Mystic — A crew demolished the 77 Masons Island Road home Wednesday where longtime teacher Leslie Buck was found dead at the bottom of a staircase in May 2002.

Buck’s husband, Charles, was charged with her murder in 2009 but was found not guilty during a 2010 trial. Buck, who steadfastly maintained his innocence, sold the eight-room house with a large garage overlooking the Mystic River to his attorneys, Hubert Santos and Hope Seeley, in 2010 for $484,000.

The attorneys sold the house to James Jaczinski and Anne MacPeek of Quaker Hill last July for $384,000, and they obtained permits from the Town of Stonington to demolish the house and construct a new one.

According to Stonington police, Buck, who is an electrical contractor, had made some visits to the property last week saying he wanted to remove some items, such as light fixtures, before the house was torn down.

The new owners contacted police, requesting that Buck be warned to stay off the property, and an officer delivered that warning to Buck on Jan. 7, according to police Capt. Todd Olson.

Still, workers on the scene Wednesday said Buck had been seen driving past the house on several occasions Tuesday and Wednesday.

Buck and his attorneys obtained an inflated value of the house as well as two other properties he owned in town to secure his release from jail when a judge lowered his bond from $2.5 million to $1.5 million, just two months before his trial.

An appraiser hired by his attorneys found the Masons Island Road home was worth $825,000 — even though the town had valued the property at $558,000 in the Oct. 1, 2007, revaluation. From that time to the appraiser’s evaluation, the average sale price of a home in the region had plummeted by 25 percent.

In all, the appraiser said the three properties were worth $2,035,000, almost double the town’s value of $1,062,400, which would have been far short of the $1.5 million Buck needed to secure his release from the MacDougall Walker Correctional Institution, where he had been held since his January 2009 arrest. Prosecutors, the judge who set the bond and the court clerk who reviewed the appraisals did not challenge the values after The Day reported the apparently inflated appraisals.

The death of the 57-year-old Deans Mill School teacher had fascinated many in southeastern Connecticut.

Two days before her death, she was assaulted and kidnapped from the garage of the Masons Island Road home by Russell Kirby, a Led­yard handyman who had done work over the years for Charles Buck. She escaped a few hours later.

Kirby is currently serving a 21-year prison term. Charles Buck refused to testify at Kirby’s trial, invoking his Fifth Amendment right not to do so.

On May 4, 2002, Charles Buck called police and said he had arrived home to find his wife dead at the bottom of the stairs leading to the second floor.

Police said that in the months leading up to Leslie Buck’s death, Charles Buck had become infatuated with a young bartender in downtown Mystic and showered her with gifts. Led by Detective Sgt. David Knowles, Stonington police worked on the case for seven years to secure the arrest of Buck, but a three-judge panel found him not guilty of murder after medical experts disagreed about how Leslie Buck died.

Leslie Buck’s family later settled a civil case it had filed against Charles Buck, agreeing to divide the proceeds of Leslie Buck’s annuities and remaining unpaid life insurance policies with him.

Her estate received almost $140,000 and Buck almost $71,000. While Leslie Buck had $106,000 in personal assets, that money was spent on administrative and legal costs pursuing the actions against Charles Buck.

j.wojtas@theday.com

Twitter: @joewojtas