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00:00What is this place?
00:25Where I used to live.
00:30I miss living here.
00:33This is my home.
00:35This is where I wanted to live.
00:38Do you wish you could turn back the clock?
00:41Yes.
00:52That was a weird question.
00:55I never thought about that before.
00:58Of course I do.
01:01I didn't know.
01:03Yeah.
01:07Yeah.
01:08Yeah.
01:09Yeah.
01:10Yeah.
01:11Yeah.
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01:21Yeah.
01:22Yeah.
01:23In March of 2017, I needed a roommate.
01:46My previous roommate had left,
01:49and my mom was having to fork over money to me.
01:53Keeping up with the Bills.
01:55I love my mom.
01:56I love my mom to death.
01:59But she was on my back, up my ass,
02:03about what are you doing to secure a new roommate?
02:07So I put an ad on Craigslist,
02:10and I interviewed lots of people.
02:15So here enters Red Creek.
02:19Hi, how are you?
02:21How are you? How are you?
02:22Fine, thanks. Thanks for calling back.
02:25No, it's my pleasure.
02:27I'm originally from Philadelphia,
02:29and I haven't lived here since I pretty much went off to college,
02:33but I find Philadelphians to be very difficult.
02:39A lot of flaky people.
02:40I'm not flaky, so...
02:42You're off to a good start.
02:45He was looking to find affordable housing because he was in need of helping his aging mother
02:53and his brother, who had problems with lawsuits.
02:58And he, having a law background, was helping his brother.
03:02I said, so are you a lawyer?
03:05And he said, not currently.
03:08Right now, I am working as a tutor.
03:11It makes sense.
03:12He's traveling.
03:13He's coming from New York into Philadelphia.
03:15He hasn't established a home base yet.
03:19And I could look him up online through Socrates and Plato, his website,
03:24where he offered mentoring and tutoring for school students.
03:28I went online and read the website, and it all looked legit.
03:33I was like, wow.
03:39I know Chestnut Hill fairly well,
03:41but I don't see an address where in Chestnut Hill sort of are you.
03:45Well, okay, so I'm not so comfortable,
03:47because we are just talking right now.
03:50Right, okay.
03:51No, no, that's not...
03:51I'm online, yeah.
03:52I understand.
03:53I'll tell you a little bit about what I have, though.
03:55I remember saying, and I did say,
03:58I'm very uncomfortable.
03:59I'm very uncomfortable with this right now.
04:02I'm just meeting you.
04:03I should have gone with that uncomfortability.
04:13I walked into the Starbucks.
04:16Judd was seated at a table.
04:19He bought me a latte.
04:21He was in khakis.
04:24He had a lacoste shirt.
04:27Clean cut, groomed, kind of tall, dark, handsome.
04:33Judd told me he had a dog.
04:36I was going to go home and get my dog,
04:39and we were going to have the dogs meet.
04:41If the dog's not happy, it's not going to work out.
04:44We went down to the water tower park.
04:49There's a baseball field.
04:50We played in the park.
04:53And the dogs are happy.
04:56So we walked from the water tower down to my apartment,
05:00and the dogs had water and then lied down,
05:04and they were, like, comfortable.
05:07I said, this is great.
05:08You know, the dogs are, look at them.
05:10They're just sleeping.
05:12I said, when would you like to move in?
05:17And he said, well, I'm staying at the Airbnb,
05:19and it's just draining my bank account.
05:22I can write you a check.
05:23I can move in tonight.
05:24So I said, you're going to have to fill out this application.
05:31It's required by the property management.
05:33You have no problems doing that?
05:35No problem at all, Alex.
05:36That's fine.
05:39I trusted everything that he was saying to me.
05:43Clean cut preppy, background in law,
05:46educated, intelligent, tutors people for a living,
05:51mentor with a dog.
05:54So that night, Judd moved in.
06:05He arrived with six or eight Tupperware bins,
06:11a dog, a cat, and a fish in a fish bowl.
06:16He didn't say anything about these things.
06:20I'm allergic to cats.
06:21He reassured me in one breath.
06:26It's not going to be an issue.
