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What Happens To Famous Murder Houses When They Sell? · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So imagine you are touring a picturesque house with a
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: loved one. Yeah. It is like the perfect Saturday morning.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. The dream weekend scenario.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Right. You have your coffees in hand, the sun is shining,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: and you are strolling up this perfectly manicured walkway.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: Sounds lovely so far.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: It is. You walk through the front door and it
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: just hits all the right notes. The kitchen is incredibly spacious,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: boasting endless pristine counter space.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Uh-huh. A good kitchen is always the selling point. Exactly.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And the living room is impossibly cozy. It's complete
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: with a beautiful, like, for reals, wood-burning fireplace.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow. You don't see those much anymore.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: You really don't. So you are mentally placing your furniture.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: You are ready to make an offer.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: You're practically moved in.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. But then the smiling realtor casually points toward
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: a sunlit corner of the dining room and says, Oh,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: just one minor disclosure. Uh-oh. Here it comes. That corner
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: right there. That is where the previous owner had her
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: face eaten by a cannibal.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: Good grief.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: While she was alive. And then the killer used her
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: skin to make rolled up skin shoelaces. Yeah, sort of
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: in the style of Ed Gein. Skin laces, I call them. Anyway,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: the realtor just smiles and says, how are we feeling
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: about the place?
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: I mean, that is just the ultimate conversational record scratch
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: right there. Totally. You go instantly from envisioning, I don't know,
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: family holidays around that fireplace to imagining a gruesome true
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: crime documentary playing out right on your prospective living room floor.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: Exactly. You just can't unsee it. And while that highly specific,
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: incredibly visceral vignette, which, by the way, is brought to
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: us by a really fascinating piece by Richard Milner in
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Grunge is a hypothetical extreme. It gets right to the
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: core of our mission for this deep dive.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: Right, because we're talking about the real world implications of
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: that exact feeling.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Yes, we are. Today, we are exploring this strangely fascinating intersection.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: We're looking at the exact point where true crime, real
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: estate economics, and human psychology all just kind of collision.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: It's such a weird mix.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: It really is. So we have this stack of data
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: synthesized from Realtor.com, Fox Business, Vice, Insider. and The Guardian.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: And we're going to figure out how the real estate
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: market actually quantifies macabre history.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: Which is not an easy thing to do.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: No, it's not. Like, do these houses ever sell? Who
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: actually buys them? And what happens to the physical structures
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: when a crime becomes infamous?
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: Well, taking something entirely intangible, like stigma or trauma or
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: just a dark history, and forcing a highly rational capitalist
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: system to put a concrete price tag on it It's
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: a very complex process because the real estate market, you know,
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: it doesn't do feelings. It does numbers.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Right. Square footage, bed, bath.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It relies on appraisals, comparable sales and strictly defined
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: square footage. So figuring out how it prices a ghost
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: story or a violent tragedy requires looking really closely at
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: how human hesitation translates into financial penalties.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: OK, so let's jump right into the cold, hard data
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: of those financial penalties, because, you know, moving past our
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: hypothetical cannibal scenario. These gruesome histories translate into very stark
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: realities for hopeful homeowners.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: And desperate sellers, too.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, desperate sellers.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: They absolutely do. When we look at the specific data
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: compiled from Realtor.com, we see the emergence of what we
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: can basically call the murder discount.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: The murder discount.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The data shows that on average, a murder house
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: will sell for 21% less than its previous sale price.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Okay, wait, 21%. Let's unpack this for a second because
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: 21% is massive.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: It's a huge hit. Right.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: If you have a house that was previously valued at, say, $ 500, 000,
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: a 21% drop means you are instantly losing over $ 100, 000
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: in value. Yes. Simply because of the narrative attached to
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: the drywall.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: And that's the crazy part. Structurally, nothing has changed. Right.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: The roof doesn't leak any more than it used to.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: You know, the foundation hasn't cracked. But to understand how
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: that 21% materializes, we really have to look at the
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: mechanics of real estate appraisal.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Okay, how does that work?
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: Normally, an appraiser looks at comparable properties, they call them comps,
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: to determine value. So if three identical houses on your
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: street sold for half a million dollars, yours is worth
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: half a million.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: Makes sense.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: But how does an appraiser establish a comp for a
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: property with a highly publicized tragedy?
