5 MOST NOTORIOUS MURDER HOUSES IN THE UNITED STATES

We have all seen the horror flicks where the killer takes his victim into his house of death and has his way with them. This is of course only a movie and not real life, maybe based on factual events but still only actors enacting the tragedies. The killers who in these houses we are to speak of were not actors, no they were only too real and they killed, killed and killed some more, most times in the sanctuary of their own homes. We all can look around our homes and see the love we put into them and the things we keep within that we collect or have acquired, the people who lived and killed within these death houses collected dead people, pain and agony and death administered behind closed doors. These tales are so morbid and macabre that they will have you locking your doors and when out for a walk rushing past that one house on your street where that one person resides that sends chills down your spine at just the view of them, who knows what they have within their home! The five listed are solely based on their notoriety only, not kill count or crimes committed but the images and stories that we have had ingrained into our minds by the media's coverage of these horror houses through books and or television. So please go lock your doors and pull the blinds and for God sakes pray, pray that the psycho down the road doesn't have plans for dinner with you being the guest of honor or possibly the main course. Read on if you dare...

5. The number five spot is nothing to sneeze at, it is the house where serial killer H.H. Holmes resided in and it was located at 601-603 W. 63rd St. In Chicago, Illinois. Holmes had the Castle as it was called a large three story building built with rooms where he could incinerate victims, air tight rooms where he could suffocate them and some rooms fitted with gas lines where he could asphyxiate his victims. Holmes had the Castle constructed with all these specialty rooms and a secret chute was used to drop the bodies into the basement where the skin would be removed and the skeletons sold to medical schools. Holmes also preyed on young women whom he would employ, taking out insurance policies on them and naming himself sole beneficiary, the young ladies would then unexpectedly turn up dead and Holmes would collect on the claim. Holmes also used the Castle as a hotel during the World's Columbian Exposition World's fair 1893, possibly killing more people who attended the fair but never returned. Holmes who eventually claimed to have killed twenty-seven but only nine confirmed murders, but many think that his victims could number in the hundreds. Money problems eventually made Holmes flee his Chicago castle to only resurface in Ft. Worth, Texas where he had inherited property from two women whom he had killed; he began building another castle but abandoned the ideal and moved on. Holmes moved about the U.S. and Canada and eventually enticed his long time companion in crime Benjamin Pitezel to fake his death while posing as an inventor who was killed in an explosion, to collect on a life insurance Holmes had taken out on the fictitious man. A body was to be provided by Holmes to appear as having died in the explosion; Holmes instead killed Pitezel and collected the payouts. Eventually the Chicago police got a tip from the janitor of the Holmes' castle in Chicago and took a look about and found the torture rooms and skeletons, dried blood and human hair in the basement. Holmes who was arrested in Boston and was then held in jail in Philadelphia on a charge of horse theft in Texas. A tip was also provided to police in 1894 by an Ex-con who Holmes had promised payment to if he could recommend a dishonest lawyer who would help Holmes with the Pitezel affair. Holmes was eventually found guilty of the murder of Benjamin Pitezel after confessing and being sentenced to death. Holmes confessed to 30 murders but all could not be collaborated. Holmes was hung On May 7, 1896, in Philadelphia. The castle in Chicago burned in 1895 and a new building built in its exact location in 1938, a postal branch currently is on the murder site. Of course this short synopsis can do no justice to the man and his evil. Holmes is one of the first modern documented serial killers in the United States. The Castle and its grounds were littered with pain and suffering, many innocent people were killed within its walls and their tortured souls destined to never rest in peace.

