True Crime Locations You Can Actually Visit

"Lizzie Borden took an axe, and gave her mother forty whacks; when she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one."

The Lizzie Borden incident has fascinated the world since it first occurred back in 1892. That year, Lizzie's parents were found with their skulls caved in by a hatchet in their Fall River, MA home. The prime suspect? Their youngest daughter.

Borden was believed to have financial and emotional motivation for the slayings but was acquitted nonetheless, and the murders remain unsolved. In 2019, the home on 92 Second Street has been converted into a Victorian-era bed and breakfast with plenty of nods to the location's grim past throughout. To top the experience off, the house is said to be rife with paranormal activity. 

One early June morning in 1912, someone entered a small house in Villisca, IA and bludgeoned two adults and six children as they slept. The incident spawned decades of investigations, several suspects, but not one conviction. Over 100 years later, the crime remains unsolved.

The house, located at 508 E. 2nd Street, stayed pretty much intact throughout the years and was turned into a tourist attraction in the 1990s. In 2019, you can tour the home during daylight hours or stay overnight, but be forewarned - ghost experts and hobbyists alike contend the Villisca house is one of the most haunted places in the US.

The unsolved slaying of Elizabeth Short, AKA the Black Dahlia, still holds Los Angeles in its grip decades later. Many of the locations Short frequented before her untimely demise are still as they were at the time of the incident. On January 15, 1947, her body was found in a vacant lot in Leimert Park where a private residence now stands.

The Sowden House in Los Feliz played a part in Short's mysterious end, but as is the case with most Black Dahlia-related locations, its full importance has yet to be established. In the mid-1940s, the house was owned by Dr. George Hodel, an LA physician. His son Steve, a retired LAPD detective and author of the book Black Dahlia Avenger, claims his father was the one who did Short in. While researching for his book, he found LAPD records that showed George was indeed one of the prime suspects at the time.

When Steve brought a police cadaver dog to Sowden House, it acted as though there was evidence of human remains on the premises. In 2019, the house - built by Lloyd Wright (eldest son of architect Frank Lloyd Wright) - still stands much as it was in 1947 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Its place in Black Dahlia lore has been further cemented by the TNT series I Am The Night which tells the story of an adopted woman who discovers George Hodel is her biological grandfather.

The production was shot inside the Sowden House and around its exteriors. Actress India Eisley said of the location, “It has a very, very heavy energy there. During filming I felt physically ill a lot of the time. It’s just so isolated, it feels like a mausoleum. You could imagine someone screaming in there and not being heard.”

The Amityville House of Long Island, NY still stands as a private residence decades after 23-year-old Ronald "Butch" DeFeo took out six members of his family while they slept in 1974. The house has since been the subject of several movies and TV shows due to the alleged "haunting" of the Lutz family, who inhabited the house after the DeFeos, though no owner since then has claimed paranormal activity.

The best-selling book about the Lutz family's time in the house, The Amityville Horror, has been deemed a hoax after DeFeo’s lawyer, William Weber, reportedly admitted he and the Lutzes “created this horror story over many bottles of wine" in the hopes of a new trial for DeFeo. The house at 112 Ocean Avenue is occupied in 2019 and was purchased by its latest owners for $605,000 in 2017. 

If you're a fan of Truman Capote's novel In Cold Blood, the Clutter house in Holcomb, KS may be on your bucket list. (Remember, however, it is a private residence.) In November 1959, two drifters, Richard “Dick” Hickock and Perry Edward Smith, executed four members of the Clutter family at their secluded home at the end of Oak Street. The men had heard rumors about how the Clutters kept a substantial amount of money in the house, but became enraged when they learned there was none.

Weeks after the slayings, the pair was arrested when a jailhouse snitch revealed their identities and both met their end by hanging in 1965. The home was purchased by Bob Byrd, a cattle rancher who allowed filmmakers to shoot the 1967 film about the incident, In Cold Blood, inside. After his passing, the house was sold to another couple in 1990, but by 2006 they were fed up with its notoriety and put it on the market.