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Because there's no standard comp for that.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: Exactly. There is no standard metric for trauma. So that
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: 21% discount is essentially the market's brute force attempt to
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: quantify the bad vibes, for lack of a better term.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: The bad vibes discount. Right.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: It represents the precise financial weight of psychological trauma in
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: a localized market.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: Wow. And what really stands out in the data is
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: that this discount isn't just a drop from the previous sale.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: Right. There's more to it.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. These homes typically sell for 9% less than their
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: current listed price.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: Meaning the sellers already knew they were in trouble.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Exactly. They priced it lower to compensate right out of
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: the gate. And then the buyers still negotiated them down
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: another 9%.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: Because the leverage completely shifts to the buyer in these situations.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: I can imagine.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: In a standard real estate transaction, there is a delicate
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: dance of negotiation. But when a property is heavily stigmatized,
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: the seller is operating from a position of profound weakness. Yeah.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: They're just desperate to get rid of it.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: They try to bake the stigma into the asking price,
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: but the buyers recognize that there are very few people
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: willing to even submit an offer.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: And it goes even deeper. When you compare these stigmatized
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: properties to other comparable houses and the exact same zip code,
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: you know, houses with the exact same square footage, same
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: school districts, the same amenities, the murder houses sell for
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: 15% less. 15% less than their immediate neighbors.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: Yes. Yes. So if you were looking at two identical
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: houses on the same street, the one with a dark
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: history is automatically heavily discounted, completely independently of whatever the
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: broader real estate market is doing. Exactly. Like it doesn't
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: matter if it's a crazy seller's market where houses are
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: flying off the shelves in 48 hours with waived inspections.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: That localized stigma acts like a heavy anchor tied to
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: the property's value.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: It really does. And that anchor doesn't just pull down
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: the price. It drags out the clock.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Oh, the time on market.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: Right. The financial penalty is only half the equation. The
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: other half is the time penalty.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: Right, right.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: In real estate, time on the market is a critical,
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: often brutal metric. The longer a house sits, the more
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: the carrying costs bleed the seller.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: Because they still have to pay everything.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They are still paying property taxes, insurance, and probably
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: a mortgage on an empty house.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: Yikes.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: According to the Realtor.com data... A normal house takes an
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: average of 90 days to sell.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: Okay, 90 days.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: But a murder house, that takes 137 days.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Oh, man. That is 47 days longer.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: A month and a half of extra waiting.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Just bleeding money.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: And those 47 days represent real estate purgatory.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: A purgatory is a good word for it.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: It reflects a profound public hesitation. You might have an
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: open house every weekend... And every weekend people walk in,
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: read the property disclosure, and quietly walk back to their cars.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Just nope, right out of there.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the nope walk. That extended time frame is the
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: physical manifestation of public disinterest. Writing the check and committing
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: to living in that space requires a psychological leap that
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: most people simply cannot stomach.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: No matter how nice the kitchen island is.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: Right, the kitchen island doesn't cancel out the history.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: So we have this house just sitting there for 137 days.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: absorbing the neighborhood gossip, growing incredibly stale on the listing sites.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it becomes the creepy house on the block.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: Right. And you mentioned that people walk in and read
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: the disclosure. That actually brings up a huge logistical question
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: for me. Sure. How do people even find out? If
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: I am buying a house, is the seller legally obligated
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: to tell me a crime happened there? Like, do they
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: have to say it?
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: This is where real estate law becomes incredibly murky.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: I bet, babe.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: Because disclosure laws regarding stigmatized properties vary wildly by jurisdiction.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: Like state by state?
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, state by state. Sometimes even locally. In some places,
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: like California, sellers are legally mandated to disclose any death
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: on the property within the last three years.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: Okay, three years.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: If they don't, they can be sued. But in other states,
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  Speaker 2: a violent history is considered a psychological stigma.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: A psychological stigma.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: Yes, not a physical defect. So it's not treated like
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: a cracked foundation or a termite infestation.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: In those states, realtors are sometimes explicitly barred from bringing
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: it up unless the buyer directly asks.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: You're kidding.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: No, I'm serious. The burden of discovery falls entirely on
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: the buyer.
