01x04 - Roommate Wanted - Part 1

[bunniefuu]

[traffic sounds]

[interviewer] What is this place?

Where I used to live.

I miss living here.

This was my home.

This is where I wanted to live.

[interviewer] Do you wish
you could turn back the clock?

Yes.

[dark music playing faintly]

[voice breaking]
That was a weird question.

I never thought about that before.

Of course I do.

I didn't... I didn't know.

Yeah.

[door closing]

[man on phone]

In March of 2017, I needed a roommate.

My previous roommate had left,

and my mom
was having to fork over money to me,

keeping up with the bills.

I love my mom. I love my mom to death.

But she was on my back, up my a*s about,

"What are you doing
to secure a new roommate?"

And so I put an ad on Craigslist,

and I interviewed lots of people.

So here enters Jed Creek.

[Alex on phone]

[man on phone]

[Alex]

[man]

[Alex]

[man]

[Alex]

He was looking to find affordable housing

because he was in need
of helping his aging mother

and his brother,
who had problems with lawsuits,

and he, having a law background,
was helping his brother.

I said, "So, are you a lawyer?"

And he said, "Not currently."

"Right now, I am working as a tutor."

It makes sense. He's traveling.

He's coming from New York
into Philadelphia.

He hasn't established a home base yet.

And I could look him up online
through Socrates & Plato, his website,

where he offered mentoring
and tutoring for school students.

And I went online and read the website,
and it all looked legit.

I was, like, "Wow!"

[unsettling music plays]

[man]

[Alex]

[man]

[Alex]

I remember saying, and I did say,
"I'm very uncomfortable."

"I'm very uncomfortable
with this right now."

"I'm just meeting you."

I should've gone
with that uncomfortability.

[tense music playing]

[Alex] I walked into the Starbucks.

Jed was seated at a table.

He bought me a latte.

He was in khakis.

He had a Lacoste shirt.

Clean cut, groomed.

Kind of tall, dark, handsome.

Jed told me he had a dog.

I was gonna go home and get my dog,
and we were gonna have the dogs meet.

If the dog's not happy,

it's not gonna work out.

We went down to the water tower park.

There's a baseball field.

We played in the park.

And the dogs were happy.

So we walked from the water tower
down to my apartment,

and the dogs

had water and then lay down.

And they were, like, comfortable.

I said, "This is great. The dogs are...
Look at them! They're just sleeping."

I said, "When would you like to move in?"

He said, "Well, I'm staying at the Airbnb,

and it's just draining my bank account."

"I can write you a check.
I can move in tonight."

So I said, "You're gonna have
to fill out this application."

"It's required by the property management.
You have no problems doing that?"

"No problem at all, Alex. That's fine."

I trusted everything
that he was saying to me.

Clean cut, preppy,

background in law, educated,

intelligent, tutors people for a living?

Mentor? With a dog?

[suspenseful music playing]

[Alex] So that night,

Jed moved in.

He arrived with six or eight
Tupperware bins,

a dog, a cat, and a fish in a fishbowl.

He didn't say anything about these things.

I'm allergic to cats.

He reassured me in one breath,

"It's not gonna be an issue.
You're never gonna see the cat."

"The cat doesn't come out.
She's quiet and very, um, shy."

The bins got stacked in the corner.

The bedding unfolded.
It was a big comforter.

Couple sheets.
A couple pillows. And that was it.

[menacing music playing faintly]

[menacing music playing]

[clock ticking]

[Alex] I had given Jed Creek

the application that was necessary
by the property management company.

I left it out on the table

and asked him to fill it out,

and I do reminded him,

"Can you please fill out the paperwork?"

"I'll get to it. Don't worry."
"I'll get to it. Don't worry."

And I'm like "Okay."

It just sat there
on the dining room table.

[ominous music playing]

[Alex] In the first few days
of him living in my apartment,

I noticed some of
my personal items were moved.

[ominous music continues]

[Alex] I had plants on my windowsill.

"What did you do with my plants?"

I went to turn on the lights,
and they weren't working.

I had six dining room chairs at my table.

I came home one day
to find all of them removed.

I went to his door.

"Um, where are the kitchen chairs?"

"In here."

"All of them?"

"Yes, I needed a desk and a table."

"Out of the chairs?"

"Yes, they make
a very good desk and table."

And I said, "Why do you need all of them?"

His response to me was,
"Alex, this is ridiculous."

"There are only two people in this house.
Why do you have six chairs at the table?"

"You only need two."

He let me have two at the table.

[interviewer] Of your chairs?