06:27You're never going to see the cat.
06:28The cat doesn't come out.
06:29She's quiet and very shy.
06:33The bins got stacked in the corner.
06:44The bedding unfolded.
06:46It was a big comforter, a couple sheets,
06:49a couple pillows, and that was it.
06:51I had given Judd Creek the application that was necessary by the property management company.
07:10I left it out on the table and asked him to fill it out.
07:17And I do remind him,
07:21can you please fill out the paperwork?
07:24I'll get to it, don't worry.
07:25I'll get to it, don't worry.
07:26And I'm like, okay.
07:28It just sat there on the dining room table.
07:31In the first few days of him living in my apartment,
07:51I noticed some of my personal items were moved.
07:54I had plants in my windowsill.
08:03What did you do with my plants?
08:08I went to turn on the lights and they weren't working.
08:16I had six dining room chairs at my table.
08:20I came home one day to find all of them removed.
08:30I went to his door.
08:33Um, where are the kitchen chairs?
08:35In here.
08:37All of them?
08:38Yes, I needed a desk and a table.
08:41Out of the chairs?
08:42Yes, they make a very good desk and table.
08:46And I said, why do you need all of them?
08:50His response to me was,
08:52Alex, this is ridiculous.
08:55There are only two people in this house.
08:57Why do you have six chairs at the table?
08:59You only need two.
09:01You let me have two at the table.
09:04Of your chairs?
09:05Yeah.
09:06The rest he kept in the room.
09:07We agreed he would share the cost of paying the bills.
09:21Later, Jed would laugh at me when I asked for him to pay the bills.
09:26When he laughed at me, it was sinister.
09:32It was demeaning.
09:33It was patronizing.
09:34Like, I was stupid.
09:38Now he's been there for a month.
09:40And I say to him, the Verizon bill is coming up.
09:45Jed, I'm expecting you now.
09:49You have been here for a month to pay this bill.
09:54And he shouted at me, you'll see me in court.
09:59This is my space now, he would say.
10:06Red flags are coming up fast.
10:09I'm very uncomfortable.
10:12So I fielded off to who?
10:14The best person capable.
10:17Mom, I have an issue.
10:19The first thing that I did was to Google Jed Creek.
10:27And I got a creek somewhere in the Midwest.
10:33But the more I looked, the less I could find of a Jed Creek as a person living anywhere in this country.
10:43And that was the first point at which I said, uh-oh.
10:45And then I put in Jed Creek's telephone number and up popped his true identity.
10:56I ran across articles that had been written about Jameson Bachman.
11:03I found out that he had had a history of being a squatter.
11:10And there was a violent component to it.
11:13I called Alex and said, we're in trouble here.
11:21Jed Creek is not who he says he is.
11:23His name is Jameson Bachman.
11:26He was a serial squatter who had terrorized roommates up and down the East Coast.
11:32And he was living in my house.
11:34They move in, but then they won't pay and they won't leave.
11:42They use fake information to get in and work the system to stay as long as possible without paying.
11:48A bad check written to a closed account.
11:51A rental application with a fake name.
11:53As far as them being con men, they're very good at it.
11:57My anxiety goes from one to 360,000, 200,000.
12:04My heart's racing, my stomach's dropping.
12:07Now I've got a problem.
12:09My first instinct is to remove him personally.
12:14She's like, you're not going to do any of the sort.
12:18Alex, you're not going to touch this man.
12:20He's a very scary person.
12:23What they're doing is they're targeting these small landlords.
12:26And they're not clearly doing these background checks.
12:29They're not checking their references very closely.
12:31I like to think that I'm a fairly good judge of character.
12:34But I was completely off the mark here.
12:36How do you sleep at night?
12:37Very vindictive, evil people.
12:41In Philadelphia, once you establish tenancy and, as we found out, have mail sent to your address,
12:52you're legally a tenant.
12:54Whether or not you have a lease, whether or not you have a personal agreement with the actual tenant,
13:01you are a legal tenant, and you cannot be removed without due legal process, which takes months.
13:12And he understood enough about tenancy laws to know that this was the case.
13:23I made a mistake.
