Home where skeletal remains found for sale in The Heights
HOUSTON (KTRK) -- Mystery surrounding the blue bungalow in the Heights where human skeletal remains were found is growing.
There is still no official identification, but neighbors along Allston Street believe the bones found inside a small bungalow are the remains of the woman who once lived there.
As they wait for answers, the home in question remains for sale.
Mary Cerruti owned the home for more than a dozen years before going missing in 2015.
ORIGINAL STORY: Skeletal remains found in previous home of missing person
"She's someone who could have been taken advantage of easily," said Roxanne Davis, a neighbor who had watched out for Cerruti for years.
Davis said Cerruti was physically weak and appeared older than her age, which hadn't yet reached 60 when they met.
Cerruti was very private and rarely opened her front door to anyone.
In 2013, she was among many neighbors angry that Trammell Crow Residential planned to build a multi-family apartment complex at Sixth Street and Yale.
That February, Cerruti and her neighbors testified in front of a Houston Planning Commission meeting, trying to prevent the apartment complex from being built.
"Literally, the project is going to be in my backyard," she said in that testimony, which is recorded on video. "I just don't see the sense in this project; it just seems like too many apartments in such a small space."
Cerruti and her neighbors lost that battle.
In the years that followed, as the construction went up around her bungalow, Davis would check up on Cerruti.
She emailed the developer when construction equipment was parked in front of Cerruti's home.
In 2015, Davis regularly contacted the police after Cerruti went missing.
Then, in September 2015, she asked Trammell Crow Residential if they knew what happened.
"I had touched base with Tramell Crow Residential and their response is, yes, we know she's missing but she's dead," Davis said.
In an email exchange between Davis and TCR's Managing Director Scot Davis (no relation) on Sept. 29, 2015, TCR does state Cerruti's dead.
"My construction team was there when they removed her body and they talked to the police briefly. The police supposedly confirmed her death. That's all we know."
The email is signed by Scot Davis. TCR is looking into the origins of the email but so far, it does not have an explanation for Eyewitness News.
In reality, no confirmation of Cerruti's death ever came.
Instead, the home fell into disrepair, was foreclosed on, sold, and even remodeled, with no signs of Cerruti.
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"It was gutted, literally, being renovated. They worked on it for months," said neighbor Michelle LaChapelle. LaChapelle remembers workers taking apart the home to get it ready to put on the rental market.
Neighbors say Michael Nassif, the realtor who now owns the house, even sold off Cerruti's belongings in a garage sale.
Yet, through all of that, human remains weren't found until new renters moved in this weekend. It could take weeks before the remains are positively identified. Davis, though, believes she already knows the answer.
"I think somebody killed her."
