[tense music]
♪ ♪
- I heard something behind me.
- From the base of my stairs,
I could hear my attic door being opened.
- He had used the bathroom inside a gift bag.
Air freshener was there to cover up the smell.
- And that's when the bad part hit, to me.
♪ ♪
[sniffles, exhales sharply]
- "he's gonna shoot me right here,
And I'm gonna die."
♪ ♪
- Man found hiding between a family's walls.
- Intruder secretly living inside her attic.
- Man slithers out from under home.
- Make sure your crawl spaces are locked.
- I hear footsteps.
I'm vulnerable, naked, and someone is in my house.
- There was somebody violating my home.
- I want to believe it's in my head.
- It's a giant man's handprint.
- You came into my home. You invaded my privacy.
[person screams]
- We had a phrogger in our house.
♪ ♪
- In 2019, I'm living in almont, michigan,
About 45 miles north of detroit.
♪ ♪
It's a very small town. It's very country.
Very peaceful to live in almont--
Very quiet, never lock your doors,
That kind of city.
I have a house on two acres.
The house is a tri-level--
A 2 1/2-car extended garage.
On the entry level is a laundry room,
A bathroom, kitchen, dining room, living room.
The lower level is one big family room and a coat closet.
At the back of the closet is our crawl space.
And the upper level is four bedrooms and a bathroom.
The property has a pond, two sheds, a pool,
Ravines in the front, a lot of wildlife.
♪ ♪
We moved from the city to almont for the country life,
For peace and quiet, safer place to live,
Better schools, that kind of stuff.
- In 2019, my children were living with my mom.
My mom helped me raise my children for ten years,
And they loved it there.
And it was just really a good bonding time for them,
Family time.
- I actually have 15 grandchildren,
But I had custody of three of them.
Two of them are boys and one of them are a girl.
And at that time, they were 10, 12, and 14.
My ex-husband and I had been divorced for five years,
But we were on friendly terms, and we kept in touch.
We had a lot of grandchildren and children together.
And over the holidays,
My ex-husband had stayed at my house for a few weeks
Because my house is one of those houses
Where everybody comes and stays for days, weekends,
Weeks on end.
♪ ♪
- Her house has always been my home away from home.
There's so much to do.
You know, the kids are all there.
Everything is lively. It's happening.
And I get there, and I don't want to leave.
[laughs]
Shelly and I met when I was three.
We became un-separable.
- She is actually more like my sister.
She's my family.
- She's a lot of fun.
She's very adventurous,
And she has such a huge heart.
- She lives in warren, michigan,
Which is about 40 miles away.
- But we message each other every day.
I don't think that there's a day
That doesn't go by that I don't hear from her.
- She's the greatest person. She really is.
♪ ♪
- There was just so much love in that house.
♪ ♪
- It was a great place to live
For a while.
♪ ♪
I'm a mail carrier for the united states postal service.
♪ ♪
The couple months after christmas
Is still usually busy season for the post office
Because of the large amount of returns.
♪ ♪
It's exhausting.
So, one day, in the middle of our busy season,
I started to notice some things around the house.
I came home from work after working 12 hours,
And I opened up the refrigerator
To grab a vodka cocktail,
And it wasn't there.
♪ ♪
I just chalked it up as to I probably drank them all,
Being as I walk around like a zombie
From working 60-plus hours a week.
So I just brushed it off.
♪ ♪
A typical morning at the house is very hectic.
It's trying to get them out of bed,
Trying to get the dogs fed,
Get the kids dressed, get myself dressed,
Drink some coffee... [chuckles]
Get all their stuff ready for school,
And the bus does pick them up in front of the home.
I went into the bathroom,
And I'm looking for air freshener.
I had just put a brand-new can
In the bathroom two days prior,
And I couldn't find it.
I just thought, "okay, well, one of the kids took it."
So the next day when the kids had got up,
I asked them, I'm like,
"what did you guys do with the air freshener?"
And they all said they didn't touch it, so...
But that's normal for teenagers to say they didn't do anything.
♪ ♪
So I proceeded to look through their bedrooms.
♪ ♪
- She's awesome with my kids.
She is their second mom. They call her "mom," too.
She puts them before anything else in her life.
- They're a handful, and they do keep me going,
But I love them to death.
Kids lose things.
They just put things in random places.
I never found the air freshener.
