20 Worst Neighbors in the News

Like family, you don't get to pick your neighbors. They're just the people you wind up living next to. The luckiest of us become lifelong friends. The unluckiest? Their unneighborly low point winds up on the news.

Colorado mom Cathy Budde started finding human waste on her lawn, but couldn't figure out where it was coming from. Her kids decided on a stakeout and caught a jogger mid-squat. Even after that, the woman returned several times—with a handful of napkins but no bags to pick up after herself. Budde eventually went to the police. No arrests were ever made.

However, there's been no more pooping. For now.

Georgia resident Marty Corbitt's overgrown lawn didn't please his neighbor, Phillip Bennett, who was meticulous about his. After many complaints, which changed nothing (do they ever in neighbor disputes?), Bennett decided to take care of it himself. Did he mow his neighbor's lawn? No. Break out the hedge-trimmers? Not that either.

He set his neighbor's house on fire.

Then, after a day on the run, he turned himself in to U.S. marshals.

After California resident Tina Rose's neighbor asked her to move her koi pond—which she'd unknowingly built partially on his property—she turned it into a planter box. Then? She erected a statue of a hand flipping the bird. Naturally, it's aimed at the offending neighbor.

Though, eventually, the two resolved the dispute and Rose put taking down the statue on her to-do list.

A Sacramento man painted swastikas on his house and hung a U.S. flag with a swastika in place of 50 stars. His neighbors asked him to removed the hateful symbols from his home, explaining why they're offensive. Instead, he invoked freedom of speech.

Mitchell Igelko, a landscaper in Miami, had a marketing plan that landed him five years' probation. Instead of offering discounts or BOGO deals to neighbors who hired other landscapers, he poisoned their lawns, threw eggs at their houses and allegedly firebombed a boat.

The internet is filled with video clips of crazy neighbors, including this one. A couple across the street (from the guy taking this video) watches as people leave their homes, sometimes following them to the end of the block and cheering as they head off to work. Is every day really a pep rally for this couple? Or is this what retirement looks like for some?

Gemma Wale of Birmingham, England, went to jail for two weeks after violating a judge's order to stop screaming while having sex. She'd been given an antisocial behavior order for annoying her neighbors not only with the sex noise but also for having loud arguments.

Lori Christensen became the neighbor from hell in her suburban Minneapolis area, after her daughter spilled nail polish in a neighbor girl's hair. Neighbor mom Kim Hoffman brought the incident to Christensen's attention, and that's when all (neighbor from) hell broke loose. Christensen began a campaign of taunts and loud swearing at Hoffman, a recovering alcoholic, who wound up eventually drinking, taking pills and collapsing in front of her husband. That marked the beginning of the really bad stuff, including yard signs making fun of Hoffman's alcohol issues and driving a remote-controlled toy car between the feet of the Hoffman children out shooting baskets in the driveway.

When a pair of retirees moved into a suburban Dallas rental, they asked their neighbors, who had four dogs, to keep the dogs inside until 9 a.m. so that they could sleep late. When neighbors James and Lisa Price couldn't comply, the sleepyheads called animal control, which wrote a $121 ticket. The Prices tried getting back at them by putting up a yard sign calling their neighbors names: "House for sale by owner because my neighbor's a douchebag." The police asked them to take it down, but the Prices knew they didn't have to. So they didn't.

After Michael Carroll won more than $13 million in a U.K. lottery, he did what any 19-year-old with a criminal history and a ton of money would do: He turned the front yard of his newly purchased house into a demolition derby track. Despite neighbors' complaints of noise, stench, dirt, smoke and safety concerns, Carroll kept the track running, forcing neighbors to put their once peaceful homes on the market.

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul's neighbor Rene Boucher, a 60-year-old retired doctor, pleaded guilty earlier this year to one count of assaulting a member of Congress. Boucher attacked Paul from behind, breaking six of the senator's ribs, injuring a lung, which caused two bouts of pneumonia, according to the senator. Boucher, through his lawyers, said he was incensed that Paul allowed an unsightly pile of debris to build up on his lawn, replacing it whenever Boucher collected it and hauled it away.

Laura Wilson was so irritated by the Palihouse Santa Monica hotel that she recorded its guests making phone calls or sex noises, or the workers washing the patio. She posted her videos on YouTube when she wasn't confronting hotel workers about their disturbances. That couldn't have been good for business.

Private neighborhood listservs and Facebook pages can give vital information about the goings-on in the vicinity. They're also filled with comments from people that border on (or dip deeply into) racism. An enclave in Los Angeles found its way into the news after participants began calling each other out for unconscious bigotry.

Mohamed Hadid, Gigi Hadid's father, had been building and building on his Bel-Air mega mansion, despite orders from the city of Los Angeles to quit, tear down parts of it and otherwise get in compliance with zoning and safety. Hadid's response? Allegedly to hide stuff behind potted plants and under tarps.

Although Exide, a battery recycler located in southern California, agreed to move its plant and clean it up, for years the plant polluted a nearby neighborhood, causing untold illnesses and chronic conditions, in addition to safety concerns, for area residents. They agreed to millions of dollars in settlements and an additional $9 million trust fund to go toward cleaning houses and yards of severely affected neighbors.

What kind of monster wants to close down Little Free Libraries that are popping up in neighborhoods everywhere? A neighbor of Peter Cook, that's who! An unsigned note left on the library read, "Take it down or the city will." It was signed, "a neighbor who hates you and your kids." The thing is, the city doesn't allow structures that could block the views of drivers on public property, which is where Cook's stood. He put it on the bit of land between the sidewalk and the curb.

Austrian and German artists built an amazing replica of a famous bar in Vienna, the Loos Bar, as part of an artists-in-residence project and an homage to European design influenced by Hollywood. The .65:1 scale bar, "Los Bar," used cardboard, pool noodles and mosquito mesh to create the effect of more traditional materials used in the motherland. They operated it in the evenings, and you could get a drink! That is until a bar- (and fun-hating) neighbor reported it and got it shut down. No wonder Europeans laugh at us!

Video from a Tulsa, Oklahoma, home went viral a couple of years ago after security camera footage revealed gunshots, fights and dog attacks all happening out on the front lawn. Police eventually gained a search warrant to the home and—surprise, surprise—made arrests and charged at least one woman with conspiracy to distribute drugs.

Neighbors in the fancy and quite beautiful Palos Verdes peninsula at the southern tip of Los Angeles have become hostile toward hikers who have discovered public trails that run through their neighborhoods. As a way to deter them from coming, their local council agreed to remove a bunch of parking on the streets and to create residence-only parking in the neighborhoods.

A feud between two Staten Island, New York, neighbors resulted in the very passive-aggressive move of Paula Bolli getting two truckloads of manure dumped around her yard—way more than anyone would need for mulch, fertilizer and such. Gus and Lucille Midura, who were in their 80s, could only stay indoors and not have friends over while the manure sat and festered. It was the latest in what the aging couple said has been a 25-year feud with Bolli. Over what? Fences and trees. It's always about fences and trees!