Well, I’m out at the club last night running sound for one of the acts I manage and I happen to pick up a copy of the* Isthmus*, Madison’s free weekly paper. As I’m thumbing through waiting for the band to get back on stage after their set break, I happen to notice an interesting little blurb in the “Week in Review” section: a guy with the same name as our landlord was sentenced Thursday to 5 years and 8 months in prison for robbing banks to pay his crack dealers. WTF?
So I think to myself, “Nah, can’t be the same guy…can it?”
And then I remember a time about six months ago when he showed up at our doorstep asking for $100 because he was “around the corner playing poker with his buddies and ran a little short.” Of course, I felt that was a wee bit improper and declined to help him out, and the next day got a call from our other landlord (his wife - she does the administration, he’s the fixer upper guy) asking if we had given him any money recently. I said that we hadn’t, and she cautioned us to “never give him money no matter what.”
I assumed that she was referring to a gambling addiction - this guy is your typical 300 pound, ass-crack-hanging-out-while-he-recaulks-your-bathtub Wisconsin salt of the earth (read: redneck) and not what I would imagine the typical crackhead to look like. And having lived for many years in B’more on the edge of the ghetto (Edmondson Ave.) I’ve seen/known quite a few crackheads.
And then this morning I mention it to Althea and we search online a bit and find this: Link to News Article
So again, I say WTF? :eek:
Anybody else have any interesting landlord stories? I guess addiction stories are okay too, but this is not a “perils of addiction, it’s so sad” kind of thread - more of a “Holy Flurking Schnit, I know that guy!” thing.
And on a side note, in the article it says that he was busted previously for embezzling money from a property he managed - and I can’t help but wonder if we’re the property - anybody know how I could find this out?
Oddly enough, one of my former landlords was an SFPD officer. He and another officer was arrested for stealing dope from dealers a couple of years ago. I’ll see if I can find a link.
5 years 8 months is “near the top of the [sentencing] guidelines” for robbing two banks in Wisconsin?
In NC each gas station is 7 years mandatory. I think banks are 10 years but I’m not fully sure. In any case I’m sure they carry a longer sentence than gas stations.
I did find something interesting one day while searching through Denton County web pages looking for a homestead exemption form. On the Denton County web page they have a “convicted sex offenders” listing. I thought oh what the heck, since I am already at their page. I put in my address and what did I find? My next door neighbor is a convicted sex offender. :rolleyes: I kid you not. Very weird feeling knowing the new neighbor that just moved in a year ago is a wacko.
When we lived in Madison we had the World’s Sleeziest Landlord, but oddly enough, this wasn’t him. (Actually, I knew it wasn’t when you mentioned that he actually repaired things.) Odd, though.
I had a landlord who was a quite active leader of some sort of Aryan group or other. Once painstakingly showed me how the Bible proves that black people have no souls and are an unholy crossbreed of human and demon.
Crying shame, because it was a pretty cool apartment.
But maybe they’ll start out a real repairman when stuff goes wrong, rather than “Dan’ll be over later to look at it.”
When we complained about the shower leaking down into the basement, this guy came over and smeared one measly line of grout (and sloppily, at that) and then says “that should do it…”
Needless to say, it didn’t. Not in the slightest.
We had to redo entirely, and this weekend Althea ended up stripping and regrouting the entire thing anyway…
Aw, man, I was hoping it was going to be my old landlord.
One year when I was in Madison, my apartment was broken into. Nothing was taken (though our CD’s were in big plastic bags in the middle of the room)–we think one of our roommates walked in as they were looting the upstairs apartments.
The police initially* didn’t find any signs of forced entry. Hmm, sounds like it could be an inside job or a former tennant who copied the key, right? Yet our landlord said he’d only change the locks if we paid for them.
*As I was cleaning out my room (they trashed it) I noticed a metal piece with little wires. I recognized it as the frame of a screen window (we were on the first floor and had front and back porches). My room looked out over the front porch and all my screens were intact. I went to my roommate’s room, which overlooked the back porch, and noticed that the screen/storm window was completely gone. Real thorough investigation MPD!