♪ ♪
Over the course of a couple days,
I was looking for cereal,
Cheese sticks,
And ramen noodles that had just seemed to all disappear.
♪ ♪
I'd just bought the cereal, and I asked the kids,
"did you guys eat a whole box of cereal?"
And they're like, "we didn't touch the cereal, nana."
So I just let it go,
Because, like, sometimes the youngest one,
He'll sit and eat three or four bowls of cereal.
I just assumed that he told me he didn't eat it
So that he, you know, wouldn't be in trouble,
Which he wouldn't have been, but children just tell stories.
♪ ♪
[dogs barking]
One night I was in bed, and the dogs started barking.
[barking continues]
I went downstairs to check out why they were barking.
They bark a lot,
And anybody walking by with another dog,
Any deer in the backyard at the pond,
Any other thing that they happen to see
That we don't at night, they go crazy.
[barking continues]
I didn't see anything.
After a few minutes, they stopped.
We lived on two acres with a pond,
So I just assumed it was a deer, a raccoon,
You know, something like that.
♪ ♪
So I went upstairs and went back to bed.
♪ ♪
It happened again, like, two hours later.
[dogs barking]
And then I sent the kids downstairs.
So they went downstairs, and they said
They just told the dogs to stop barking,
And they did.
♪ ♪
On February 20th, early in the morning,
The house was noisy.
Three kids, three dogs, a cat, yeah.
So I was outside drinking coffee.
♪ ♪
And I noticed that there were some footprints
And also bike tire tracks
Leading from the shed to the road.
♪ ♪
And I just thought that the kids had went in there
To get a sled or something.
♪ ♪
The bus came, and the kids got on the bus.
Being a mail carrier in michigan in February is hard.
It's layers and layers of clothes,
Ice, snow.
I usually wear, like, four layers of clothes.
I noticed it was 12 degrees outside.
♪ ♪
So I went upstairs to my bedroom
To put on more layers of clothes.
♪ ♪
I was dressing, and I heard something behind me.
[gun cocks]
♪ ♪
And I turned around.
♪ ♪
And it's my ex-husband.
♪ ♪
And I know I'm in trouble.
He had a gun in his hand.
[voice breaking] and in my head,
I just thought and I felt like,
"he's gonna shoot me right here, and I'm gonna die."
[gun cocks] - I turned around...
[tense music]
And it's my ex-husband.
And he said, "say your prayers, bitch.
We're both gonna die today."
♪ ♪
And he pointed it directly at my head.
♪ ♪
- My stepdad was loving, caring.
Just thinking about them and how long they've been together
In their relationship,
I would've just never pictured that happening.
♪ ♪
- We had been married twice.
Once when I was 19 years old,
We were married for four years,
And then we remarried again in 2006.
And we got a divorce in 2015.
♪ ♪
When I looked into his eyes, I seen nothing--
No feeling, no emotion.
He was not the man that I knew
And that I had loved for so many years.
♪ ♪
He had me go downstairs.
♪ ♪
He sat me at the dining room table.
♪ ♪
And he took my cell phone.
♪ ♪
And he threw my cell phone
Up on top of the kitchen cabinets.
♪ ♪
I, at that point, tried to run out my backdoor.
♪ ♪
He caught me by the back of my hoodie.
He sat me back down at the table.
♪ ♪
He put the gun to my head. [gun cocks]
And he cocked the gun, and he told me
If I tried that again
That my brains were gonna be all over the wall.
♪ ♪
He barricaded the back door
With the rest of the dining room chairs
So that I couldn't try to run again.
♪ ♪
And he's pacing, waving the gun around.
He just told me he wanted answers
To why I didn't want to be with him.
♪ ♪
I didn't have answers, and I'm just in total shock.
♪ ♪
Then I ask him, "can I get something to eat?
Can I make a bagel?"
I had an ulterior motive.
My grandson's phone was sitting over by the toaster oven.
♪ ♪
And I tried to get the phone.
♪ ♪
He saw me. He got really angry.
He took that phone also,
And he threw it on top of the kitchen cabinets.
At that point, I was trying to talk to him.
I'm, like, telling him, "you can't let these kids,
The grandkids, come home and find me dead."
♪ ♪
"you can't do that to them."
- I think it's just so selfless to think about them
And not herself, but she always does that, though.