Yeah. The rest he kept in the room.

[menacing music playing]

[Alex] We agreed he would
share the cost of paying the bills.

Later, Jed would laugh at me

when I asked for him to pay the bills.

When he laughed at me,

it was sinister.

It was demeaning.
It was patronizing, like I was stupid.

Now he's been there for a month,
and I say to him,

"The Verizon bill is coming up, Jed."

"I'm expecting you,

now you have been here for a month,

to pay this bill."

And he shouted at me,

"You'll see me in court."

"This is my space now," he would say.

Red flags are coming up fast.

I'm very uncomfortable,

so I field it off to who?

The best person capable.

"Mom?"

"I have an issue."

[Susan] The first thing that I did
was to Google Jed Creek.

And I got a creek somewhere in...

[chuckles] ...in the Midwest.

But the more I looked,
the less I could find

of a Jed Creek as a person
living anywhere in this country.

And that was the first point
at which I said, "Uh-oh."

And then I put in
Jed Creek's telephone number,

and up popped his true identity.

I ran across articles that had been
written about Jamison Bachman.

I found out that he had
had a history of being a squatter.

And there was a violent component to it.

I called Alex and said,

"We're in trouble here."

"Jed Creek is not who he says he is.
His name is Jamison Bachman."

[Alex] He was a serial squatter
who had terrorized roommates

up and down the East Coast.

And he was living in my house.

They move in, but then they won't pay,
and they won't leave.

[reporter 1] They use
fake information to get in

and work the system to stay
as long as possible without paying.

[reporter 2] A bad check
written to a closed account.

A rental application with a fake name.

As far as them being conmen,
they're very good at it.

My anxiety goes from one to 360, 200,000.

My heart's racing. My stomach's dropping.

And I have got a problem.

My first instinct
is to remove him personally.

She's like, "You're not gonna
do any of the sort, Alex."

"You're not gonna touch this man.
He's a very scary person."

What they're doing is they're
targeting these small landlords,

and they're not clearly doing
these background checks.

They're not checking
their references very closely.

[woman] I'd like to think that
I'm a fairly good judge of character,

but I was completely off the mark here.

- How do you sleep at night?
- Very vindictive, evil people.

[Susan] In Philadelphia,
once you establish tenancy,

and as we found out,

have mail sent to your address,

you're legally a tenant
whether or not you have a lease,

whether or not you have a personal
agreement with the actual tenant.

You are a legal tenant,

and you cannot be removed

without due legal process,

which takes months.

And he understood enough
about tenancy laws

to know that this was the case.

[sniffles]

[voice breaking] I made a mistake.

A very great mistake.

I trusted his word.

I saw him as a good man.

I didn't fact-check.

I let it go.

[interviewer] Why did he create Jed Creek?

I suspect

he had aroused enough suspicion
about Jamison Bachman

that he had to find another identity.

[menacing music playing]

[Arleen] You know, I met Jamison in 2005.

I used to see him,
you know, in the park with his dog.

We started talking a bit.

And I thought,
"Wow, he was this educated guy,

nice-looking,
very handsome, fun to be with."

We were friends at that point,

and then we became,
you know, more intimate.

We became intimate.

And I fell for him.

I just fell for him.

[suspenseful music playing]

Yeah, it was very fun.
He had a good sense of humor.

We'd go to dinner.

You know, he liked Mexican food.
I love Mexican food.

And we had a lot of good times.

He told me he had a law degree,
but he had failed the bar.

And then he got a job
as a teacher at a private school.

He taught history.
I think eight to ten years old.

They allowed him to live in the house

that was on the property
next to the school.

It was a nice place,
and he was very happy about it.

[sinister music playing]

But I'd say about
three or four months into the job,

he started getting complaints.

The homework was too difficult.

They didn't understand,
and he would get frustrated with them.

Just, you know, hard on them.

He thought he was gonna run the school.
He was gonna be the next dean.

And I looked at him, and I said,

"You know, I think
you're getting ahead of yourself here."

"I don't think that's gonna happen."

[menacing music playing]

And he really became really angry with me,

and his eyes sort of changed.

You know, became dark.

And he was just glaring at me,
and I got really scared.

And I said, "I'm leaving."

[tense music playing]

[Arleen] That was definitely
the first time that I was afraid of him.

And I swore I wasn't gonna have
anything to do with him after that.

But he called me about three weeks later,

said he was really sorry,

and he's just going through
a lot of things mentally.

And he just sucked me right back in.

[suspenseful music playing]

Shortly after, they let him go,
and Jamison, he was gonna be homeless.

