The Meth Lab, Contractors, House from Hell, and Sasha's Next Case

As some of you may know, I live in a house from hell.  It was cursed from the moment I moved in, if not long before then.  


First of all, it turned out that the house next door to mine was a meth lab.  No one in the neighbourhood suspected a thing... until the fire.  The fire happened 2 months after I moved in here.  It was 4:00 on Friday the 13th of March.  I heard screams and smashing glass, and saw flames, so I called 911.  The dude who was cooking meth ran out of the house wearing just his shorts.  He was on fire and skin was falling off him.  


Meth Dude was airlifted to a special burn victim unit in a New York hospital.  Last I heard, he was on parole awaiting the trial. 


The cops said to me at the time that if I hadn't called 911 when I did, that there were enough explosives in the meth lab to have taken out 6 or 8 houses in the vicinity.  The fire fighters and cops kept my end of teh street closed off until 3:00 pm Sunday.


Not surprisingly, the owners of the meth lab (not the dude cooking the meth) walked away from the house.  The bank now owns it, and they - along with lawyers and insurance companies - have been fighting over who's going to pay to fix it up.


It's been over two years now since the fire, and the repairs/de-contamination of the Meth House are still not done. 
(Plot idea #1)


Then, I found out that the house I had bought had been part of a mortgage fraud, a while before I bought it.  In Sept. 2007 the house sold for $160,000.  Five days later, it sold for $320,000.  The buyer who paid $320K bailed on the mortgage, and in March 2008, the bank foreclosed the mortgage and became the owner of the house.
(Plot idea #2)


Several months later, Mr. W ended up buying the house from the bank for market value.  Mr. W bought the place as a "fixer-upper".  He lived a few blocks away, and worked on this house on weekends.  Eventually, he was offered a job out of town, so he hired a contractor to finish the renovations for him.


The contractor, Mr. S. was either lacking in competence or lacking in integrity, or both. The house looked great, all shiny and new.  However, there were several "behind the scenes" problems with the home, none of which were visible when I had the home inspection. (Home inspections are supposed to be non-invasive, so they don't get to knock down plaster and see what's underneath.) 


Long story short, Mr. S. did a fly by night and was nowhere to be found when the problems became aparent.  There were many issues, and the contractor was only one of the several people involved with the renos and sale of the house who fucked up big time.  On the one hand, Mr. S did the shoddy work, but since he did not work for me (he had been hired by the guy I bought the house from), I didn't really have a lot of recourse with him.  Fast-tracking to the end of this part of the story: lawyers got involved, I got the resolution I wanted, and the house is now fixed.


Two days ago, I got a random email from a lawyer.  She asked me about contact info for Mr. S. saying that her client had given Mr. S a deposit for his work, and had paid in advance for materials, and then she never saw him again...
(Plot idea #3)


Truth really is stranger than fiction...