She puts them before anything else in her life.
- I was trying to get to him through the kids
To make him at least try to feel something
Because he loved those kids, and I knew this.
♪ ♪
[sniffles] so...
At that point, he told me
That I needed to roll a bunch of cigarettes
Because it was gonna be a long day.
♪ ♪
So he gave me the rolling machine,
Tobacco and tubes
In which I just set and rolled cigarettes
While he paced the kitchen with the gun.
♪ ♪
He handed me my phone back, and he told me
To cash app the money in my bank account
To his cash app card.
♪ ♪
I never connect my phone to the wi-fi
Because the kids suck it up with their games.
So, when I did it,
In little letters across the bottom,
It said "waiting for wi-fi connection."
So the money had never actually transferred.
He thought that it did.
♪ ♪
At that point, he told me to grab a coat.
♪ ♪
And he had the gun in his pocket.
♪ ♪
He had me walk to the shed
And get his bike...
That it was hidden behind my shed.
♪ ♪
And he told me if I tried to run or scream...
That he would just shoot me.
♪ ♪
He had me load his bicycle into my van.
He had me go back into the house.
♪ ♪
Told me to take off my coat,
And then he told me I needed to go downstairs
Into the crawl space.
♪ ♪
I went downstairs.
I opened the door to the crawl space,
And he told me I needed to go left.
I needed to crawl and not look back.
♪ ♪
[voice breaking] and in my head,
I just thought and I felt like,
"he's gonna shoot me right here
"because he just doesn't want
To look at my face when he does it."
[sniffles]
So I'm just waiting for the shot.
I'm just waiting to be shot.
I'm crawling to the wall like he told me.
♪ ♪
He had crawled in, and he wanted me
Nowhere near the door apparently.
And he retrieved a backpack he had in there.
♪ ♪
At that point, I realized that he had been in my house.
I had no clue.
That was the most horrible feeling.
[sniffles]
Everything that was missing was there.
The empty bottles of vodka that I was missing,
The empty cup of ramen noodles,
The empty cereal box.
He had used the bathroom inside a gift bag.
♪ ♪
Air freshener was there.
It was more than likely being used to cover up the smell.
I believe that he was just up and roaming the house,
Doing whatever he wanted while we were gone.
So he crawled back out.
He told me to crawl out backwards,
Because the crawl space is only three feet high.
And I crawled back out,
And he had me go back upstairs.
And he's pulling the backpack out on the counter,
And he's pulling food
That he had taken out of my refrigerator
And my cabinets,
And he starts laughing at me and telling me how stupid I was
That I didn't even know that he was taking the food...
[sniffles] and that he was in my house.
♪ ♪
And then he told me...
♪ ♪
[sniffles] to make some sandwiches,
Because we were leaving.
So... [sniffles]
I made about six sandwiches,
And he put them into his little backpack.
♪ ♪
He told me to get a warm coat.
♪ ♪
And I grabbed the coat
That had the second key to my van in it.
Then we walked out the back door,
And he told me
To climb into the back of the van and lay down.
And if I drew any attention to myself again
That he would shoot me.
He pulled out of the driveway.
I was laying in the back floor,
And I'm watching the signs, where we're going.
I know we're going south on m-53.
♪ ♪
[sniffles] I didn't know where we were going.
We'd been driving probably for 20 minutes.
He said, "we're going to detroit."
He didn't gag me or anything.
He just child-locked the doors,
And he's talking to himself...
That he needs to make sure
That the money's there before he gets rid of me.
♪ ♪
We're driving probably for another 20 more minutes,
And we cross into detroit.
I knew exactly where I was at
Because I grew up in warren, which borders detroit.
♪ ♪
He pulled over right past the gas station,
So I knew that was the bank,
And they have a walk-up atm up front.
He was getting out, and he said,
"if I see your head, I will blow your brains out."
♪ ♪
I was just so freaked out at this point.
♪ ♪
And...
At that point, I told myself,
"if you don't get away now, you're gonna die."
I decided that if I was gonna die,
I was gonna die my way.
♪ ♪
So I tried jumping over, and I got my leg caught.
♪ ♪
He seen me in the front seat.
I had managed then to pull the rest of myself over,
And he jumped back to the vehicle.
I put the car into drive.
♪ ♪
And I literally just pulled right out
Into oncoming traffic.
