New family in house where Tinyes was murdered
There's a new family on Horton Road in Valley Stream.
The woman who just bought the two-story Tudor from the parents of the man convicted of mutilating and killing 13-year-old Kelly Ann Tinyes before hiding the girl in the basement says she's sympathetic to Kelly Ann's family. But she's also not bothered that she's living in a home that was a notorious crime scene in 1989.
PHOTOS: The Kelly Ann Tinyes murder case
"I don't care what happened," the woman, who didn't give her name, said Wednesday at her doorstep. "It happened 20 years ago, not yesterday."
She moved into the four-bedroom, brick-and-stone house on Saturday with her three children. It's where killer Robert Golub's parents John and Elizabeth stayed after their son's murder trial until about two weeks ago - five houses down from the cape where Kelly Ann's parents also remained.
The new owner said she knew its history before she bought it.
"This is my house now," she said before closing the Halloween-decorated front door. "I'm trying to live in peace here."
For 20 years, the Tinyeses and the Golubs bitterly feuded, trading insults, lawsuits and accusations. The Golubs maintain their son's innocence. The Tinyeses and their supporters on the block have long maintained that, besides Golub, there were others involved in Kelly Ann's slaying - an accusation being investigated by the current Nassau district attorney Kathleen Rice.
Robert Golub, meanwhile, is serving a 25-years-to-life prison sentence.
Neither family could be reached for comment Wednesday, and it's not clear where the Golubs moved.
The latest listing price was $379,000; the new owner paid $320,000, records show.
The house has been listed by Golub's parents since at least 2005, when the asking price was $525,000, records show.
James E. Larsen, a finance professor at Wright State University in Ohio, did a study of properties he called "stigmatized" or "psychologically impacted" - sites of murders, suicides and places thought to be haunted. He found that prices of those homes tend to be 3 percent lower than others and stay on the market 45 percent longer than other homes.
Neighbors on Horton, the block riven for more than two decades by Kelly Ann's death, say they harbor no animosity toward the new family.
Asked whether the family should feel welcome, one neighbor said: "Why shouldn't they?"
Said another neighbor: "Somebody was bound to buy it, right?"
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