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The infamous Colorado Tudor where the body of 6-year-old beauty queen JonBenét Ramsey was discovered can’t find the right buyer.
The gated, five-bedroom, 5.5-bathroom home in Boulder, CO, was pulled off the market at the beginning of the month. This was the sixth time the home has failed to sell, according to the New York Post. And it was despite the top-floor penthouse with two bathrooms, kitchen with a separate catering kitchen, and hefty price cuts.
The 7,240-square-foot home, built in 1927, was initially listed for $7.25 million in November 2022. The price had been whittled down to its most recent $6,249,000 before the owners took it off the market.
But the lower price might not have been enough for buyers to overlook the unsolved mystery of the young girl who was found dead in the home.
JonBenét Ramsey’s body was discovered in the wine cellar near the basement on the day after Christmas in 1996.
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“The market perceives anything dealing with children who have been injured, abused, or murdered as the most heinous condition. It has a dramatic effect on property values,” says Orell Anderson, a forensics real estate appraiser at Strategic Property Analytics who specializes in damaged real estate. He also worked on assessing the Colorado property after the murder.
The 7,240-square-foot home, built in 1927, was initially listed for $7.25 million in November 2022.
Andy Cross/The Denver Post via Getty Images
JonBenét’s body was discovered in the wine cellar near the basement on the day after Christmas in 1996. Her skull was broken, and a garrote was tied around her neck. An autopsy ruled the cause of death was strangulation.
Before her body was found, Patsy and John Ramsey found a ransom note in the home demanding $118,000 to get their daughter back.
The Ramseys, who had purchased the home for $500,000 in 1991, moved out after the murder. The home was sold to an investor for $650,000, according to the Post. The profits of the sale were pledged to the JonBenét Ramsey Children’s Foundation.
Patsy and John were suspects in the murder for more than a decade. They weren’t cleared of the crime until 2008, two years after Patsy died of cancer.
The Ramseys, who had purchased the home for $500,000 in 1991, moved out after the murder.
Helen H. Richardson/ The Denver Post
Homes with a tragic history, especially ones involving children, often sell at a 10% to 25% discount—or even more, says Anderson. The percentage increases based on the awfulness of the crime and how much attention it received.
Earlier this week, the Beverly Hills mansion where the Menéndez brothers gunned down their parents sold for $17 million—down from its initial list price of $19,999,500.
When terrible things happen in a home, it will immediately turn off many prospective buyers. They might feel uncomfortable being in the same room where someone died, even if it’s been thoroughly cleaned and redone.
The new owners will also have to deal with what can be unwanted attention. In some cases, like the home where Gypsy Rose Blanchard orchestrated her mother’s murder, the home’s address and appearance will be altered to discourage looky-loos and true-crime aficionados who still travel to the property.
“People have some fascination or fetish about murders in general,” says Anderson. “People go on vacation, and one of the things they do is maybe visit all the murder houses.”
Tim and Carol Schuller Milner, the current owners of the Ramseys’ former home, have been trying to offload the property for more than 15 years. They purchased it for $1.05 million in 2004 and put it on the market four years later for $2.68 million. They tried again in 2009, listing it for $2.29 million, according to the Denver Post. The property was relisted in 2011 for $2.3 million and then again for $2 million in 2014.
Carol Schuller Milner, the daughter of “Hour of Power” televangelist Robert Schuller, told Inside Edition that she wanted to undo the home’s stigma when she purchased the property.
“This has become a dark monument, this thing that was just sitting there, just a constant reminder of something horrible that happened, and I’m just a believer in undoing stuff like that,” she said in the 2016 interview.
“It is a wonderful place to live. It is home,” she said.
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