Nightmare on My Street: Boise’s Murder House [VIDEO]
Forget Violet Harmon, Tate Langdon, the old restored mansion and well...pretty much everything about the first season of American Horror Story. There's a REAL murder house in Boise and I JUST realized it's down the street from my apartment!
I think it was 2015 when I first heard the tales surrounding the gorgeous, yet rundown home at 805 W Linden in Southeast Boise. There are so many rumors about the house that was built in 1910. I've heard everything about a crazed serial killer who killed multiple people in the home, to it being a frat house for Boise State where brothers frequently saw blood running down the walls to stories of a woman dressed in clothes from the 1800s standing in the window. Let's set the record straight about the home...it's never been a BSU Frat and there's no real documented proof of the female ghost. But about that murder? There's a crap ton of truth to that story!
According to Channel 2, a man by the name of Preston Murr was at the two story home on June 30th, 1987. Murr got in an argument with two men by the name of Daniel Rogers and Daron Cox after attending a funeral. The argument is believed to have something to do with someone threatening Murr and guns stolen from Rogers. The fight escalated to the point where Murr was shot in the shoulder and ended up escaping the home long enough to bang on the doors of homes in the neighborhood looking for help. No one in the neighborhood answered their doors that evening, but one neighbor did call the police after finding a trail of blood on his doorstep and seeing Murr being dragged back into the home.
According to court documents, Murr was dragged back into the basement where Rogers fatally shot him in the head. Following his death, Rogers and Cox cut his body into 13 pieces, packaged each of them in plastic bags and threw them into the Brownlee Reservoir. Rogers and Cox were eventually found and arrested for the murder. Rogers continues to serve a life sentence for first degree murder. Cox served six years for his role as an accomplice in the murder.
Many people believe that Murr's soul will forever haunt the Murder House, while people who lived in the house don't necessarily believe that. You can see Deann Davis's account of living in the house with her two daughters in this Channel 2 story from 2012.
According to the Ada County Assessor's Office, the same man has owned the home since at least 2000. I was talking about it with our bartenders at Old Chicago a few weeks ago when my fiance pointed out that we drive past this house multiple times in a single week. My stomach sunk when I realized it's EXACTLY a mile walk from our front door! It's unclear if the man who owns the home is still renting it to people or not. (According to a post on Strange USA it was a rental property at one time.) I had a couple meetings and group runs in Meridian last week and when I drove past it on the way home it does appear that there is a light on in the home during the evenings. I haven't seen any movement or any people on the property (but then again, I don't stop long to take a good look at it because the house creeps me out big time.) It is not in as good as shape as it was in the video above. There are multiple vehicles parked on the property, what appears to be trash piled in the second story window, broken windows and debris all over the front porch.
As for whether or not I believe it's haunted...I'll tell you when I pulled up next to the house and instantly got an uneasy feeling. I, someone who craves weird scary stuff from American Horror Story every week, was too scared to get out of my car to take a picture of it alone. I ended up grabbing a friend to come with me to snap this photo because I just couldn't bring myself to get out of the car and snap a selfie.
Have you visited the Boise Murder House?! Do you have any stories you'd like to share?!