
Worst Roommate Ever - wallflower
https://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/02/jamison-bachman-worst-roommate-ever.html
======
subroutine
Did anyone else read this paragraph wonder wtf really happened...

"Bachman enrolled at Tulane University in the fall of 1975, but his time there
was rocky and brief, ruptured by a horrific incident in January at the Sigma
Chi house, just off campus. Although Bachman was not a member of the frat, he
told Friedman he’d been hanging around the house with a friend from Elkins
Park, a boy a year older named Ken Gutzeit. Suddenly, a man had appeared with
a knife and slashed Gutzeit’s throat. “The word Jamison used was beheaded,”
Friedman told me. According to news reports, Gutzeit was killed by a 25-year-
old student librarian named Randell Vidrine. The two were said to have been
feuding since the previous fall, after Vidrine called campus police on Gutzeit
for eating a cheese sandwich among the stacks. (“I know it sounds incredible,
but from what we understand they never argued about anything else,” a police
spokesperson told a reporter at the time. “It was always about the sandwich.”)
Gutzeit stumbled onto the frat-house steps and bled to death, surrounded by
Bachman and some two dozen other witnesses. (A grand jury declined to indict
Vidrine.)"

I looked into it...

The Times Shreveport, Louisiana 31 Jan 1976

[https://goo.gl/E7za2q](https://goo.gl/E7za2q)

~~~
ghaff
What a weird story. One strongly suspects that there must be more to it. As
reported, to not even be indicted (which usually has a low bar) for stabbing
someone to death in full view of numerous witnesses seems like a pretty
abnormal outcome.

~~~
Itaxpica
From the article it sounds like it happened in the course of a fight that the
other guy started; the grand jury may have just viewed it as self-defense.

~~~
ghaff
Maybe? Self-defense doesn't usually extend to "He shoved me while in a public
space with other people around so I killed him." One has to believe that there
were indeed extenuating circumstances but it's not really clear from the
article what they were.

~~~
r3vo
I'm extrapolating a bit from the article, but it sounds like he was walking
past the frat house on the street when Gutzeit left the house approached him
on the street and attacked him.

If you are minding your own business walking down the street and someone
approaches you to physically attack you, especially with 10-20 fraternity
brother behind them ready to jump in, it doesn't seem unreasonable to me to
use a knife in self defense. That is a life threatening situation, or at least
a risk of grievous bodily harm situation.

The fact that he wasn't indicted makes it hard for me to believe the situation
occurred otherwise. It seems to me like the Ny Mag article may have
significantly misrepresented the event.

------
whack
The kind of tenancy laws I read in articles like these, sound absolutely
idiotic. If you let someone into your home, and they aren't on the lease, you
should be able to kick them out anytime they overstay their welcome. If you do
sign a lease with someone, and they haven't paid their rent, you should be
able to throw their stuff out and change the locks as soon as their security
deposit has run itself out.

As a former master tenant who had to deal with 4 sub-tenants, I lived in
mortal fear of the day one of them realised that they could just stop paying
me rent, and there's nothing I can do about it whatsoever. It boggles my mind
the amount of legal BS you have to wade through, just to reclaim your home
from someone who thinks they are entitled to free housing.

~~~
maaaats
> _I lived in mortal fear of the day one of them realised that they could just
> stop paying me rent, and there 's nothing I can do about it whatsoever_

That is of course false. It may be a hassle, but you can absolutely to
something.

And giving people housing is important, that's why the laws often favor the
person renting, not the owner. The laws is a risk you have to take if you want
to rent out your place. Price it into your rent. Or just don't live in "mortal
fear" by not being a master tenant..

~~~
BrandoElFollito
> That is of course false. It may be a hassle, but you can absolutely to
> something.

It depends where. In France you are completely stuck when someone dies not
pay. It can take over a year to finally kick someone out.

