A California husband and wife, known as the “landlords from hell” will be sentenced to state prison according to the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office.
Kip Macy, 38, and his wife, Nicole Macy, 37, pleaded guilty to two felony counts of residential burglary, one felony count of stalking and one felony count of attempted grand theft.
The couple owned an apartment building in San Francisco. They wanted to evict their tenants so they could renovate the building and sell the units individually. Deputy District Attorney George Gascon stated, “the actions of these defendants are so outlandish and brazen that it sounds like the plot line of a horror movie.”
The landlords’ actions ranged from cutting holes in the floor of one victim’s living room with a power saw while he was inside the apartment to soaking victims’ beds, clothes and electronics with ammonia.
“The defendants also cut multiple sections out of the joists below the victim’s floors, in an apparent attempt to make the floor collapse while people were standing on it,” the DA’s office wrote in a news release. “Before cutting the joists, Nicole Macy had asked a Department of Building Inspector which beam she would need to cut to make the building structurally unsound in order to red tag the building and order all tenants out.”
Nicole Macy sent fraudulent emails to the civil attorney of one of their tenant victims, pretending to be the victim and firing her attorney.
In another incident, she sent fraudulent emails to her own civil attorney in which she pretended to be same victim and threatened to “kidnap and dismember the attorney’s children,” the DA’s office said.
The laundry list of offenses the two were accused of also included purchasing a semi-automatic handgun and threatening to shoot the building manager, changing locks, cutting phone lines, shutting off utilities, removing a victims’ belongings from their apartment and destroying them, multiple burglaries and threatening letters to victims.
The events took place from September 2005 to December 2007.
The couple were charged with felonies in April 2008, but posted bail and ran away to Italy, authorities said. They were taken into custody in Italy in May 2012 and extradited back to the U.S. After pleading guilty to four felony counts on June 18th, the couple are scheduled to be sentenced to four years and four months in state prison on Aug. 22.