An unsuspecting Las Vegas home sits on a foundation of blood
Address: 1700 Bannie Avenue, Las Vegas, NV 89102
The suburban sprawl of Las Vegas offers little variation in terms of architecture or the endless rows of palm trees. But inside each house is a story, and sometimes these stories are written in blood. One such house, La Palazza Mansion, has enough blood to fill volumes.
It's not often that you have to ask your realtor if the house you're interested in has any bodies buried in the backyard, or money stashed away in the walls. When you're house hunting in Las Vegas, the chances are likely that at some point someone had their knees turned backwards where you envision your children playing one day.
Meanwhile, there's always going to be creeping doubt whenever the dog brings in a bone from the backyard: is that a toy or someone who couldn't pay up on time?
La Palazza Mansion is one such house where the gruesome past that haunts it, and the ghosts squatting in the darkness waiting for the property to be theirs, isn't just likely, it's probable.
Violence never goes away; there's too much blood and it stains no matter how hard you try and scrub it out.
So little has been revealed to the public, but the information on the house’s history is enough to scare off any potential buyers.
The Mansion has been vacant for quite some time and the reason is very simple: its last owner woke up in the middle of the night, gasping for air. Someone was strangling him. the only thing is that there was no one there.
Needless to say, he packed up and left.
In the process of his move, however, he started to discover things that had remained hidden the entire time of his occupancy. Secreted away was a room, just big enough for a few people.
The walls were covered with blood. A lot of blood. It dripped down faded mustard wallpaper from the early 1970s, making its way to the worn linoleum floor.
The blood looked as if it had been placed there on purpose, like someone trying to paint a room but without the skill of a brush.
The smell of iron and decay filled the room.
Not long after the gruesome discovery, the owner of La Palazza sold the home.
No one has lived in La Palazza since, and no one should do so again.
Word around the neighborhood is that this used to be a murder house for the mob. A safe location where the cleanup job wouldn't take more than an overnight shift. You would’ve never guessed it just by looking at the place.
1700 Bannie Ave is far from an architectural outlier in the Las Vegas suburbs. A Spanish-style house bent into a semicircle. Sienna clay tiles and sun-baked stucco walls. A one-story building unimposing on the eyes, but somehow still sinister.
To look at the front of La Palazza is to see a house twice imprisoned. The initial barrier between the house and the rest of the world is a row of palm trees. They do their best to smother the house and what it contains, but something always peaks through.
Preventing you from even walking up the driveway and being consumed by the house is a large rust orange iron fence with no indication of ever opening. Spikes adorn the top of each iron rod and the large brick towers are silent as sentinels to keep in what is in, and out what is out.
There are houses or hotels that you can break into to test if they truly are haunted, but La Palazza Mansion isn’t one of them. And there’s no test of endurance by living in it longer than previous tenants; the house isn’t even on the market.
The depths of violence that this house has seen have resulted in the sheer number of tortured souls who cannot move on. Worse than wine stains in shag carpeting, the energy of these victims is here to stay.
Following organized crime in the 1970s and 80s was like watching an empire fall; or worse, it was like watching a boa constrictor collapse the lungs and ribs of its prey. There’s one gasp of air left and it’s painful.
As the next generation of mobsters took over the Cosa Nostra of their forebears, organized crime of the Italian-American variety grew more visible than it had ever been. It was flashy, in the news more than the time after Appalachia. Names “Crazy Joe” were household names. Gangsters were celebrities again.
You can only thumb your nose in the face of the law on national television or in the press for so long before things come crashing down on you. And this is exactly what happened to American mobsters who had spent decades getting away with murder.
Decline breeds desperation. And desperation can oftentimes lead to paranoia. When people are paranoid they make rash decisions, usually mistakes, too. Being a part of criminal organizations typically means that those mistakes result in being buried in a hole out in the desert.
Or, as is the case with La Palazza: killed and disposed of in the hidden room of an unsuspecting home in Las Vegas suburbia. You can dig a hole as deep as you’d like, but sometimes the dead find their way to the surface.
If we are to determine the severity of violence committed in this house based on mob activity in Las Vegas during the late 70s and early 80, then it’s safe to say that what occurred here is enough to keep any ghostly remnant angry throughout the afterlife.
Anthony “The Ant” Spilotro had the kind of reputation that would explain the mess left behind in La Palazza.
Tony the Ant operated in Vegas during the same period as our mysterious mob owner. When he wasn’t skimming money off of the casinos he managed, he was handling people who gave him a hard time. Tony the Ant isn’t someone you wanted to cross.
If you crossed Spilotro you were lucky to get shot, let alone live. His most infamous gangland execution was having someone’s head put into a vise, tightening it until his eyes started to burst.
Then, in a twisted act of mercy, slit his throat. This is the behavior that most likely took place at La Palazza.
Mob violence typically sends a message, but every once in a while there’s an enforcer whose tastes verge on sadism. Usually, the punishment they receive in the end is similar to the pain they dealt.
Spilotro and his brother were found in a shallow hole, beaten to death. Likely with baseball bats.
For the sake of comparison, Spilotro’s house, which is very similar to La Palazza and is also found in Las Vegas, was recently on the market. It was bought immediately by someone for millions of dollars.
La Palazza remains vacant behind its rusting fence and weary palms. Waiting for someone to make an offer on the house that not even a ghost could refuse.
La Palazza Mansion is located at 1700 Bannie Avenue. This home is currently privately owned, so tours are unavailable. Please be mindful of residents when exploring the neighborhood and never trespass on private property.
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