Some big criminal cases still resonate in the collective unconscious, sometimes by being brought to light by a film or a series, sometimes because they have made such an impression on people’s minds that the name of a serial killer is enough to remind everyone certain world of his crimes. If we have already discussed certain things that we do not know about serial killers, today we are going to talk about a very particular aspect of certain cases: the famous houses of horror which have been the morbid theaters of outstanding cases .
1. The house of John Wayne Gacy, the killer clown
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It was between 1972 and 1978 that John Wayne Gacy murdered 33 people (young boys and men) of whom nearly 29 were buried in his basement. He brought his victims to his house promising them work, drugs or some kind of consideration and strangled or asphyxiated them. At the time, it was the smell given off by the corpses that alerted the neighborhood and led the police to his home to make a terrible discovery. It took nearly two years for investigators to collect the skeletons of the victims and identify them as they were so crowded and disorderly.
2. Jeffrey Dahmer’s apartment
The one who was nicknamed the cannibal of Milwaukee lived in an apartment where he kept the corpses of his many victims. His “plan” was to turn his victims into zombies by injecting hydrochloric acid into their brains while they were still alive. When the police finally tracked him down, they discovered almost all the bodies of his 17 victims in the apartment in various places in the apartment: heads in the fridge and freezer, limbs in drawers, a decomposing body in his bed and also a corpse in his bathtub beside which Dahmer was washing. Yeah, it’s creepy.
3. The house of Ed Gein, the killer who inspired the movie “Psychosis”
During the arrest of Ed Gein, guilty of several murders and other mutilations of stolen corpses, the police discovered inside his house a lampshade, curtains and gloves made of human skin, human parts as well as corpses of its many victims. If the whole house was an absolutely horrible dump Ed Gein had left untouched the room of his mother, who was the only woman he had ever loved and whose death had been a real trauma. The room was perfectly tidy and immaculate, left untouched like a sanctuary in Ed Gein’s horrible house.
4. Home of Anthony Sowell, the Cleveland Strangler
Located next to a sausage factory in Cleveland (it matters), the house of Anthony Sowell’s mother had been the scene of nearly 11 murders. When his mother was still alive he had already started killing women there and continued after her death. Passers-by and neighbors hadn’t necessarily been awake by the smell of the 11 decomposing bodies hidden in the house because of the unpleasant smell of meat emanating from the famous factory, at least until the police came there. discover the many corpses.
5. Maury Travis’ Torture House
The basement of Maury Travis’ house had been converted into a torture chamber and is the place where 17 prostitutes died. He brought his victims there for paid sex, tricked them and locked them in his cellar before murdering them, filming most of his crimes. Travis hanged himself in his pre-trial cell shortly before he was arrested by police and his mother continued to rent her home after his death.
6. Château de Sautou, one of Michel Fourniret’s properties
By owning several properties, Michel Fourniret had been able to make several bodies of his victims disappear there over the years. The ogre of the Ardennes had bought the huge house with money hidden by robbers whose location he had been informed by a fellow prisoner during a stay in prison. He would have told the justice system that he had hidden the body of Estelle Mouzin near the Château, in which several of his crimes would also have taken place.
7. The house of Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès
Evaporated in nature for almost 11 years, we no longer count the times we thought we saw Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès. As a reminder, the man had killed all the members of his family (his wife, his four children and his two dogs) in their house in Nantes between April 3 and 4, 2011 before burying them under the terrace of the house and cover them with lime. Completely disappeared since, some of his relatives think he is still alive when no track seems to lead to him.
8. Marc Dutroux’s house in Charleroi
This is the only house in which were the only two young girls kidnapped by Marc Dutroux to have survived their ordeal: his house located in the city of Charleroi in Belgium. There were sequestered several young girls and little girls in the 90s and the house was destroyed 25 years after the events to be transformed into a flower garden in memory of the victims. The killer had immured two little girls there alive but had also kept other young girls captive in the house before moving them to one of his other residences.
9. The house of the Flactif family
The case marked the inhabitants of Haute-Savoie when the entire Flactif family was murdered by David Hotyat, a jealous neighbor helped by a couple of friends. He had first killed (accidentally according to his statements) the father of the family before attacking the rest of the family (his wife and their three children) to avoid leaving witnesses. David Hotyat later took the bodies to a nearby forest to burn them, but the police quickly tracked him down.
10. Pas de Calais House of Horror
In September 2022, the sordid story of the Pas de Calais house of horror came to light: two parents had been making their ten children live through infamous abuse for many years. Between violence and humiliation, the children suffered blows, insults or were sometimes tied to a chair for the youngest without being changed and therefore covered with their own excrement. Parents used their children to obtain child benefits and threatened them with further violence if they revealed their daily life to social services during their interviews.