13:26A very great mistake.
13:27I trusted his word.
13:31I saw him as a good man.
13:34I didn't fact check.
13:36I let it go.
13:45Why did he create Jed Creek?
13:48I suspect he had aroused enough suspicion about Jameson Bachman
13:55that he had to find another identity.
14:02You know, I met Jameson in 2005.
14:07I used to see him, you know, in the park with his dog.
14:12We started talking a bit.
14:14And I thought, oh, wow, he was this educated guy.
14:17Nice looking, very handsome.
14:20Fun to be with.
14:22We were friends at that point.
14:24And then we became, you know, more intimate, became intimate.
14:31And I fell for him.
14:34I just fell for him.
14:42Yeah, it was very fun.
14:44He had a good sense of humor.
14:45We'd go to dinner.
14:46You know, he liked Mexican food.
14:48I loved Mexican food.
14:50And we had a lot of good times.
14:54He told me he had a law degree, but he had failed the bar.
14:58And then he got a job as a teacher in a private school.
15:04He taught history.
15:05I think eight to ten years old.
15:07They allowed him to live in the house that was on the property next to the school.
15:14It was a nice place.
15:16And he was very happy about it.
15:18But I'd say about three or four months into the job, he started getting complaints.
15:27The homework was too difficult.
15:29They didn't understand.
15:30And he would get frustrated with them.
15:34Just, you know, hard on them.
15:38He thought he was going to run the school.
15:40He was going to be the next dean.
15:42And I looked at him and I said, you know, I think you're getting ahead of yourself here.
15:47I don't think that's going to happen.
15:48And he really became really angry with me.
15:55And his eyes sort of changed.
15:58You know, it became dark.
16:00And he was just glaring at me.
16:02And I got really scared.
16:04And I said, I'm leaving.
16:11That was definitely the first time that I was afraid of him.
16:18And I swore I wasn't going to have anything to do with him after that.
16:23But he called me about three weeks later.
16:26Said he was really sorry.
16:27And he's just going through a lot of things mentally.
16:31And he just sucked me right back in.
16:39Shortly after they let him go and Jamison, he was going to be homeless.
16:45He was going to try to stay there and not pay rent.
16:50And they put an eviction notice on the door.
16:53And he said, you know, I don't have to leave.
16:56And I said, look, Jamison, you know, you have to leave.
16:58You can't, you know, they want you out of here and they will get you out of here.
17:01And I told him he could stay with me for a couple months until he got on his feet.
17:09You know, I just wanted to help him out as a friend.
17:11I cared about him and his dog.
17:14And I kind of felt bad for him.
17:15I thought he was just having a really hard time.
17:17That's the train that rattles the windows.
17:32And that's my old building.
17:34We had a retail hobby store on the ground floor.
17:37And I had two apartments upstairs that I rented.
17:41Arlene was one of the tenants.
17:42And Arlene brought in Jamison Bachman.
17:46And the rest is history.
17:51In June of 2006, Jamison Bachman pulled up with a U-Haul and moved into the apartment.
17:58Arlene was a great tenant.
18:00I thought she's letting this person move into her apartment.
18:03So I figured everything was okay.
18:05So he brought his stuff.
18:09He didn't have that much stuff.
18:11And his dog.
18:13And then I had my cats at the time.
18:16And it became kind of crowded, my apartment.
18:19Even though it was a big place,
18:21you know, I came home the next day and my whole apartment was rearranged.
18:28I mean, the couch was no longer, you know, on the side of the wall.
18:32It was in the middle of the room.
18:33The furniture was just completely changed around.
18:40After day one?
18:41Yeah.
18:42And I was, I walked in, I was like, what the hell?
18:47And he's like, oh, don't you like it?
18:49I said, no, I hate it.
18:52And I thought, wow, this is really bizarre.
18:55Within a few weeks, there started to be a lot of complaints from Jamison.
19:07The window wouldn't stay up.
19:09Stove was a problem.
19:11There were always problems.
19:12I was wondering, why is he complaining?
19:15He's not even the actual tenant in the building.
19:17He did pay, like, one month's rent, and I think he paid, like, a half month's rent.
