Hey everyone, Manny here before we start today's episode, I'm doing a call out for an advice episode.

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Enjoy today's episode.

I'm Manny.

This is and this is no such thing the show where we settle our dumb arguments and yours by actually doing the research.

On today's episode, what happens to a property after a murder?

No, there's no no touch thing, No touch, thank touch, thank.

Touch, thank you, touch, thank you.

All right, boys, we're here.

What are you pointing at his shirt?

We're getting spooky today?

All right, boys, Uh, we're here to talk about, uh, this question that that actually I don't think I've ever really thought about before we came across this, And that question is what happens to a property so like an apartment or a home after there's been a murder, or especially like a high profile murder that's been in the news.

We're going to talk to a journalist who essentially did the work for us.

She's gotten to the bottom of this and you know, uncovered a bunch of nuances about this industry, so to speak.

But before we get to that interview, I wanted to ask you, guys, would this be a deterrent for you?

You you were moving into a place, So let's say you let's do a scenario here where you're at the last stages.

You know, maybe you've talked to the real estate agent, you put down a down payment, but then you find out that twenty years prior to big crime that happened there.

I mean, well, how do you guys feel.

I I think my only deterrent wouldn't be the act that happened there.

I think it would be more if like people were coming by all the time, like if it was really high profile and like they're like tourists coming by and hounding the place.

If it was like cleaned up or redone and there's not like signs of anything happening, Yeah, I think I don't think it would bother me.

I don't think I'd be so spooked.

Maybe if it was like a really extreme thing.

Where you know whoever John Wayne Gacey or something like yea, you know the bodies were under this floorboard or something like something like that, where it's like, Okay, maybe that would be creepy, especially if I'm in, you know, some creaky house or something.

But I think if it was just it's like, okay, yeah, something bad happened here, not like the most extreme.

I mean, I think I could be okay with it as long as yeah, it's not like people are driving by or coming up and checking it out all the time.

So you're not someone who thinks like there's bad vibes in the air like any like, you're not spiritual in that sense where you're worried about like the water faucet being turned on by itself.

Yeah, I think as long as.

You know the price is right, I could get over that.

But I think the thing you'd have to think about is if you were to sell that house, would you have issues.

Maybe you don't have an issue with it and you get a good price, but now it's time for you to sell it and everyone's like, I don't want to buy that house.

That's the house where that crazy thing happened.

Yeah, it's a good point, all right, And now okay, I put all this money into this house and I can't get you know, I'm always thinking about you know, I'm an HGTV head, so I'm always thinking about, you know, flipping it.

You know.

Yeah, so you have the house, you got to think about.

It's an investment.

At some point you're going to want to try to sell it.

But I don't.

Yeah, I'm not like a big ghosts or spiritual guy.

I think to know his point as long as it like, if I was to be able to walk into that place and not notice or no exactly, then I would be okay with it.

Obviously, if it's a high profile thing and people are coming and taking pictures, like I didn't even think about the Sex and the City seen this the Brownstone in New York where it is this old man is like putting up you know, like ropes and stuff because people are sitting on a stoop like I think also the breaking bad House where he throwst of people like to take pictures in front of the house.

So some of that is like all right, it comes to the territory.

But some of it is like all right, people like let's be respectful someone does live here.

Yeah, so that would be my biggest worry is that if it's you know, you get these fanatics who would show up to your house.

Yeah, it's like a notorious location.

Yeah, at all hours it a night, or be sneaking around and it's like, all right, I don't want that to be happening.

Yeah, I thought I've thought about this question.

I think, you know, I'm not spiritual in that way where like I think there's a ghost or whatever, and that's why I wouldn't do it.

I do wonder if I could get over the thought of the thing happening there, like if it would be occupying my mind while I lived there.

Of course, if there if there was a situation where they were like, okay, you found out that this thing happened here, will give you give you this place half off or whatever, like if there's a consideration about the price attached to this, I would probably be okay.

But I certainly think like if I was down in the basement doing laundry or whatever and like anything about that, Yeah, I don't know.

I don't know.

I just feel like, you know, people obviously not high profile, but lots of bad things have happened probably in all the places we've lived, unless you're a first person living there.

Yeah, you know, I hear my neighbors are you, And I'm like, that's not good stuff happened in and there.