He was gonna try to stay there
and not pay rent.

And they put
an eviction notice on the door.

And he said, "I don't have to leave."

And I said,
"Look, Jamison, you have to leave."

"They want you out of here,
and they will get you out of here."

And I told him he could stay with me
for a couple months

till he got on his feet.

Yeah, I just wanted
to help him out as a friend.

I cared about him and his dog,
and I kind of felt bad for him.

I thought he was
just having a really hard time.

[train rattling]

That's the train that rattles the windows.

And that's my old building.

We had a retail hobby store
on the ground floor,

and I had two apartments upstairs
that I rented.

Arleen was one of the tenants,
and Arleen brought in Jamison Bachman.

And the rest is history.

In June of 2006,

Jamison Bachman pulled up with a U-Haul
and moved into the apartment.

Arleen was a great tenant.

I thought, "She is letting this person
move into her apartment,"

so I figured everything was okay.

[Arleen] So he brought his stuff.
He didn't have that much stuff.

And his dog, and then,
"Oh, I have my cats," at the time.

And it became kind of crowded,
my apartment.

You know, it was a big place.

Uh...

You know, I came home the next day,
and my whole apartment was rearranged.

The couch was no longer
on the side of the wall.

It was in the middle of the room.

[discordant music playing]

The furniture was
just completely changed around.

[interviewer] After day one?

Yeah.

I walked in, and I was like,
"What the hell?"

And he's like, "Oh, don't you like it?"
And I said, "No, I hate it!"

And I thought,
"Wow, this is really bizarre."

[expectant music playing]

[Peter] Within a few weeks,

there started to be
a lot of complaints from Jamison.

The window wouldn't stay up.

Stove was a problem.
There were always problems.

I was wondering, "Why is he complaining?"

"He's not even the actual tenant
in the building."

He did pay, like, one month's rent,

and I think he paid,
like, a half month's rent.

I was like, "Jamison, what's going on?"

"You're not finding work,
and my landlord's getting pissed off."

And I said, "You've got this law degree."

"Why don't you try to pass the bar
and do something with your life?"

"Well, I can't afford it."

"And I can't study in this place.
It's too noisy."

[train horn blaring]

And he was like, "Oh, you know,
please just give me more time."

"I promise I'll be out of here."

"And what am I gonna do with my dog?
I have nowhere to go."

He made me feel bad.

Like I said, I cared about him.

In the back of my mind,
I thought, "He'll be out of here soon."

[ominous music playing]

[Arleen] And the next thing I knew,
mail was coming.

His mail was coming to the building.

When I saw the mail, I just...

I thought, "Oh, my God. I'm in trouble."

That's when it hit me.
"I'm never gonna get rid of this guy."

I went to the police. They didn't help me.

I said, "Look,
how do I get rid of this guy?"

"He won't leave."

And they said, "Look, you can't..."
I said, "I wanna change the locks."

And they said,
"You can't do that. They'll arrest you."

Once they're in that property,
in some cases,

it's very hard
to get them out of that property

without legally evicting them.

[reporter] The eviction process
is complex, takes time,

and is more confusing when it's not
a traditional landlord/tenant situation

where someone's paying rent.

Jamison knew every law in the book
as far as renting and that type of stuff.

[Arleen] He said, "You know what?"

"This is my home
just as much as it is yours."

"And... I'm not leaving."

[dark music playing]

Days turned into weeks,

weeks turned into months,
months turned into years.

By the second year, we were done.

No more relationship.

And then when, you know, we...

I didn't want
anything to do with him anymore.

I went off to the spare room.

It was a tiny room,
but I was able to sleep there.

I'd come out to use the bathroom

or the kitchen
to get something to eat or drink.

And I'd go back into the room.

That's pretty much where I lived.

[interviewer] Put out of your own bedroom,
your own bed.

Yeah. Yeah. I didn't wanna sleep with him.

I told him, "I don't want you here.
I don't want you in my bed."

"I don't want you in my house anymore.
I want you to leave." But he wouldn't.

It was just like
coming home to this monster.

You know, I remember being on the street,
and looking up, and seeing the lights,

and I'm thinking, "My animals, my things..."

You know, he's in my home,

taking control of my... everything.

[menacing music playing]

To this day, I don't understand, like,
what was his main purpose in life?

To hurt people?

Something must've happened
when he was a kid.

Or he was just born that way.

Jamison... well, I called him "Jammy."

He always had a bad temper.
When we were little kids, he always did.

