a round mirror and framed black and white prints of semi-naked men.
Dahmer’s kitchen remained undecorated, with bare white walls, peeling cabinets and pans piled up in the sink. On 22 July 1991, he lured his final intended victim back to his apartment. However, the man escaped and called the police, who subsequently found evidence of the murders. Dahmer was found guilty of 16 murders and in 1992 he was sentenced to multiple consecutive life sentences. He died just two years later, after being attacked by a fellow inmate.
Today, the site of the apartment block is an empty lot. Ideas about what should replace the building include a park, a playground and even a murder museum, but the area is still closed to the public. Many believe it’s high time for the city to create a memorial to Dahmer’s victims. However, as Mayor Johnson told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, he is “cautious” about erecting one. “That would have an unfortunate potential to attract people who have a morbid fascination with the killer.”
This forbidding house lies in the small village of Bosseborn, just outside the city of Höxter, Germany. Surrounded by rolling fields and forests, the pretty area is a popular hiking spot. But for years, tenants Angelika and Wilfried Wagener had lured women to their home – now known as the 'Höxter Horror House' – through lonely hearts adverts, keeping them captive and abusing them so badly that two of the women died. The shocking case led the press to dub the sadistic pair the German 'Fred and Rose West' after the British couple who killed at least 12 girls and young women and buried them in the grounds of their suburban home.
The Wageners were a divorced couple, although they pretended to their neighbours and their victims that they were brother and sister. Women answering Wilfried's bogus ads were chained up, beaten and forced into domestic slavery. Their terrible secret came to light only when a divorced 41-year-old woman who had answered their ad was so badly beaten she suffered a brain haemorrhage. They planned to drive the woman back to her home, but their car broke down and Angelika was forced to call an ambulance. The woman subsequently died in hospital and, as paramedics found wounds to her entire body, the police were called.
Upon entering the seemingly ordinary home, they found a squalid "abyss". It was believed their first victim was a 33-year-old woman who met and married Wilfried in 2013. She moved into the home and was severely abused for two months before her death. Angelika and Wilfried then kept her body in a freezer, before burning it and scattering the ashes from their car window as they drove around the area. At least two other women are alleged to have been abused by the pair but survived. In 1995, Wilfried spent almost three years in prison for inflicting life-threatening wounds on his first wife, prior to marrying Angelika.
During their trial, which began in October 2016, Angelika and Wilfried blamed each other for what they had done. A forensic expert who psychologically assessed the defendants declared their relationship "highly disturbed". She found Angelika to be "highly intelligent, extremely domineering and power-conscious" and declared her "unable to feel compassion". Meanwhile, Wilfried was found to be "moronic in the legal sense", with the worldview of a primary school child. "Guilt or responsibility are not to be taught to him," she added. In October 2018, the pair were found guilty of murder and murder by omission. Angelika was sentenced to 13 years behind bars, while Wilfried received 11 years in a prison psychiatric unit.
In 2017, Scotsman David Macleod bought the house of horrors for less than £5,000 ($6,460), telling The Mirror he planned to turn it into a women's refuge. “The reaction I’ve had has been quite positive," the 50-year-old roofer said. "I think people in the village are just glad I’m going to do something with it and they can move on." Unfortunately, news crews were back outside the house later that year when it was discovered it was being run as a marijuana plantation. Police found more than 1000 plants spread over three storeys, with a street value of 500,000 euros ($551k / £426). The unfortunate Scot was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison. In April 2022, in the early hours of the morning, the house was finally demolished. A green space is planned to replace it.
With its turrets and colonnade, Phil Spector’s Californian mansion looked like a fairytale castle, while what happened inside its white walls was a real-life horror story. Perched upon a hilltop, hidden away in lush gardens behind tall gates and soaring trees, the house gives no hint of the tragedy that took place there in 2003, when the legendary music producer murdered actress and nightclub hostess Lana Clarkson.