So I think to some degree, it's just like bad stuff happens everywhere.

M h.

I think it's different if we have like a collective memory about the thing.

Yeah, I mean what has happened in this studio?

Yeah, in the past.

Yeah, it's possible, you know, go far enough back.

Yeah, I've gotten bad vibes, Like how like to what what extent does it go?

Like, could it be possible at four thousand years ago some guy hit another guy with a rock or something.

And that's not really gonna deter me from.

In the United States right here?

Yeah, hey, is American to me.

But I think the more interesting question is something I've just not thought about before, which is like, what exactly is the process of selling these places?

So if some high profile murder happened in an apartment, what exactly is the process, Like, you know, do they let people know ahead of time before people try and buy the place?

Are these places torn down?

What the hell is happening?

Is this an industry, and thankfully we've we've got a journalist joining us.

Her name is Katherine Fenlosa, and she's interviewed a man who has become known as the Master of Disaster, which is you know, I know this is kind of a darker topic, but that is an awesome name.

Anyway, we've got Katherine waiting for us on a call, so why don't we just bring her in?

Okay, all right, we're here with Katherine Fenelosa.

Catherine, we're ready to record if you are sure.

Great.

Catherine is a journalist who is sharing with us an interview that she conducted with a man named Randal Bell.

Randall has become known for his work surrounding the sale and management of real estate that's kind of been stained by crime, especially the kind of crime that is high profile, the kind of crime that might make it in the national news.

So, Catherine, I guess my first question is, you know, the only person I can kind of imagine who'd be able to do this kind of work is someone who's, you know, a dark figure, someone who's brooding, pensive.

Maybe not a whole lot of fun to hang around, But what was it like actually talking to the so called Master of Disaster.

Well he is.

He's a really interesting guy, and I don't know what I was expecting beforehand, but he's so kind and gentle that in some ways I was sort of surprised that this is his line of work, because it's he's dealing with, like truly the worst sides of humanity.

He's been called to investigate basically the best way to handle some of the most notorious crimes in the country or natural disasters, and he does it with such a He describes himself as a surfer and a skier, and that comes across He lives in southern California, and he's got this very sort of Southern California beachy vibe to him, which, you know, I think if you met him on the street, his line of work would be the last thing you'd ever think of.

I am doctor Randall Bell, and I'm a socioeconomist, and I specialize in real estate damage economics.

What that basically means is that when there's a disaster or a crime, or an oil spill, or any number of things a natural disaster, I measure what in the legal field is called a diminution value.

I measure loss and value but in order to do that, there's a lot of sociology, a lot of finance, a lot of research.

So how did he get his start on your conversation with him?

Yeah, so it's interesting.

He was a neighbor of Nicole Brown.

You know, she was married to O.

J.

Simpson, the football star who then you know, depending on how old you are, in my childhood, he was like on the front of every wheaties box, and you know, he was everywhere selling literally selling orange juice.

The orange juice I grew up on.

It's rich in natural energy, as sweet as an orange right from the tree right.

Randall Bell lived in the neighborhood where her father lived, and so after that tragedy, Lou Brown, her dad reached out to Randall just to say, you know, do you have any thoughts of what we can do with her condo?

So when lud told me about the property, I was already pretty familiar with the demographics and it's a very high end area.

It's West LA.

I don't know that people really following the case really appreciated or fully acknowledged of the human side of it.

And Lou and I became reasonably close.

We would go to lunch several times together, and he would share things with me that I've never shared with anybody, just in terms of the grief and the the sadness that this, you know, happened, and what he was dealing with there.

But in terms of the real estate, well, his question to me was, this property's we need to sell it for the estate.

We got bills to pay.

There's you know, every disaster has a or tragedy has the emotional side, but there's also practical issues going on kind of behind the scenes, and he was concerned about paying the bills.

And he said, you know, because the property is so famous, is it going to sell for more or is it you know, he didn't know what was going to happen, and that's where I said to him, you know, Lou, I don't know, but let me figure it out.

He really got to start helping Nicole Brown's dad figure out what to do with her place, and then he just sort of got a reputation as the guy to go to I think.

I mean, we were what three years old on this Yeah, it was happening.