We had been friends
since we were seven years old

in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania,
which is just outside of Philadelphia.

Jammy and I were particularly close,

best friends.

We would spend all of recess
in elementary school

just sitting and talking.

And pretending.

Growing up, he talked about
how difficult it was,

how terrible things were with his family,

how brutal his father could be.

His mother described his father
as "an animal" sometimes.

I don't know exactly what that meant,

but a wife doesn't say that
about her husband

unless things aren't good.

[bittersweet string music playing]

[Bob B.] I felt very sympathetic for him

because he also talked about
how people had expectations,

perhaps unrealistic expectations of him.

And everyone was so disappointed.

When we later reconnected,

he would be very angry
over things that he saw as injustices.

[bittersweet string music continues]

He had this sense of righteous indignation

about things
that were unfair in the world.

He just could not abide by a bully.

And for him
to become an obvious bully himself...

this is one of these contradictions
that I can't understand,

but I know that
they were both in that same person.

I've never been able
to think of Jamison as evil.

This is somebody
that I knew on a different level.

He did some horrible things,

and it just escalated,
and got more and more horrible.

[intriguing music playing]

[Sonia] I first came across
an advertisement

that they were gonna build condos
one block from the beach.

And Caribbean as I am, I love the beach.

You see the view of the ocean,
and it's massive.

It's beautiful over there.

When I first went to see it,

it was just an abandoned lot
and a blueprint.

And I took a chance on it.

And I ended up taking out a loan
from my pension for that down payment.

My partner and I
had separated after ten years.

And she had been paying
part of the mortgage.

When that relationship dissolved,
I had to find myself another roommate.

I had to be paying my mortgage,
or I would lose my home.

I ended up putting something on Craigslist

regarding renting the room
for $700 a month.

And two people answered the Craigslist.

One was the successful lawyer.

On the other hand, was a young couple
with their young child.

And so the obvious choice for me
was to go with the mature lawyer.

Jamison Bachman.

And so we agreed
that he was gonna come over

to look at the apartment
the next day, Saturday.

And that's exactly what happened.
He called me, and he goes, "Oh, I'm here!"

And when I step out, I see him.
He goes, "Oh, hi! I'm Jamison!"

I noticed that the odd thing on the block
was, "Oh, a U-Haul across the street."

And I looked at that U-Haul, and he goes,
"Oh, yeah, I hope you don't mind."

"I'm ready to move in now."

"I'm ready to move in now.
I have the security."

"I have the rent, cash."

He told me that he couldn't take

any more living with his ex-girlfriend,

and he's grateful, because otherwise,

he would have to be
sleeping in that U-Haul.

I said, "Wow, this is going kind of fast."

"But God must be in my favor," I said.

[laughing] Because here I am
really struggling,

and this person comes with cash.

I said, "Perfect!"

"I can pay my mortgage for the month
and start getting on track."

'Cause this was crucial for me
to save my home.

[tense music playing]

[Sonia] And so
he set himself up in the room.

And I said, "You have such a big U-Haul.
Where is your bedroom set?"

And he said, "I sleep on the floor.
This is comfortable for me."

[discordant music playing]

[Sonia] He moved in February of 2012,

and for the first three months,
things were great.

We really got along well.

He was cordial.

It was important to me
of how he treated his animals, too,

because I'm a licensed nurse for animals.

He had a dog, which was Zachary,

and he also had two cats.

Emma and Abigail.

He had a very deep connection
with his animals,

and I think this is why we got along.

Until July-August,

he did not pay me any rent.

I told him, "If you don't pay me,

I'm gonna have to take
some legal actions."

And he said, "No, no, I understand."

"You're not gonna believe this,

but I did my tutoring work,

and would you believe that
they sent the check to the wrong place?"

"The wrong address."

And in my mind, I said,
"Here starts the bullshit."

- [tense music playing]
- [Sonia] Tension started building

because now Sonia
had to pick up the pieces

that he wasn't filling in.

Aside from my full-time job,

I had to take more hours
of the midnight shift.

I was exhausted.

I mean, I was losing my hair,

and he was making my life miserable.

Miserable.

September was when I went to the court,

and I filed paperwork for eviction.

And I ask, "Can I just go ahead one day
and just change the lock

so that he doesn't come back in
'cause he's not paying?"

She said, "You can't do that."

[interviewer] Why not?

He has the right to stay
at that apartment for three months

until he is legally evicted.

Police often can't do anything
about these situations

until homeowners evict the squatters.

[reporter] If you don't
stop squatters right away,

it can take months to get them out.

