Armchair Anonymous: Crazy Neighbors II

23:38Yeah, I have a good friend who moved there, lived there for the last five years, just sold his house, and it had tripled in value in the five years he owned it. That's so nice. I really want to go there. It looks so idyllic. It's pretty. Where did you come from? So we moved here from the Seattle area. Oh, okay. So all the way across. Yeah, we like the corners. Yeah, you like the corners. You could have also agreed to only live in towns named Portland and still been in the Pacific Northwest. That's true. OK, so your crazy neighbor story, was it in the Seattle area? Yes. Walk us through it. Let us hear.

24:10This took place in early September of 2018. At the time, we were living in a very idyllic suburban area. Outside of Seattle, there are some very family-friendly towns. They have a name and they have their own private park. Kids ride their bikes still. It feels very like 1950s. They're just running into each other's houses and stuff like that. And so that's where we were. And we had two young kids at the time and tons of families where we lived. The kids were like early elementary school. And my daughter was good friends with two other daughters in the neighborhood. They all hung out together and stuff.

24:45And our families began to hang out. What ages? The youngest being like five and the oldest being eight. I'll give you a couple of names, a couple of the players. So Karen and Heather, Karen's kids and Heather's kids, all of our daughters, they all hung out together. And so Karen and Heather and our family, we would get together for trick-or-treating and Easter eggs and community events and all of those kinds of things. We even went camping together in that summer before. So we knew each other well, but always with tons of kids and husbands and people always around. There was another family, Jennifer's family.

25:19She had two boys, but she was like our kid's soccer coach. So we all knew each other. And again, kids all in the same age, going to the same school, same bus stop. And in early September, one of the daughters had a birthday party. Heather and Karen and I, we were hanging out after the birthday party. And we're like, we should do a mom's night out. Like school is back in session. Long summer. Let's have a good time. We decide that we're going to do it the following weekend. And in between time, there was a soccer practice. So I was like, hey, why don't we invite Jennifer too? Because she's cool.

25:48She's friendly. Super funny. And she's the mother of the boys. She's the mother of the boys. And the other two moms are like, yeah, that sounds great. We decide to go to a country western bar with a mechanical bull. The moms are going hard. Keep in mind, at this point, I'm in my early 40s. So is another mom. Everybody else, late 30s. We are not mechanical bull riding appropriate age. Sure, sure, sure. But it's hilarious. And why not? Yes. And Chippendales isn't in fashion anymore. That's right. And that wasn't really our style anyway. We're like, let's just go and make fun of ourselves and have a couple of beers.

26:22But in the lead up, we start a group text and Karen sends a text of Deborah Winger from Urban Cowboy. Yeah, yeah. Know it well. Bud and Sissy. In that movie, Sissy is like erotically riding the bull. She's in a white tank top, brawless. Yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot. So she sends a gif, jif, whatever you call it of Deborah Winger riding the bull. Now, again, this is not really our vibe for the rest of us. So we're like, that's a choice. But could be funny. Yeah. We were like, OK, let's go the funny route. So we were like, all right, let's embrace our Deborah wingers. You know, we're going to have a good time.

27:00So I'm the designated driver. The rest of us, we all meet up. I take everybody out. Heather is particularly happy. She just got a new job. So she's like happy drunk. We're all just laughing, having a really good time. Karen is a little on the quiet side. We decide to go do the mechanical bull. Really quick. Like, had she arrived in an overtly sexy outfit or just normal? Just normal. Okay. All right. We were all just kind of normal, trying to get our country on, but that wasn't really our situation either. So I go up first. I comically fall off the mechanical bull kind of instantly. We're laughing really hard.

27:33We're all having a good time. Jennifer goes up. Heather goes up. We all instantly fall off. Karen goes up and she's been very quiet, very kind of serious this whole time. And she does kind of seductively ride the bull. A little longer than the rest of us. She's kind of whipping her hair back and forth. Living out a fantasy. We're like, okay. But we're cheering for her. We're like, that wasn't what bus stop moms we were expecting. But we're like, go, Deborah, you know. She gets off and she kind of struts over to us. She's very straight faced. We're laughing. We're just enjoying ourselves and making fun of the whole situation.

28:10And she's like, yes, my husband is a very happy man. Oh, all right. Oh, wow. Thanks for telling us. Oh, wow. Okay. And she kind of keeps walking back to the table. Oh, she like says it in passing. Yeah. She throws it away. So she goes back to the table. You know, we carry on. We're having a good time. We're line dancing. A couple hours in. And again, Karen's pretty quiet. I come back to the table from line dancing, and it's just Jennifer and Karen at the table. And Jennifer's kind of teary-eyed. Oh, boy. Oh, okay. And Karen is very flat faced, like flat affect. And Jennifer's immediately like, I'm going to the bathroom.

