Houston Murder-Suicide Gay Couple’s Estate Auction

The house:

The murder:

They don’t know who killed who, eh?

They do. It was extensively covered here.

Thanks R4, I haven’t had my coffee yet.

There are a couple of Facebook videos on the auctioneers’ page:

Christoph Waltz is gay? And lives in Houston?

I remember them and their DL threads! Thanks for the update OP. Going to brew a cup of coffee and peruse the elegant offerings.

I'm calling out an error on the auctioneer's part -- this looks like Then-Prince Charles to me, not Philip. That's 100% Charles' 1970s hairstyle.

Was there a red bordello-style bathroom?

No, just a grand red living room.

Here’s the Faberge video:

The murder/suicide was in 2018. Why did it take so long to auction their estate?

Beats me. Perhaps they didn’t have wills or had made each other sole beneficiaries. My guess is that the estate was tied up in probate.

Here's older Rene's obit. He was an oil and gas exec. and he was the murder victim.

And the murderer's details per a rather pretentious feature in Australian Vogue.

I remember this incident because of the photos of the couple, the victim looked trapped in the pics. His boyfriend was a controlling asshole.

There's something sad about all that prissy, try-hard furniture. The guy who bought it must have grown up in squalor.

The younger one was a brand ambassador for Clairol or L’Oreal or something…

What was our final theory, years ago? The older one with the $ was going to trade the aging makeup artist in for a younger model - and violence ensued?

The victim was about to bounce and the controlling asshole put a stop to it.

There was a third party involved with the victim but reading between the lines, the controlling behavior was the cause for the breakup not the sidepiece.

The victim had enough BS and was trying to move on.

Just a bunch of tacky brics 'n' bracs, 'n' nics 'n' nacs.

they had a few nice more simple designs. A couple nice chairs. A lot of ornate tat, however.

Ben was Global Creative Director something similar for Laura Mercier cosmetics--I never heard of them either. We established that his grammar was atrocious..

The auction house must think there will be a premium paid by true crime fans because practically all of the estimates are EXTREMELY inflated. Most of the opening bids are more than the hammer price in typical auctions. A lot of that stuff wouldn’t even make the cut to bother auctioning at the houses in my area.

I was stuck by the ridiculous number of (supposedly) Faberge pieces. That these items were in Houston brought to mind a quote, which I can’t find now, from world’s preeminent Faberge expert, Geza Von Hapsburg. If I remember correctly, he said that there was more fake Faberge in Houston, Texas than there was real Faberge in the entire world.

Points for anyone who is able to match the auction items with items in the HAR listing photos.

Ok. At 2:45 in the video. Lot 95.

I’m watching the live auction and, as I predicted, most things are selling for half of the auctioneer’s low estimate, the minimum opening bid, or being passed on entirely.

Only two or three things so far have gone for more than the estimates.

So if their divorce wasn't settled and both died - yeah, that's going to be a really sticky situation to settle the estate.

Any attorneys on here? What happens if one spouse kills another? Can you imagine the killer's family wanting a portion of the estate based on their marriage? I'm talking about more than what he brought into the marriage.

And also - because I went through this myself when my brother died in 2019 without a will - 2020 and 2021, you couldn't get hardly ANYTHING done in the courts. It took forever due to closings. Then when everything returned, there was a massive backlog - and that's without anything being contested.

It's gross - but the killer's family may have wanted their share after them being together for 22 years. I'm sure the makeup artist brought something to the relationship and had a decent living but not like his husband's money.

Auction seemed to go poorly.