There's a process, and the weird thing is,
it protects them, or buys them more time.

They know eviction law, in some cases,

as well as many attorneys.

You'd think there'd be something
to stop them, but apparently there's not.

[dark music playing]

[Sonia] So I was becoming desperate.

I told Jamison, "Next month,
since you haven't pulled through,

I need to now rent my living room."

And I actually put up a tent
to make literally a room,

and a woman moved in
with her two little dogs.

We had now three dogs, and three cats,

and one bathroom.

One or two days later,

I got a call at work from the new roommate

saying, "Sonia,

I'm gonna need to call the police."

And she said, "Jamison is yelling at me

that my dogs
are stinking up the apartment."

"He's getting really
close and verbal to my face."

So I started becoming scared.

And then she also said, "You know
that window that's inside my tent?"

"I always close that window
before I leave to work."

"And when I came home today...

that window was wide open."

And I said,
"If you have to call the police,

if you feel threatened,
you go right ahead."

"I'm gonna be... I'm on my way."

So then when I came in, I said,

"You didn't have any right
to go into her space."

He said, "I don't give a f*ck about her."

[menacing music playing]

[Sonia] Things changed drastically
at that point.

He put down the hand that said,

"Whoever comes in here
is not gonna be comfortable with me."

And it was like
a domino effect after that.

The new roommate, she said,

"You know, I realize
this is not gonna work out."

Now I really felt scared

because now who can I rent to?

Who am I gonna put in here?

I didn't trust that I would do it in time
to save my home.

Once he was served
with the eviction papers,

that's when
he started becoming more vocal,

and his tone was more angry towards me.

I remember being in the kitchen,
and he came in, and he goes,

"You're gonna be very sorry
that you served me with those papers."

"You better get a good lawyer
because I'm gonna take your home."

So I now had to lock my door.

I put even something... a chair at my door

because I was fearful that he can come in
and do something to me.

Now this person who I thought I knew...

is just next door in that bedroom,

and I'm in this bedroom,

and he could snap at any time.

[discordant music playing]

[sighs]

Brings back...

memories.

This is my high school yearbook from 1974.

Kind of hoped
I'd forgotten all these pictures.

Thank you for handing me this.

So I'm gonna look
for Jamison Bachman's picture.

There he is.

That's a good picture of him.

He just looks like the Jamison I remember.

It doesn't say to me
this is somebody whose life went bad.

That's how I remember him.

Just Jammy.

I really looked up to him
because he just had a cool about himself.

He was just together.

Because he had an older brother,

I think that's where
some of his self-confidence came from.

Jamison was a good student.

Relatively popular.

I really looked up to him

because he just had
the panache that I didn't have.

But there was one particular incident

when we were in high school.

We were just
knocking the tennis ball around one day.

I was mentioning the girls in high school
that, "Oh, I'd love to go out with her."

Or he'd say, "I went out with her.
I went out with her."

"And I went out with so-and-so."

For every name I threw out,
he said he'd been out with them.

I didn't call bullshit at the time.
I knew it wasn't true.

But it really stuck with me.

[tense music playing]

[Bob F.] Jamison had
all the ingredients for success.

He was smart. He was charming.
He was good-looking.

When we graduated from high school,
Jamison was the superstar.

He was gonna go out and be successful.

I think he wanted to be a lawyer.

I went off to a college in Ohio,
and Jamison went off to Tulane University.

Jamison and I reconnected
in the summer of my sophomore year.

My life had taken off in a positive way,

and he just kind of seemed stalled,
and dark, and morose.

Very different than the Jamison
I had known since age three

and graduated from high school with.

He told me he was having dinner one night
when he was at Tulane...

at a fraternity house with somebody
we had gone to high school with.

And in the middle of the meal,

somebody came out of the kitchen
with a meat cleaver

and decapitated this friend.

[discordant music playing]

[Bob F.] He had embellished some things,
but it was mostly true.

And I could not believe it.

This was a kid who'd gone
from being upbeat and positive

to all of a sudden being very dark,
very paranoid.

That's the kind of traumatic,
life-changing event

that changes your whole worldview.

[interviewer] But do you think that
witnessing that incident

justifies all that he did?

Well, you cannot justify what he did.

[tense music playing]

Inside the dining room area,
there were signs of a violent struggle.

You could see blood smears
across the floor,

down to where
the victim's body was hidden.

There were blood trails

and blood spatter smears

all over the floor.

As he walked out,

he began swinging an axe,

fighting with officers at the scene.

It was a scene of violence.

[discordant music playing]

[dark music playing]