Human remains discovered during walkthrough of recently purchased Arlington County property

ARLINGTON, Va. - An unusual mystery is unfolding in an Arlington County neighborhood Tuesday after human remains were found inside a house that had just been sold.  

Authorities have not released the identity of the person who was found dead inside of the house in the 1300 block of N. Taylor Street in Arlington County on Monday just after 4:45 p.m. but it’s known that the remains were inside the house for quite some time.

"It was pretty crazy there was like five police cars and they were asking if I had seen anybody or anything recently," neighbor Stephanie Mages told FOX 5. 

Mages lives next door to the house where the remains were found. It’s a pretty spooky-looking place at the end of a cul-de-sac in Ballston.

Arlington County police told FOX 5 the remains were discovered during a walk-through by its new owners. 

Police haven't identified the remains, which are now at the Medical Examiner's Office but Mages says she has a hunch it's the man who grew up in the house and last lived there maybe ten years ago.

"He would come by to the house even after it had been sold periodically," Mages said. "So I saw him in 2020 maybe. So, I mean if he decided to die and wanted to be in the house that his parents built, I think it's really likely."

Another neighbor says police told him the remains had indeed been in the house for a while. Mages says they were discovered in the basement.

 "He grew up there. His mom owned it and then he owned it after she passed and he was hanging out here for years and years after he didn't even own it," she said. "But he was a pretty strange guy."

According to property records, the two-bedroom, one-bath, 840-square-foot house was built in 1939 and just sold two weeks ago for $700,000. Mages says the man who she believes died there, as long ago as the fall of 2020, hadn’t owned the house for years.

"He hadn't paid taxes and he owed like $20,000 in back taxes," she said. 

So the property was auctioned away.

Another neighbor tells FOX 5 that the most recent owner planned to tear down the house and build a new one in its place but never did.  

We don't know for sure whether the new owner purchased the house without ever looking inside to find the remains of a former owner in the basement.

FOX 5 spoke to the new owner on the phone briefly this afternoon but he referred us to his lawyer and we are still waiting to hear back. 

If it is the man Mages thinks it is, he would have been in his 70s and had no survivors that she knew of.