Spector was known as a musical 'genius' who produced multiple hits in the 1960s and worked with The Beatles, Tina Turner and The Righteous Brothers. His iconic 'wall of sound' style influenced many more, including The Beach Boys and Bruce Springsteen, but success turned to scandal on 3 February 2003 when he met 40-year-old Clarkson at a bar and took her home. His chauffeur heard a gunshot and moments later Spector appeared holding a gun and said: “I think I killed somebody."
Crime scene photos give us a glimpse at what the ten-bedroom house looked like at the time. The hallway, where Clarkson was found dead, was decorated with plush red carpets, a huge chandelier, elaborate vases and an elegant wooden bannister. Spector insisted at his trial that Clarkson had killed herself, but he was found guilty of second-degree murder in 2009 and was sentenced to serve 19 years to life. He died from covid complications in 2021, aged 81.
At the time of the murder, Spector’s home, known as the Pyrenees Castle, looked dated. Police photos of his living room show a plastic flower arrangement, an elaborate coffee table and a floral rug. Despite its tragic history, when the house was sold by his former wife in 2021, the listing showed very little had been altered. Most of the ornaments and furniture had been pared back, but the coffee table, along with the wood panelling, inlaid floors and crystal chandeliers, remained.
The infamous home spans 10,590 square feet across two wings, which spread from the hallway in which Clarkson’s body was found. Although it has a large bar, a billiards room, 11 bathrooms and a fountain in the driveway, the castle eventually sold for $3.3 million (£2.6m), significantly less than the original asking price of $5.5 million ($4.4m) but a big jump from the $1.1 million Spector paid for it in 1998, which would be around $1.8 million (£1.4m) today.
It’s one thing for a serial killer to hide their victims on their own property, but quite another to bury them in someone else’s garden. Yet this is exactly what 66-year-old Bruce McArthur did. Between 2010 and 2017, Canada’s oldest-ever serial killer murdered eight men, preying on the male community of Church and Wellesley, Toronto’s gay village, trawling the streets for his victims or targeting them via dating apps.
A father and grandfather, McArthur was a landscape gardener and occasional mall Santa, which earned him the nickname the Santa Claus Killer. "He looked all so normal and business-like," one of McArthur’s landscaping clients told Time.com. “To know that something as macabre as this was transpiring over the years is pretty astounding.” Although McArthur killed his victims in his own home, he hid their remains in plant pots belonging to one of his clients.
McArthur brought men back to his apartment in the Thorncliffe Park area of Toronto, where he photographed them before and after killing them. The apartment block still exists today and is one of a pair of Brutalist-style towers. Standing 423 feet tall, with 43 floors, they were once the tallest apartment towers in the Commonwealth and are described by leasidetowers.com as an 'upscale rental community' with an indoor pool, sauna, hot tub and sun decks, as well as a party room and fitness centre.
According to CTV News, police forensic teams spent several weeks examining McArthur’s 19th-floor apartment. They removed 1,800 pieces of evidence, leaving the space 'pretty much empty', and took more than 18,000 photographs of the unit and its contents. "Combined with the search of other crime scenes and vehicles related to Bruce McArthur, this is the largest forensic examination in Toronto Police Service history," the service announced at the time.
Following McArthur’s arrest, police searched an attractive Leaside home and found the remains of seven victims hidden in multiple plant pots around the garden. Employed to cut the grass, McArthur would eat his lunch among the planters and rearrange them from time to time. The garden gives way to a hillside where further remains were found. Owner Karen Fraser told a BBC documentary that she was “devastated, upset, shocked, betrayed, horrified.” Despite this, she has no intention of leaving the home.
In 1983, Dennis Nilsen confessed to killing 15 men and boys over six years at two North London addresses. The Scottish serial killer’s reign of terror spanned five years before he was finally caught. Nilsen received a whole life sentence and died at York Hospital in 2018 aged 72. Although he became known as the Muswell Hill Murderer, he began his spree in Cricklewood. The apartments still exist today, in attractive houses on quiet streets in desirable London postcodes.