19:24I was like, Jamison, what's going on?
19:26You know, you're not finding work.
19:27And, you know, it's like my landlord's getting pissed off.
19:31And I said, you've got this law degree.
19:33You know, why don't you try to pass the bar and do something with your life?
19:38Well, I can't afford it.
19:39And I can't study in this place.
19:41It's too noisy.
19:45And he was like, oh, I'm, you know, please just give me more time.
19:49I promise I'll be out of here.
19:52You know, and what am I going to do with my dog?
19:54I have nowhere to go.
19:56He made me feel bad.
19:58Like I said, I cared about him.
20:01And I, you know, in the back of my mind, I thought, you know, he'll be out of here soon.
20:07And the next thing I knew, mail was coming.
20:15His mail was coming to the building.
20:19When I saw the mail, I just, I thought, oh, my God, I'm in trouble.
20:26That's when it hit me.
20:27That's, I'm never going to get rid of this guy.
20:30I went to the police.
20:32They didn't help me.
20:33I said, look, how do I get rid of this guy?
20:35He won't leave.
20:36And they said, look, you can't, you know, I said, I want to change the locks.
20:40And, and they said, you can't do that.
20:43They'll arrest you.
20:46Once they're in that property, in some cases, it's very hard to get them out of that property
20:51without legally evicting them.
20:53The eviction process is complex, takes time, and is more confusing when it's not a traditional
20:59landlord-tenant situation where someone's paying rent.
21:02Chamberson knew every law in the book as far as renting and that type of stuff.
21:09He said, you know what?
21:10This is my home.
21:11Just as much as it is yours.
21:13And I'm not leaving.
21:23Days turned into weeks.
21:25Weeks turn into months.
21:28Months turn into years.
21:29By the second year, we were done.
21:37No more relationship.
21:39And then when, you know, we, you know, I didn't want anything to do with them anymore.
21:44I went off to the spare room.
21:47It was a tiny room, but I was able to, you know, sleep there.
21:51I'd come out to use the bathroom or the kitchen to get something to eat or drink, and I'd go
21:57back into the room.
21:59That's pretty much where I lived.
22:01But out of your own bedroom, your own bed.
22:04Yeah.
22:06Yeah.
22:06I didn't want to sleep with him.
22:08I told him, I don't want you here.
22:10I don't want you in my bed.
22:11I don't want you in my house anymore.
22:13I want you to leave.
22:14But he wouldn't.
22:17It was just like coming home to this monster.
22:20You know, I remember being on the street and looking up and seeing the lights on the thing.
22:25My animals, my things.
22:27You know, he's in my home, taking control of my everything.
22:37To this day, I don't understand, like, what was his main purpose in life?
22:41To hurt people?
22:44Something must have happened when he was a kid.
22:47Or he was just born that way.
22:56Jamison, well, I called him Jammy.
22:59He always had a bad temper.
23:01When we were little kids, he always did.
23:06We had been friends since we were seven years old.
23:11And Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, which is just outside of Philadelphia.
23:17Jammy and I were particularly close, best friends.
23:22We would spend all of recess in elementary school, just sitting and talking and pretending.
23:28Growing up, he talked about how difficult it was, how terrible things were with his family, how brutal his father could be.
23:42His mother described his father as an animal sometimes.
23:51I don't know exactly what that meant, but a wife doesn't say that about her husband unless things aren't good.
23:57I felt very sympathetic for him because he also talked about how people had expectations, perhaps unrealistic expectations of him.
24:11When we later reconnected, he would be very angry over things that he saw as injustices.
24:23He had this sense of righteous indignation about things that were unfair in the world.
24:33He just did not apply by a bully.
24:36And for him to become an obvious bully himself.
24:43This is one of these contradictions that I can't understand, but I know that we're both in that same person.
24:52I've never been able to think of Jamson as evil.
24:59This is somebody that I knew on a different level.
25:03He did some horrible things, and it just escalated and got more and more horrible.
25:10I first came across an advertisement that they were going to build condos one block from the beach.
25:27And Caribbean as I am, I love the beach.
25:30You see the view of the ocean, and it's massive.
