Mystery Solved! They Caught Her!

This has been quite an exciting week!  Marc's parents were in town, so we've been having fun hanging out with them in our new home =)  I'll have more details on that and a few other items in a different post, but first, I had to get this out!

If you remember from a post back in October, Jerks and Puppies, I recounted a few unfortunate events that delayed the move-in to our new place.  In a nutshell, some psycho flooded our house with a garden hose, and the police were totally unwilling to do any research and try to find the culprit.  We were convinced it had to do with the previous tenant, but there was no way for us to prove it, so we tried to just get over it and move on (if you know me, you know how hard it is for me to "let stuff go" like that!!).

Fast forward to after we had moved in to our home - about mid-December (I seriously have a lot of updates to give but I'll try to keep this short!).  We had been in our new home for about a week and were just starting to get settled.

Midnight Visitors
Side Note:  A lot of people don't know this story, so I will first say that I am FINE.  Nothing bad happened...and this side story is crucial to explaining the heading of this post.

Okay back to this story.  It's mid-December and we've been in the new house a week.  It's a Wednesday night and Marc had been out of town for work (he's a consultant and travels quite a bit) and I had gone to bed around 10:30.  Because of the new puppy, I kept my bedroom door open so I could hear if she started to cry from her crate.

At about midnight, I woke up to what sounded like banging on my front door.  At first, I thought I was dreaming, but after I sat there for a few minutes, I could definitely tell someone was banging on the door and yelling someone's name.  After I put on my glasses, I was also able to tell that whoever it was, was shining a flashlight in through our front door window into the living room.

Freaky?  Yes.  Very.  Remember...I'm home ALONE and it's midnight.

I sat up and tried to pull my thoughts together...since the noise woke me up from a sound sleep I was really out of it, but I could definitely tell that whoever was banging on my door was yelling for someone to open up.  They kept banging and yelling "Molly!  Molly!  We've got you - open the door!!"

Okay, at this point, I'm sure a lot of people are like HOLY HELL CALL THE POLICE!  In retrospect, that's what I should have done first.  But in mind, that was not the most logical first step.

In my head, the most logical thing to do was confront these people and let them know there was NO Molly here.  I didn't want waste any time - I wasn't sure how long they were going to wait for this Molly person before they broke the door down. 

I was NOT about to let someone break into my house looking for someone who wasn't there.  Oh heeeeellz no.

So I put on my robe, said a few prayers, and went to the front door to try and reason with these strangers.  Please note:  I did NOT open the door.  I turned on the outside light and talked to them through the window on the door.  Again, looking back, this probably was not very smart, but I was positive this was the right thing to do.

So standing on my front stoop are these two HUGE dudes.  Like, I'm talking 6'5", 250 lb's, easy.  They were massive.  And wearing black sweatsuits with black beanie hats.  I could tell they were pretty shocked to see me, since I was clearly not "Molly" - who they were looking for.

Here's how the conversation went down:

• Huge Dudes:  "Where's Molly?  We're here for Molly - we know she's in there"
• Me:  "I'm sorry - I think you have the wrong house.  There's no Molly here."
• HD:  looking puzzled.  "What?  You've never seen this girl?"  holds up a piece of paper that says Criminal Report.  there's a polaroid of a girl I've never seen.
• Me:  "Nope.  Never seen her and we just moved in a week ago.  I swear, there's no Molly here."
• HD:  exchange glances to each other...obviously surprised "Wow!  We are so sorry!  We didn't mean to scare you.  We'll leave."
• Me:  "Okay.  Thanks...I'm sorry you must have the wrong house and I'm really freaked out right now.  Please leave or I'm going to call the police."
• HD:  "No no no...we're really sorry.  We're out."

And they left.

So after like 10 minutes, I start crying hysterically, called Marc (so stupid...what could he do?  He was in Tulsa), then called the police, then tried to go back to sleep.  Needless to say, the experience had me pretty shaken up.

Mystery Solved!
Now fast forward to this past week.  At this point, I've, again, tried to let this thing go, at Marc's advice.  He was convinced my midnight visitors were "bounty hunters"...and I was all "puh-lease....those aren't real."  But I tried to not be a paranoid freak and move on.

Now, as with most rental property moves, we were still getting mail addressed to the previous tenant.  Up until this point, most of it was just junk...credit card applications and stuff like that.  Well...this past week...we got some very interesting stuff!

Two letters came and both were hand addressed to the previous tenant, Sally.  One of them was from Colorado Bail Bonds...the other was from this place called the Covenant House.

Hmmm...interesting!  I went and looked up the Covenant House, and was quite intrigued with what I found.  Basically, it's a rehabilitation home in New York for SERIOUSLY troubled youths.  And we all know what bail bonds places are...and that they send people for you if you miss your court date or go missing...

So Marc went down to the Colorado Bail Bonds place to tell them that Sally didn't live at this address anymore.  And you know what they said?

• 1)  That Molly had been found and arrested
• and 2)  That they  had JUST spoken to Sally, and she has continued to tell them that our house was her current address!

Needless to say - this answered a LOT of our questions!  They apologized profusely and told us that they would definitely be speaking with Sally to find out her real address.  They also said that yes - they had sent bounty hunters to our house in mid-December looking for Molly.  And they finally said that this Molly kid is a majorly troubled young woman and it's really good that they found her when they did...and she is now locked up.

So let me pull all the pieces together for you.

• Sally was this crazy old lady, and she must have 2 daughters (at least).  One was Katie...who was living with her illegally (our landlord told us this).  The other was this Molly chick...who must have been involved in some seriously bad stuff (our landlord did not know about her).
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• Sally was also using a fake last name...which we confirmed with the Bail Bonds place.  We figured this, since we were getting letters for Sally McDonald and Sally Muere, but it was interesting to have it confirmed from someone else.
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• This Molly kid is a seriously troubled young woman...who was sent to this Covenant House in New York.
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• Molly must have made bail to get a court date and be released from the Covenant House...and she must have missed it and/or escaped!  Hence - they sent the bounty hunters after her to the address where her mom was listed....which is our house!
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• This also explains why we would get visits from social workers about once a week asking for either Katie, Molly or Sally.

So now...mystery is solved.  Molly is arrested, the bail bonds place knows that Sally has moved, and they will be contacting all the social workers to let them know that these crazy ladies don't live in our house anymore.

Goodness!  I'm so glad we figured all this out!  I'm also, now, completely convinced that Molly was definitely the source of the flood.  And I can sleep easy knowing I won't be receiving anymore midnight visitors =)

Case closed.  Just call me Nancy Drew =)