A man who thought he had landed a cut-price home in a scenic Connecticut town was instead met with a chilling discovery: three bodies inside the property.
Edward Marchion bought the house sight unseen at a foreclosure auction in June, a process that prevented would-be buyers from viewing the interior before placing bids.
His winning offer of $525,000 appeared to be a major deal for the Cape Cod-style home, built in 2002, after court records listed its fair market value at $820,000.
But when Marchion entered the property in Burlington, an affluent suburb about 20 miles west of Hartford, the purchase took a grim turn. Earlier this month, the Daily Mail reported that he found the bodies inside the home, two of which have since been identified.
Connecticut State Police said the remains were “skeletal” and identified two of the deceased as Sally Anne Cash, who would have been 54, and her son, Brian Cash, who would have turned 23 this month. Authorities are still using DNA testing to identify the third body.
Sally Anne had previously co-owned the home, purchasing it in 2019 with her husband, Paul Cash. The couple took out a mortgage of nearly $400,000 to buy the residence.
Officials have not said how the people died or how long the remains had been inside the house. Police have stated, however, that there is no evidence a crime occurred and emphasized that the public is not in danger.
After the bodies were discovered, the Burlington Volunteer Fire Department checked the property for carbon monoxide, but found no signs of the deadly gas.
Three bodies were discovered in a Connecticut house purchased at a foreclosure auction
Police identified two of the bodies as the previous co-owner of the home, Sally Anne Cash, and her son, Brian Cash. The third is undergoing DNA testing for identification
The foreclosure process began after the home’s co-owners, Sally Anne and her husband, Paul Cash, failed to respond to court notices and did not appear in the case
The house, located in the affluent Burlington suburb about 20 miles west of Hartford, before the lawn became totally overgrown
The previous owners of the property stopped making their roughly $3,000 per month mortgage payments in late 2024, according to court records reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, and their bank filed a foreclosure complaint in August last year.
The couple never replied to the foreclosure complaint and appeared to ignore a summons left at the address by a state marshal, court records show.
The Cashes did not appear in the case, and a motion seeking a default judgment was filed in October. A foreclosure judgment followed in March.
The lawyer appointed to oversee the foreclosure auction, Christopher Thogmartin, told the Journal he assumed the property was abandoned because its lawn was so overgrown when he first visited in May.
That immediately struck him as odd, however, because the house sat on more than two acres of land and was worth at least twice the amount left on its mortgage.
‘Why would anyone walk away from that?’ the lawyer said to the Journal.
And when Thogmartin returned to the property a few weeks before last month’s auction, he noticed that two new signs had been mysteriously erected on the lawn.
‘Keep out’ and ‘private property,’ the signs read. It remains unclear who placed them there, but homeowners and tenants are typically permitted to remain in residences through foreclosure proceedings and aren’t required to allow interior inspections.
The lawyer overseeing the auction thought the house was abandoned because the lawn was overgrown. But then two signs suddenly appeared on the property
It remains unclear who placed the mysterious signs but they led the lawyer to believe the house was still occupied
The Cape Cod-style home was sold at a bargain $525,000 after no one had inspected the interior. It is unclear how the people found inside died or how long their bodies were there
It was thus reasonable to assume that people were still living inside the house and had put up the signs, which meant Thogmartin did not have a right to order a locksmith and go into the property before the auction.
When more than 20 bidders arrived at the auction on June 8, they walked around the exterior of the house to survey it as best they could.
Marchion was declared the winner after six offers, and he paid an $82,000 deposit to secure the property.
He has asked the court to delay the closing until police complete their investigation. The court was scheduled to consider his request on Monday.