4. We move from the distant past to the present and we introduce the Home of one Leonard Lake who along with fellow sadist Charles Ng killed at least 12 known victims. Leonard Lake was arrested on June 2, 1985 when his friend Charles Ng was spotted shoplifting, Lake was questioned at the site and identified himself as Robin Stapely, but police became suspicious when Lake who was obviously in his late thirties provided the Stapely drivers license that listed him at 26. The car Lake was driving was registered to a Paul Cosner who along with Stapley had been reported as missing. During questioning Lake asked for a glass of water and when the chance arose swallowed a cyanide capsule he had hidden on his being. Lake went into a coma and died three days later. The police went and searched the property that Belonged to Lake's ex wife but Lake had been residing at in remote Wilseyville, California and unearthed 12 corpses. The property had been set up as a fortress in case of an impending global nuclear war that Lake felt would happen and thus he had built a bunker and had stashed weapons. Police found journals and a diary that Lake had kept, detailing how he planned on rebuilding the human race with female slaves. Worse of all the police found videos showing Lake and Charles Ng raping, torturing and killing women. Lake was in the military and was diagnosed with schizoid personality disorder in 1971 and given a medical discharge. Ng fled the country but was caught shoplifting in Canada, at the police station Ng after a tussle with an arresting officer Ng shot the police officer in the hand. He was charged with felonious assault, shoplifting and possession of a concealed weapon and sentenced to 4 years. Ng who was wanted in California on the murder charges, he eventually admitted to the murders. It took seven years for Ng to be extradited to the United States because Canada did not have capital punishment and Ng was returned then he would have been executed. The extradition and ensuing trial cost the taxpayers in the tens of millions. Ng sits on death row in San Quentin. One psycho is enough but get two sexual deviant psychos together like Lake and Ng and you have a recipe for disaster. The house is a house of horrors, a place where these psychos killed at least 12 people that included men, women and even children. The videos of Ng and Lake raping, torturing and killing women have reportedly been available online.

3. The next horror house on our list is located in the Midwest in Cleveland Ohio. The house belonged to one sick dude called the Cleveland Strangler. Antony Sowell killed eleven women in a span between May 2007 and Sept 2009. In 1989 Sowell was charged with rape, attempted rape and kidnapping, he pled guilty to attempted rape and served 15 years in prison. Released in 2005, Sowell work for a time at a factory until being discharged. September 2009 Sowell attempted to kill a female he had invited to his home at 12205 Imperial avenue. He raped and choked the victim until she passed out, after coming to the victim reported Sowell to police. The police arrived on October 29, 2009 with a warrant for his arrest, Sowell was not home but the police found two dead female bodies in the living room. Eventually the police found a total of 9 more bodies in the basement, crawl space and the back yard. Most of the women were drug addicts whom Sowell did not think would be noticed if he killed them. The media storm created by these sensational murders put Cleveland right in the cross hairs of media and public scorn concerning the perception that the disappearances of these women were not fully investigated because of the urban area and the known drug activities of some of the victims. The house of horrors was demolished in December 2011, rather than let the awful reminder tower above the area it was removed. Many pictures taken by the media and police are available as to never let that memory die as to what happened behind those doors of the Cleveland Strangler.