28:50So she goes to the bathroom and Karen follows her. Oh, I have no idea what's going on. I'm fat, dumb and happy. You're not even drinking, right? Yeah. So I'm like, and we're all grown ass women. Yeah. You're like, what the hell? You know what I mean? Yeah. But Heather immediately is alarmed. And she said, something's wrong. I think Karen is attacking Jennifer. What? Oh, whoa. And I'm like, what are you even talking about? Keep in mind, we had just gone camping together the month prior. Like, this was so out of left field. And so Heather's like, you need to go check on them in the bathroom. Okay, hold on one second.

29:23Do you have a guess? A little bit. I have a guess, too. Minimally, she thinks this woman's fucking her husband, right? That's my guess. I mean, Karen thinks. That Jennifer is fucking her husband. Jennifer is fucking her husband. That's my guess as well. Yeah, she's like, look, I'm sexier than you. My husband's very happy. Don't even think about it. Yeah, don't you fucking think about it. I'm going to assault you in the bathroom because actually I'm very insecure. OK, let's resume. OK, but we don't tell us if we're right. Let's just hear it. I go in. Long story short, they wind up leaving. Karen walks out of the bathroom.

29:51Jennifer looks at me and is like, she is a crazy fucking bitch. Oh, my God. And this is not how Jennifer talks. And I'm like, what just happened? She's like, I don't want to cause any more drama. She's very territorial with me. She's saying really nasty things about me. She basically just verbally attacked me for the last 10 minutes. Whoa. And Jennifer's like, I'm catching an Uber and I'm leaving. So Jennifer leaves. I come back to the table and mind you, I have a lot of experience like de-escalating heated situations, both personally and professionally. And so that part of my brain kind of clicks in and I'm like, I'm going to stay cool and calm and collected.

30:30I'm going to leave with some curiosity. I'm really clear about what's mine and what's not mine. And clearly whatever's happening with Karen is not mine. So I come back to the table and I'm like, what's going on? And she's like, you know what's going on. She starts talking in this like really cryptic kind of hostile way towards me. And she says, you are such a bully. And you know what? So is your daughter. Oh, now it's going to be hard to deescalate. You've brought my child into it. My daughter, she barely turned eight at this point. Everybody that I talk to about her is just like she's the sweetest, kindest kid.

31:07So I kind of instantly know this has nothing to do with me. This has nothing to do with my kid. And if there is something of mine or something of my daughter's, some transgression, I'm happy to own it. We get talking and I'm like, tell me more. She's kind of circling around, you know. The only specific thing I can get from her is one time my daughter and Heather's daughter whispered in each other's ear and didn't tell Karen's daughter what they whispered. So a bully. She's a bully. A big bad bully. Yeah, big bully. And so I was like, I see that as a parenting difference. I'm okay with children whispering in each other's ears.

31:45She's not de-escalating. In fact, she starts then verbally attacking my husband. So I'm all done with this conversation. I'm starting to get triggered. This has gone on too long. But I'm still the designated driver. We're a half hour away. I'm still willing to take you in my car. And keep in mind, Heather is sitting there the whole time. But she's no longer happy drunk. She is very sad drunk. holding on to her beer, like head down. This was supposed to be a very fun mom's night out. It did not turn out. Sounds more like a trip to Vegas. That's right. I had been texting my husband this whole time because he's like, how's it going?

32:18And I'm like, holy shit. It's going sideways. So I'm like going once, going twice. Okay, you guys are staying. I'm leaving. I leave. I call my husband. I'm talking to him on the phone, trying to tell him all the crazy things that had happened. I'm just a minute or so out. and Heather calls. And I'm like, fuck you. I'm not answering your phone call. I don't want any like, come on back. We were having fun. You know, I don't want any of that. And I'm like, you chose to stay. So I'm out. I keep talking to my husband. She calls a second time. I ignore her call a second time. But I tell my husband, hey, Heather just called me twice.

32:55If she calls a third time, I'm answering. She calls a third time. I pick up the phone and she says, she punched me. Oh, my God. She punched her? Oh, my God. Where this bar was, it's kind of like four wide lanes of highway, like car dealerships around, you know, like very industrial kind of place. She had crossed the street and was just hightailing it in a direction on the street. She's like, can you come back and pick me up? So I do. I come back. I pick her up. And she's like covered in beer. Apparently what happened is I left the bar. Heather, who's been kind of standing by her side this whole time, turns to Karen and says, it's just the two of us now.

