(This story from the Post-Dispatch Everyday Magazine waspublished on Dec. 1, 1999)
Gaylen Smith was looking for a more convenient home when a brownsplit-foyer house went on sale right across the street from hisauto salvage yard in Harvester. Seeing a crowd gathered there onApril 10, 1987, Smith figured it was some kind of party. In a wayit was: a sad celebration by police that they'd cracked a four-yearmystery.
From a cistern in the back yard, authorities recovered the bodyof Walter Notheis Jr., better known as Walter Scott, a singer whoserecording of "The Cheater" with Bob Kuban's band made the BillboardTop 40 for seven weeks in 1966.
Notheis floated there for more than three years, it turned out.Not coincidentally it was in the back yard of James H. WilliamsSr., who had married Notheis' ex-wife, JoAnn, in the interim.Williams got life in prison for murder. JoAnn Williams got fiveyears for hindering prosecution.
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Smith got the house.
And he said recently he never had one regret, not even whenpolice suggested yanking up his carpets to look for the dried bloodof Williams' wife, Sharon, who also was slain. Her exact place ofdeath remains unknown, but police figure it is entirely possiblethat what Smith bought was really a double murder house.
Just what kind of people are willing to live where someone elsevi olently died?
They're ordinary people who manage to keep their imaginations incheck, according to a sampling of homeowners who, like Smith,agreed to talk about the experience.
Water supply was OK
After Notheis' body was carted to the morgue and Williams wasshipped to jail, the "For Sale" sign at 5647 Gutermuth Road camedown for a while. When it went back up, Smith was told the askingprice was $156,000.
"That was too much, " said Smith, who offered $95,000 andwatched for months as the house in the news got barely a trickle ofother prospects. It was unclear to him whether the problem wasoverexposure or overpricing.
After 10 months, Smith said, the house was appraised at $91,750.That's what he bid, and that's what he paid to own a slice of darkhistory.
He even got an $800 "murder rebate" of sorts. The cable TVchannel HBO taped at Smith's house for one of its "Autopsy"programs on forensic science. That show aired twice and Smith got a$400 royalty check each time.
"Living here doesn't bother me a bit, " he said, showing off anoctagonal, knee-high wood planter that covers the concrete lid ofwhat was Notheis' watery tomb.
The killer apparently built the planter to minimize the chancethat anyone would ever explore the underground reservoir. Smithrebuilt it when the wood rotted. Short on morbid curiosity, henever peeked under the lid.
The house creaks, Smith allowed, sometimes in cadence as if fromhaunted footsteps. But he doesn't believe in ghosts.
There is no indication Notheis was killed inside the house.Indeed, police believe he was waylaid, shot and taken directly tothe cistern, just a few feet behind the home.
But it remains unclear where Sharon Williams died in October1983, two months before Notheis disappeared. Authorities at firstaccepted appearances that she died in a one-car wreck. But theydecided after exhuming her body that the crash was staged and herhead was crushed somewhere else - maybe inside the house.
"Still doesn't bother me, " Smith said.
Police once asked his permission to pull up the shag carpets tolook for residue of Sharon Williams' blood. But they never gotaround to it. James Williams was convicted in her death, too, andgot a second life sentence.
"If it had been something I'd seen, I might feel a lot differentabout it, " Smith said. But he takes comfort that while he knowsNotheis' most famous song, he cannot even picture the singer'sface.
For Smith, 56 and divorced, a personal connection to the deathwould make a difference. "My mother died in her mobile home and Icouldn't bring myself to go back in there, " he explained.
"What happened here was not a part of my life."
Friends and relatives sometimes react to the infamy of Smith'sresidence.
"I had one employee who wouldn't drink the water at the housebecause he thought it came from there, " Smith said, grinning andnodding toward the cistern. "It doesn't. I've got a well."
Recently, Smith tired of the house. It sold quickly, he said,for $111,000 to a young man who was undeterred after hearing theNotheis-Williams story.
"It didn't bother him a bit, " Smith said.
Let the buyer beware
Some sales prospects will buy a murder house without a secondthought, and some will run away, according to real estate agents.They say it is just another consideration, like the floor plan orlandscaping. People either accept it or they don't.
The nature of the killing - if it was gory, whether it wassolved and how long ago it happened - can be key factors whenprospective buyers get the news. That is, IF they get the news.