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  Speaker 1: That is wild. You could literally buy a house, move
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: all your furniture in, paint the walls, and only find
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: out about its dark history when a neighbor comes over
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: with a casserole and asks how you were sleeping in
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: the murder room.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Which is why buyers eventually start doing their
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: own research. But to get back to the timeline, someone
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: eventually breaks that standoff. Right.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: Houses do eventually sell.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: They do. And the data gives us a fascinating breakdown
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: of who actually steps up to buy these homes.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: Okay. Who are these people?
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: So 59% of these properties ultimately go to ordinary buyers,
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: everyday people.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: Just regular folks.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: 20% are purchased by some kind of corporate entity.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: Interesting.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: And 8% are taken off the market entirely because they
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: simply will not sell at any price the seller can accept.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: Okay, wait, let me look at these numbers. So 59%
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: ordinary buyers, 20% corporate, and 8% taken off the market.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: That gives us 87%. Uh-huh. So what does this all
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: mean for the remaining 13%? Because the data seems to
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: have a gap there. Is this just the message? imprecise
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: reality of tracking stigmatized properties or are there like secret
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: buyers sweeping in?
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: It is definitely a combination of messy data and the
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: complex legal mechanisms that surround violent deaths.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: Well, when a severe crime occurs, the property doesn't just
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: instantly hit the multiple listing service. First, it is an
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: active crime scene, you know, controlled by law enforcement.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: Yellow tape everywhere.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Once it is released, if the owner is deceased,
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: the property enters probate.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: Probate is a nightmare.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: It really is. It's a legal process where a court
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: oversees the distribution of assets. If there are disputes among
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: heirs or complex liabilities... A house can be locked in
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: legal limbo for years.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: So that missing 13% could be houses sitting empty, just
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: tied up in court battles, slowly deteriorating.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: Yes, that's a big chunk of it. Or they could
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: be private sales that never hit the public market.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: Oh, like off-market deals.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: Right. A desperate family might quietly sell the property to
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: a distant relative or a neighbor for pennies on the
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: dollar just to be rid of the burden.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: Just to make it go away.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Bypassing realtors and public listings entirely. Or the property
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: might be completely repurposed, subdivided into commercial units where the
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: residential stigma doesn't apply the same way.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: That makes sense.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: But the 20% purchased by corporate entities, that part is
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: particularly telling.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: Right. Because a corporation doesn't have a soul to be spooked.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: Precisely.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: A limited liability company doesn't care if there's a ghost
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: in the hallway. They just look at the spreadsheet.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: It's all about the math for them.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah. If they could buy a house at a 21% discount,
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: slap some fresh paint on it, and turn it into
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: a rental property, the return on investment is fantastic.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: It's a goldmine.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: And the disclosure laws for renters are often far less
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: stringent than for buyers, right?
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: Oh, much less.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: So the renter might not ever know the history.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: They probably won't. It is the ultimate capitalist absorption of trauma.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: The corporate entity sanitizes the history by turning the physical
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: structure into a pure, yielding asset.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: They utilize the stigma to acquire the asset cheaply, and
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: then they structure the rental to avoid the liability of
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: the stigma.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: It honestly makes me think of buying a salvaged title car.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: Okay, how so?
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: You know, a car that was totaled in a terrible wreck.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: The insurance company writes it off, but some mechanic buys it,
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: straightens the frame... replaces the engine, and is now selling
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: it for half the price of a clean title car.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: Right. I see where you're going.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: If you buy it, you are getting an incredible deal
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: on the mechanics. It will get you from point A
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: to point B. The air conditioning works.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: The radio is fine.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Yeah. But you have to carry the invisible burden
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: of knowing the violent wreck that caused the discount in
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: the first place.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: That's a great analogy.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: Buying a motor house is the exact same thing. You
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: get the great foundation, the nice roof, the spacious kitchen.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: But you are buying the salvage title of a human tragedy.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: That is a highly accurate way to visualize it. You
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: are accepting the historical burden in exchange for the economic discount.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: However, this salvage title dynamic only applies up to a
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: certain point.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: What do you mean?
