4949 Swiss Ave Estate Sale begins Friday 9 AM

[Lakewooder]

For those of you wishing to take a peek at the mysterious mansion featured in the DMN series "Mary Ellen's Will" http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/spe/2006/4949swiss/

Estate sale begins at 9 am Friday Sept. 8 at 4949 Swiss Ave, a home fossilized from the 1940s. $8 admission fee will be taken off any purchases. The sale runs Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 9 am until 5 pm each day.

Intersection - Collette

I have a feeling this will be a mob scene, get there early...

[Lakewooder]

September 8, 2006
Downright Un-neighborly
Filed under: Generally Bad Ideas

Nothing like a little morbid curiosity to boost a saleBig estate sale going on right now at 4949 Swiss Ave., subject of the recent series of stories in The Dallas Morning News, “Mary Ellen’s Will: the battle for 4949 Swiss,” by Lee Hancock, which I thought was really terrific stuff.

Cars are lined up half a mile away on Swiss. People at the head of the line look like dealer types to me (I have an eye for this, having been dragged around to a lot of estate sales by my life partner). But toward the back of the line you have more hapless schmoes, which is what I look like at these things. I was walking three dogs today, so I couldn’t go in. I did happen to have my camera, which I have to carry when I walk my dogs because stuff happens around here.

But here is what struck me: Art Rousseau, the guy doing the sale, who is a former neighbor of the late Mary Ellen Bendtsen, has posted copies of the Morning News series on the front of the house as sales come-ons. I have to say, I’m just a little queasy about that.


You say tragedy; we say opportunity.The Morning News series was a story about, among other things, the failure of the neighborhood to do anything to help an old lady who was increasingly out of her head in a falling-down house. Let me qualify that: There were a few neighbors, notably Frann Love and her husband, David, who did try to intervene. But I think most of us in the ’hood who knew Mary Ellen get a grade of pretty much F-minus for helping her. And I think that was clear in the stories.

But never mind that. Rousseau, who is in the estate sale business, hawks this one by effectively saying, “Here it is, folks, read all about it: the haunted house you read about in the Morning News, where we neighbors allowed a fragile old lady to drift off into neglect and abuse, just like our own local Brooke Astor. C’mon in and grab her stuff while you can!”

He’s charging eight bucks admission. Ah, well. The antiques business is not for the faint of heart, is it? –Jim Schutze



10:38 am

[Lakewooder]

Swiss Ave. sale draws hundreds

02:03 PM CDT on Friday, September 8, 2006

By LEE HANCOCK / The Dallas Morning News



JIM MAHONEY / DMN
A line of estate sale patrons stretches down the driveway of 4949 Swiss Friday morning. Consider it Mary Ellen Bendtsen’s last soiree.

A crowd began gathering before dawn Friday outside her sagging mansion at 4949 Swiss Ave. for an estate sale. Most were curiosity seekers captivated by her larger-than-life persona and her tragic story, and they waited hours for the chance to sweep up mementoes and absorb the aura of the three-story home that was Mrs. Bendtsen’s passion.

The saga of Mrs. Bendtsen and her Swiss Avenue home was detailed last month in a series of stories in The Dallas Morning News. The house is now at the center of an ongoing fight between Mrs. Bendtsen’s family and two antique dealers who befriended her in the last years of her life. Mrs.Bendtsen signed a deathbed will leaving the house to the two men, but a probate court has thrown out the will and declared her only daughter her rightful heir.

The two antique dealers, Mark McCay and Justin Burgess, were indicted last March on state felony theft charges, along with a lawyer who did legal work for them and briefly represented Mrs. Bendtsen. The lawyer, Edwin C. Olsen IV, helped the men draw up a deathbed will and had Mrs. Bendtsen sign it in a Dallas hospital emergency room, hours after she suffered a major stroke.

All three have denied wrongdoing. The two men have appealed the decision throwing out their will, and they maintain that Mrs. Bendtsen wanted them to have her home because she knew they appreciated it and would make it a shrine to her memory.

Also Online
The Battle for 4949 Swiss: Greed, deception, delusion - and one woman's piece of Old East Dallas
There were murmurs in the line of people waiting for the sale to begin, as people recounted their reactions to the story and wondered aloud if the two men would come to the sale.

But they did not show, and just before 9 a.m., the estate sale manager stood on a bench in the crowded driveway to announce rules of the sale. Inside were more than 3,500 items, ranging from a $2 pair of flocked silver and gold pumps to a $3,200 piano. Though a few items came from unrelated estates and some were belongings inherited by her sister and her daughter, most of the things for sale belonged to Mrs. Bendtsen. Proceeds from those items until the courts resolve legal issues surrounding Mrs. Bendtsen’s estate.