2. The number two spot belongs to one of the most famous serial killers of all time. Quite possibly the sickest on this list and a truly frightening murderer. The number two home belongs to none other than that cannibalistic serial killer who killed in Milwaukee Wisconsin. Many of us can remember the television broadcast of the morbid scene that unfolded after the arrest of Jeffery Dahmer, to myself it is a vague memory that plays albeit foggy in my mind but a memory that has stayed within me since seeing the coverage of that old brownstone building as the police and forensic crews took out the contents of Dahmer’s apartment. Dahmer who was a social outcast, a loner and a homosexual who as a young teen had fantasies about taking total control of his sexual partners. Dahmer killed his first victim one Steven Hicks a hitchhiker who he picked up and took to his father's home. He bashed Hicks skull in and then dissolved his flesh with acid, using a hammer to pulverize the bones. After an unsuccessful stint in the army and at Ohio State university, Dahmer moved to Milwaukee Wisconsin and took up residence with his Grandma in 1981, being sent there by his father from Ohio. Dahmer lived with his grandma at her house until 1988 when she noticed him bringing young boys home to her house and the putrid smell from the basement, Dahmer killed his first Wisconsin victims there. He briefly moved into an apartment but returned to his grandma's house after he was arrested for drugging and sexually fondling a 13 year old boy. He was convicted and was places on probation and had to register as a sex offender. In May 1990 Dahmer moved into the apartment that is so ingrained into our brains, 924 North 25th street where he would kill a total of 12 victims. Dahmer was arrested on July 22, 1991 after a young man he was going to kill was momentarily released from his handcuffs, punching Dahmer in the face as he escaped, Dahmer had threatened him with a knife, saying he was going to cut his heart out and eat it. The intended victim asked police to help him get the handcuff off but their key did not fit and they accompanied him to Dahmer' s apartment to get the key, where the gruesome details unfolded that was broadcast out to the world to see. The police found body parts throughout the apartment including skulls, human organs, scalps, and penises. Dahmer took Polaroid pictures of his victims in different stages of decomposition. Dahmer was indeed a sick man, a killer, a sex offender, a rapist who immersed himself in Necrophilia and cannibalism, Dahmer had gotten his start by killing small animals and collecting road kill. Dahmer was convicted of 15 counts of murder in Wisconsin and one count of murder in Ohio; most of his victims were Afro-American youths who he would invite to his apartment with offers of money and drugs. On November 28, 1994 Dahmer had his head bashed in by a fellow inmate named Christopher Scarcer at the Columbia Correctional institute in Portage Wisconsin, a little poetic justice indeed. The apartment was eventually torn down and is now an abandoned lot over grown with weeds, a place that could never be anything but a grim reminder to the monster who was Jeffery Dahmer.

1. The top spot is reserved for someone that led a double life, one as a married businessman who was well respected in his community and the other as a ruthless killer. The man was a fucking clown for Christ sakes, a killer clown known as John Wayne Gacy. This is another killer whose exploits are well documented in our mass consciousness by the media attention afforded it by the nightly news. I can't add much to this man's very public murder exploits but to say that of all listed on this list Gacy was the most disturbing in life as well as the cult like status his name invokes in the mind of some after death. As serial killers go he may be the most recognizable to the general public. The small brick ranch home where he entombed many of his victims is forever etched in our television watchers minds as his heinous crimes unfolded before our eyes which were glued to the evening news shows. Gacy once said that "clowns get away with murder," but only for awhile. Gacy owned a construction business and would hire young men and then murder them, also picking inner city youths up, many who were runaways or prostitutes and would not be noticed missing. Gacy raped, tortured and killed 33 young men between 1972 and 1978, 28 were buried about his property in the crawl space and in his back yard. Gacy would entertain children dressed as Pogo the first clown. Fact’s reign of terror ended in 1978 when the mother of a young man named Robert Piest was reported as missing, he was heading to Gacy’s house looking for employment. On December 21, 1978 police searched the Gacy house and grounds uncovering the truth about this clown. Gacy confessed to the crimes but later recanted his confession. Sentenced to 12 death sentences and 21 life sentences in 1980 he was euthanized on May 10, 1994 by lethal injection, Gacy's memory has never died. The fright house in a suburban area of Chicago was destroyed by crews as they searched for bodies. The lot sat empty for many years, a plot of ground where nothing would grow until it was purchased and a house built upon those blood stain grounds.

This list could have included such human monsters as Dean Corll and Ronald Dominique but for flat out media coverage the top four are without a doubt worthy of their inclusion. H.H. Holmes while a murderer who lived and killed over one hundred years ago has a recent movie made of his life and a book written about him and his castle that has pushed him into the fifth spot. As I complete my writing on this the sun is setting and the shadows of the night are spreading across my house, I reach for the light switch and flick it on and look about wondering what horrors may have played out within these walls before I moved in... I think tonight I might sleep with the lights on!