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: The data we just discussed covers your average localized tragedies.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: But there is a line where the history becomes too
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: dark or the public spectacle becomes too loud and those
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: normal economic rules completely break down.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, so if the baseline economic data shows us the
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: standard discounts and the days on the market, we now
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: need to explore what happens when a property's history crosses
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: the line from a localized tragedy into a highly publicized
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: national media spectacle. Right. We're talking about the difference between
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: a sad local news story and a true crime phenomenon
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: where the entire country knows the address.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: Exactly. When a property achieves that extreme level of dark infamy,
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: the market response just fractures.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: How does it fracture?
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: We see two very distinct, completely contradictory outcomes.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: The property is either entirely wiped off the map through
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: physical erasure, or it is protected by what we can
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: call luxury insulation.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: Luxury insulation. Okay, let's look at the erasure first.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: Some properties become so inherently toxic to the public psyche
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: that the only acceptable solution is demolition.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: Just tear it down.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: Turn it to dust.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: And the source material highlights several infamous examples of this.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: Jeffrey Dahmer's apartment, 213 in Milwaukee, is a prime one.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: The crimes discovered there were so grotesque that the entire
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: apartment building, not just his individual unit, but the whole
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: multi-unit structure, was torn down a mere 15 months after
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: his crimes were discovered.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: And 15 months is incredibly fast in the world of
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: urban demolition.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: I would think so, yeah.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: To race-dise an entire building that quickly, a city has
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: to navigate complex property rights. They can't just show up
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: with bulldozers on a Tuesday.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: Right. There are other tenants, owners.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They often have to purchase the property, sometimes using
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: mechanisms like declaring it a public nuisance or leveraging extreme
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: health and safety code violations to expedite the legal process. Wow.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: The sheer speed of the Dahmer demolition shows a desperate,
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: urgent need from the city to eradicate the site.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: We see this pattern repeated. Yeah. Like Ed Gein's 1958
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: house demolition. mysteriously burned down, and then the rural property
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: it sat on was subsequently completely razed and cleared.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: Cleared right out.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: And looking at more recent events, the site of the
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: University of Idaho murders was slated for the exact same
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: fate as of 2023. The university acquired the property with
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: the express intent of tearing it down.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is the underlying societal motivation behind this
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: instinct to destroy the physical structure.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, why do we do that?
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: It is almost ancient in its psychology. It's like salting
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: the earth so nothing can ever grow there again.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: It does feel like folk war, like we're banishing a demon.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: But in a modern municipality, why go through the immense
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: legal trouble and financial costs of buying a property just
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: to destroy it? Is it purely out of respect for
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: the victim's families? Or is it a city trying to
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: cleanse its own public image?
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: Well, it is a mixture of civic image and victim respect,
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: but there is a highly practical, urgent third reason.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: Which is?
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: Preventing morbid pilgrimages.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: True crime tourists.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: Yes. When a site becomes internationally infamous, it acts as
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: a massive beacon for those tourists. A standing structure draws crowds,
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: disrupts the neighborhood, and creates an ongoing policing issue.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: I didn't even think about the neighbors. That must be awful.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: It's terrible for them. So tearing it down removes the monument.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: It turns a specific, highly charged destination back into empty,
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: anonymous space.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: There's nothing to take a selfie in front of.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It is a community's way of forcefully mandating the
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: process of forgetting. If there is nothing to look at,
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: the tourists eventually stop coming.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: But here's where it gets really interesting.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: Because that rule of erasure doesn't seem to apply evenly.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: Right alongside the Dahmer apartment and the Gein farmhouse. The
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: source material gives us examples of extremely famous, highly publicized
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: crime scenes that were absolutely left standing.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: Yes, they survived the bulldozer.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: You survived the bulldozer, but they took massive financial hits
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: on the open market.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: The surviving properties in the high-end market.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: Right. Look at Nicole Brown Simpson's Brentwood condo. It was
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: a sprawling 3,405 square foot luxury property in an incredibly
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: exclusive neighborhood.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: Very high end.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: In 1996, it sold for $ 100, 000 less than what she
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: had originally paid for it, dropping down from her purchase
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: price of $ 625, 000.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: That's a big drop for the 90s. Huge.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: And then you have Phil Spector's lavish mansion. This is
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: a legendary palatial estate.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: A literal castle in some ways.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah. In March 2019, it was listed for $ 5. 5 million.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: But to find a buyer, the price had to be
