Buffalo's Death Row...

Visited 830 Sycamore this afternoon (white house on left), the abandoned, boarded, derelict and vacant house where the body of Yvonne Peterson was found Thursday afternoon. Guess what? The house is still not boarded! In fact, the two houses next door at 832 and 836 Sycamore are clearly open and not secured. A quick check of City records and it appears as though the City of Buffalo is the responsible party for mowing the lawn and keeping the place up to code at 836 Sycamore the green sided house with the decorative ghetto palm next to the front door.

Looking around the immediate vicinity it's hard not to notice that this once prosperous commercial strip on Sycamore Street is now framed by the Transfiguration Church and this burned out convenience store.

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I had the opportunity to talk with two neighborhood residents about the discovery of Yvonne's body at 830 Sycamore, the house with the pink door where a window once was. They both claimed that her hands were missing fingers and independentily of one another both residents told me that her head was bashed in and that the woman who found the body ran down the street to the Dockery Center screaming something about having just found a body, hanging.

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Here the various close ups the three houses that comprise Buffalo's Death Row. The first pic shows the narrow garbage strewn passage way between 830 and 832 and the open door where Yvonne presumably entered...minimally I would have expected the three houses to be properly boarded and secured shortly after Yvonne's body was found. But wait...51 Eaton is still wide open today, a full 60 days after Shawn Luchy's partially decomposed body was found in another abandoned house in Buffalo, NY.

Hello Byron, please send the board up crews on Monday morning to 836 Sycamore Street. Hello...oops, I thought you were listening...

I wrote this yesterday and this about the first body. Still wondering how many other bodies are decomposing in Buffalo's abandonded, boarded, derelict and vacant houses?

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Artspace Archive • Annals of Neglect • BAVPA • Where is Perrysburg? • Broken Promises...
Writing the City • Woodlawn Row Houses • Tour dé Neglect - 2006