33:36What are we going to do? And Karen punches Heather in the face. Oh, my God. Heather drops to the ground. Karen punches her a second time on the ground. Let's remember, within an hour of bully allegations, which is spectacular. I think she was just like raging with impotence. I could tell she wanted to get a rise out of me and I wasn't giving her that. And I think she just kind of snapped. But somebody helps Heather up. Heather walks out of the bar. Karen follows her screaming at her. Heather crosses the four lanes of traffic. And that's when I pick her up. Turns out in the car, Heather opens up to me and begins telling me that Karen had had a baby a year or so prior.

34:21She was postpartum going through something. had kind of sworn Heather to secrecy, was really worried and paranoid, but had been doing all this emotionally manipulative stuff that is more prevalent in maybe some emotionally abusive relationships. She had also been verbally attacking Heather's daughter and like really seemed to be targeting a lot of hostility towards not just my daughter, but hers. So there was like Like a longstanding pattern that I had no idea about. And Heather was actually reluctant to come out with us that night. But because I didn't know anything, I was just like, it was a mom's night.

35:00And anyway, that night, Karen reached out to Heather. Heather sent her a text that said, you fuck off and die. Don't ever talk to me again. And Karen kept texting. Heather filed a police report. A restraining order was issued. I was able to fact check myself because we have a lot of court documents documenting the whole night. Oh, boy. And when the police officer came to take the report, he was like, oh, my gosh. Boss moms, soccer moms. Yeah, fist fight. By the way, in their defense, there was a lot of fist fights at that bar in Urban Cowboy. So she, like, really was living out. I think even Sissy got in a fucking girl fight.

35:40She really was living out. Yeah, yeah, she did it. She did it. It was really awkward because Jennifer was still our soccer coach. Karen and I were still on the soccer team. The season had just started. Her and her husband pretended like nothing had happened. Oh, boy. I had to send some strongly worded texts to everybody saying, oh, no, we're not pretending. Karen's accounting of the night, because again, a restraining order was issued. And her recounting of the night was that Heather had said, oh, I wonder who you're going to fuck tonight. and also that she had accused Karen of doing sex acts with Jennifer's husband.

36:20Okay. She's mixing it all. So it was a very like dissociated from reality, but the daughters still hung out together. So we had to tell our kids, you can't hang out with her daughter anymore because she was so targeting our daughters. Yeah, that's tricky. Yeah. And they would like find each other in different friends' houses. and we wanted to protect her mental health status and her daughter's ability to shape friendships. You're making me grateful I haven't become friends with a lot of kids' parents. I just mostly felt guilty about that, but now I'm feeling a little grateful. I know. This gets very a mesh.

36:57It can get so fucking messy. Yeah. There were two big takeaways from it. One was that the judge said he wouldn't have issued the restraining order had my friend not been so clear and said, do not contact me again. And the other thing was Jennifer and Heather and I have trauma bonded and we are still in touch. We talk to each other every week. But one of the things that we found when we were all debriefing about some of the weird stuff that had led up to it was that we kept using this word weird. Like, oh, I had this conversation with her and it was kind of weird. And this situation happened. That was kind of weird.

37:27And I'm like, you know what? I have a new mantra. Weird equals warning. Not Weird Al Yankovich weird, like kooky, delightful weird. Not like Austin weird. Not the way you like to use it. Yeah, that's right. Right. That weird is fantastic. But those conversations where you're like trying to justify it and being like, huh. Did we find out if she had fucked anyone's husband or her husband had fucked anyone? No, we don't think any husbands were fucked besides her own. Okay. Who was very happy. Yeah, she does it well. Okay. So there was no impropriety outside of her own imagination, probably. Well, I think she was kind of like.

38:01Yeah, she had some. Some psychosis. Yeah. Did she have a period where she was infatuated with you? You know, she did send me kind of a cryptic text that was like, I so admire you and the strength you have. You think she has borderline? And then she thinks everyone's out to get her to the point where you're willing to punch someone. I mean, you've really convinced yourself this person's trying to harm. We're really diagnosing people these days. You're not supposed to do that, but I'm going to keep doing it. Yeah. I just want everyone to know if you tell me not to, it's a waste of your breath. I'm going to continue to do it.

38:30There were signs of that kind of borderline stuff because one of the things Heather said is one day she kind of followed them after the bus stopped and she had her four year old with her and she would yell at Heather about what a terrible mom she was. And then the four year old started crying and then she would like switch and be like, oh, honey, everything's OK. It's OK. And then she would go back to attacking. And the reason why everybody's names have been changed is because Jennifer and Heather and Karen still live. Yeah, that's real tough. Yeah, wow. They've got some years left. You were like, fuck this.

