Los Angeles, California on December 6th of 1959
2475 Glendower Place is a spectacular Spanish style 5 bedroom, 4 bath, 3 story home fully equipped with a maid’s quarters and a beautiful ballroom. On this evening, cardiologist Harold Perelson had a nice, normal dinner with his wife, Lillian, and their 3 kids; afterwords he tucked his 11 & 13 year old children in to bed.
A few hours later, the doctor grabbed a ball peen hammer from the garage, walked to his bedroom where Lillian lay sleeping, and bashed his wife’s head in. It’s said she did not scream, and the children were not alerted. Sadly the blow to the head did not immediately kill her, the cause of death was asphyxiation – Lillian had been left to slowly drown on her own blood.
Next Harold calmly walked into 18 year old Judye’s room, and he whacked her in the skull. Thankfully the hit wasn’t dead on (so to speak) and Judye began to scream. She quite literally ran for her life, straight into her mother’s room, with her father right on her heels; the teen saw her mom lying in a pool of blood. Judye then raced out the door and to a nearby neighbor’s house where the police were alerted.
Though wounded with a skull fracture, Judye did survive. For whatever reason, Harold did not attack the other children. Young Debbie awoke to her sisters screams, and Harold told his daughter to go back to sleep – it was all just a nightmare.
The brave neighbor Judye had ran to, Marshall Ross, decided to go see for himself what was going on in the Perelson home; he walked in to find that the Doctor had just chased a handful of pills with a bottle of acid. Harold was nearly dead by the time EMS arrived. Next to the bottle of pills lay a book, Dante’s Divine Comedy which was opened to this passage: “Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost…”
To this day nobody fully understands what made Harold snap on this particular night, but it’s known that the family had fallen on hard times, financially. On top of a disappointing failed business venture, Judye had been involved in a car wreck while her younger siblings were in her car. This has cost Harold a good deal of cash, which may have been his reason for attacking his oldest child but not the younger ones. It appears that there may have been some mental health issues as well.
After this, Judye and her siblings were taken in by a relative. It’s been reported that Judye has changed her name and that the son has moved to Israel. Now for the interesting part; the urban legend to this story is a bit freaky.
The story goes that the Doctor and his family LOVED Christmas, and that on the night of the murder their mansion already looked like Christmas Eve. The kicker? You can look through the spacious windows and see the Christmas tree and the lovingly wrapped presents are still in the mansion.
The mansion is part of the haunted Hollywood tours, it’s a destination site for many who love the macabre. There has been a “No Trespassing” sign up for years, but you know that does not keep people like us from visiting. The curious have been sneaking up to the house to take pictures forever, and of course they’re posted online.
Finally, after more than 50 years, a photographer named Alexis Vaughn was allowed inside the home. Supposedly all of the images taken by Alexis are of the Perelson’s belongings, left just as they were on the night of the tragedy.
The home has been sold a couple of times, but it’s said that no one ever moves in – it’s mostly been used as storage. Whoever was in possession of the house didn’t change too much, the Perelson’s possessions are still in that house – note the “Judy” light switch. It’s said that the mansion is very haunted, and the image of a woman can often be seen as well as her screams and the groans of an anguished male.
In 2016 the home was for sale, and purchased; the new owner had planned on renovating the beautiful home. Just three years later the mansion was back on the market again, without any mention of the tragedy which had taken place decades before. Apparently in California a seller has no legal obligation to inform potential buyers of this type of thing, so long as the murder hasn’t taken place in the past three years. But what would make this owner, who just so happens to be TruTv’s Lisa Bloom (she obviously knew the home’s history before purchase) sell the place she’d had her heart set on making a home?
