You wouldn’t buy a house without having a building inspector check the foundation, so why wouldn’t you research your potential home’s history?
A heritage house at Fraser and East 10th went up for sale last week for $1.4 million. It wasn’t the price-tag though (low by Vancouver standards) that captured people’s attention, it was the house’s murder history.
Unsolved Murder:
The Mount Pleasant house has sat empty for 30 years—since the day in August 1991 when the 20-year-old resident was murdered. Wanda Watson had recently moved from hometown Victoria and was living in the house owned by her parents. It’s believed that Wanda surprised two robbers and was stabbed to death, and the house set on fire. Wanda’s murder remains unsolved.
Old houses have stories, but over the years they fade in people’s memories. Murders that happened before newspapers went online are just not that easy to find. House numbers change, neighbours move away, people forget, and while some homeowners will serve up a murder as dinner party fodder, most live in fear that a murder will bring down the value of their home.
In 2007, I wrote a booked called At Home With History: the secrets of Greater Vancouver’s heritage homes. The idea behind the book was that a house has a genealogy or a social history, and I included a chapter on murders that happened in houses that still stood.
HOUSE MURDERS:
The duplex where Esther Castellani was slowly poisoned to death by arsenic in 1965 and featured in Murder by Milkshake is still standing in Kerrisdale.That same year, 17-year-old Thomas Kosberg made milkshakes for his father, mother and four siblings, drugged them, and after they fell asleep, hacked the family to bits with a double-bladed axe. That story is in Vancouver Exposed and is now a podcast.
In 1971, Louise Wise had just turned 17 when she was stabbed to death in her East Vancouver home. Her story is in Cold Case Vancouver and also a podcast.
In 1975, Vancouver poet Pat Lowther, 40 was beaten to death by her husband in her house on East 46th Avenue. And, in that same year, Shaughnessy’s 68-year-old Marion Hamilton was strangled by her cousin so that she could inherit her Nanton Street house.
In the same neighbourhood, five decades earlier, 23-year-old Scottish Nanny Janet Smith was found shot in the head in the basement of her employer’s home. Her murder remains unsolved.
Selling a murder house:
Grant Stuart Gardiner is a North Vancouver realtor who specializes in selling heritage houses. He says in British Columbia, a realtor is only obliged to disclose a murder if asked.
“I’ve never had somebody ask me if there has been a murder in a house, although I have had somebody ask me if there has been a death,” he says. “If there has been one you are duty bound to disclose it, but there’s no duty to research it and try and figure it out.”
Grant doesn’t know about any murders in the houses that he’s sold, but he has had a death. He was showing a Grand Boulevard house one day when a woman came to look but refused to go up the stairs. “She said there’s some weird spirits or something spooky about this house.”
Much later a neighbour told him that a man had hung himself in the attic back in the ’50s. “If it’s not disclosed when you buy it the neighbours sure as hell tell you when you move in,” he says.
Tips on How Not to Buy a Murder House:
- Ask your realtor if there’s been a murder or suspicious death in the house
- Ask the neighbours
- Google the address. The caution here is that occasionally savvy owners have kept the house and changed the street number.
- Same idea, but this time do a free online search through your library on local papers, or if you have a subscription, through newspapers.com
- Both the Vancouver and the Victoria public libraries have murder files packed full of old newspaper clippings.
- Check the index of my true crime/history books—I may have already written about it.
I was invited on CKNW this week to talk about Would you Live in a Murder House?
Related:
19 comments on “Would you buy a murder house?”
What time slot will you be on at NW? \
The Condo where the Surrey Six were murdered
The home in Coquitlam where Blackman murdered 6 family members. The shiny new subdivision built on top of the Pickton farm.
The huge development in New Westminster built on top of the Woodlands property where many children were tortured
You can add these to your list and NO way I would want to live in any of these locations
I was also thinking of the Blackman murders while reading this article.
Was on earlier this week Doug – here’s a link to the story https://omny.fm/shows/steele-drex/would-you-live-in-a-house-that-had-a-brutal-murder
In addition to everything else that happened at the institution, there was actually a murder at Woodlands in the 1970s where a male resident killed a female resident – it is in the Woodlands newspaper clippings file at the library.
Definitely if the price was right.
I am so sensitive Eve I would not even think about it! There’s a house near where I live 18th and Arbutus Southwest corner I would sure love to know about. It’s been sold over the years so many times. I’m not sure if it has heritage status. I’ve lived in the area since late ’70s.
I personally dont think I would buy a home in which a murder was committed. Dying naturally is one thing, but the thought of evil in the home for even a short period of time would disgust me. Ask a hundred questions before buying. Having said all this, murder mysteries set in old houses is one that draws attention to the reader, probably a sense of morbid curiosity sets in.
Murder is unfortunately all too common, almost to the point of being mundane. If you start mapping murders over 20 years, 50 years, 100 years, they will appear like a scattergraph, wherever people live.
There are times when buildings should be demolished, sites memorialized, and publicly remembered, but there are also times when the site of a murder, if it is a home, should be left to live out the rest of ‘its natural life’. Of course, the life of a person far outweighs the life of a house, and houses can’t be sentenced to murder; if a demolition can be avoided, it is a reprieve for all the work that went into the home.
ps: Great photo Jesse!
I would not live or biy a home or property where anyone has been murdered
In my opinion homes or any other building where murder has occured should be demolished
In August of 1989 we rented a very custom waterfront house on Ships Point Road, Fanny Bay. Shortly after moving in, our 9 year old daughter was on the beach, and a neighbour told her about the murder. We were shocked, but continued to live there until November, when we found a house to buy. We did confirm the story, and eventually discovered all the sordid details. A single gay 55 year old man was bludgeoned to death by his 20 year old boyfriend. This caused quite a local media frenzy. The house is still standing.
Nice of the neighbor to discuss such a horrid story to a 9 year old!! My gawd at that age any wonder she was able to sleep!
Our main family home was a good house,but with the abuse & violence brought on heavy grief. I was relieved to hear that after it was sold,it was bulldozed down and 2 houses built on the property. I don’t think I would want to be in a house that had anger ,pain , a bad death in it. A Home should be a safe haven, to nurture good feelings..that’s my point of view.
My stepmom Pat Lowther was 40 when Dad murdered her. (not 42)
Pat was born in 1935, and Dad (Roy Lowther) killed her in September 1975, the 22nd if I remember correctly. I think that house’s address is 466 East 46th Avenue. When I was allowed to visit them, they were living at 5283 St. George, I think.
Thanks for the correction Ruth, I’ve changed it on the blog.
Oops, sorry, Eve. I mistakenly said that the address of my stepmom Pat’s murder was 466 E. 46th Ave. That house is actually: 566 E. 46th Ave.
Wow, I just opened up this story and there was my first apartment I ever had on my own, the attic of 2549 Fraser. I lived there from 80-82. I always wondered why there was a fence around it in later years (I’d moved out of that neighbourhood and didn’t know about the murder/fire)
I have bought and live in a murder house with the intention of honoring together with releasing the trapped spirit of the victim and then healing the house and the land which it is built upon. The house had been vacant for a number of years before I purchased it directly from the City of Langford.
Special healing/releasing ceremony was done by an Indigenous healer/medium as well as I myself did my own spiritual healing. This was done prior to the start of my renovations of the house inside and exterior. I do regular smudging with sage and have personal honoring rituals for the soul of the murder victim, a woman on an ongoing basis.
I have a spiritual connection with her spirit.
Lovely story, thanks so much for taking the time to stop by
Absolutely would NOT live in any home or property where a murder has occured