Pittsburgh shooting: Five dead and three injured in 'ambush' at Wilkinsburg backyard party

[happyslug]

19. Should have gone to the Allegheny County Tax site

http://www2.alleghenycounty.us/RealEstate/Search.aspx

The house is an American four square (Through the Web Site calls it "Old Style".

http://photos.county.allegheny.pa.us/iasworld/iDoc2/Services/GetPhoto.ashx?parid=0233G00230000000&jur=002&Rank=1&size=350x263

This is an owner occupied house NOT a rental unit (The address to send tax notices is the same address as the house). The present owners purchased the house in 1974 (That was 40 years ago, thus the original owners may be dead and their children or grandchildren MAY be living in the house but no one ever changed the name in the Tax Office once the Mortgage was paid off).

We can assume the house is NOT subject to a mortgage for the tax bill goes directly to the home owner. That is generally the case when you have no mortgage. When there is a mortgage, the mortgage company pays the taxes out of any escrow account, this is to protect the banks from any sale of the house that they do not know of.

The owners paid $18.900 for the house in 1974 and it is now accessed at $6,200 (that is how bad Wilkinsburg had declined since the 1970s and it was bad then).

This house has an ally-way to its rear:

http://www2.alleghenycounty.us/RealEstate/Map.aspx?ParcelID=0233G00230000000%20%20%20%20&SearchType=2&CurrRow=0&SearchName=&SearchStreet=Franklin&SearchNum=1304&SearchMuni=866&SearchParcel=&pin=0233G00230000000

Please note, this information has been public record since before the US War of Independence. The problem has been they were kept in the County Courthouse (and during the Civil War, taking over such courthouses are an important military objective for both sides, to get copies of the maps held in those county seats that not only shown who owned what but the roads that any army had to travel on. The main roads were well known, but any secondary and parallel roads would only appear on those county maps and thus why both armies wanted those maps).

Since the expansion of the Internet since 2000, these records are now coming into the reach of most people who just can not go to their county courthouse between 9:00 am and 4:00 pm. Before the net (and to a degree to this day) to look at these records you had to go to the county courthouse and dig into those records. Most had very efficient manual system to find paperwork, but again something you had to learn AND use between 9:00 am and 4:00 pm.