I had a large house with a big pool listed that was in a cul-de-sac. The sellers were somewhat hard to deal with as they were extremely particular about everything. They previously had the house listed for over a year with no luck in selling it. So, this time around, they chose me and a lower price which I knew was right. I was excited because it was the first house I had listed in that particular subdivision.

Two weeks later, I was bringing all the people from my real estate company for what is called a realtor tour. I was the lead car because it was my listing. As we pulled up by the house, ready to turn into the cul-de-sac, we all stared as we realized the entire cul-de-sac was filled with police cars and ambulances. What worried me the most was where the ambulances were directed. Were my sellers OK? I pulled into my seller’s driveway which faced a side street as I couldn’t enter the cul-de-sac due to the police tape.

My seller came out through the garage, obviously upset over what was going on. And that was my first question to him: “What is going on”? “Apparently”, he said, “the house at the end of the cul-de-sac has two murdered people in the basement.” I asked, “Where is your wife?” And he said, “She’s in the kitchen crying as she’s so upset.” “Don’t worry”, I volunteered, “we’ll get it all straightened out”, having no idea what I was actually facing. Let me get my people into the house so we can get them away from the police and we’ll figure it out from there.

After I got the realtors going through the house, I went with my seller to talk to the police. They were not the most cooperative from which to get information. Apparently, this was a drug hit, most likely by “the mob”. The man that owned the house and his girlfriend were the ones who had been shot. They had been dead in the basement for over two weeks. That’s all the police would tell us.

I went back in the seller’s house to try to calm them down. I told my sellers we couldn’t show the house until police tape and police cars weren’t all over the place. It was two more weeks before I could allow showing of the house. But we finally succeeded and got the house sold. I read several stories in the papers about the murders and a couple of them mentioned the address. It did not seem to affect the sale of the house.