So everything I know about this case has been learned through you know, movies or documentaries.

Were actually pretty removed from like the human element of this, and it's fascinating to here that you know, he was so close to it was either like a next door neighbor or like in the neighborhood.

He was in the neighborhood.

Yeah, he was in the neighborhood.

You know.

You hear about all of these cases on the news.

Our happenings in Los Angeles, and that all began with charges laid by LA Police against oj Simpson in connection with the brutal slang of his ex wife Nicole and twenty five year old Ron Goldman.

Simpson charge with the two counts of murder was supposed to surrender to LA police had too Eastern this afternoon, but failed to show up.

He is now considered a fugitive from this and police are on the.

Hut and everyone is interested in the moment, and then sort of the attention goes on to the next you know, big sensational event and what happens to the families and the communities that are left behind that really have to like put everything back together.

And that's what really happened with Randall helping Nicole's family, which was you know, someone does have to pay the pay the mortgage or the rent, and so what do you do because now you've got this property that has this this stigma attached to it.

I mean.

Another one that he did was Heaven's Gate, which was nineteen ninety seven, and that was in Rancho, Santa Fe, California, where a cult, the Heaven's Gate Cult, the thirty nine members all committed suicide.

San Diego Sheriff's deputy stumble into a house of the multi million dollar mansion filled with dozens of bodies, the site of a grim mass suicide.

Resident.

Do you have any comment on the mass suicide.

It's shocking.

I think it's important that we get as many facts as we can about this.

It was sort of like a UFO cult.

It's a little it's a little weird.

I've tried to like understand it.

But yeah, So they thought there was a comment, I think it was called the Haley Bop comment, and they thought when this comment was coming, it was like their sign to be delivered to eternity.

And so the thirty nine members were living in a mansion in this very wealthy neighborhood in southern California, and they all committed suicide, and each member got into bed.

They all dressed identically, and I believe they drank some sort of poison and they each died in their beds, and Randall was called by the owner of this property to go in and figure out what to do with it.

And when he went in the day after the last body was removed.

I'm often asked, what's the most bizarre case I've worked on?

It is probably that one.

There were two things.

One was just how bizarre the cult people were.

I mean, in terms of their lifestyle.

Every single jar in the pantry, every light switch, and this is not an exaggeration, every light switch, every switch of any kind, everything in the closets, everything was labeled.

And I was really puzzled by it.

And one day I was walking through the property with a Wall Street Journal reporter and she says, do you know why they do this?

And I go, I have no idea, and she goes, because they don't want the cult members thinking for themselves about anything, even the most mundane thing.

All the thinking's been done for you when you join the cult, And I thought, wow, that makes sense, and I haven't ever heard a better explanation in all these year since.

But there was also the remnants of the incident.

And I don't want to be graphic.

I'm not really a graphic person.

But when you have thirty nine bodies in a house for three days in the summer with no air conditioning, there were a lot of body fluids all over the property, and the property smelled so bad.

I'll never forget.

I got in my car when I was done going through it, and I went back to my house and I literally went around the gate to the backyard and jumped in the swimming pool with a full suit on.

I did not want to carry that smell into my own house.

And in the Heaven's gatecase.

So how do you start doing what you need to do?

Can you walk me through your process?

The framework of it's pretty simple.

We look at the costs, use and risk.

So the first thing is the costs with Heaven's Gate.

There was the cost of saying, okay, the house steaks.

Is that just a thing where we get a bunch of frebreeze or do we need to deal with biological waste?

So we hired an environmental company to come in and test the porest surfaces, the carpet, the drapes, the air conditioning, ducting, and they came back and said, unfortunately, there is biological matter that's decomposed and airborne and all these things need to be demolished.

So the first step is costs.

The second one is, you know, does the property have any utility while it's being repaired, And the answer was obvious, no, you don't move the family in, you don't live here, you don't try and rent it right now.

So there's a calculation on the loss of use and that goes and gets submitted to the insurance companies.

And then the third thing is the risk, and that being once you clean up the property and fix it up and put it on the market, and you say, hey, we've got a ten thousand square foot mansion and three acres of land and the spectacular view of San Diego and a pool and a jacuzzi and a tennis court and an elevator and all these amenities, and that's the garaguy you park your limo.