“I think you’re going to have fun,” said the manager, Art Rousseau, who has lived for years across Swiss Avenue from Mrs. Bendtsen’s home.. “We spent at least 3½ weeks cleaning in there. … You can do surgery in there (now) compared to when we started.”

He opened a side door of the house at 9 a.m. sharp to allow 50 people inside. Two hours later, 300 people had filed inside to gawk at the rooms filled with faded furniture, books and bric-a-brac. Another 165 hovered outside on the porch and any other bit of shade, clutching $8 tickets and waiting for their turn inside.

"You wouldn’t have any more people here if there’d been a murder in that house," Jeff Martin, a friend of Mrs. Bendtsen’s, said. "This is just bizarre."

Cars lined up for blocks down Swiss Avenue and surrounding streets, drawing ticket-writing police officers. Shortly after 11 a.m., a crew of firefighters pulled up in a Dallas Fire-Rescue ambulance, concerned about the crowd in the house and the safety of the front steps and other potentially unstable areas of the home. Within a few minutes, they, too, were wandering through the first floor, fingering silverplate and shaking their heads at the faded grandeur.

They and others bumped shoulders with gaggles of women who seemed nearly breathless at the thought of being inside a place that had been the scene of so much Dallas drama. Several women explained that they and their friends had made a pact to take off work for the day so they could devote as much time as possible to being in Mrs. Bendtsen’s world.

“I felt compelled to come,’’ said Penny Booth of Van Alstyne, who was in line along with two friends before 6 a.m. and was still in the home, browsing at noon. “I had to write her daughter, and now I want anything that might have belonged to (Mary Ellen). I want a piece of something that reminds me of her. I wanted to go in and smell the house – that sounds crazy, but I wanted to go in and absorb it all.”

Mrs. Bendtsen had a habit of clipping her name from calling cards and gluing it to the bottom of household items. So Mrs. Booth and her other friends combed the rooms for such personal tokens.

She beamed as she strode downstairs with a prize, a china bulldog that bore not only Mrs. Bendtsen’s stage name from her piano-playing days but also the distinctive tag: "Neiman Marcus."

"This is worth $25!" she declared.

Park Cities real estate agent Cynthia Beaird bought nearly $6,000 in merchandise, including a grand piano, bookcases and a pencil drawing of Mrs. Bendtsen wearing a Mexican hat. She had said she was on a mission to get as much as possible that was distinctly Mrs. Bendtsen’s or was historically important to the home because she has a pending contract to purchase it.

The antique dealers have tried to block the mansion from being sold by placing a cloud, known as a lis pendens, on its title in Dallas county deed records. But lawyers for Mrs. Bendtsen’s daughter recently went to court to ask a judge to lift it and allow the $865,000 sale to go forward.

Ms. Beaird left around 11 a.m., saying she needed a break from what had been "an emotional" experience but would later come back for more.

Willetta Stellmacher, a longtime Lakewood resident who lives in another historic home on La Vista Drive, paused so a friend could take a photo in the foyer of the home and bragged about her own purchases – a book that included a picture of another friend and an alabaster clock.

She chuckled about what her late friend would have thought about the milling crowds and all the talk about her flamboyant life.

“They were saying on TV this morning that Mary Ellen was once the toast of the town,’’ Mrs. Stellmacher said. "That would make her so happy. She would be so thrilled that this is happening.”

E-mail lhancock@dallasnews.com


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Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/090806dnmet4949sale.7ce364db.html

[Lakewooder]

20/20 Tonight:

http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2009/11/a_longer_look_at_tonights_2020.php

ABC News has posted a longer sneak preview of tonight's 20/20 segment about the battle over 4949 Swiss Avenue; the video's here, while the story's here. (Mark McCay and Justin Burgess, to whom Mary Ellen Bendtsen signed over the house shortly before her death in 2005, declined to speak to ABC.) And, in case you were unaware, the house is currently on the market: for $849,000.

[CasperITL]

That story in the DMN made me so mad that I could probably not watch a TV show about it. That nice old lady got screwed by those guys.

[trolleygirl]

20/20 Tonight:

http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2009/11/a_longer_look_at_tonights_2020.php

ABC News has posted a longer sneak preview of tonight's 20/20 segment about the battle over 4949 Swiss Avenue; the video's here, while the story's here. (Mark McCay and Justin Burgess, to whom Mary Ellen Bendtsen signed over the house shortly before her death in 2005, declined to speak to ABC.) And, in case you were unaware, the house is currently on the market: for $849,000.

Wait, did 20/20 finally air it???

[Bhops]

We called about this place but there was already a contract on it. Glad we didn't get it. They put up a fence and there is a work truck parked in the back, but no visible changes. It's going to take a while before the progress shows.

The front porch is fantastic. It's cool and breezy, with elevated view of Swiss Ave.