39:02Let's go to Maine. Yeah, smart. Really smart. Let's see how the people in Maine are. Honestly. God. Well, Claire, what a spicy night out for the moms. Not what we were expecting. No. But it broke the monotony. Some drama's kind of fun. I'd be liking it all. I hate to admit. But not neighbors, because you can't remove yourself. That's the problem. It was awkward, because she's a big part of the PTA and would be a part of family events. It just got really awkward. But yeah, it does make for a good story. And Jennifer and I would celebrate by sending Heather little gifts like fruit punch and sockeye salmon.

39:37Commemorate the budding of our intimate friendship or strong friendship that we now have. Well, thank you. Thank you, Clara. That was great. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. If I could give just two shout outs, just shout out to Shalise. She is a day one listener who got me hooked into you. Thank you, Shalise. And then the other thing I just want to say, Dax, I know a lot of people talk about how much your stories of sobriety mean to them. And my dad was an alcoholic. He never went into recovery at all. In fact, he went the other way, died of cirrhosis, tragic. But your stories have been healing for me even after his death and shows me the amount of courage and strength and fortitude and support that my dad really didn't have.

40:20And it gives me a lot of compassion for him. Oh, good. it's very hard. It's healing for me, so I appreciate it. Oh, my pleasure. That's so nice to hear. Thank you. All right. Have a great summer up there. Bye. Bye.

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43:17Hi. How are you? What name are we using? Your name is in parentheses, which makes me think it's a code name. It is a code name. I'm going to go by Caroline today. Caroline, where are you? First of all, your environment is so well put together. It is. This is my home office. I'm in Colorado. Oh, okay, great. Your arms are ripped. Are you like a climber or something? Absolutely not. I just have two toddlers, So I carry around a lot of really bulky children all day. They'll tone up those biceps. That's one of the favors they do for us. Exactly. And are you from there or did you move there? Moved there, actually.

43:51So originally from Maui, which is where my story takes place. Oh, wow. That's rare. My story takes place around 2016. And I was with my boyfriend for about a year at the time. And we decided to move into our first place together. So big step, we found this gorgeous apartment. Like, especially if you're in your 20s, this was a score. It had like a spiral staircase. It was lofted. It was in a dream apartment. We moved in and it was great at first. It's a large house, to give context, that was subdivided into multiple units. So kind of a slumlord situation. We had our place, which was probably like an add-on to the house.

44:29It was above a carport. There was the main house that had maybe three people living in it. There was a unit around back. And then there was a two car garage that had been converted into two studio apartments. And that's kind of where the focus is. So we had James on one side and then Jamie on another side. And they had actually started dating and became a couple. Oh, dangerous and fun. Yes, exactly. James, we kind of knew of. He was kind of in my parents circle. So we knew him. And Jamie was very quirky. She was, let's say, mid 50s. She had a giant tramp stamp and she always walked around in a sports brown tiny shorts.

45:10Yeah, good for her. Will you give a vibe check for Maui? Because I imagine a lot of people move there with kind of interesting, lofty spirituality dreams or something. Is it a hodgepodge of people? You get a really good mix of people. You get hippie crunchy. You get obviously people that are native. There's a lot of different competing vibes there. It's kind of a strange place. A lot of vibes is just the best way I can say it. And Jamie had a vibe. She really did. I mean, she would smoke cigarettes outside all day. She didn't work. She told us she was undergoing cancer treatment, which I'm not sure if that is true or not, because I don't think she left the house much at all.

45:50So anyway, we're enjoying our apartment. Everything's great. My now husband, then boyfriend, made great friends with Jamie. They get along great, super friendly, quirky, but not threatening. And then fast forward to maybe a month living in the apartment and I received a package in my name. I opened it up. It's from Sephora. And it's like a laser device of some sort, maybe like a laser skin device, I want to say. I did not order this. I looked it up on Sephora and it was like an$800 device. Oh, shit. Whoa. But it was your name, not just your address? It was in my name to my address, but I had not ordered this.

46:24And there's no way I could have afforded this. I was like 23, 24 at the time. Like, this was expensive. I kind of set it aside. I was like, I'm going to have to investigate this. I'll ask around our neighbors. This is strange. A couple of days later, we're chit-chatting outside on our patio with our neighbors. And I go, hey, by chance, did you guys order a large package from Sephora? I didn't order this. And it's really strange because it was really expensive. And I just want to see if anybody else ordered this. I want it to get in the right hands. I could just see the wheels turning in his head.

46:52He goes, well, how much was it for? And I was like, you know, it was about$800. He goes, I just had a fraudulent charge on my card. from Sephora for about that amount. Oh, no. And we were like, oh, my God. So we pull the package out. We're all looking through it. We're looking for any sort of clues. We find a phone number on the receipt. Obviously, we're going to call it. And it was Jamie from downstairs. With the tramp stamp and the cigarettes and the questionable cancer treatment. At this point, we kind of put together. So she uses his credit card, puts it under my name to avoid suspicion, but doesn't work.