Oh, by the way, this was the site of the nation's worst mass suicide.

Well, that has a reputational problem, and obviously you're gonna have crime scene stigma, or in this case, you know, a stigma with the mass suicide and there are ways of extracting that data and calculating what an appropriate discount would be.

So at the end of the day, I'm looking at the costs, the loss of use, and the risk effects.

What ended up happening with the Heaven's Gate property.

The house ended up going into foreclosure, and I believe a neighbor bought it for half of what it had previously sold for five years before.

And the city tried to do a few things.

They tried they changed the name of the street, which is not that uncommon in cases like this, you know, so that someone doesn't google an address and it comes up, you know.

But when they did that, some local news stations cut wind of it, and so it's sort of backfired because then it just it put the story back on on the news cycle.

But that one, that one did sell to a neighbor at you know, half of what the owner had bought it for.

That's fascinating.

We have to take a quick break, but when we come back, we're going to ask Catherine about some of the more difficult cases that Randall had to work on.

All right, we're back.

We're here with Catherine Fenelosa, a journalist who's interview with Randall Bell, aka the Master of Disaster has been fascinating us.

Catherine.

We've talked a little bit about some of the cases Randall has worked on, which are kind of inherently distressing.

But I'm curious if there are any cases Randall worked on that were either emotionally difficult or even logistically difficult.

He worked on the World Trade Center, Jim.

Just a few moments ago, something believed to be a plane crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center.

I just saw flames inside.

You can see the smoke coming out of the tower.

We have no idea what it was.

It was a tremendous boom.

Just a few moments ago.

You can hear around me emergency vehicles heading towards the scene.

His cases are it's so fascinating because it's such a wide range.

But the World Trade Center in that case, he was also involved in trying to figure out what to do.

The property in Lower Manhattan was really valuable, and so you can't have the entire place be a memorial, but figuring out the balance between a memorial and then needing to use, you know, rebuild for office space.

I worked on the World Trade Center site and that was involving a lot of money, you know, obviously in the financial district of New York, and it was so large, both in terms of finances and also just the worldwide international scope that I wanted to be very careful in each step because I knew it would be so scrutinized at a level that I don't think has happened before since you know, I mean, think about it.

You have two twin towers.

You're given a task to put numbers on everything.

And at the end of the day, courts don't award hugs, they don't award apologies.

They award dollars.

And that's what we're dealing with here in terms of putting dollar amounts on what all this meant in terms of not just the costs, the downtime with the property, the lasket, lack of use, and also what's appropriate to do with the site.

It consumed every cell in my brain for months and months and months trying to figure everything out.

We have a sign in my office on the wall that says, the more complex the case, the more simple the solutions.

And I went back to basics and what we are taught in the field of real estate research is I looked for case studies around the world where something similar a proxy would give us clues of the appropriate direction that this should go.

So we went to Oklahoma City, I went to Haroshima, Japan.

I went to Pearl Harbor.

I went to JFK, the Book Depository.

I found sites all over the world where there had been horrific events, and I looked at the real estate and I talked to the people running the property, and they were all very gracious with their time and information that they gave to me.

So I went on this international trip, if you will, to gather information, and that brought things back down to earth in terms of what would be appropriate or inappropriate with the World Trade Center site.

I think we hit a grand slam of doing things right.

The memorial is.

Very fitting, it's very respectful, but at the same time, the site was carved into four pieces, one for the memorial and three that redeveloped, one with the Freedom Tower, and it was the right balance of respect and also moving forward with the other properties with the financial district, and I think it was a nice, fullistic solution to the whole thing.

So Randall worked on the Sandy Hook case.

Is that right?

Like specifically the home of the shooter.

Yeah, Sandy Hook was twenty twelve in Connecticut where a guy, Adam landsa murdered almost an entire kindergarten classroom and the teachers.

The majority of those who died today were children, beautiful little kids between the ages of five and ten years old.

The decision had been made to tear the school down, but Randall came in to work with the community about Adam Lands's family home another case that you've worked on.

That in seeing that you worked on this case, it literally emotionally brought me back to the day was Sandy Hook.

And this is like so inappropriate, but it's going to make me cry a little bit.

I had a first grader and running to my kids, you know, elementary school in that day and all the parents, you know, everyone was silent.

