Should It Be Bulldozed? Infamous Texas House Site Of Family Murder
Imagine you're shopping for a house to rent in Texas. The home seems perfectly decent, but perhaps you get a chill down your neck or an ominous feeling in your stomach when you enter it. Do you listen when your body lets you know a place has bad energy?
Or, perhaps you are immune to all that- you don't believe in the supernatural, certainly not in ghosts. But still, if the house you are about to sign a lease on was the sight of a gruesome and infamous murder, wouldn't you still like that disclosed?
Here in Texas, your landlord does NOT have to tell you if someone(s) was murdered on the property. They only have to disclose a death when the property itself caused the person(s) demise.
as long as the person didn't die because of some problem with the unit that could put future tenants at risk, a landlord doesn't have to tell you if anyone died in a unit.
If you do get a bad feeling about a property, and you care to know if something horrible happened there, I would recommend a cursory Google search of the address to see what pops up. You may find the home does have a horrific past, much like a house that still stands in Fort Worth Texas on Cactus Flower Drive, which will display a result from the Died In House Facebook page.
Apparently, this house was the site of the infamous murder of Shanna Riddle Vandewege (36) and her infant son. Both had died from deep cuts to their necks. Her husband Craig claimed to have come home to find them dead- the result of a supposed burglary. His timeline was suspicious and unprovable at best, and his coworkers came forward to authorities to alert them that Craig spoke often of "dreaming" about "slicing" his wife's head or otherwise wanting to harm her.
Craig was apprehended in Colorado with a car full of ammo, 2 guns, and camouflage clothing. He also claimed he was on his way to meet Donald Trump in Las Vegas to "clear things up" about his wife's murder.
A jury did not buy any of Craig's claims and he would be sentenced to life without parole.
There are photos of the inside of this home on Zillow- it is an unremarkable house, but there is something about the pictures that fills me with unease. Maybe it's my own bias, or maybe it's just bad photography. Or maybe there really is a malicious energy imbued in the home.
Either way, I would want to know what happened there before I was contractually obligated to live there for a year or whatever the terms of the lease are. But to be fair, if my landlord told me this, I'd likely turn the property down.