Opulent home near Watsonville with lurid past up for sale

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'The Annie Nugent House' near Watsonville is up for sale.

WATSONVILLE - A property owner here and his wife are putting up for sale an opulent restored Victorian house whose troubled past, while it hasn't resulted in any ghost sightings to date, does have an occasional unexplained noise.

"Every once in awhile we'll hear something we can't identify, like a thump noise, or an occasional creak in the attic," said Max Kelley, owner of the home on Rancho Brazil Lane (off Whiting Road) near Watsonville.

The house, described as a Queen Anne Victorian, is called "The Annie Nugent House" for its original owner. Annie Nugent was the widow of a well-to-do former Irish immigrant, Lawrence S. Nugent. After he died, Nugent commissioned a renowned architect, William Weeks, to build a house for her and her two children, Mary and James Nugent.

Originally on 100 acres, the home was the scene of a grisly murder in 1903. Mary Nugent, fiance of a local attorney, was shot by a cousin who had been attempting to bilk the family out of money. The man hid in a closet on the second floor of the home when police surrounded it. They opened fire from the yard, hitting the man through the closed closet door. He staggered outside and was gunned down.

The scandal and murder were reported in San Francisco newspapers of the period and the bullet holes in the home can still be seen today.

"There is a barn on the property and I was out there looking from some trim pieces," Kelley said. "I've done a lot of trim work as part of the restoration. I saw a board with holes in it and found one of the bullets embedded in the wood."

The home was also reportedly a brothel in the 1960s.

The Loma Prieta Earthquake of 1989 knocked the home off its foundation. It was cut into 14 pieces, moved to its present site on 3.5 acres, and reassembled by Jim Rector, owner of Cypress Construction in Watsonville.

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Opulent home near Watsonville with lurid past up for sale