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: slashed down to about $ 4. 4 million. That is a $ 1. 1
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: million discount.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: An astonishing financial penalty. But the critical detail is that
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: the mansion itself was never in danger of being torn down.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: And this creates a bizarre analogy in my head of
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: comparing real estate to fame.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: Oh, I like that.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: It seems like there is an invisible macabre threshold. If
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: an unspeakable crime happens in an apartment complex or a
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: modest rural farmhouse or an off-campus college rental, society says,
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: bring in the bulldozers, wipe it from existence.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: Get rid of it.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: But if the exact same level of infamy occurs in
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: a multi-million dollar mansion with imported marble floors and a
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: pristine swimming pool, suddenly we just put it on the
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: discount rack.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: The structure's inherent luxury acts as a shield against demolition.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: It's like the house is too expensive to bulldoze.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: That highlights a profound tension between our moral sensibilities and
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: our capitalist systems. Yeah.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: Why do some properties get erased from existence while others
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: merely get put on the discount rack? Does capitalism eventually
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: override the bad vibes if the crown molding is nice enough?
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: Basically, if we connect this to the broader function of
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: real estate as a vehicle for wealth preservation, the answer
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: is yes.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: Demolishing a modest rural farmhouse or a standard apartment building
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: is a relatively minor economic sacrifice for a community to
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: make in the name of psychological healing.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: The city can absorb that cost.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But demolishing a $ 5. 5 million estate destroys a massive
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: amount of taxable value for the city, and it destroys
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: a significant financial asset for the heirs, the trusts, or
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: the creditors involved.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: The creditors want their money.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: They absolutely do. In the high-end market, the sheer density
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: of capital crystallized in the physical structure forces the market
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: to look past the trauma.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: The financial value of the marble floors literally outweighs the
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: historical weight of the crime.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: They do. The capitalist imperative to preserve wealth demands that
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: the house be rehabilitated economically rather than destroyed physically.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: That's so grim. It is.
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: The $ 1. 1 million price chop on the Spectre mansion is
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: the market's way of absorbing the trauma. The market acknowledges
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: the tragedy, prices that tragedy at exactly $ 1. 1 million, and
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: then moves on to the paperwork.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: Unbelievable.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: The luxury insulates the physical structure from the moral outrage
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: that dooms cheaper properties.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: Which is such a dark, fascinating way to look at
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: how we value physical space. And it pivots our conversation
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: away from the bricks, the mortar, and the bulldozers and
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: points us directly toward the human element. Right.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: Because someone has to move in.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Because whether a standard house is discounted by 21%
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: or a mansion gets a million dollar price chop, someone
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: eventually signs that paperwork. Someone takes the keys.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: They pack up their U-Haul.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Who exactly are the 59% of ordinary buyers willing
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: to pack their boxes and cheerfully move their lives into
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: a crime scene?
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: Well, to understand the psychology of the unbothered buyer, we
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: have to start by confronting a statistical reality that most
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: people actively try to ignore.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, what reality is that?
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: And the best way to visualize that reality is through
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: a bluntly named online tool called Dydenhaus.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: Dydenhaus.com. Just the name is unsettling.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: It really gets to the point.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: It does. It is a search site that allows anyone
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: to look up an address and see if that specific
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: property hosted a death by suicide, murder, or natural causes.
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: The existence of that tool and its popularity points to
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: a broader truth. People spend the vast majority of their
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: lives at home. Right. Consequently, a massive percentage of the
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: population reaches the end of their lives at home.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: That's just a fact.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: If you live in an older city, in a house
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: built 50 or 100 years ago, The mathematical odds are
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: incredibly high that someone has passed away in one of
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: those bedrooms. Loads of homes have housed death.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: It's just the basic math of human existence. But we
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: don't like to think about it.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: We really don't. And this raises an important question regarding
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: how we psychologically separate a physical structure from a historical event. Right.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: When we look back at the Realtor.com statistics, you know,
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: that 21 percent discount and the 47 extra days on
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: the market. It is crucial to note that their data
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: includes all deaths on a property, not just the high
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: profile gruesome slayings.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: Wait, so the market penalty isn't just driven by the
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: cannibal corners and the true crime headlines.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: No, it's not.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: It is also driven by someone passing peacefully in their
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: sleep at age 95.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: Yes. And that reveals something profound about the human psyche.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: What's that?