[car horns honking]
♪ ♪
He ran into an alley.
I was very angry and not thinking,
So I started to chase him down.
[tires squealing]
And then I thought,
"what are you doing?" [chuckles]
♪ ♪
So I turned around,
And I drove to my best friend's house,
Who happened to live one mile from where I escaped.
♪ ♪
- My niece came into my bedroom.
She said the mail lady
Was knocking at the door really hard
And she wasn't sure what to do.
And I says, "let the mail lady in."
I'm thinking somebody's chasing her.
♪ ♪
So, you know, we open the door,
And there's my best friend,
Like, crying and, like, just frantic.
I couldn't make out some of the stuff she was saying
Because she was so distraught.
She just told me that,
"my ex-husband tried to kidnap me and murder me."
And I just, like, grabbed her and hugged her.
I said, "we have to call 911."
♪ ♪
- When I called 911,
They asked me for his phone number,
And they started pinging his cell phone.
They told me the area that he was in,
And they asked me if I knew anyplace
In that area that he could be,
And I'm like, "well, that's where his mom lives."
[engine turning over]
I was told to drive to the almont police department.
We went to the house.
They started taking crime scene photos.
Turns out that the footprints in the snow were not the kids.
They were his footprints.
He had actually rode a 10-speed
In the middle of winter 53 miles.
He had mapped out all the back roads
To get to my house
So he wouldn't be caught with that firearm on him.
♪ ♪
We believe he entered the home.
After the kids had come home from school,
They always immediately take the dogs out,
And we live in this little, tiny, small town.
We don't lock doors.
♪ ♪
And they proceeded to go upstairs,
Which is their pattern,
And he knew their pattern.
It's believed that he then entered
And proceeded downstairs to hide in the crawl space.
The next day I just decided
That I could not be in that house any longer.
So I took the kids out of school,
And we just got in the van, and we drove to florida.
♪ ♪
While I was gone, I had a friend of mine
Put a padlock on that crawl space
Because I still couldn't wrap my head
Around that he had been in my home for days
And that I didn't even know it.
♪ ♪
- Nobody felt safe there.
I mean, the kids really didn't even want to stay.
They wouldn't come back until alarm system was put up.
♪ ♪
- My daughter said,
"if papa can do this to nana, mom,
What would a stranger do to us if they came in?"
And she has never been comfortable
In that house since that happened.
♪ ♪
- They later found him
In an alley behind his mother's house.
♪ ♪
- He had a lot of unresolved issues,
Like, with anger, drinking.
He had to have snapped,
Or something had to have, like, really went wrong in his mind
For him to even want to do something like that.
♪ ♪
She's a survivor.
Here you're staring at a gun,
Thinking that your life is gonna end,
And then for you to be so quick-witted.
♪ ♪
Like, "I'm not gonna let this fool do this to me."
That's the friend that I know.
♪ ♪
- She's always been a fighter.
She's always been quick to think.
- I did it for the kids
Because they needed me.
My whole family needed me.
♪ ♪
- My mom is like wonder woman. She's awesome.
♪ ♪
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- My name is paul haynes, and in 2018,
I had my home on north padre island.
♪ ♪
Padre island's about 150 miles long.
It's only about a mile to a mile and a half wide.
- My name is dale rankin, and in 2018,
I was and continue to be,
The publisher of the "island moon newspaper,"
A free weekly on padre island, texas.
The latest census puts us at 10,000.
Out of those, probably about 7,000 are permanent residents.
There are very few people who grew up
On or around the island, and paul is one of them
- Growing up on the island was truly a paradise for a boy.
Riding motocross bikes almost every weekend.
Anything you wanted to do, you had it there.
Everything slows down just a little bit
From the mainland, yeah.
- If you live on the island
And make a living on the island,
You pretty much have to be in the tourist industry,
The maritime industry, or independently wealthy.
Many people own a house.
They travel for work for long periods of time,
And they come back and spend time there.
- Since 2015, I've been working in saudi arabia
As a training coordinator at a petrol chemical plant.
♪ ♪
About every six months,
I was able to come home for a couple weeks.
- We have 16 miles of canals.
So we have 32 miles of waterfront homes.
- Mine faces the main canal,
So it's almost like living on a lake.
I've got a fantastic view.
My town house-- about 1,300 square feet,
And it's a "five town house" building.
