I'd stay out of the garage, if I were you...

(Above:  Joel Rifkin's Long Island home)

It may look like a perfectly mundane, typical suburban Long Island house, but this one has a rather singular provenance:  It's the former home of one of New York's most prolific serial murderers of the past quarter century, Joel Rifkin.  In 1994, Rifkin was convicted of committing nine murders and sentenced to 203 years to life. He confessed to killing 17 women between 1989 and 1993.  He kept atleast one of the victim's bodies in the garage of this house.  After about 10 months on the market and several price chops, the house just went into contract for almost $275,000.  "Every home has a buyer," said Gregory A. Berkowitz, manager of Laffey Fine Homes in New Hyde Park, the company in charge of selling the four-bedroom house. "Just like every seat sits a person." Interviewed by Newsday , Berkowitz said the potential buyers of 1492 Garden St. in East Meadow are "fully aware" of the house's history.
"We have a family that is happy about buying it," he said.

I guess short of bulldozing it and building something else in its place, someone had to eventually buy it.  I've always been fascinated by the "next chapter" of homes that were the scene of grisly murders and scandals.  I can't imagine ever being able to sort of put aside what went on under the very roof where I'm about to put my head on the pillow.  For instance, the Beverly Hills home where the Menendez murders took place in 1989:

 
(Above:  The Menendez mansion)
The 9,000-square-foot mansion that once belonged to Jose and Kitty Menendez was listed for $3,995,000 and sold for about $3.7 million several years ago. In 1996, Lyle and Erik Menendez were convicted of killing their parents, Jose and Kitty, in 1989 and were sentenced to life in prison without parole. For me, anyway, no matter how many years passed by or how much remodeling took place, the stark fact remains that one of the most grisly murders of our time happened right in that living room.  I don't care if it is in "prime" Beverly Hills (well, prime "Flats" of Beverly Hills)...I don't think I could do it.... 

Or how about the Brentwood, CA home of poor Nicole Simpson?
 

(Above:  The redesigned entry to Nicole Simpson's condo in Brentwood)

Someone purchased the condo where her ex-husband, O.J. Simpson brutally murdered her and her friend, Ron Goldman.  They completely redesigned the entryway, and even changed the address.  But how could you walk through that entry without thinking every single time of what took place there? 

It's not altogether uncommon for some of the more scandalous murder sites to be razed.  John Gacy's suburban Chicago home was leveled. 

(Above:  The replacement house of the "Sharon Tate House")

The Bel Air home where the Manson murders took place in 1969 was leveled and replaced by an enormous hilltop mansion.  And the entire Milwaukee apartment building where Jeffrey Dahmer lived was destroyed soon after the horror of his grisly acts came to light.   It remains a vacant lot to this day.

Apparently, living in a home with such a horror-filled past doesn't seem to bother some people.  William Link, who co-wrote Murder, She Wrote and many other TV shows and films, moved into the Menendez home with his wife, and lived there for almost a decade. He never worried about unwanted visits from the supernatural.

"When you're dead," he noted prosaically, "you're dead."