Former EWU football player buys $3.45M ‘Casa Del Leone’ in Spokane
An Eastern Washington University football-player-turned-serial-investor last month made the most expensive house purchase in Spokane County in the past 12 months , paying $3.45 million.
At the end of an inconspicuous gravel road off the Palouse Highway, the Casa Del Leone home boasts more than 11,000 square feet of California-Tuscan design. Tiles imported from Italy form risers for the maze of wooden staircases in the house, and hallways – inside and out – are lined with arcades.
“The only thing it doesn’t have is a pool,” new owner Robert Cody Humphrey said. “My plan is to put a pool on it.”
Humphrey, 34, moved into the house about two months ago with his wife, Samantha, and two children, 3-year-old Isla and 1-year-old Banks. The family is still in the process of ordering furniture to fill their new space.
Decorative cobwebs hung in the great room when Samantha Humphrey gave The Spokesman-Review a tour Wednesday, their placement dictated by Isla and Banks. Glittery gingerbread houses sat on the kitchen counter, and Humphrey pointed out a number of spaces in the house that would be dedicated to the pair’s children.
The house was built in 2011, with construction directed by the previous owners: John “Bruce” and Sharon Jessen.
Bruce Jessen, along with colleague James Elmer Mitchell, are known for creating the Central Intelligence Agency’s “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Each were reportedly paid $1,000 per day during their federal contract to reverse-engineer torture techniques used on American servicemen undergoing Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape training for use in post -9/11 interrogations. Waterboarding, sleep deprivation and long-time standing were among the many techniques they helped develop.
The Jessens’ broker, John Williams with Tomlinson Sotheby’s International Realty, said that his clients declined to comment on their sale, but forwarded a flier they made about the story of the home.
The flier describes the house as “a labor of love for those we love with whom we created awesome memories.” Scholtz Design designed the house using “natural and authentic materials” for an “old world look and feel.” The Casa Del Leone name is a reference to a “cougar stalking the owner,” and the lion motif is present throughout.
The $3.45 million purchase was the largest Spokane County has seen in the past 12 months. The 15 acres include a library, theater, guest apartment, orchard and bocce court. The Humphreys’ broker, Rebecca Flaherty with John L. Scott Real Estate, called it a showstopper.
“Anywhere you look, it’s just beautiful views of rolling Palouse hills,” Flaherty said. “So it’s kind of just one of those dream homes, and you’re like, ‘Oh, my God.’ ”
Robert Humphrey said Flaherty “crushed it,” noting that she had been negotiating the deal for around a year.
Despite his new, luxurious family home, Robert Humphrey joked that he “could live in a shoebox,” saying that he “never thought I’d be able to buy a home like this.”
“I’d never owned (my own) home. We went out and seen it, and it’s on the Palouse, so it’s gorgeous. It’s got a garden. It’s got places where my kids can run around. It’s not in the city. It’s very nice. Very peaceful,” he said. ” I think that’s what brought me in the most. I want my kids to be able to go outside and play, get dirty, don’t have to worry about cars driving by and running out into the street. Kind of grow up how I grew up.”
Born in Coeur d’Alene and then having moved to Hermiston, Oregon at around age 3, Robert Humphrey grew up in a trailer house on his parents’ farm.
“I didn’t grow up with much. I started a lawn mowing business when I was very young,” he said, adding that his parents have since taken over Got Lawn. “And then I started another business in college – I don’t know if you know who Cooper Kupp is – his wife was my roommate upstairs, and so him and her would come out and mow lawns with me. I had a bunch of guys on the football team, they would come out and mow lawns.”
Humphrey was recruited by Eastern Washington University in 2009 to play football. With him playing tight end, the Eagles won the National Collegiate Athletic Association championship in 2010 and the Big Sky Conference championships in 2012 and 2013. He was also on the track and field team, throwing shot put and discus.
He studied health and fitness as an undergraduate at Eastern, aspiring to become an athletic director. Then, he blew out his knee during his senior year. After four surgeries, his surgeon advised him against a job that demands extensive standing.
Pushing on in the world of sports, Robert Humphrey joined a master’s program at EWU for sports administration and marketing, but moved to California with his wife just before defending his thesis (he toys with the idea of returning to finish it off. “I guess I could,” he said. “I just don’t really need it.”). There, he got into sales.
“I guess it was a pivoting moment,” Robert Humphrey said. “I think the best thing I ever did was not do sports and go venture out.”
Today, Robert Humphrey calls himself a serial investor. He owns a number of houses in Coeur d’Alene and Denver, Colorado, which he leases out to others, along with a cattle ranch in Condon, Oregon. His family moved back into the Spokane area in 2022 from California when he started his own tax mitigation business: Priority Tax Relief. Spokane was a great space to start a business, he said, with all the colleges in the area.
“I get attorneys out of Gonzaga. I get accountants out of Eastern and U of I and Central,” he said. “I have over 90 people in the Spokane office here, but – I should do a head count – easily 40 went to Eastern. Easily.”
The time Robert Humphrey spent at EWU was what set him up for success, he said. A number of his current business partners are his old football teammates, and he donates to the university’s athletics department.
“Eastern’s almost like a blue-collar work ethic with a college degree, right? Which is what you want. That’s who we try and hire, is hard workers, not someone that’s afraid to roll their sleeves up.”