Nilsen moved into a ground-floor garden flat in Cricklewood in 1975. The perfectly ordinary tree-lined street and whitewashed facade masks what happened inside. In 1978, 33-year-old Nilsen killed his first victim and buried him under the floorboards. He went on to kill a further seven men and boys at the address, disposing of their remains by burning them in his garden. The apartment last sold in 2016 for £493,000 ($617k), surprisingly only slightly less than the average price for the area.
The well-kept street of attractive houses betrays no hint of what happened there. The current owners told The Sun in 2020 that the home’s past “was never an issue”. They added new flooring and a bespoke kitchen imported from Portugal. The garden, which once concealed fragments of bone, has been transformed into a peaceful oasis with a vegetable patch and modern extension. “It feels good to live in it,” said the owner. “We have sun every day being south facing… We never think about the history.”
In 1981, Nilsen moved into a flat in Muswell Hill. Photos of the interior taken in 1983, nine months after Nilsen’s arrest, show a cramped space, tucked away in the eaves of the house. The walls are bare and the room is dominated by a large patterned rug and 70s-style curtains, dated even for the time. An estate agent stands in the middle of the messy room, upended by numerous police searches. His unenthusiastic expression as he surveys the infamous flat is more than understandable.
Nilsen killed at least three men in Muswell Hill before his crimes were uncovered in 1983 by a plumber who discovered human remains in the pipes of the flat. Unsurprisingly, when the apartment came up for sale in 2015, potential buyers were advised to “research the history of this property” before arranging a viewing. One woman who viewed it told The Mirror: "I’m sure it will make a nice home for someone, and a tidy bargain, but I wouldn’t spend the night under that roof."
Ivan Milat lived with his sister in the popular family neighbourhood of Eagle Vale, 25 miles from Sydney. His neighbours described him as a “normal, unassuming guy”, according to Daily Telegraph. “He had a nice house, he kept his yard looking nice,” one local resident said. They could never have imagined that the man who lived among them in a respectable brick home was the Wolf Creek Killer, a serial murderer who killed seven victims between 1989 and 1993. Also known as the 'Backpacker Murders', these brutal killings targeted both foreign tourists and local travellers passing through the region. The victims, aged 19 to 22, were stabbed, shot, beaten and even decapitated.
He kept guns at the house and photographs show him posing with firearms in his living room, which was plainly yet elegantly decorated with pale blue curtains and a Queen Anne-style side table. When police raided the property, they found trophies taken from his victims hidden in roof and wall cavities. Milat was arrested at his home on 2 May 1994. Convicted in 1996, he received seven consecutive life sentences, and he died aged 74 in prison in 2019, having never admitted to his crimes.
The victims' decomposed remains were discovered in the remote Belanglo State Forest, 85 miles (138km) from Sydney, over a four-year period. All the murders shared similarities: bodies were dumped in remote bushland, covered with a crude pyramid of sticks and ferns. For a time the investigation pointed to multiple killers until matching .22 bullets, shell casings, and cartridge boxes linked the crime scenes. Forensics revealed multiple stab wounds and signs of sexual assault. Campsites found near the bodies indicated prolonged interaction meaning Milat spent significant time with the victims. Milat's heinous acts inspired the chilling 2005 horror film Wolf Creek.
Australia’s worst serial killer bought the house with his sister Shirley for $54,900 AUD in 1990; one year after Milat’s arrest, she sold it for $160,000 AUD (about $344,000 AUD or £183k today), according to domain.com.au. The four-bedroom, two-bathroom home now has modern interiors, an outdoor dining area and a small swimming pool surrounded by flowering trees. It was put on the market in 2016 and was described as a “well presented home... a stress-free haven on a sunny north facing block”, according to the Daily Mail.