Laws in Missouri and Illinois do not require disclosure of amurder in a house the way they require the disclosure of a physicaldefect such as termites. Some other states do.
Mike Fisher, the Re/Max agent who represented Smith in hisrecent sale, said, "I would tell. We're not required to, but I'drather not have it come back to haunt me. Ethically, I may not haveto reveal what happened, but my conscience tells me I do."
Richard Federer, who until recently was president of the St.Louis Association of Realtors, said an agent often doesn't evenknow about a murder, and is unlikely to tell if he does. "He knowsit would have the effect of chilling the sale for most people, "Federer said. "So he probably won't do it."
Federer said disclosure is a "foggy area, " clouded by anattempt to balance a buyer's desire to know against a seller'sright to privacy.
A house hunter seriously averse to purchasing a crime sceneought to check with neighbors and police, he suggested.
Not every buyer is put off, however, and killing the resident isnot necessarily the same as killing the resale value.
"Some people kind of like the idea that there might be a ghostliving on the third floor, " he explained. "There are some peoplewho like the macabre."
If anything, Federer said, a romanticized tale of life and deathfrom another era can enhance the selling price of an old house."There is a washing effect the years have, " he suggested,"especially after other people have lived there and nothinguntoward happened."
In a few infamous cases - although none in immediaterecollection in the St. Louis region - homes linked to crimes havebeen considered beyond salvage.
The suburban Chicago house where serial killer John Wayne Gacyhid 27 bodies in a crawl space was razed without ever going on themarket, and its street address was even changed. O.J. Simpson'smansion in Los Angeles was torn down. So was the Milwaukeeapartment building where cannibal-murderer Jeffrey Dahmer lived anddined.
After-dinner surprise
Susan Hegger didn't give much thought to the mismatched plasticthat replaced one of the window panes in the back door when shebought a comfortable Richmond Heights bungalow in 1989. It was thepane closest to the lock.
But the significance snapped into focus the night a dinner guestcalled her boyfriend from Hegger's new home. He knew theneighborhood and asked if the place happened to be near the "Wolffhouse."
Hegger remembered being told the home's impressive rewiring wasdone by a previous owner, an electrician named Wolff.
"I told her this is the Wolff house, " Hegger recalled. "Shetold her boyfriend, and he said, 'You're not going to believethis.'"
By the next morning, Hegger, an editorial writer at thePost-Dispatch, was digging in the paper's files for stories; hercompanion and the house's co-owner, Jack Slater, took his questionsto the police station.
They pieced together a tragic story of failed love and unbridledrage that unfolded 14 years before, right under what was now theirown roof at 7210 Nashville Avenue.
Tina Lenza, 23, had brought her children, 5 years old and 7months old, to live with her parents, Robert and Beverly Wolff,during her divorce.
On Dec. 12, 1975, Tina's husband, Michael Lenza, broke that backglass, twisted the lock and slipped in to confront his wife in adispute over child custody. During an argument, he knocked Tina tothe floor with a blow from his fist. Then he attacked her mother,Beverly, 43, who tried to intercede.
Michael Lenza carried Tina to the upstairs bathroom, where hestopped-up the bathtub drain with a washcloth and stripped off herclothes to make it look as if she fell and died while showering. Anautopsy showed she drowned.
He stuffed his mother-in-law's body into a shipping barrel,drove it to the Jefferson Barracks Bridge and threw it into theMississippi River. Beverly Wolff's remains were neverrecovered.
Michael Lenza initially denied the crime. But he was seen byTina's sister as he carried the crate out the door, only momentsbefore she found the body in the tub. He was convicted of thesecond-degree murder of his wife and sentenced to life in prison.In 1984, he confessed to both killings and filled in the missingdetails.
Learning of the crime flabbergasted Hegger. "I was upset andmad, " she recalled.
Slater, 72, a retired limousine driver, tried to be the voice ofreason: "I said, 'What difference did it make? We're alreadyhere.'"
But Hegger, 50, said she wished they had been told in advance."I would have anguished over it, " she said, "And I might have usedit as a bargaining tool." They figured $88,000 was a good price.But was it a good price for a murder house?
"I had fears he would get out of prison and come over here, "Hegger said, chuckling at the absurdity of her imagination.