And this is just if he is not paying. If someone pays, it is simply
impossible. Every three years you may take back the house for your or your
close family use only. You cannot sell it empty. You cannot end the contract.
You are awfully stuck.

~~~
maaaats
> It depends where. In France you are completely stuck when someone dies not
> pay. It can take over a year to finally kick someone out.

But then how do you kick them out? _By doing something_! Which was my point.
Saying "nothing whatsoever to do about it" is a lie by the OP.

I'm not saying all the rules are sane. But it's better to protect the weak
that need roof over their heads, than the persons renting out a house they
don't need.

One could even argue the French law is good. If it deters people from buying
properties for renting to others by making it not as lucrative, it keeps the
prices down and makes housing affordable for many.

Owning multiple properties and renting them out isn't a right. Having a house
to live in should be.

~~~
ben174
> Owning multiple properties and renting them out isn't a right. Having a
> house to live in should be.

I’m not sure I’m reading this correctly. You believe it should be a human
right to have a home to live in? Every person is just given a free home? Who
would build all these homes in this utopia?

~~~
maaaats
That's a very non-charitable way of reading my statement, I believe you are
very sure you're not reading it correctly.

But yes, I do "believe it should be a human right to have a home to live in".
Not given freely, but having the opportunity for housing. It's even in Article
25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

~~~
tudelo
Even if it's at the cost of someone else who does not wish to single-handedly
carry this burden? I have seen first hand the damage someone can cause to a
home. I really think that when they are not paying for it they have even less
of an emotional stake in the livability of the home post inhabitance.

~~~
jcadam
Yep, I was an accidental landlord due to the housing bubble bursting in 2008
(had to move for a job, couldn't sell the house without taking a huge loss).

Hired a property manager, found a tenant, and did my best to be a good
landlord. Let the tenant pay a couple of weeks late a few times without
getting bent out of shape, fixed things promptly, etc.

Then the time finally came to sell last year. The market had recovered, I
could sell the house and actually make a profit. My reward for doing "the
right thing" (not defaulting/short-selling/etc.) was ready to be reaped.

Tenants moved out... got our first look at the house. It was a complete
nightmare. Turns out they raised _rabbits_ (as in, to sell) in the property
and trashed the place (poop everywhere, stained walls, and egads.. the smell).
Ended up taking a large loss on the property anyway - had to basically dump it
in order to find a buyer and just be rid of the thing.

The tenants lost their security deposit. That's it. I lost tens of thousands
on the sale price (and this was a sub-$200k home), not to mention the years of
maintenance, etc. I spent (well, my useless PM charged me) while they were in
the house.

Yea, should have just sent the bank the keys in the mail and walked away. In
the end it would have been less painful.

~~~
photojosh
Our property manager (standing in for the owner) inspected our rental every 3
months for the first year, then every 6 months after that. If we'd've trashed
the place, they can start the eviction process straight away. Do you not have
the right to inspections?

~~~
jcadam
Yes, but I was out of state and unable to manage the property directly, hence
why I hired a PM. The PM ostensibly conducted regular inspections :/

------
danielvf
The author of ZeroMQ wrote a book on recognizing people like this, and more
importantly how to get yourself out of prison they’ve put you in. The action
plans have helped me.

The lucky ones in the NYmag article here did many of the things he recommends.

Free PDF here, look for the hard to find “read” button.

[https://www.gitbook.com/book/hintjens/psychopathcode/details](https://www.gitbook.com/book/hintjens/psychopathcode/details)

~~~
nwatson
Thanks for the pointer to the book, quite interesting so far.

The author talks of psychopathy as an "adaptation" and not a "brokenness" in
an individual ... but the adaptation so far mentioned is only in the sense of
"the relatively small number of psychopaths is adapted to prey on other
humans". I suppose that having too many psychopaths would render human trust
very frail and would make a society prone to failure (and so be a negative
pressure) -- so psychopathy can only occur within limits to be successful.

I wonder though whether there's another use for psychopaths: when a society or
humanity at large faces a "bottleneck event" where extinction is very
possible, the psychopaths "rise to the occasion" and do all the nasty, non-
empathetic, distasteful things that a society needs to survive in those weird
situations.