25:37It's beautiful over there.
25:41When I first went to see it, it was just an abandoned lot and a blueprint.
25:47And I took a chance on it.
25:49And I ended up taking out a loan from my pension for that down payment.
25:55My partner and I had separated after 10 years, and she had been paying part of the mortgage.
26:08When that relationship dissolved, I had to find myself another roommate.
26:13I had to be paying my mortgage or I would lose my home.
26:18I ended up putting something on Craigslist regarding renting the room for $700 a month.
26:25And two people answered the Craigslist.
26:29One was the successful lawyer.
26:32On the other hand was a young couple with their young child.
26:37And so the obvious choice for me was to go with the mature lawyer.
26:45Jamison Bachman.
26:46And so we agreed that he was going to come over to look at the apartment the next day, Saturday.
26:58And that's exactly what happened.
27:00He called me and he goes, oh, I'm here.
27:02And when I step out, I see him.
27:05He goes, oh, hi, I'm Jamison.
27:07I noticed that the odd thing on the block was, oh, a U-Haul across the street.
27:13And I looked at that U-Haul.
27:15He goes, oh, yeah, I hope you don't mind.
27:17I'm ready to move in now.
27:18I'm ready to move in now.
27:20I have the security.
27:21I have the rent, cash.
27:23He told me that he couldn't take any more living with his ex-girlfriend.
27:30And he's grateful because otherwise he would have to be sleeping in that U-Haul.
27:36I said, well, this is going kind of fast.
27:40But God must be in my favor, I said, because here I am really struggling.
27:46And this person comes with cash.
27:49I said, perfect, I can pay my mortgage for the month and start getting on track.
27:56Because this was crucial for me to save my home.
28:02And so he set himself up in the room.
28:08And I said, you have such a big U-Haul, where's your bedroom set?
28:12And he said, I sleep on the floor.
28:14This is comfortable for me.
28:19He moved in in February of 2012.
28:23And for the first three months, things were great.
28:27We really got along well.
28:30He was cordial.
28:32It was important to me of how he treated his animals, too, because I'm a licensed nurse for animals.
28:38He had a dog, which was Zachary, and he also had two cats, Emma and Abigail.
28:47He had a very deep connection with his animals.
28:50And I think this is why we got along.
28:55Until July, August, he did not pay me any rent.
29:01I told him, if you don't pay me, I'm going to have to take some legal actions.
29:09And he's like, no, no, I understand.
29:11You don't, you're not going to believe this.
29:14But I did my tutoring work.
29:15And would you believe that they sent the check to the wrong place, the wrong address?
29:20And in my mind, I said, here starts the bullshit.
29:23Tension started building because now Sonia had to pick up the pieces that he wasn't filling in.
29:32Aside from my full-time job, I had to take more hours of the midnight shift.
29:37I was exhausted.
29:39I mean, I was losing my hair.
29:41He was making my life miserable.
29:44Miserable.
29:46September was when I went to the court and I filed paperwork for eviction.
29:50And I asked, can I just go ahead one day and just change the lock so that he doesn't come back in?
29:57Because he's not paying.
29:58And she said, you can't do that.
30:00Why not?
30:00He has the right to stay at that apartment for three months until he is legally evicted.
30:07Police often can't do anything about these situations until homeowners evict the squatters.
30:12If you don't stop squatters right away, it can take months to get them out.
30:15There's a process, and the weird thing is it protects them or buys them more time.
30:21They know eviction law in some cases as well as many attorneys.
30:25You'd think there'd be something to stop them, but apparently at the moment there's not.
30:28Right.
30:28So I was becoming desperate.
30:34I told Jamison, next month, since you haven't pulled through, I need to now rent my living room.
30:42And I actually put up a tent to make literally a room, and a woman moved in with her two little dogs.
30:51We had now three dogs and three cats and one bathroom.
30:56One or two days later, I got a call at work from the new roommate saying,
31:06Sonia, I'm going to need to call the police.
31:10And she said, Jamison is yelling at me that my dogs are stinking up the apartment.
31:16He's getting really close and verbal to my face.
