Idaho house where four students were killed was razed. What happened to homes linked to notorious killings
The University of Idaho on Thursday demolished the off-campus home where four students were fatally stabbed last year — the latest instance in which a property is razed following grisly, high-profile killings.
Ethan Chapin, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Madison Mogen were killed inside the Moscow, Idaho, off-campus rental on November 13 in 2022, stunning the university and the surrounding community.
The owner of the home donated it to the university and the school planned to tear it down in July, before the start of the new academic year.
With the house gone, attention can turn to the property's future.
The university intends to create a memorial garden on the site to honor the four students, it has said, and landscape design and architecture students were set to draft concepts for the garden this past fall.
The question of what to do with such properties has become distressingly rote in recent years, particularly in the US, where communities regularly have to grapple with the scenes of mass shootings, asking themselves how they honor the victims and their families while allowing those left behind to heal and move forward.
Here's a look at what happened to other homes synonymous with the killings that took place there.
10050 Cielo Drive
In 1969, five people were murdered at 10050 Cielo Drive in what was perhaps the most notorious of the murders carried out by the cult led by Charles Manson.
The victims included pregnant actor Sharon Tate, hairdresser Jay Sebring, 18-year-old high school graduate Steven Parent, coffee heiress Abigail Folger and aspiring writer Wojciech Frykowski.
The Beverly Hills, California, home was demolished in 1994, and a new one — a sprawling nine-bedroom, 18-bathroom mansion — was built and completed in 1996. It received a new address.
The mansion was put on the market in January 2022 for US$85 million ($124 million), but the asking price has repeatedly dropped over the last 23 months.
The sellers are now asking US$49.5 million ($72 million), according to the real estate agent's listing, which makes no mention of the property's dark history.
John Wayne Gacy's home
The serial killer John Wayne Gacy killed at least 33 people, and the remains of more than two dozen of them were found underneath his house near Chicago by investigators following his arrest in December 1978, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Gacy's home was demolished months later, in April 1979, the Tribune reported at the time.
It was a relief to neighbors, including one who told the newspaper, "I'll be glad when every bit of it's gone."
The lot was empty for almost a decade, until a new home was erected on the site beginning in June 1988, per the Tribune.
Like the Cielo Drive house, the new home also was given a new address.
Home of Fred and Rose West
Fred and Rose West abducted, sexually abused and killed a series of girls and young women — two of their daughters among them — between the 1960s and 1980s in England.
Fred, accused of 12 murders, died by suicide before he could stand trial, while Rose was convicted on 10 counts of murder in November 1995 and sentenced to life in prison.
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