If so, then, ... psychopaths are harmful to individuals and society, until
they aren't.

EDIT: actually, there's the brilliant Marlon Brando speech in Apocalypse Now
([https://simonamooon.deviantart.com/journal/Apocalypse-Now-
Ho...](https://simonamooon.deviantart.com/journal/Apocalypse-Now-Horror-
Monologue-By-Marlon-Brando-218225354)), where he describes bastards with
empathy, people who love their families yet are able to perform the
unthinkable atrocities [on their family] to win. So these folks are the
opposite of psychopaths -- they do terrible things when necessary and
doubtless feel the anguish of it.

EDIT: in other words, psychopaths are society's ultimate catastrophic re-
insurance, the last resort.

~~~
castle-bravo
I am not qualified to speak authoritatively on this matter, but here's how I
see it: Psychopaths are mutant parasites. They lack certain abilities that
enable them to integrate well into human groups and would not survive well in
the paleolithic. With increasing population densities in the neolithic and in
the modern age, it became possible for psychopaths to survive and pass on
their genes. I think that psychopaths are still rare for a few reasons: the
mutation may be recessive, or high population density is too recent for the
mutation to have spread widely, or psychopaths may be more likely to die by
violence, or they may invest too few resources in their children. In any case,
I think increasing numbers of psychopaths would pose a long-term existental
threat to human civilization. As far as productive uses for psychopaths go (if
we can identify them before maturity), I have no suggestions; it is not wise
to put guns into the hands of heartless people who would turn them on us if
they perceived any advantage in doing so; one need only look at the example of
Mexican cartels founded by special forces to see this.

~~~
willvarfar
Why would psychopaths not do well in the paleolithic?

The family raise a child who is a psychopath. The child then does what
psychopaths do, and the family are in an abusive relationship with the child.

The child can be charming to outsiders etc and can find partners to procreate
with.

Can't spot why they would not survive well in the paleolithic.

~~~
robotbikes
If you are referring to hunters and gatherers, they rarely lived in nuclear
families but instead extended family groups. They also socially impose the
norm of egalitarianism and are in constant contact with each other. I suspect
the original author saw these in direct conflict with sociopathy.

------
PascLeRasc
I just lived for my last semester of undergrad with two people like this who
really got on each others' nerves (all three of us just needed a semester of
housing to finish school). They'd both brought their own toasters and just
wanted theirs out and the others in a cabinet. I think they had less than 5
conversations in person, instead putting all their incredibly minor complaints
in a group text so I'd have to see it. The bathroom just had two towel hangers
and they both wanted to hang two towels and would put the other's on the floor
even if it was just wet. One would go away for the weekend and try to
calculate that they should pay 5% less in utilities for the month because of
that. They'd buy something like paper towels and announce that we each owed
them $1.50 for that. We had a mail slot and they'd pick up their mail off the
floor when they got home and then step on everyone else's.

My only solace is that these people must be incredibly unhappy all the time.

~~~
philliphaydon
I’ve never had problems like this. I had a policy with flat mates which was.
If you put food in the fridge, expect me to eat it, if I put food in the
fridge, I expect you to eat it, I’m not going to argue about fridge space or
who bought what. It’s not worth the time and effort.

~~~
Chris2048
> or who bought what

Why? Why aren't people entitled to the things they buy? It just rewards people
with peculiar tastes or low budgets.

~~~
dalore
What if I store my stool sample in the fridge that I need to take to the
doctor?

~~~
Chris2048
Why in the fridge? It need to be kept fresh?

~~~
jwilk
[https://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/how-should-i-collect-and-
store-...](https://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/how-should-i-collect-and-store-a-
stool-faeces-sample.aspx?CategoryID=69)

 _Stool samples must be fresh – if they aren 't, the bacteria in them can
multiply. This means the levels of bacteria in the stool sample won't be the
same as the levels of bacteria in your digestive system. If the levels of
bacteria don't match, the test results may not be accurate.

