A. A residential home.

Q. Where is it supposed to be on the show?

A. Somewhere in Miami.

Q. When did we see it on the show?

A. In Episode 11 (of Season 4), "Hello, Dexter Morgan".

Dexter has been cozying up to Arthur Mitchell,
the Trinity Killer, while using the alias of "Kyle Butler".

When things go bad between the two (after Dexter thwarts Arthur's attempt to kill a child), Trinity goes hunting for Kyle.

Of course, Kyle isn't real. Dexter just made up the name,

But unfortunately, there is a man with the same name in the phone book.

And Trinity, not knowing the name is fake, goes to Kyle Butler's house.

As he is taking the screen off a window to break in, the real Kyle Butler shows up. He sees some stranger breaking into his house, and naturally becomes agitated.  He accuses Trinity of trying the steal his stuff.

Arthur falls back on his usual avuncular charm, and tries to laugh it off as a mistake (as he heads for his car), but Kyle is having none of it. He tells Arthur that he's going to call the police.

That was a mistake.

The next time we see the house - it's the interior, and Kyle is lying dead on the floor.

Dexter is doing his usual blood spatter investigation, when Vince mentions that the victim's name is Kyle Butler.

Dexter is shocked.  He realizes Trinity went hunting for him and killed this innocent man.

Q. What is it actually in real life?

A. A residential home - but nowhere near Miami.

Q. Where can I find it in real life?

A. This house is located just a couple of blocks from the ocean, at 206 Knob Hill, in Redondo Beach, California.

It's on the south side of Knob Hill, at Broadway.

The house is about five blocks south of the Redondo Pier, where they filmed the scene of Trinity kidnapping a boy from an arcade.


Here is an aerial photo. And here is a map link.




I shot the photo below in September 2010.



[ Warning: This is a private home.  Do not trespass on their property, knock on their door,
or do anything else that might disturb the residents. ]

Q. How the heck did you figure out where it was?

A.  This was a hard one.

I knew the number was 206, since you could see it on the house, in the scene. I also knew that there was a white apartment house with a red-tile roof on the corner across the street (you can see that during the conversation between Kyle & Arthur).

So, I thought it would be relatively easy to find. It wasn't.

First, I went to Long Beach, of course, where they film most "Dexter" scenes.  I checked every 206 from Belmont Shore to downtown Long Beach, then north to Pacific Coast Highway, but found nothing.

I moved on to San Pedro, and checked every 206 from Cabrillo Pier north to the city limit, and east & west, as well - with no success.

Then I moved on to Pacoima, where they had filmed the scenes of Trinity trying to bury the boy alive. It wasn't there.

I didn't think to look in Redondo, because in the four years they had been filming "Dexter", they had never filmed near the South Bay beaches, except for that one arcade scene at the pier. And even then, they used locations in other cities for places that were supposed to be near the arcade.  (For instance, Trinity's church, which Dexter passes while following Arthur to the pier, was actually in Hollywood.) So I wrote off that one pier shoot as an odd exception to their usual routine, and didn't think to look there for Kyle's house. A major tactical mistake on my part.

Almost a year later, Rick (a fan who has found a number of locations) and I started kicking the location around again. We had both tried to find it earlier, without success, so we redoubled our efforts.

I retraced my steps in Long Beach and San Pedro, in case I had somehow missed it. But while I was looking, Rick managed to find it.

How? He noticed that the IMDb listed Redondo as one of the locations for this episode, and also noticed what might have been an ocean breeze stirring Arthur's hair in the scene. So he started checking 206's in Redondo, using Bing's aerial photos, and looking for that red-tile roofed apartment house across the street. And of course, he found it.  (Thanks, Rick!)


Here, by the way, is a photo I shot of that apartment house across the street (and the matching screenshot):






It's called Oceangate Villas, at 301 Knob Hill.