Speaking to Australia’s Daily Telegraph, the estate agent who handled the 2016 sale said that “multiple people viewed the house” and “they were not put off by the home’s history”. It was bought after just three-and-a-half weeks on the market by a local couple who paid $660,000 AUD (£351k), lower than the asking price, perhaps due to its murky past. However, it was significantly more than was paid for it in 2006, when it was snapped up for $386,000 AUD (£205k), according to realestate.com.au.
The current owner told Vice: “We came to look at this house and I really liked it.” No one told her of its past. “I do believe that bad energies or evilness can hang… You just get a strange, uneasy feeling.” News photographer Jeff Darmanin photographed the house in 1994. "I feel really surprised I was called to this well-maintained home in the middle of suburbia for something like this. Quite often when you go to a crime scene you expect to see something dirty and not maintained well at all."
John Wayne Gacy was a friendly local contractor, known for his performances as Pogo the Clown at hospitals and children’s parties. He lived in an inconspicuous brick ranch-style home in Chicago’s Norwood Park. No one could have guessed that hidden in the crawl space beneath his property lay the remains of 26 boys and young men. An additional three bodies were discovered buried in trenches in his garden, while four more were found in the Des Plaines River.
After his arrest in December 1978, Gacy verbally admitted to 33 murders, each of which he claimed to have carried out in his Norwood Park home. He had hired many of the young men to work for him at his construction company, gaining their trust and inviting them into his home. According to Newsweek, Gacy bought the house in the 1970s with financial help from his mother, after relocating from Iowa, where he had served 18 months in prison for assaulting a 15-year-old boy.
Just four months after his arrest, Gacy’s home was torn down, partially because it had become a safety hazard, according to the Chicago Tribune. The plot lay empty until 1986, when a local woman bought it and built a new house on it. The address was then changed to prevent visits by 'murder tourists'. The three-bedroom, 2,500-square-foot house features two dormer windows that dominate the roof line, and a large arched window on the ground floor, which looks out onto trees in the front garden.
A Tribune article detailed the build and quoted a neighbour who was ''very satisfied'' with the construction. “I want this to be a normal neighbourhood again. We still get people driving by here to look at all hours of the day and night,'' they said. According to NBC Chicago, the ranch-style home was put on the market in 2019, eventually selling 20 months later for $395,000 (£315k), significantly below the original asking price but a decent increase on the $300,000 (£240k) paid for it in 2004.
Suspicions persist about a five-unit apartment block where Gacy worked as a maintenance man. A retired police detective who lived close by told The Verge in 2013 that he encountered Gacy alone outside the property at 3am one night in 1975. He was holding a spade. Other neighbours reported seeing Gacy digging trenches at the property and, in one case, dragging a heavy bag across Miami Avenue in the middle of the night. So far, no remains have been found at the property, which still stands. Well, not yet, anyway.
The Southeast neighbourhood of Boise is rated as one of the best places to live in Idaho, with young professionals choosing it for its good schools and proximity to Boise State University. Unsurprisingly, this is reflected in the house prices, which are on the up. What might be surprising though is that even a home with a murky past will cost you a pretty penny. This includes the infamous Chop Chop Murder House where, in June 1987, 21-year-old Preston Murr was shot and killed.
Currently worth an estimated $584,700 (£467k) by Zillow, the house belonged to Daniel Rodgers. It was he, along with accomplice Daron Cox, who murdered Murr. The pair dismembered the body in the basement and dumped it over one hundred miles away in Brownlee Reservoir, where it was discovered a week later. Rodgers was found guilty of the murder and sentenced to life without parole, while Cox served just six years.
Built in 1910, the two-storey house has four bedrooms, three bathrooms, a garage, deck and what Zillow describes as an 'unfinished basement'. The home sits on a 17,000-square-foot plot, surrounded by mature trees and flowering shrubs. The full sales history of the imposing craftsman-style home is unclear, but it is reported by Redfin to have been sold in April 1988 for $71,729 ($183k or £146k today), just 8 months after the killing took place, and then again in 2000.
