TACOMA, WA --By KING-TV © 2007 KING.
found at firstcoastnews.com
An ad placed on Craig's List is being blamed for the ransacking of a
Tacoma woman's home.
Vandals ripped apart the house after an ad posted on the internet bulletin
board invited people to take anything they wanted from inside.
Now police and the home's owner are trying to find out who posted the ad,
and why.
"It hurts. I was attached to this home because it used to be my
mom's," says Laurie Raye.
A phone caller alerted Raye to the destruction.
She soon walked through her garbage strewn front yard to find her house
dismantled.
From the light fixtures to the hot water heater everything is gone...including
the kitchen sink.
Her neighbors later reported seeing strangers hauling stuff away from her
home, seemingly looking for salvage material.
The ad was posted on Craig's List last weekend.
An off-duty Tacoma police officer noticed the Craig's List ad last week
inviting people to enter the unlocked house and take whatever they wanted.
Later, that same officer noticed the ad was flagged and canceled after a
reported burglary at the house.
"We've had a lot of scams off of Craig's List. We've had prostitution
things happen, rental scams, fraudulent activity. In this case, it appeared
the items were going to be given away, but they were not," says Tacoma
Police Investigator Gretchen Ellis.
Raye believes the unknown person who posted the ad carries a personal grudge
against her, but that person also conned unsuspecting people into taking part.
When Raye contacted Craig's List she received an email back saying they can't
release information about who posted the ad without a subpoena or search
warrant.
Raye uses the house as a rental property and recently evicted the tenants. So
far they have not been named suspects.
Hmm. Sherlock Holmes would be stumped by this one.
Landlord evicts tenants, they leave all their junk.
Landlord places ad on CL.
Old tenants see ad for their old place whilst looking for a new place to live, and pay the neighbor kids $5 to go trash the place.
You really have to be fairly naive to think an unattended house is safe.
She's the landlord and the house was between tenants. I think this was the doing of a bitter ex tenant.
“There’s so much inventory out there that the buyer can pick and choose,” said Susan Sirles Fidler, a Realtor at Re/Max 10, Oak Lawn. But she cautioned, “The stuff that’s almost free is almost free because it’s going to cost you an arm and a leg to put it back together. It’s not buyer beware as much as buyer be smart.”