47:30So she hoped to intercept the package. Kind of a wrench in her plan. Like they'll call when they get confused at this multi-person dwelling. Yes. But what she didn't account for was my boyfriend's former roommate was our FedEx driver. So they were total buds and he would just walk into our house and just drop off packages. That was the other thing I wanted to ask you about Maui. It's a small place. There's not a ton of people, right? So if you grew up there, even the fact that you said your parents knew some of the neighbors. Everyone knows each other. I didn't know her. Nobody really knew who she was.

48:00But like I said, it's like, okay, well, how threatening could she be? We know the other people that live here. We knew her boyfriend. Like how bad could it be? Anyway, we find out she had ordered it. She hoped to intercept it. FedEx driver thwarted that plan. We're at this point, we're like, okay, well, we have to file a police report. So we call the police, the non-emergency line. They send out an officer. He shows up and immediately is like, is this where Jamie lives? Oh, boy. Perfect. Perfect. Apparently she had had problems with the other tenants that used to live there. They had maybe accused her of possibly stealing a laptop, but I don't think anything ever came out of it.

48:34They had since left the apartment. So he basically takes our information. He says, you know, we'll file a report. Keep me in the loop with anything else that comes up. Gives us his card. I want to say maybe a week or so later, I get a credit card statement. I had taken out a new credit card, but I never received the credit card, but I didn't really think anything of it. Again, I'm in my young 20s. I'm not super organized at this point. I get the statement and there's thousands of dollars worth of charges racked up on this credit card that I never even received. Yeah. Call, get it cleared up. Basically, we're able to figure out.

49:08Indeed, Jamie had taken it out of the mailbox once it arrived and gone on a shopping spree. What kind of stuff did she buy? More beauty products? No, she bought more short shorts. It was all Macy's. She went crazy at Macy's. Wow, good for Macy's. Get that canceled. And then at this point, I luckily had a credit monitoring service through my work as a benefit. I started just getting pings after pings. She took out probably eight credit cards in my name in the span of one week. Oh, my God. Really quick. Had you guys confronted her in face to face or no? You just called the police and let them deal with it?

49:44We never really confronted her at that point. Okay. Down the road, we did a little bit, but I don't want to lose this apartment. Yeah. Okay. There we go. There we go. That's fair. dream apartment like i don't want to stir up drama so she takes out about eight credit cards and my name is able to go shopping with a few of them we're able to get those canceled we continue to file police reports they're telling us okay we're gathering evidence we're probably going to arrest her at some point she does end up getting arrested and then the next day is out watering plants outside acting like nothing ever happened then it kind of gets to a point where we're like okay, this is crazy.

50:22She's obviously just continuing to try and open credit cards in my name, fake emails in my name. She's deranged. So we talked to our landlord. He starts taking steps to get her removed from the property. But as I discussed earlier, she was dating James who lived in the other unit. So even after she was evicted, we were catching her sneaking onto property, going through our mailbox. Did your husband ever pull James aside and go like, bro, how do you like this girl? She's a fucking criminal. He's a thief. What's funny is then he started to get confrontational towards us. He, through the window, tried to get confrontational with my boyfriend.

51:00I also had my dad over for dinner one night, which is funny, and he tried to fight my dad. Oh, wow. Oh, my God. He was the one, though, that was also involved in Sephora. No. Oh, there was a fraudulent charge. Not James, different tenant. She continues to sneak on property, like I said. She actually keeps ordering packages in my name and I keep receiving them, she ordered that same laser two more times. Oh my God. She should just quit smoking if she wants her skin to lighten up. That's what I'm most irked about, to be honest, with this whole story. $3 ,000 on these things and never received them.

51:33I hope you used it. Isn't it really crazy, though? The thing I'm most triggered by is like, girl, stop smoking. You don't buy products. Like, get your shit together. Sure. It's just getting more and more chaotic, it seems like. She's not going to leave us alone. But we're just kind of trying to hope, like, okay, it'll smooth out. she's off property now, the landlord's involved, we have to switch out the mailbox for a locked mailbox. We're just kind of hoping, okay, things are surely going to kind of start to taper down. Then one day I am walking into the grocery store, one big main grocery store that everybody shops out on the island.

52:07I'm walking in, I kind of see something out of the corner of my eye. I don't fully process it. I walk into the store and I just had that gut feeling of what did I just see? so i walked back out and on the glass door is a flyer my boyfriend's picture is at the center of the flyer there's a heading new pedophile to the area no oh my god and i did send in a picture of the flyer oh my gosh if you didn't know what you were looking at she tried to make it look official. No, he looks pretty pedophile-y in that photo. He's got a mustache. He's working against him. He's got his mustache. There's also what's really funny.