I share a wall on both sides.
I'm second from the end.
It's two story and three bedroom.
Well, as soon as you walk in, if you did a u-turn,
You'd be into the downstairs bedroom.
If you didn't, you'd just walk down the hallway
Past the kitchen and into the open living room
Right out to the deck.
Halfway through walking towards the deck,
There's the stairs going up.
At the top of the stairs, you have a third bedroom,
Smaller bedroom, and you make a u-turn
At the top of the stairs heading back towards
The water again, that's the master bedroom.
And you walk out onto the balcony.
I do have an attic.
In the upstairs master closet,
There's a big old attic access door there.
♪ ♪
I was planning my annual trip home for christmas,
And my mom go check up on the place,
You know, a week or two before I come home
Just to straighten up and make sure everything was okay.
And about a week before I was to fly home,
I get a phone call from my mother back home,
And she commenced to scold me
For leaving my downstairs bathroom in such a mess.
She's very stern, strong woman.
She had to deal with my father for 18 years.
And I said, "mother, I haven't been there to make a mess.
It was sparkling when I left. I don't know how it got dirty."
♪ ♪
So she said, "okay, well, I'll get to cleaning it up
'cause it's in pretty bad shape."
A few hours later, I get a call back from her,
And she says, "there's something wrong."
And I said, "what do you mean by 'something wrong?'"
She goes, "the chair that you kept your digital antenna on
Has been moved."
It was in front of the sliding doors,
But now it's over by the fireplace.
She goes, "paul, there's been somebody here."
♪ ♪
So we did a little investigating,
And I went online and checked my water bill,
And sure enough, there was a spike
In the water usage over a several-week period.
♪ ♪
So somebody was using my water,
Maybe outside, but considering the condition
The downstairs bathroom was in, it's highly unlikely.
So, from there, we decided
Somebody had been in there, but we didn't know who.
And now I start to getting scared,
'cause my mom was 80 years old at the time
And there all alone,
Even though mama does pack. [chuckles]
♪ ♪
So, hop on the plane,
Took the grueling trip back home.
♪ ♪
Walked in.
I went upstairs and started noticing things.
My upstairs closet--
Just a couple subtle things had been moved around.
♪ ♪
And I looked up,
And the lock leading to the attic was open.
♪ ♪
Now, I would normally never go up there,
And I couldn't understand any reason
Why my mother would go up there.
She's the only one that's been in the house as far as I knew.
So I concluded she was right.
♪ ♪
There's definitely been somebody there.
So I called the police.
I want a report made.
I wanted it on paper. I want it documented.
And an officer showed up quite quickly.
We went through the house, including the attic,
And we verified everything was clear.
♪ ♪
So the next day, after the 9,000-mile trip
And the 30 hours travel time, first thing you have to do
Is try to figure out a way to unwind.
[engine turning over]
I went for a drive down the beach,
And on padre island, you can drive down the beach.
I came back home a little after lunchtime.
♪ ♪
When I returned,
I see my front door is open about a foot.
It was a door that was still there when I bought the place,
And you could easily open it with a screwdriver.
And I walked up,
Opened the door a little bit more,
Walked in a few feet, had a quick look around,
I walked straight to the base of the stairs.
I almost went up, but I stopped myself right there,
And that's when I made my presence known.
From the base of my stairs,
I could hear my attic door being opened.
[creaking] I heard the springs expand,
I heard the ladder be unfolded, and I could hear people
Scuffling up the ladder into my attic.
I was extremely angry,
And I was ready to take things in my own hand.
[tense music]
- From the base of my stairs,
I could hear my attic door being opened.
[creaking]
I heard the springs expand, I heard the ladder be unfolded,
And I could hear people
Scuffling up the ladder into my attic.
So I decided I was not gonna call the police this time.
I'll handle the situation myself.
I yelled, "I know you're in my home.
I could hear you open the attic door."
I just told them in no uncertain terms,
"it's time for you to go."
I said, "you have two options.
"you can go out the balcony and jump off,
"or I'm gonna go out in the parking lot area,
And you can walk out the front door."
I said, "I believe in second chances.
Here's your chance."
My main goal at that point, maybe as dumb as it was,
I wanted to see where they went.
♪ ♪
They don't want to be seen.
They want to be a shadow. They want to stay that way.
They don't want you to see their face.
