The Horrifying History of My Childhood Home
Homes can be like cheating spouses. You live with them for years, never realizing the dark secrets they are harboring.
I grew up in such a home on Havemeyer Road in Irvington, New York. My parents purchased the house a few years after a brutal murder occurred in the driveway. We all knew that foul play had occurred – my parents even had a healer tour the house to clear it of negative energy –but I never knew much about what really happened on a snowy day in January 1974.
Until last week.
Let me backtrack a little. Late last year, I read a story by UK-based journalist Matt Blake in The Guardian about a home he’d recently moved into with a dark history. The article has one of those great tabloid titles the Brits do so well:
The Guardian
Matt’s article tells the story of a Victorian house in London he purchased for himself and his 2-year-old daughter after a divorce. The property was by no means a dream home, but it represented a new future for his family.
But when Matt started cleaning it up and talking to neighbors, he uncovered several disturbing details about the home that would lead to the most shocking discovery of all.
I won’t give it away. You can listen to the whole story on the latest episode of Write About Now.
But Matt’s story got me thinking about my own history with dark homes.
Realtors call these “stigmatized properties” — places impacted by events such as murder, suicide, a notorious previous owner, and alleged occurrences like hauntings.
In many states and the UK, stigmatized properties do not need to be disclosed by the owner or the realtor.
Matt didn’t know about his home’s history, but my parents did.
Still, the news didn’t deter them — this was their dream home, a gorgeous Japanese-inspired mid-century dwelling tucked atop a hill. All I remember hearing growing up was that a mom was murdered in the driveway by the jealous boyfriend of her live-in nanny.
There was also a strange glass door in the house that locked from the outside but not the inside. We were told this was for the safety of a little boy in the home with severe cerebral palsy. My friends used to love locking me behind the glass door when we were in high school.
Armed with that information last week, I asked google to tell me what happened on January 17, 1974, at my childhood home. It spit out a series of articles from The Daily News that are like portals into another time.
Meet the Bernhardt’s
I learned a family from Liechtenstein named the Bernhardt's occupied the home. Elfie, 41, was a “housewife” and mother of two children, Peter, 9, and Mickey, 5, who suffered from cerebral palsy. Mr. Bernhardt ran a large power tools company in Stamford, Connecticut.
The police chief described Elfie as a “very friendly woman who liked to help people.” When a neighbor with six kids slipped and fell and became bedridden, Elfie prepared dinner for eight every night until the neighbor was back on her feet.
Elfie Bernhardt
But according to the Daily News, “Mrs. Berhardt’s generosity may have inadvertently led to her death.”
Elfie liked to return each year to Liechtenstein and bring back an au pair from her home country. That year, she returned with an attractive woman named Elizabeth Sele, 19.
Murder on Havemeyer Road
Sele began seeing a local guy named ‘Richie.’ On the evening of January 17, Richie drove his yellow Toyota to the Bernhardt’s house looking for Sele who wasn’t home.
For some reason, Elfie let Richie inside the house.
What happened next is awful. When Sele returned to the house at 8 pm, she witnessed a horror show. Elfie lay dead outside the house in blood-soaked snow above the driveway. Her son Mickey writhed in bed groaning, his legs slashed and bleeding. The police found a bloody kitchen knife at the scene.
When the police informed Elfie’s husband, he drove home so fast that the cops pulled him over for going 100 mph.
Solving the case
Several witnesses saw the man in the yellow car, but nobody got a clear view. So, police used a newfangled device from Minolta that pieces together the mugshots of thousands of perps to create a composite photo of their suspect.
A woman recognized the composite photo as Richie and tipped off the police. Neal Girardi, 18, was arrested hours later and brought into custody. The son of an anesthesiologist, Girardi was a high school student who lived in nearby Tarrytown. He’d shaved his beard to throw the cops off.
Girardi’s lawyers argued that he was high on LSD at the time of the murders (such a 1970s defense). But the jury convicted him of second-degree murder, and he was sentenced to 25 years to life. Girardi has appealed for parole several times over the years but appears to have been denied each time.
I could use a few sharp subscribers to help dig deeper into this case, but this is all I could find with my limited research ability.
So that’s my story. I can’t deny that it’s kept me up at night. I wonder what happened to that poor family.
Does your home have a dark history? Let me know in the comments below.
And please take a listen to my podcast interview with Matt Blake.
See you next week!
Jon