Can a Murder Aura Be Erased?

The Mercer House

Source: Photo by K. Ramsland

News this past December that the University of Idaho would demolish an off-campus rental house where four students were murdered the year before shocked many. It was a crime scene, some said, that could play a significant role in the forthcoming trial; destroying it might harm the legal process. However, the prosecutor told university officials that he didn’t need the house, as his team had gathered sufficient measurements for relevant exhibits. The university wanted to remove the stain of violence and its negative influence on campus morale.

University of Idaho President Scott Green said, “It is the grim reminder of the heinous act that took place there.” He believed demolishing the house would “allow the collective healing of our community.” People in that neighborhood concurred, telling reporters it’s the only way to move on. (They’re tired of all the gawkers and podcasters.) The area will be leveled and planted with grass.

Yet does erasing physical features associated with a violent act actually diminish the impact? Realtors know about stigmatized properties. Events like murder or suicide have a negative psychological effect on a potential buyer. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the property, but the perceived contagion effect reduces its value. (However, the savviest buyers know the stigma eventually dissipates, giving them a solid profit when the property regains its value.)

When I worked as an executive producer on Murder House Flip, one property was known in that locale as “the blue murder house.” The young couple who’d snagged it at a bargain price soon learned about a man killing and dismembering his wife there. Their love of the house soured. Our team painted the exterior white, replaced violence-related items, and changed the curb appeal to help erase neighbors’ memories. The couple was delighted, claiming the place felt lighter and looked like an entirely different house.

We “healed” 10 properties in similar ways (documented here), with homeowners later reporting a reduced sense of stress over the “violence space.”

It’s all about perception
How people view where violence had occurred will affect their sense of the location. There’s a frisson attached to the notion of a lingering aura. Many infamous murder properties draw tourists who want to see the actual place as if some emotional residue is still there to experience. There’s even a business in murder tourism, such as tours of the Boston Strangler or Jack the Ripper murder sites. The Villisca, Iowa, murder house, where eight were axed to death in 1912, is a museum now. So is the Lizzie Borden B&B and the Mercer House in Savannah where Jim Williams fatally shot Danny Hansford. Such memorials preserve the past. There's value in this.

But there’s also a benefit to erasing some spots if only to shut down crime scavengers and restore a neighborhood’s security. John Wayne Gacy’s house, H. H. Holmes’ “murder castle” hotel, and the building for Jeffrey Dahmer’s apartment are examples. The new home on Gacy’s former property was given a new address. So was the new house erected on the Cielo Drive property where the Manson gang murdered five people, including pregnant actress Sharon Tate. Recently, the house in Pasadena, Texas, where Dean “Candy Man” Corll tortured and killed teenage boys, was demolished. In addition, several sites of school mass shootings have been razed and replaced at great cost.

Such moves mean that no one will live, work, or attend classes in the actual place where devastating violence occurred. They won’t see evidence of the event, such as blood stains, bullet nicks, or residue from crime scene processing. It’s believed that the incident’s vividness will fade faster when there’s nothing physical to visit; an empty space hastens the forgetting. There’s also a sense of purging, like those therapeutic purification rituals that encourage burning items or written descriptions that are associated with painful trauma. Reportedly, they work.

It’s difficult to find research that shows a clear benefit from razing stigmatized properties. There’s plenty on PTSD in the context of personal trauma or witnessing violence but nothing beyond opinion pieces about sustained awareness from visual reminders. The murder aura is grounded in perception, and visible reminders keep the perception more readily intact than does the absence of them. With no substantial proof of benefits for either position (raze or preserve), the affected community should have the final say.