31:20So I started becoming scared.
31:22And then she also said, you know that window that's inside my tent?
31:28I always close that window before I leave to work.
31:31And when I came home today, that window was wide open.
31:37And I said, if you have to call the police, if you feel threatened, you go right ahead.
31:42I'm going to be, I'm on my way.
31:43So then when I came in, I said, you didn't have any right to go into her space.
31:52And he said, I don't give a fuck about her.
31:57Things changed drastically at that point.
32:01He put down the hand that said, whoever comes in here is not going to be comfortable with me.
32:06And it was like a domino effect after that.
32:11The new roommate, she said, you know, I realize this is not going to work out.
32:19Now I really felt scared.
32:21Because now who can I rent to?
32:24Who am I going to put in here?
32:26I didn't trust that I would do it in time to save my home.
32:29Once he was served with the eviction papers, that's when he started becoming more vocal and his tone was more angry towards me.
32:42I remember being in the kitchen and he came in and he goes, you're going to be very sorry that you're serving with those papers.
32:48You better get a good lawyer because I'm going to take you home.
32:53So I now had to lock my door.
32:55I put even something, a chair at my door because I was fearful that he can come in and do something to me.
33:04Now this person who I thought I knew is just next door in that bedroom.
33:12And I'm in this bedroom.
33:14And he could snap at any time.
33:18And I'm in this bedroom.
33:48This is my high school yearbook from 1974.
33:55Kind of hoped I'd forgotten all these pictures.
33:57Thank you for handing me this.
33:59So I'm going to look for Jamison Bachman's picture.
34:03There he is.
34:06That's a good picture of him.
34:08It just looks like the Jamison I remember.
34:10It doesn't say to me, this is somebody whose life went bad.
34:15That's how I remember him.
34:17Just Jamison.
34:18I really looked up to him because he just had a cool about himself.
34:22He was just together.
34:24Because he had an older brother, I think that's where some of his self-confidence came from.
34:32Jamison was a good student.
34:34Relatively popular.
34:36I really looked up to him because he just had the panache that I didn't have.
34:42But there was one particular incident.
34:46When we were in high school, we were just knocking the tennis ball around one day.
34:50I was mentioning the girls in high school that, oh, I'd love to go out with her.
34:55I'd love to go out with her.
34:56Or he'd say, I went out with her.
34:57I went out with her.
34:58And I went out with so-and-so.
35:01For every name I threw out, he said he'd been out with them.
35:04I didn't call bullshit at the time.
35:06I knew it wasn't true.
35:08But it really stuck with me.
35:16Jamison had all the ingredients for success.
35:18He was smart.
35:21He was charming.
35:22He was good-looking.
35:24When we graduated from high school, Jamison was the superstar.
35:28He was going to go out and be successful.
35:31I think he wanted to be a lawyer.
35:32I went off to a college in Ohio, and Jamison went off to Tulane University.
35:41Jamison and I reconnected in the summer of my sophomore year.
35:46My life had taken off in a positive way.
35:48And he just kind of seemed stalled and dark and morose.
35:54Very different than the Jamison I had known since age three and graduated from high school with.
36:01He told me he was having dinner one night when he was at Tulane at a fraternity house with somebody we had gone to high school with.
36:11And in the middle of the meal, somebody came out of the kitchen with a meat cleaver and decapitated this friend.
36:21He had embellished some things, but it was mostly true.
36:31And I could not believe it.
36:34This was a kid who'd gone from being upbeat and positive to all of a sudden being very dark, very paranoid.
36:45That's the kind of traumatic, life-changing event that changes your whole world view.
36:53What do you think that witnessing that incident justifies all that he did?
36:59Well, you cannot justify what he did.
37:04Inside the dining room area, there were signs of a violent struggle.
37:18You could see blood smears across the floor down to where the victim's body was hidden.
37:23There were blood trails and blood spatter, smears all over the floor.
37:31As he walked out, he began swinging an axe, fighting with officers at the scene.
37:39It was a scene of violence.
37:53It was a scene of violence.
38:23It was a scene of violence.
38:53It was a scene of violence.
39:23It was a scene of violence.