CLEVELAND, Ohio – The empty house at 9412 Fuller Ave., where 14-year-old Alianna DeFreeze’s body was found in late January, tells a story all too familiar to public officials and community groups waging a daily fight against blight.
City of Cleveland
In the Union-Miles neighborhood on Cleveland’s East Side, the house didn’t stand out as an eyesore. It didn’t generate complaints to the city. It didn’t raise red flags for nonprofits and board-up crews that monitor the surrounding streets.
But the house had been distressed since at least 2012. That’s when it slipped into foreclosure, and into a cycle that often ends with demolition.
In 2013, Deutsche Bank bid just $2,000 for the property at sheriff’s sale, a public auction that ended litigation over nearly $74,000 of unpaid debt, interest and fees. Months later, the bank turned around and sold the house to a local investor for just under $7,000.
In early spring of 2016, the house changed hands again. County records show a $28,600 sale price, but that figure isn’t necessarily accurate. The buyer, 25-year-old LaVontay Mckenzie, did not respond to interview requests. Neither did the prior owner.
“My construction yard is right around the corner from there, and I’ve wrecked houses on that street within the last year. And it’s been vacant for a long time,” said Bob Deskins of Lightning Demolition & Excavating, the company that boarded up the house’s windows and doors after DeFreeze’s body was discovered. “Everything is gutted out. The hot water tank is gone. Whoever bought the house wasn’t doing anything to it.”
Building records don’t show any signs of renovations. There are no mortgage records on file with Cuyahoga County. As far back as 2013, at least one window – on the back of the house – was covered with plywood, based on photos from a real estate listing.
Deskins lost an adult daughter, Angela, to an East Cleveland serial killer a few years ago. He described blighted properties as crime scenes in waiting. “You can’t do it right in the street,” he said. “You need these abandoned houses to go into to commit these crimes.”
DeFreeze disappeared on Jan. 26 on her way to school. Her body was found a few days later. Christopher Whitaker, a 44-year-old sex offender, has been charged with her murder.
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Eliminating vacant homes and buildings won’t stop violent crimes, of course.
“I won’t be the one that would say the house was the reason she was murdered,” said Councilman Tony Brancatelli, who is part of a public-private task force focused on vacant and abandoned properties. “She would have been murdered somewhere else.”
But razing empty, forgotten houses reduces the locations that criminals can hide.
A photo from a 2013 real estate listing shows a boarded-up window on the back of house at 9412 Fuller Ave. in Cleveland.NEOHREX
Since Mayor Frank Jackson took office in 2006, the city has demolished 434 nearby structures on 318 sites flanking East 93rd Street between Miles Avenue and Kinsman Road. “This is an area that we’ve done a lot of work in,” said Ron O’Leary, the city’s director of building and housing.
The house at 9412 Fuller isn’t in foreclosure. County records show roughly $3,000 in delinquent property taxes. It wasn’t considered a demolition candidate in 2015, when a survey by the Western Reserve Land Conservancy assigned the property – which seemed occupied – a grade of “C,” mediocre but not beyond help.
Now, the house’s association with a grisly crime will bring it more attention, including a city inspection, that could heighten the odds of condemnation and an eventual teardown.
“It just happened,” Brancatelli said, “to be an attractive nuisance for somebody to do bad things.”
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