You were involved in that case.

I'm sorry, this is like so, I'm surprised at how emotional it's making me.

But do you mind talking about that case?

I feel myself getting kind of emotionally charged a little bit because I have four big kids now, but they were little.

It was horrific.

What he did is horrific, and being in his bedroom seeing what I saw with the remnants of his obsession with guns being in his mother's bedroom where he shot his mom.

It's for me too, and I need to be very careful with my self care because I'm dealing with the heaviest of the heavy situations.

Like when I was the World Trade Center, I had to take breaks and just I had to self regulate because it can be too overwhelming.

On the other hand, I need to be clear on what my objective is, what my purpose is to try and take this situation make it better.

And that's what kind of feels me to go forward.

Because with Sandy Hook, my client was the bank that got the property back in the foreclosure because there's obviously nobody paying the mortgage, so that they didn't want the property, but they got it back anyway, and they didn't know what to do with it.

So I met with the mayor and she was a wonderful person, and I met with the chief of police and the school district people.

I met with all of them, and I said, you know, the bank is in the business and making money, but not in this case.

The bank simply wants to do that.

Now I'm going emotional.

The right thing for the town for the families, because there were families still living right down the street.

What I did is I went to Sandy Hook, I went to other school shooting sites.

I oftentimes get FBI clearance.

I got all this.

I don't know about all, but I think I actually did get all the recent school shootings, which blew me away how many aren't publicized, and visited a number of them and said, here's what happened here, and here and here, and I laid out a frankly a chart showing every possible option I can I have researched or found or am aware of, and we'll let the town make the decision.

And one night I'm working in my office late and the mayor called me and she said, I've talked to the families.

She says, do you think that we can get that place torn down?

And I said, watch me, and we did.

Some places are just simply not salvageable.

And I think that's one of them.

And I think the reasons are pretty apparent.

I think that was the moment where we all realize, as the country, okay, there's nothing that there's not gonna be any one act that is going to change the conversation around gun control in this country, if this hasn't done it nothing well.

And I have my brothers a lot younger than me, and he was about the age of those kids, so like it was also for me, I was like, this is horrific, and if this is not something that can actually make us do something, it's not going to happen.

But then I can't imagine, you know, going in that community and having to sort of like face it head on.

And I think a lot of people are probably relying on him to kind of be this rock in these moments right where it's like, Okay, this tragedy is happening, I need you to sort of guide me on what to do next with this property or in this moment, like I need you to be the sort of like stable guide in this sort of tragedy that's happening around me.

Yeah, definitely.

I think Randall he does hit in an interesting position because he's trying to help places financially and logistically, but he also kind of has to act like a therapist, you know, and talk to all these people and listen and then try and figure out what is the best for them, not just financially but emotionally.

What's the best for these communities and these families.

Yeah.

And another one of these cases that Randal worked on that wasn't just emotionally charged but also politically charged, was what happened in Orlando.

Could you tell us a little bit about that.

Twenty sixteen somebody went into this gay nightclub and murdered forty nine and injured fifty three people.

And that one.

From talking to Randall, I sort of got the impression that one was the most personally life changing for him.

He talks about going in with the owner of the nightclub and there was no power, but he said it wasn't dark inside because the size of the bullet holes that had gone through the glass windows were so large.

He said they were like cannonballs, And so there was just light streaming from outside.

And there was a like a fifteen foot wide dark stain on the floor, and he asked the owner what is that and the owner said, that's blood that was underneath the dance floor.

They had ripped up the dance floor and there was so much blood that had seet down into the foundation.

That's where I became very vocal about and being an LGBT fer me.

I'm not gay myself, But that's where I thought, I need to do more personally and anytime, any chance I get to speak out against this kind of injustice, because that's what fueled this thing.

But we can't speak out of our own ways.

My ways small and probably insignificant.

But I'm going to use whatever voice I've got to say racism or any of this stuff is just horrific, and I'll say it as loud and proud as I can to the day I die.

And that's that case really woke me up to being loud and proud about speaking up against social injustice.

I imagine, like a nightclub property is, you know, for his purposes is kind of a valuable thing.

What ended up happening with that nightclub.

So that the city of Orlando bought the property and the plan is is that that is going to be turned into a memorial.