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: The public's hesitation isn't just a specific fear of violent crime.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: It is a broad, deep-seated aversion to mortality itself.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: We use our homes as sanctuaries from the outside world.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: We want a house to feel like a blank slate,
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: a place where only our own future exists.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: We don't want the past creeping in?
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: Exactly. A death, any death, shatters that illusion. It is
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: a literal reminder that we are temporary. The market discount
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: is the price we charge for being reminded of our
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: own mortality.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: We are terrified of our own expiration date. We don't
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: want it living in the guest room. That makes perfect sense.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: But despite that universal fear, over half of these homes
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: go to ordinary buyers.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: They do.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: So the source material outlines three distinct psychological profiles of
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: the people who actually buy these homes. Let's break them down. First,
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: we have what we can call the pragmatist.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: The pragmatist is perhaps the most heavily fortified against the stigma.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: Well, the article highlights a buyer named Abigail Denton who
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: purchased a stigmatized property and summed up her perspective simply.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: She said, it doesn't bother us. It's a house. That's it.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: It's a house. That's it. To possess that mindset requires
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: an incredible level of mental compartmentalization.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: It really does.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: To the pragmatist, wood is just wood. Drywall is just drywall.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: And history is merely a sequence of events that happened
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: in the past, completely disconnected from the present physical reality
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: of the structure.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: They just don't link the two.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: Right. They look at the 21% discount and say, fantastic.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: I can finally afford a house in this zip code.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: A ghost isn't going to raise my property taxes.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: That's exactly it. The pragmatist operates entirely in the material world.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: They reject the idea of residual energy or atmospheric contamination.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: Interesting.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: But then on the complete opposite end of the spectrum,
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: we have the second profile, which is the embracer.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: The embracer is fascinating.
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: Very.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: The article introduces us to Louise Bloomfield, who bought a
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: house with a highly publicized murder history. But she doesn't
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: ignore the history like the pragmatist.
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: No, not at all.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: She actively leans into it. She calls her home's publicized
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: murder part of the heritage of the Northeast.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: Heritage.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah. She even claims that she always feels the victim's ghost.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: The Embracer represents a very specific psychological twist.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what is going on there?
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: Well, instead of finding the dark history repellent, they find
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: it enriching. They view themselves not just as homeowners, but
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: as curators of a historical site.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: Oh, that makes sense.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: By framing the violent tragedy as heritage, they elevate the
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: crime from a sordid, ugly event into something historically significant.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: It gives it prestige, almost.
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And by claiming to feel the ghost, she is
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: establishing a personal, almost protective relationship with the tragedy. It
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: gives the house a unique, irreplaceable character.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: It is almost romantic in a dark, gothic way.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: Eerie gothic.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: She isn't just buying a piece of real estate. She
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: is buying a storyline that... that she gets to be
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: a character in.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: So we have the pragmatist who ignores it, the embracer
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: who romanticizes it, and then we have the third profile,
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: the cleanser.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: The cleanser perspective is brought forward by auctioneer Andy Thompson.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: Okay, what's his take?
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: He posits a theory that a property can actively be
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: cleansed of its dark history. And he believes that the
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: necessary component to achieve this cleansing is simply occupancy by
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: the living.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: This idea that you can just live the bad vibes away.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: If you found your absolute dream home, but a quick
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: search revealed a dark history, would you be an Abigail,
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: ignoring it completely, or a Louise, embracing the ghostly heritage?
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: That's the question.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: But I have to push back on Andy Thompson's theory here.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: Can a house actually be cleansed just by moving in
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: a new sofa, making dinner, and watching TV? Or is
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: the idea of occupancy cleansing just a highly effective, incredibly
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: comforting sales tactic invented by auctioneers to move difficult inventory?
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: I mean, from a purely transactional standpoint. Framing occupancy as
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: a cleansing process is a brilliant sales narrative.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: It really is. It makes the buyer the hero.