Both Hegger and Slater are comforted by knowing the full story.An unsolved mystery would sit less well, they said. So wouldsomething bloody. "I would have maybe had a different idea if ithad been a gun murder, a shotgun murder, " Slater suggested.
The couple has become comfortable, seldom giving a secondthought to showering in the same brown tub where Tina Lenza gaspedher last breath.
Slater thought he saw a figure of a woman once, standing in thefirst floor dining room near where the women were attacked. "Susanwas hoping I wouldn't tell you that, " he added. "It doesn't botherme to any extent."
Smoke from a turkey
John and Ellen Lembeck, who lived in Ballwin in the mid-1980s,followed the news stories on a lurid killing about a mile fromtheir house.
On May 6, 1986, Julia Bulloch, 31, was found duct-taped naked toa chair in the burning garage of her home. She had asphyxiated.Suspicion eventually fell on her husband of four months, Dennis, anaccountant she met through a lonely hearts ad in a freenewspaper.
It turned out that Dennis Bulloch, who claimed to be inMinnesota on business, actually had slipped back into the St. Louisarea and then returned to his hotel in time to get the call frompolice about his wife's death. He left a false suicide note andfled to California after realizing he was a suspect.
Bulloch was charged with first-degree murder; prosecutorscontended that he killed Julia for an inheritance.
The defendant convinced the jury he had killed his wife byaccident during an evening of drunken bondage sex play. He wasconvicted of manslaughter and paroled after serving four years of aseven-year sentence.
In 1990, prosecutors separately accused him of arson in thecase. He was convicted and sentenced to seven more years in prison,although an appeals court later gave him credit for the time servedfor manslaughter. He was freed.
The Lembecks, meanwhile, moved to Kansas in 1990 to followJohn's work as an mechanical engineer. In 1997, they made plans toreturn to Ballwin, and accompanied a real estate agent to a wornbut promising house at 251 White Tree Lane.
"The agent told us this was the street where the Bulloch killingoccurred, " Ellen Lembeck recalled. "But she didn't think it wasthe same house." The agent double-checked and found it was, indeed,the Bulloch house.
"I did some hard thinking, " recalled Ellen, now 60, ahomemaker. "Then I thought, well, I guess it's all right." Theasking price was $142,000; the Lembecks made a tentative deal for$138,500.
As they drove back to Kansas, a wave of uncertainty struck bothat once. "I said, 'Oh, John. Maybe we don't want that house, '"Ellen explained. They prayed and reached a conclusion: "If Goddidn't want us to have it, we won't get it, " she said.
Friends were split. "Some said, 'I'd never live in that house.'Others said, 'It wouldn't bother me, '" Ellen recalled.
The Lembecks wondered for a moment whether God really might haveintervened, when the seller turned down the offer. The price wasright, but the owner wanted to move up the closing date.Eventually, the intrepid buyers threw $500 more into the deal toreach accord.
Ellen, who said she had felt a menacing presence in a house theyonce owned in Kentucky, was uneasy at moving into White Tree whileJohn stayed in Kansas to settle business. She would face the housealone.
"You wonder if the ghost is still in the house. Will I hearfootsteps in the night? Well, I never did, " she said recently.
She and John, 64, said they are comfortable even in the attachedtwo-car garage, with its fresh white walls and ceiling and neatstorage racks. The only lingering sign of the fire can be seen inthe garage attic, where new ceiling joists brace old ones charredon Julia Bulloch's fateful night.
One of the Lembecks' grown children, left alone in the house fora while, once nervously reported to her mother that the garagestill smelled of the fire after all these years.
"That's because your father smoked a turkey out there yesterday," Ellen responded dryly.
The Lembecks made a showplace of the brick and gray clapboardranch home where Julia Bulloch grew up. (She had inherited it whenher parents died.) Julia's childhood bedroom is now devoted todisplay of a doll collection.
"I feel that if her ghost is here, it's a friendly ghost, "Ellen explained.
Friends sometimes ask for a peek into the garage. When theLembecks held a garage sale, many browsers took vocal note of theold crime scene.
John said owning the place proved to be a different - but notnecessarily unpleasant - adventure.
"Everybody in the neighborhood knows the story of our home, " heexplained. "It's a house with a reputation. It's always in the backof your mind that your house has a history."
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