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They took the money up front, but did nothing to stop the banks from foreclosing. As the recession spread, the real estate world was teeming with such scams. Most victims would just move on, too embarrassed or defeated to fight back.
But detectives could tell from the blood on the wall that Dean and Garcia had run into some homeowners who wouldn’t go away quietly. They had taken revenge, meting out a kind of frontier justice that other fleeced homeowners could quietly cheer.
Except for one thing. The homeowners’ hands were dirty, too, and had been long before they went to work on Dean and Garcia. Turns out, every victim in this nasty little event was also a villain.
Instead of a simple story of revenge, the case became a study of the sinister side of the real estate boom — and crash — and the easy-money mania behind it all.
Two days after the bloody night at the bungalow, the police arrested Daniel Weston outside his million-dollar home in La Cañada Flintridge. He and his girlfriend, Mary Ann Parmelee, were charged with torture.
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