52:49It looks like he has a tattoo on his neck. Yes, it does. That's a photo of his driver's license. And that's the watermark of the state of Hawaii going across his neck. So our theory is that she walked into our house at some point, found his wallet, pulled out his driver's license and took a photo of it for this flyer. because how else would she have that? She tried to make it very official. It says, new, local pedophile to Maui, Hawaii Criminal Justice Data Center, Department of the Attorney General. Like it's - A lot of words, data center. My heart was in my stomach. Like I could not believe that.

53:25It's got our address printed right across it. Pedophile in my address is not something that makes me feel safe. So call my boyfriend, we go home. Immediately he's like, okay, we got to start telling neighbors like what's going on like to let us know if you see her if you see anything suspicious so he goes and knocks on our neighbor's door she literally tells him get off my porch i know who you are yeah see this is now oh no she had distributed this flyer in everybody's mailbox in our entire neighborhood this is a real liable case here this is what You can literally win a liable lawsuit over. I thought about it, but I'm like, this woman clearly has nothing to her name.

54:06Steal your own shit back. Yeah. Exactly. Our neighbor across the street had it posted in their laundry room. Like this poster had gone around. And again, small island. People had seen this poster. It had been circulated for a while. We just didn't know about it. Oh, boy. So we had to call the police again. They had to go door to door telling everybody, in fact, he is not a sexual predator. This is a fake poster. Please let us know if you saw this being distributed. He had to go door to door. It was completely mortifying. After that, we were like, okay, we throw in the towel. We're leaving. But what did the police, they can't do anything about this?

54:45We couldn't prove that she had done it. They kept telling us she's going to be going to jail. The police kept amping this up. When they arrested her, there was mail on her counter that wasn't hers. There was all of these things pointing towards her, but nothing ever happened to it. Last I heard, she was selling hummus at the farmer's market. Oh, do not buy that hummus. Oh my God, do not support that local business. Nothing ever happened. Ew. After we moved out, I heard that she started harassing somebody else at a house nearby. So clearly this was her MO. And did you guys bounce to Colorado? After that, we were pretty quickly like, okay, I think we need a break from the island.

55:25Wow. People go crazy on an island. Maybe some methamphetamines too. We suspect. Wow. Wow. That took a turn. Hated that. Yeah, I don't like her. Loved it. Loved the story. And I weirdly admire her. No, that's bad. I mean, she's just making an absolute mess of everything. And somehow she's trucking along. Nothing can get her down. I wish I almost had that level of delusion. Yeah, like if I had those things on my shoulders, like the cops came, there was mail everywhere. I've got charges. It would ruin me. I couldn't just parade around and continue to put. Well, not if you were doing drugs. That's true.

55:55That would help. You did a lot of bad stuff when you were doing drugs. Yeah, I mean, she was shameless. We would walk by. She would say, good morning. She'd be watering. She forgot. She did not give a crap about anything. She didn't care. This prompt is making us grateful for the neighbor we don't like. Very tame comparatively. Anything is better than that. That's awful. That was about the peak. Well, it's so nice meeting you. Same. Nice to meet you as well. All right. Take care. Bye. Hello. We're going to go with a fake name, I've just been told. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think I'll keep myself anonymous for this one.

56:29Okay. And what fake name would you like? Let's go with Mike. Mike. Okay. Nice and generic. Mike, where are you at? So I am located in the foothills of Northern California, about an hour outside of Lake Tahoe. Oh, okay. This drives Monica crazy. Is it the 90 that runs through there? Close, the 80. Okay. And dirt biking's big in the area or no? Dirt biking is big in the area, a lot of off-roading, just a lot of outdoor adventure stuff. Yeah, we got a lot of rivers out here, skiing. And do you go up to Tahoe a lot? Yeah, my wife and I spend quite a bit of time up there. We like to ski and take our dogs up there.

57:07Okay, so Mike, you had a crazy neighbor, or maybe you've had more than one. Yeah, I did, and not so much one isolated incident, as crazy neighbor stories often go, of a kind of a progressive story over the period of a few years that kind of culminated in one large event. Oh, fun. Okay. Breadcrumbs and then a loaf. Totally. So 2022, my wife and I bought our house, moved back to the state. We both grew up in this area. It was a big deal for us kind of buying our dream house and moving home, being close to family again. And we found this sweet little neighborhood. Everyone seemed really cool. Our next door neighbor is very friendly, trails out of our back door.

57:47So it did seem just like this textbook picture, perfect little thing. And we settled in really well and started meeting all the neighbors and everyone was cool. And we met one guy who was a little odd, but seemed like he was successful. It was driving around in a nice sports car and to have some odd conversations with him here and there at the mailboxes. Were you guys way younger than all your neighbors? We are. Yeah. Yeah. We're a generation below the majority of our neighbors. But this guy, not significantly older than us, but definitely in a different stage of life. Every once in a while, people in the neighborhood will shoot.

