House For Sale: Explosive Features Included (Scary!)

Somebody rigged this house to explode
when a light switch was flipped, police said.
Luckily, an electrician found the problem
before the switch was flipped.  

Some tenants moved out of a house last Sunday in the Boston suburb of Milton.

The owner of the place wanted to sell the building and hired an electrician to see whether everything was up to snuff before putting the place on the market.  

It was not up to snuff.

It turns out somebody rigged the house so that, if somebody flipped a certain light switch, the house would explode.

The Boston Globe picks up the story:

"When officers arrived, an electrician and the homeowner's attorney were at the house, said Milton Police Chief Richard Wells. 

The electrician was there, following a failed home inspection the week before, when he discovered what he told the police was 'an IED' - an improvised explosive device - i the form of a plastic jug full of accelerant and wired to explode when a light switch was flipped, Wells said."

Boy, I bet that electrician was glad he didn't flip that light switch when he was poking around, looking for wiring issues.

Especially since the explosive stuff was well hidden. It was behind a recently replastered wall inside a closet.

Lindel Williams, who owns the property said the most recent tenants, a husband, wife and daughter moved out last weekend after living there since June.

Police are now looking for that family, as they are the proverbial persons of interest.  Neighbors basically said the people who lived there were quiet and kept to themselves. (All the potentially scary people in the world are quiet and keep to themselves, aren't they?)

Also, before this, somebody clogged all the house's drains with cement.

Of course, we don't yet know if the former tenants were behind all this handiwork.

But if the tenants were behind this, I hope they make their names public. I wouldn't want to so much as rent a video to these clowns, much less a house.

Person Who Lost Out On Dream House Unleashes Nightmare On New Owners

Kathy Rowe in court with her attorney
after being caught harassing a couple who
outbid her on a house she wanted.  

The ABC show 20/20 did a piece on a woman in California who was outbid when trying to buy a house she really, really wanted.

I can understand her disappointment. But maybe she went a teensy bit too far on how she reacted to the disappointment.

ABC quoted Kathy Rowe thusly:

"I had put so much hope into this house......When I walked in, it felt like my house...its almst like, you know you hear bluebirds sing and music play. I walked in, it was my house."

Well, no it wasn't. It belong to Janice Ruhter and Jerry Rice, a married couple, and their yoiung child and another baby on the way. The couple poured their life savins into the house in a very nice Carmel Valley California neighborhood.

Not long after Ruhter and Rice moved in, strange things started to happen, ABC says:

"They received $1,000 worth of bills for adult diapers and magazine subscriptions that they never ordered. They found their house re-listed for sale online, and buyers started showing up in their yard. There was an online ad for a New Year's Eve party at their house that they said they never planned.

'You get scared, you know, that's your house. It should be a place of safety,' Ruhter said. 'With that out there, the safety just disappears.'

"Then things got worse One Valentine's Day, Rice said the neighbors' wives were sent Valentine's Day cards, with his name signed on the cards. Then Rice discovered online posts advertising sex with his wife telling strangers to just show up at the house during the day."

Now, that's extremely troubling. With that, Rowe could have easily set up a situation where Ruhter could have been raped or even worse.

This is the house Kathy Rowe really, really
wanted.  

If People magazine's account is true, what Rowe did was very, VERY scary:

"In email correspondences with men, Rowe, posing as Ruhter, wrote that she had fantasies of being raped while her husband was at work.

'I love to be surprised and have a man just show up at my door and force his way in the door and on me, totally taking me while I say no,' she wrote to one ma who responded to her posting."

Rice called police who investigated and figured out Rowe was behind all this. Surely Rice and Ruhter were relieved. I bet the neighbors were too. After all, upon the arrest of Rowe, the neighbors surely figured out the couple who actually owned the house were pretty normal.

I bet the neighbors were glad they didn't have Rowe as a neighbor. Who knows what she would have done had one of those neighbors gotten on her wrong side.

Rowe pleaded guilty to stalking in November.  A few weeks ago, she was sentenced to a year of home electronic surveillance, five years of probation and ordered to stay away from the Rice and Ruhter and their family for ten years.

Rowe told ABC: "I may be the least liked person in San Diego County....a horrible, evil person wanted to harm this nice couple. I did not intend to harm them."

Didn't intend to harm them?!?!  How is harassing them, complicating their lives and putting them in danger not harming them?

Rowe's attorney said she was stressed over caring or a severaly disabled teenage daughter and snapped.

Anyway, if Rowe is house hunting anywhere near you in the future, and you outbid her on a property, better just let her buy the place and look elsewhere. Your life will be easier if you do.

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Lots Of Vehicle Traffic Inside This Indiana Home

Given the speed demons that race up and down the road in front of my house in St. Albans, Vermont, I'm glad the house is set far back from the road, with a ravine between the yard and the road.

The inside of an Indiana house after it was hit by
a car on Sunday, the 11th time in 30 years it's happened.  

At least nobody is going to drive through my house. Probably.

The same can't be said for a house in Indiana, which has been struck by cars 11 times in the past 30 years.

The most recent crash came when the occupants were minding their own business, trying to watch a football game on TV.

It seems there's a set of railroad tracks nearby. A train starts to come, and rather than sit and wait for the train, motorists zoom over the crossing.

Problem is, once they get past the tracks they become pretty much airborne, can't stop and hit the house.

The people living there say they don't want to move. They have been lobbying the city hard for a stop sign that migh encourage people to slow down. But I'm not optimistic. People who want to beat a train are not going to be stymied by a stop sign.

So, the poor unfortunate house will probably continue to be almost as busy as the Long Island Expressway at rush hour.