For half a century, the world has wondered where Lord Lucan disappeared to after his family's nanny was found dead, here in his Belgravia townhouse. On 7 November 1974, Lady Veronica Lucan was at home with her three children while their nanny, Sandra Rivett, went to fetch her a cup of tea. Wondering what was taking so long with her drink, Veronica went looking for the 29-year-old and found her body in the basement kitchen. She had been bludgeoned to death with a metal pipe. The killer then placed her body inside a canvas mailbag. He then turned on Lady Lucan...
"Living there I never felt afraid or felt it was haunted, but there are so many stories," former tenant Deann Davis told KBOI 2 News. “I’m not uneasy in the house... I don’t feel there’s somebody watching me. I’ve never experienced doors open when I shut them, or I never heard people walking on the stairs when there was nobody," she said. However, her daughter had a different view: “When I went into the basement it was dark and I was scared… I was like ‘Get me out, get me out, get me out.’"
In 2022, tenants shared their memories of the house with local radio station Lite FM. Shellie A lived there in the 90s but “never heard or saw anything strange. It is a very beautiful home structurally and with a little love could be restored to show that.” Dan D said when he lived there he saw visions of a “big black oily-looking thing.” But it was Deann Davis’s daughter who described it best: “It looks like a feral animal, like something really pretty but no one wants to go near it."
The 7th Earl of Lucan, John Bingham, was known for his expensive tastes and destructive habits. After leaving the Coldstream Guards, he became a merchant banker but developed a taste for gambling on backgammon, baccarat and bridge at the exclusive Clermont gaming club in Berkley Square. He eventually left his job to become a professional gambler. The rowdy peer raced powerboats and drove an Aston Martin, so it's easy to believe the rumours that he was in the running to play James Bond in the early films. Unfortunately, 'Lucky' Lucan, as he was nicknamed – pictured here with his wife Veronica in 1963 – proved unlucky at the gaming tables and wracked up an estimated £900,000 debt ($1.2m).
The Lucans separated in 1972 and a bitter custody battle ensued. Lucan moved out of 46 Lower Belgrave Street, leaving behind this opulent study, with soaring ceilings, built-in bookcases and a Victorian writing desk. Lady Lucan put the desk up for auction in 2009 and while we don't know what it went for, it was expected to fetch as much as £7,000 ($9k). Lucan moved into a home on Eaton Row and later Elizabeth Street, just around the corner from the scene of the crime. Determined to win custody of their children, Lucan attempted to prove Veronica was unfit to care for them. However, a court handed custody to Lady Lucan, provided she hired a live-in nanny, and in 1974 she took on Sandra Rivett.
Today, the Grade II-listed building is beautifully maintained. With whitewashed lower walls and window boxes full of flowers, passers-by get no hint of the building's dark past, which included not one but two attacks. Upon finding Sandra's body, Veronica was then assaulted. She managed to fight off her assailant and run to the Plumber's Arms, a pub located just one minute's walk from her home. At 10pm, she burst into the bar and, bleeding, she cried: "Help, help me. I have just escaped from a murderer. He's in my house. He's murdered the nanny." By the time the police arrived, the attacker had disappeared.
Lucan did not immediately disappear. He telephoned his mother shortly after the murder, asking her to collect the children as a "terrible catastrophe" had happened at the house. He then drove to visit friends in East Sussex, which was the last confirmed sighting of Lucan. His Ford Corsair was found in the port of Newhaven, East Sussex, soon after. The car was smeared with blood and a metal pipe was found inside. But Lord Lucan was never seen again. A 1975 inquest found the infamous peer guilty of Sandra Rivett's murder. Declared dead in 2016, alleged sightings of the runaway Lord continue to this day. Veronica Lucan died in 2017 at the age of 80, after taking a "cocktail of drink and drugs." She left her fortune to the homeless charity Shelter, having become estranged from her children, including George, the 8th Earl of Lucan, in the 1980s.
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