Make sure you notify the medical examiner to be on standby.

'Bargain' Connecticut home was sold sight unseen for $525,000...then its new owner found three dead bodies inside

12:29 EDT 20 Jul 2026, updated 13:33 EDT 20 Jul 2026
By ELIOT FORCE, US NEWS REPORTER

A man who snapped up a bargain property in picturesque Connecticut was horrified to discover three dead bodies inside it.

Edward Marchion purchased the home sight unseen in June at a foreclosure auction, which meant prospective buyers were not allowed to inspect the interior of the house.

His $525,000 winning bid seemed to be a bargain for the charming home built in 2002 that court records placed at a fair market value of $820,000.

But when Marchion walked into the Cape-Cod style house located in the affluent Burlington suburb about 20 miles west of Hartford, he discovered the bodies, two of which have been identified.

Connecticut State Police described the remains as 'skeletal' and said they belonged to Sally Anne Cash, who would have been 54, and her son, Brian Cash, who would have turned 23 this month. The third body is undergoing DNA testing for identification.

Sally Anne was the previous co-owner of the house. She had purchased the property in 2019 with her husband, Paul Cash. The couple had taken out a mortgage loan of nearly $400,000 to pay for the residence.

It is unclear how the people found in the home died or how long their bodies were there, though police have said there is no evidence that a crime was committed and stressed that there was no threat to the wider public.

The Burlington Volunteer Fire Department was called in after the remains were found and tested the property for carbon monoxide, but said there was no indication of the deadly gas.

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.

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.

Well that explains the payment problem.
Seems like someone would have missed them.

quote:

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.

Because they were dead!
You would think someone would have checked up on them... No friends, or family?
Strange.

quote:

It is unclear how the people found in the home died or how long their bodies were there, though police have said there is no evidence that a crime was committed ...

Seriously?
Even if the bodies were badly decomposed, there may be clues as to what happened.

Looks like we've got some new ghost stories coming.

Check your state laws. Most states have disclosure rules about deaths in the property within x amount of time. The buyer may be able to unwind this deal.

I’ve also heard of liens getting slapped on properties days before the auction and unless you the buyer have somebody doing a lien search the day before the auction you may be buying a problem. When in doubt, if it’s too good to be true it probably is.

quote:

The buyer may be able to unwind this deal.

Why would he want to do that?

People die in homes all of the time, and it appears to be worth $300,000K more than he has in it.

I’d have guessed that the interior would be kinda smelly.
No intent to cast aspersions on the deceased.

I was a banker for over 40 years. People would ask, “Do you have any good, cheap repos?” My response was “There’s no such thing.”

I don't know. I did okay on a HUD repo in the mid 80's in Denver.

quote:

Originally posted by a1abdj:

quote:

The buyer may be able to unwind this deal.

Why would he want to do that?

People die in homes all of the time, and it appears to be worth $300,000K more than he has in it.

Yep sounds like a killer deal,