58:21It's not a big deal. It's the country. I don't mind. Shoot guns? Yeah, shoot guns. It's definitely a culture thing out here in the foothills. And he would, you know, shoot guns every few weeks. I'd hear some gunshots and whatnot coming from down the hill and wouldn't really think much of it. Are people on acres in this neighborhood? Yeah, these are all like five acre and bigger lots, bigger parcels. You've got room to do that kind of stuff. So I didn't really think much of it at first. It became a little bit more frequent. And this is, you know, over the next year or so, the frequencies of these shooting events happened a little bit more.

58:53And I just started having some weird encounters with the guy around the neighborhood where he just seemed a little bit off. I work in healthcare. I've got a pretty good scope of when people just aren't quite at their proper baseline. And I would just catch him out on the roads again at the mailbox and he just seemed a little off. Did he seem angry or perverted? Not angry, but just having very strange strings of thoughts. Just those odd conversations you have where they'll just like interject with some very out there. Non sequitur. Exactly. Yeah. And so I started having those with him. And my wife had a couple of very odd encounters out on the road, walking the dogs where he was behind the wheel of a car and seemed like, you know, it was not in a good state of mind to be doing so.

59:43So we're starting to get a little bit concerned about this. Nothing like too acutely terrifying has happened, but we're starting to take notes. I also, you know, like most people kind of lurk the local community Facebook page and just keeping tabs on the neighborhood and I read a few posts from some moms in the neighborhood about like, Hey, there's just this kind of odd guy. That's like talking to my kids at the park and stuff. And they kind of described the vehicle and I'm like, Oh God, you know, like this isn't good. And so we're now at this point and it's last summer when I initially sent this in, I thought July, but then I looked back at my videos and photos and it was actually in like September.

1:00:27So peak fire season. I mean, things are bone dry around here. Over the summer, the shooting had grown to a point where it was daily. These shooting events were now going from like maybe a hundred rounds to like a few hundred rounds. Oh my God. From what I understand, ammo is pretty expensive. This was daily occurrences for days on end. And also the kinds of guns he was shooting weren't just your normal like pop pop they were like fully auto yeah yeah like some heavy duty hardware kind of stuff yeah and i think full auto is illegal in california yeah there's no license you can have in california i think that allows you to have anything like that at this point i'm avoiding this guy i was in school at the time i was trying to study it was interrupting my studying i was kind of at my wits end with it i am out in the yard one day spreading some gravel in the driveway and I will never forget my wife was standing up on the patio and we hear this enormous explosion down the hill immediately followed by another explosion and I hear somebody screaming.

1:01:35No, no. There is a massive column of black smoke that just rises up in the air and I'm thinking, here we go. He's now working in explosives. He's transitioned from small arms to C4. Calling it into califier. where my neighbor's next door is standing out in his yard looking at me like, whoa, what's going on? I'm on the phone with dispatch trying to tell him what's going on. And there are just like explosions going on in the background. My wife and I go into action mode. You know, you've got the grab bag, you've got animals, the cash, the documents, all that list of things they tell you to have ready to go.

1:02:11Well, the one thing that we had to get was our husky. If you know anything about huskies, they've got their own agenda normally. And it tends to be the exact opposite of what you want in the moment. And they like to get out and just roam, right? Yeah. They're kind of wild animals at heart. Add some explosions on top of that. And she's like, nope, sorry guys. So she's gone. Oh, I'm like, okay, what do we do here? We have elderly neighbors. So I'm like, let's just go start letting people know. Cause at this point you're concerned the fire is going to take over your neighborhood right up the hill i mean we are bone dry peak fire season we're in the hills this guy sits at the foot of a hill but we drive down to the neighbor's house we let him know hey so-and-so's house is on fire and we're waiting around we're just looking for the dog and at this point they've got helicopters overhead scouting it they've got spotter planes they brought in the cal fire bombers so they jump on it and i start seeing fire engines i hear the sirens.

1:03:08So I jumped down the hill and guiding them back down to the correct house props to the local fire department. They jumped on it. I was so impressed with how much resource they sent to this thing to get on it right away because it could have been nasty, but it seemed like it got on it. It was limited to just the structure and the guy's house and nothing really blew up from there but it was a very close call that we all kind of saw coming I think from a mile away I rode my quad down once things seemed to have kind of stabilized and I hopped on my ATV and rode down and this big fire inspector guy sees me and he's like are you the homeowner and he starts walking up to me I'm like no man I called you guys in like I live up the hill he's like well we found like IEDs in the roof and apparently they found some wild stuff in this guy's house I haven't seen this guy since.

