Murder house buyers cry foul
LONDON, England (Reuters) -- A British couple who discovered their home had been the scene of a grisly murder as they watched a crime documentary on television have launched a legal claim that the previous owners should have informed them.
Alan and Susan Sykes say they would never have bought the £83,000 pound ($155,000) house in Wakefield, West Yorkshire in December 2000 if they had known that 15 years earlier a doctor had murdered his 13-year-old adopted daughter there and dismembered her body into more than 100 pieces.
The couple, who put the house on the market soon after they learned about their home's gruesome history, are claiming damages from sellers James and Alison Taylor-Rose.
The Sykeses struggled to find a buyer and ultimately lost £8,000 pounds on the sale.
The couple say that when the Taylor-Roses were asked: "Is there any other information which you think the buyer may have a right to know?" on a legal form, they answered "No."
An original claim for damages was rejected by a county court judge but now they have gone to the Court of Appeal to try to overturn that verdict.
If successful, the claim could impose a duty on sellers, and potentially real estate agents, to disclose information about the history of properties to buyers.
Opening their case, counsel Clive Freedman said the couple had great difficulty in selling the property, even though it was in a fashionable area of the town.
"The fact that the gruesome murder still resonates years after it took place is evidenced by the fact that the television program was made and by the reaction of the prospective purchasers who did not want to move into such a property," he said.
The Taylor-Roses had been unaware of the history of the house when they bought it in 1998, but they learned about it in early 1999 when an anonymous note was pushed through their letter box.
University dental biologist Dr. Samson Perera was convicted of murder in 1985. Parts of his victim's body were found hidden under the floorboards, in pot plants and a coffee jar at the house, while others were never traced.
The hearing continues.
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