I didn’t know what to expect when I drove to the home for the estate sale. The auction house was selling the items of a family who had been killed by another son back in March.
I knew that lots of people would come out of curiosity, along with those who would be looking for bargains. Many did show up, and the auction house had put up signs directing us to park across the street in another neighborhood.
The auction house had laid out the family’s items on long tables in the driveway. It looked like any other estate sale, and as soon as I saw something I liked – three old rotary phones in black, red and aqua – it felt like any other auction. For a moment, I forgot the infamous nature of the house and the sale.
The tables were loaded with household items and knickknacks from both the family and a tenant who rented renovated rooms on the second and third floor. The garage was open, and tons of tools were stacked on tables, shelves or left in place on the floor. When the auction got started, most of the men among the 60 to 75 people bidded on those items.
“I knew the guy,” I overheard a woman tell the auctioneer-owner as she fingered some costume jewelry. She said that she lived down the street.
Just before the auction got started, the auctioneer-owner mentioned that some family members were on hand, and urged us all to be respectful. Relatives had removed all of the items that they wanted, and the auction house had been enlisted to sell off the house, its contents and some cars. (At one point, I saw a woman with a metal thread holder I had seen on a wall inside the house. I assumed that she was a family member who had found something else she wanted to keep. Another family member took possession of a Don Quixote-type bust from a table.)
I wanted to see the inside of the house, to get a feel for how these folks lived. That’s always the interesting thing about sales on-site; you can get up close and personal with people and their lives.
Near the front door was what looked like a stone religious statute, and I could imagine the family acknowledging it as they headed out each day to their regular routines. Inside, the house seemed smaller than it looked outside, and the new owner would definitely have to update it. It twisted in and out of rooms and spaces like a maze (which is how one person described it). The galley kitchen – where police said the bodies of Joseph C. McAndrew, his wife Susan and son James were found – was much like mine but a little wider.
At the living room door that led from the kitchen, a rectangular strip of carpet about 7 to 8 feet long and 2 ½ feet wide had been cut out. Cushions had been removed from two chairs and an ottoman. I can only assume that they had shown signs of the slaying.
As I moved through the rooms, I wondered who slept where. Which room was Joseph McAndrew Jr., who has been charged with killing his family, and which was the room of James, his twin brother who had recently graduated from Pennsylvania State University?
I found what appeared to the master bedroom with its antique furniture and clothes still in the closet. Along one wall up a flight of stairs to the third floor were boxes of comfortable shoes that likely belonged to the mother. In a walk-through from the parents’ bedroom, I came to a room that looked to be James’. A very old Mac computer – a relic – sat on a desk along with books. In fact, there were lots of books all over the house.
I used my eyes rather than my hands to examine the things in the room, and noticed some artwork lying on the top shelf of another desk. I pulled out several sheets and saw that they had been done by James for an art class. This room also had clothes in the closet, as if he had just left the house for a short while and planned to come back.
In the window was a sign that said simply “Welcome Friends.” It was the type of sentiment that any of us would have planted in a window.
I hung around for the auction of items outside but for nothing else. The auctioneer seemed to be selling every little piece individually, and it was becoming tedious on a day that Hurricane Irene was set to pay a visit. He was actually having a hard time of it, though, because most people seemed to be looking for giveaways.
At one point, he asked why people had come if they weren’t going to bid. Many who came were not regulars but new faces, and they were likely waiting to pay as little as possible – as we all do at auctions. They came away with some big bargains, with some items going for as little as $1.