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It empowers the buyer. It turns them from a
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: passive participant in a creepy transaction into an active hero
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: who is healing a neighborhood blight.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: But psychologically, there is a mechanism at work here, which
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: is desensitization.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: How does that play out?
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: Well, the first night you sleep in a stigmatized house,
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: every creak of the floorboards is terrifying.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: Oh, I'll be awake all night.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: Right. But a year later, you are annoyed by the
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: creek because it wakes up your dog. The mundane daily
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: repetition of normal life eventually overwrites the trauma in your
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: cognitive mapping of the space.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: It just becomes home.
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The physical house doesn't change, but your association with
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: it normalizes. The new sofa doesn't exercise a ghost, but
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: it reclaims the territory for the present.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: The mundane defeats the macabre over time. I love that concept.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: It's very human.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: But of course, that only works if the buyer actually
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: wants the mundane.
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: Good point.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: We have discussed buyers who ignore the history, those who
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: try to cleanse it, and those who feel a personal
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: connection to it. Now, we have to transition to the
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: most bizarre outcome of all.
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: Ah, here we go.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: Those who actively monetize, seek out, and revel in a
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: home's dark past.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: We are entering the realm of morbid tourism, which has
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: evolved into a booming global phenomenon.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: It really has. The source material highlights perhaps the most
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: famous example in American history. The Lizzie Borden House in
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: Fall River, Massachusetts.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: A classic!
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah. This house wasn't razed to the ground like Dahmer's apartment.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: It wasn't quietly discounted and leaned in by a pragmatist.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: It has been transformed into a full-blown active bed and breakfast.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: You can sleep there.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: People pay money to sleep in the rooms where a
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: horrific double-axe murder took place. And it proudly boasts its
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: own Yelp reviews.
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: The presence of Yelp reviews is the detail that truly
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: bridges 19th century horror with 21st century consumerism.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: It is incredibly surreal.
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: It is.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: Imagine casually scrolling an app that you usually use to
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: find a local coffee shop or a reliable plumber, and
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: instead you are reading reviews that say, oh, the blueberry
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: muffins were fantastic, the bed was a little firm, and
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: the ambient vibe of a brutal unsolved double homicide was
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: absolutely immaculate. Five stars.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: It's so strange.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: It is taking the darkest aspects of human history and
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: subjecting them to a star rating system.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: What is happening there is the complete commodification of tragedy.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: Commodification, yeah.
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: The Lizzie Borden House operates as a curated time capsule.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: The horror has been sanitized by time and commerce. It
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: is no longer a crime scene. It is a theatrical experience.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: That's like going to a theme park.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: Yes. People are not going there to mourn the victims.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: They're going there to be entertained by their proximity to
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: a famous narrative.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: And what blows my mind is that this required proximity
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: doesn't even have to make logical sense.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: What do you mean?
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: The source brings up Ted Bundy's former house.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: Right, in Utah, I think.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: According to Insider, this specific home has been completely inundated
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: with murder tourists. But the incredibly strange fact is that
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: this house is not actually the site of any of
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: his murders.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: He didn't kill anyone there.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: He just lived there. He ate breakfast there. He slept there.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: Yet people flocked to it, creating a displaced pilgrimage.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, the Bundy
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: House phenomenon perfectly illustrates how infamy eventually detaches entirely from
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: the physical reality of the tragedy.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: The physical reality doesn't even matter anymore.
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: It really doesn't. The morbid tourist doesn't actually need the
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: visceral reality of a crime scene. They just need a
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: tangible connection to the celebrity of the killer.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: The celebrity aspect is so disturbing. It is.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: The infamy morphs into a detached pop culture artifact. Standing
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: on Ted Bundy's old porch is psychologically driven by the
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: same impulse as a fan standing outside a house used
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: in a famous movie.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: Oh, like going to the Breaking Bad house?
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: Exactly like that. They are seeking a physical connection to
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: a narrative they have consumed in the media. The violence
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: happened elsewhere. but the space is imbued with his aura.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: And for the tourists, that proximity is enough of a draw.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: It makes me think about the explosion of the true
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: crime genre as a whole. To me, this dark tourism
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: is essentially physical true crime podcasting.