1:04:01He has been AWOL. You have still never seen the guy? I have still not seen this guy. He disappeared. Did you guys ever learn from the fire investigators if he had set off the explosion or something self ignited in there? I never heard anything. I never got any follow up on it. So I don't know if it's still like an active. They're like looking into something. And was the house burnt to the ground? It was still standing. I sent a video in, I think if you guys got that, it shows they're spraying down the upper level of the house. It was completely burned to the bones. Oh, my God. Yeah, it's still standing.

1:04:35But if you look at it, it's done for. Mike, we've got the video. OK, we're going to watch it. Rob's going to show us the video right now. Oh, shit. I feel like a real news show. Me too. Oh, yeah. This is a big scene. By the way, it's beautiful where you live. Thank you. Oh, it sounds like the end of the world with all the fucking goats blatting. Yeah, and probably 20 different fire engines. They had two different planes on it. It was impressive watching how they went after it. God, I'm dying to know what this guy's ism was. Yeah, I am right there with you. Maybe some schizophrenia with substance.

1:05:10Yeah. I mean, they often kind of follow each other like that. Self-medication that's making it worse. Oh, wow. That is rough. Wild couple of years, and then that problem kind of taking care of itself for me, I guess. Yeah, so it's kind of like a PSA to other people. Like, if you've got that neighbor, don't worry. He'll blow his house up soon enough. Well, he might blow your house up, so you've got to be aware. Well, you never know what your neighbor has. Like, there was just that news story about the kid who inherited his dad's house, and he had, like, a brick of C4 in it. Oh, really? He was an old demo instructor.

1:05:42Yeah, that was just like last week here in California. You never know what your neighbor's got. Wowzers. God, what is going on in these homes, you know? I know. I also bet up there there's a mix of some raw dog dudes. Yeah, there are definitely some people hiding out up here. Yeah, yeah, that's a great way to say it. We're close enough to the city that, you know, you do have the professionals and stuff that come up here to just get away from it. But you've also got the other side of it. Wow. Sure, some guys trying not to be found. Yeah. Oh, well, Mike, this was delightful. Yeah. I'm sorry that happened.

1:06:13But that was a good story. I'm excited for us. Thank you. Yeah, it was fun to share it with you guys. And if I can just give my wife a quick shout out, she's the one that turned me on to the podcast. and she's getting ready for work right now, actually. So she wasn't able to hop in. What do we call her? We're going to have to call her a fake name. Kathleen. Kathleen. Thank you, Kathleen. Very sexy. Kathleen Turner. Seductress. Great meeting, brother. I love that story. Yeah, this was fun. And send our love to your wife. Absolutely. Will do. Y 'all take care. Be good, brother. Bye. I liked him because he was a medical professional.

1:06:44And it was mixed messages. Yeah, I like that. He was a medical professional and owned a quad. Yeah, and he was a great storyteller. And it was mixed messages. And he was on top of it because he was helping the neighbors. He was taking care of his going to get the old folks out. Yeah, that's nice. I did that during our fires, if you recall. That's nice. I went up to that really old gal who still walks. We have a neighbor. She's so impressive. She's in her 90s, I think. And she walks home from the grocery store with her groceries. Oh, my God. And I went over and I said, hey, how you doing? and I just wanted to invite you to our house if it gets tricky or you need.

1:07:21That's really nice. And she's like, oh, I'm almost offended. Yeah, she's funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was great. It was great. Okay. I was like, okay, you're good, you're good. I thought maybe you saw my lady's ghost and you thought she was alive and real. Your lady's ghost. The lady who lived in my home before me. Oh, who died in your house. She didn't die in there. Yes, she did. No, she didn't. I looked it up. Look, my old house, there's a murder. Listen, I know, but that's not what happened, okay? I looked it up. She didn't die on the property. They have to disclose that. She probably died in the hospital, I guess.

1:07:51But she was 100. And I thought maybe you went over there to check on her and she was there because she was a ghost. Oh, and she said, ghosts can walk through flames. I'll be fine. Yeah, that's right. Oh, I don't think she'll like that you did that. Are you inclined to like learn a lot about her? Yes, I thought many times, I guess, spoiler, about doing a documentary that's me investigating her and her life. and also the neighborhood. Oh, yeah. That would be nice. Because, you know, she was called the queen of Laughlin Park. Oh. You don't know a lot about her. Other than that she died in your house.

1:08:25No. Don't do that. She's going to be mad at you for saying that. She might haunt you. I bet she'd prefer that she died in her house than the hospital. So I bet she likes this revisionist history. She wants the truth to be told. Okay. Let's tell the truth. Very honest. All right. I love you. That's the truth. Do you want to sing a tune or something? I want to have a theme song. Oh. Okay, great.