Okay, so supposedly in twenty twenty seven that should be a memorial.

How did all of this work?

How does it affect him personally?

I mean, does this kind of dampen his outlook on life?

Have you guys talked about, you know, how he kind of processes all of this, how he's able to keep doing it.

Yeah, that was a question I had for him, because in some ways, I honestly think the work he's doing is some of the hardest around crimes because he's he's really sitting in the emotions with these communities long after like the initial tragedy, and he's trying to figure out how to help make them whole, Like how do you heal these help heal these communities, and whether it's just like making sure they're getting enough money right through like the different insurances or whatever it is, but how do they then rebuild?

He talks about going to New Orleans after Katrina, and you know, there were just tens of thousands of homes that were destroyed and people just literally swept away in these waters, and and he talks about families showing up with what little they had from another state, like emptied out their four hundred dollars from their bank account and came and just tried to help anybody who needed it.

So he said it's sort of in these worst moments that he sees the best sides of people and that ultimately, you know, it keeps them going because we as humans do want to help each other in the face of sort of unimaginable events.

It's also it's fascinating too, because it's not work that it's going to dry up for him, you know, it's these these kind of like high profile crimes unfortunately like just going to keep continuing, especially as him was saying, where you like kind of don't really do anything legislatively to prevent some of them, and so yeah, it's just really kind of daunting to think that, like he's just got a lot of work to do and will continue to have a lot of work to do.

Randall sort of ended up in this line of work also because I think he had a he has a memory growing up of driving into La with his dad and it was after the La riots and seeing homeless families living on the street, and he asked his dad, He was like, what are what are those people doing?

And his dad started to explain to him, you know, about the riots and also just that there were people who who didn't have a place to live, and Randall I think was six, and he just kept asking his dad like I don't understand, you know.

I think it was maybe his first exposure where he was old enough to realize like maybe a little bit of his innocence had been broken where he was like, wait, this is awful, Like how can little kids be living on the street, And that always stuck with him and his dad didn't have an answer for him.

But I think it's something that he could never shake.

And so I think when lou Brown called him and said, what do we do with Nichole's place?

Because we have to keep you know, we got to keep paying the bills.

We've got to figure out what to do with this, I think he had that empathy and wanting to help people who were in a really difficult situation, and also trying to understand, you know, something horrible has happened, it's not your fault, and maybe there's no way, sort of going back to your point about Sandy Hook and you know, I remember thinking, God, if we're not going to enact gun legislation, after that same thought, it's never going to happen.

And I think Randall is sort of in that same situation where he's like, we're not making things all that much better after these events, but we need to come together as people to do what we can.

You know, you can't wait for someone else to try and make things better.

And maybe he's still you know, trying to answer that question that he had as a kid, like how can this stuff be happening?

And so it's you know, I think he thinks of this line of work as his little way of trying to make life better for people who find themselves in just a horrific situation.

It is insanely heavy stuff.

I fully acknowledge it.

And one of the coping mechanisms is that I work hard, but I also play hard.

I live by the beach, I go skiing a lot, as much as a sixty six year old guy can do.

I beat most of the snowboarders down the hill.

I have a work life balance.

I do it very conscientiously.

But what is it about me?

I think I've come full circle with that day that my dad took me down to the LA Riots, because you know, you see the families that are homeless on the sidewalk.

I saw it as a six year old kid and just saying, why would why is this going on?

I was just baffled, and I don't know that I have the answer to that, but I do feel like I've contributed a little bit to making things better.

My Mom's not here to brag for me, so I'll just say, these cases tend to find me, and I'm very proud of that I've made.

I think that contribution.

I think that's what keeps me going.

That's why I don't want to retire.

Thanks for listening to No Such Thing.

Produced by Manny, Noah and Devin.

The theme song is produced by me Manny and this episode was mixed by Steve Bone.

No Such Thing as a production of Kaleidoscope Content.

Executive produced by Mangesh Hachi Kador and Kate Osborne.

This episode was produced with the help of America's Crime Lab.

Great podcast that everyone should go check out, and thank you to our guest Catherine Finelosa.

If you like what you're hearing, please give us a five star review wherever you're listening to this, and be sure to check out our website at No Such Thing dot Show.

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