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's an interesting way to frame it.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because people are no longer satisfied just reading the articles,
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: watching the documentaries, or listening to the stories. They feel
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: a bizarre psychological compulsion to physically experience stand in the spaces.
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: They want to be close to it.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: They want to cross the boundary from passive consumer to
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: active participant. It proves that human curiosity, especially our curiosity
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: about the darkest aspects of our nature, often completely overrides
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: our natural revulsion.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: It is the ultimate manifestation of the rubbernecking impulse.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: Yes, staring at the car crash.
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: Exactly. When you drive past a car crash, there is
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: a primal urge to look. Morbid tourism is simply parking
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: the car and buying a ticket to stand next to
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: the wreck.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: That is perfectly said.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: And it is crucial to note that this is not
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: a uniquely American phenomenon.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: Right, it's everywhere.
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: The desire to interact with stigmatized spaces crosses cultural boundaries entirely.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, our source material points to a piece from Vice
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: that explores the real estate market in the United Kingdom.
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about the UK.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: Across the pond, it is the exact same story playing out.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: Murder houses still sell, but they sell for less. British
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: buyers cite the exact same hesitation about bad vibes.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: The bad vibes are universal.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: But the UK article introduces a deeply ingrained adage that
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: buyers there rely heavily on. It's the belief that time
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: heals the wounds of the home.
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: Time heals the wounds of the home. That is a
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: really poetic way of describing the sociological process of forgetting.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: In the UK, the housing stock is vastly older than
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: in the United States.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: Right. Centuries old.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: If you refuse to live in a building in London
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: where something terrible happened centuries ago, your housing options would
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: be severely limited.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: You'd have to live in a tent.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: Pretty much. So they have culturally adapted this philosophy that
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: the passage of time acts as a filter, slowly washing
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: away the trauma until only the architecture remains.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: It is the ultimate reliance on the cleansing theory we
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: discussed earlier, just applied across decades or centuries, instead of
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: single lifespan.
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Time does the heavy lifting.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: The house just keeps absorbing new lives, new families, until
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: the ghost is completely drowned out by the present.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: It's a comforting thought.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: It is. Let's synthesize this massive deep dive. We started
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: with the visceral shock of the cannibal realtor thought experiment
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: to understand how stigma feels.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: Yes, the skin laces.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: We trace that shock into the cold math of a
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: 21% financial penalty and the grueling purgatory of an extra
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: 47 days on the market.
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: The hard data.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: We explore the societal divide that sends bulldozers to erase
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: infamous apartments while protecting multi-million dollar mansions with mere price chops.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: Capitalism at work.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: We psychoanalyze the buyers who step up to buy these
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: salvage title properties. And finally, we looked at the bizarre
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: global reality of morbid tourism, where homicides earn Yelp reviews
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: And time is trusted to heal the wounds of the home.
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: It is a profound reminder that the walls around you
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: right now might hold histories you know absolutely nothing about.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: That is a chilling thought.
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: It is. Our relationship with the physical spaces we inhabit
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: is entirely subjective. A room is just wood and drywall
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: until human experience gives it a narrative.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: And depending on who is standing in that room, that
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: narrative can make it a cursed place to be fled from.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: a haunted heritage site to be embraced, or simply a
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: great financial deal on a house.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: It is all about the story we choose to accept,
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: which leaves me with a final lingering question for you
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: to ponder.
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: Okay, let's hear it.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: It builds directly on that UK belief that time heals
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: all wounds of the home. Think about the Lizzie Borden house,
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: proudly operating as a B & B. Think about castles
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: in Europe where ancient battles occurred, now serving as prime
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: wedding venues.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: Beautiful locations with bloody pasts.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: Exactly. If a house manages to survive the immediate outrage,
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: if it avoids the bulldozer and stands for 100 years
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: or 300 years, well, at what exact moment does a horrific,
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: unspeakable crime scene transition from a stigmatized property into a
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: protected historical heritage site?
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: That's the real question.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: How much time has to pass before tragedy becomes tourism?
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: It is something for you to think about the next
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: time you see a historical plaque on an old, beautiful home.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: Thanks for taking the plunge with us today.