That puts the end to everything they're doing.
♪ ♪
I'm on the street side.
They're on the water side at this point.
I could hear them climbing around from my balcony
To my neighbor's balcony on the end.
So they chose the option
To climb onto my neighbor's balcony
And hang off of his, I guess,
And drop down to the lower deck.
And I heard them, boom, boom, boom--three right in a row.
At that point, I was so mad, I couldn't stand it anymore.
So I kind of just moved over enough behind the shrubbery
And the palm trees just to where I could see through them
A little bit, but they couldn't see me.
♪ ♪
So I watched them climb up
On the roof of the building next door.
I don't know if they actually went into that town house.
♪ ♪
My neighbors are only there
About every three to six months,
So they were always empty.
♪ ♪
So it was a couple days later,
And I stopped by the "island moon" office
On padre island.
I wanted to make residents on the island aware of this.
- I'm sitting at my desk, and paul walks up to me
And says that he found some people living in his house
When he came home from saudi arabia.
And he started telling me the story,
And before he got very far, I said,
"well, this story sounds to me
Like it's at your house, not in my office."
So I grabbed the video camera, and off we went.
♪ ♪
I do a weekly story called "the island report"
For a local television affiliate once a week.
I do mostly light stuff,
But I also do hard news when the situation warrants.
♪ ♪
The interest to me is, if 30% of the homes
On the island are not occupied full-time,
This could happen in any one of these houses.
As you drive down the central street,
The houses on both sides are on the water.
So, essentially, it's a dead-end street.
♪ ♪
We pulled up in front, and my first thought was,
"I can see why they picked this place."
It's at the end of cul-de-sac.
It's got a covered walkway
That if you went in here at night and the light wasn't on,
No one would know you were there.
♪ ♪
As we walked into the house,
He started showing me where he was standing
When he first heard noises upstairs.
- After we went through my town house
And I showed him what happened, we went next door
Because I thought they may have been inside
My neighbor's house.
I'm not sure if they were.
My building has five units in it.
I think theirs has six,
But they're about 20 to 25 feet apart.
And that man's unit is on the very end,
So he's got windows on three sides.
He had his camera rolling, and we knocked on that door...
See if we could get a response.
Of course we didn't.
♪ ♪
But the one thing we both noticed, almost simultaneously,
Was the blinds.
♪ ♪
All the blinds, all the way around
Three sides of that particular town house,
Were all the exact same angle--
Not all the way closed, not all the way open,
Just enough where if you were inside,
You could see out, but you could not see in.
♪ ♪
- You could see maybe
An 8th of an inch or so between the blinds.
- Normally, if somebody's not staying there,
They just go ahead and close them.
Through those blinds, you could see
My entire end of the street,
My parking area, the side area, the canal area,
Up and down both sides of the canal.
I'm thinking, "maybe they just saw my vehicle was gone,
"and they thought I had left
Back to the airport to saudi arabia or something."
♪ ♪
- So, while I'm talking to paul out in front of the house,
A lady pulls up in a pickup truck,
And paul tells me that she lives down the street.
So I went over and interviewed her.
And she said that she had seen people coming and going
On the water side of the house in a kayak,
Taking great pains not to make any noise,
To be very careful about how they paddled the kayak
And not talking amongst themselves
As they made their way down the canal.
♪ ♪
- A few days later,
I'm out hanging out with friends for a few hours
Till 11:00, 11:30--
Just down the street, not very far.
♪ ♪
I come home for the evening.
I walk upstairs
And just casually walk into my bedroom,
And shock.
♪ ♪
And that's when the bad part hit, to me.
[sniffles]
[exhales sharply] wow.
[tense music]
- I come home for the evening.
I walk upstairs and just casually walk into my bedroom,
And shock.
♪ ♪
I notice four figures on my balcony.
The hair stands up on your neck, first thing.
That's just a natural, I guess, nerve reaction.
And then you try to comprehend what's going on right now.
It was very dark.
I see four silhouettes.
So I'm like, "am I really seeing this?"
They were on the water side, so there was no lighting.
They were actually backlit
From the lights on the other side of the canal.
When my eyes adjusted to the low light,
I asked, "why are you on my balcony?"
And I'm asking them through sliding glass doors,
And also, my bed is between us.
And immediately the response was,
"well, jeff," which is my next-door neighbor,
Runs an airbnb there.
"jeff said that if paul wouldn't mind,
"since we have so many people staying at his place
"that we could spill over a little bit
Onto your balcony if we needed the room."
And you can climb
From balcony to balcony if you're very careful.
They knew my neighbor's name. They knew my name.
They called me by my name. They knew I was paul.
It was two adult men and two juveniles--
Maybe 11, 12 years old.
And I can't see their faces.
They're just wearing
Normal, everyday clothes you see on the island, you know?
And I said, "jeff told you that?"
So I'm like, "well, I guess he thought maybe I was already
"gone back to saudi arabia, but I'm not.
I'm still here at home."
Right at that moment,
One of the young boys
Raised his arm and had pointed his finger at me,
Said, "he's watching porn."
You know, it dawned on me real quick what was going on.
That boy was trained to do that.
It's almost like they had a script they'd follow
If they got caught in situations like this.
Kid said that to me to shock me,
To give them time to escape.
Of course, all this is rushing
Through your head a mile a minute.
You're like, "what do I do?"
So I very sternly said,
"it's time for you to get off my balcony
And leave my property."
♪ ♪
The two adult men helped the two young boys
From my balcony to my neighbor's balcony,
And then they themselves climbed around.
♪ ♪
And that's the last I saw of them.
[chuckles]
That's what started the nightmares.
♪ ♪
Was that child beaten until he had to learn to say that?
It was almost like that boy was screaming for help.
My childhood was--
Basically I just said to myself,
"that could've been me."
And it just really hit home.
♪ ♪
The next day I called jeff and talked to him about it.
♪ ♪
And he gave nobody permission,
And nobody was supposed to be in his town house that weekend.
After that, there's no doubt in my mind
They were up on that balcony trying to jimmy
My sliding glass door open again
With a screwdriver to get back in.
- After I talked to paul,
I wrote a story in the "island moon,"
And I put it out a couple of days later on television.
♪ ♪
When a story starts out, "I came home from saudi arabia,
And I found people living in my house,"
Then you kind of want to know what comes after that.
[telephone ringing] - I started getting calls.
You know, we seen something over here.
We seen something over there. [telephone ringing]
- I actually talked to at least a dozen homeowners
Who had people living in their houses.
They knew they were there
Because things weren't where they were supposed to be,
But they never really saw them.
♪ ♪
- I was very pleased that people
Were waking up and looking around
And seeing what was going on around them.
♪ ♪
- What it looked to me like happened
Is these people were working
Somewhere on the island in a short-term job.
They couldn't stay in a hotel because it was too expensive.
They thought he had gone back to saudi arabia,
And so they had another six months.
♪ ♪
- Well, I started doing investigating of my own.
How do they know to go to my townhouse?
Every time I come home, I walk out to check the mail.
Even though it didn't go to my house when it's supposed to,
I still check the mail, and there's always a sign
In there that the postman puts, saying "vacant"...
I guess so they don't fill it up with junk mail every day.
Well, that's a big green light.
Just go through the mailboxes and take a look at night
And see which place is vacant.
Watch it for a day or two, move in.
♪ ♪
- The police started putting the word out.
So we had a rash of police calls,
And then over time, the problem mitigated a bit.
I think the word just got out among whoever the people are
That are living in these houses that if you go in there,
You're probably gonna get caught.
♪ ♪
- What affects you may not affect me.
I still don't know why that one moment
Still to this day--
And I'm getting dizzy right now thinking about it--
[voice breaking] has such a strong effect on me.
♪ ♪
It just reminds me how easy it is to manipulate a child.
♪ ♪
- The two adults and the two kids
That were living in paul's house
Have never been identified that I'm aware of.
There really wasn't any way to trace them.
So, wherever they went, we don't know.
♪ ♪
- I remember like it was yesterday,
And I'm hoping this is gonna--
By me telling the world,
Helps it stop.
♪ ♪
- When I was telling people about these strange things,
I didn't feel like I was going crazy
But I felt like I sounded like I was crazy.
- They felt like it was escalating.
It was really scary.
- I think I was in denial at first.
- There's no reason I would be missing
My bathing suit bottoms.
I had the tops, and just the bottoms were missing.
- Oh, my god, a phrogger is watching me sleep.
- When it finally sinks in that someone entered the home
While I was sleeping, it was terrifying.