If you can't hand your stool sample in immediately, find out how long it can
be kept in the fridge. Your GP or the healthcare professional who requested
the test will be able to tell you._

------
0x7f800000
One of the most important tools we have for social encounters like
interviewing a stranger as a potential new roommate is our "gut" reaction,
which is our hard-won evolutionary instincts warning us of potential danger --
warning that something is off about the person or their situation.

Trust your gut.

~~~
mtgex
I completely disagree. I think our "gut" is infinitely biased. No one is
immune. If you believe you do not have racial, ethnic, and gender biases you
are wrong.

And, if you read the article, everyone's gut reaction was that this man was an
unassuming, down to earth, great guy, and they got along with him very well at
first. The article makes clear that their gut reaction failed them.

~~~
tty7
> If you believe you do not have racial, ethnic, and gender biases you are
> wrong.

When does trusting your gut mean you don't know you are biased? Everyone is
biased, get over it. If you are living with someone - yes please trust your
gut, live with who you want to live with.

as per the article the move in happened quickly and they were seemingly
desperate to get someone in to cover the rent.

~~~
mtgex
I didn't suggest that trusting your gut means you're not aware you can be
biased.

------
lr4444lr
Just the thought of being forced out of my house, or even having it invaded
confrontationally by someone like this who is relentless and antagonistic,
immediately gives me the gut reaction that if I take a baseball bat at night,
catch him while he's sleeping, and beat him badly enough to the point where I
can safely call the cops and claim I just defended myself after _he_ tried to
drag _me_ into his room and I grabbed a bat, what's his recourse? I play a
convincing victim of assault, and he's got what to counter it, a serial
history of manipulation while recuperating in the hospital? I might even call
the cops a few times leading up to the big night with fake domestic violence
complaints just to butter it up even better in preparation for it. I can't be
the only one who thinks along these lines.

~~~
markbnj
People like this are intuitively manipulative and often strangely good judges
of character. If you're the type of confident person who would not in a
million years put up with his crap then it's very likely you would never have
to, because he would seek out someone more malleable to make a victim of.

------
artificial
Meet Jeb, a roommate from hell originally posted on SomethingAwful.com ages
ago: [http://www.wyseguys.com/blag/shitty-roommate/meet-
jed/](http://www.wyseguys.com/blag/shitty-roommate/meet-jed/)

~~~
SuperNinKenDo
Wait. Is this the same "Jeb"?

~~~
lagadu
No, he says the names are fake.

------
mrunkel
Huh, as I started reading I was thinking "I've had some pretty bad roommates,
I wonder if this is worse." About a quarter of the way through I realized this
is way worse.

About three quarters of the way through I was filled with dread as I was
pretty sure it wasn't going to end well.

Excellent writing..

~~~
mlazos
I had the exact same experience. I was an inch away from not reading the end,
then the stabbing happened, then the murder happened... then everyone was
dead.. Insane. It escalated quickly.

~~~
Tokkemon
It's like Hamlet. A really slow burn through four acts, and all of the sudden
it explodes like a powder keg on fire!

------
simen
It's crazy how people who were terrorized by this guy blame themselves for the
fact that he turned out to be a murderer, and couldn't take the punishment.
Must have been a master at gaslighting.

~~~
zdfjkhiuj
Most people aren't psychopaths. The man was crazy, but he was still a person
and didn't deserve to die.

You should celebrate the fact that even people who he antagonized were upset
by his death. Even if they reacted irrationally, at least they reacted at all.

~~~
wils1245
There’s a big difference between empathy and guilt. That people feel guilty
and responsible for what happened to the man is a legacy of his manipulation,
and not something to be celebrated.

------
hprotagonist
This sounds eerily close to David Peritz's shenanigans in california:
[https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/12/berkeley-
sarah-...](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/12/berkeley-sarah-
lawrence-professor-house-rental-saga/)

edit: but way crazier. Good grief.

~~~
stevenwoo
I didn't realize the simple matter of not having an address on checks was such
a red flag.

~~~
ghaff
Barring a real-time clearance system (as I believe most stores still accepting
checks tend to use), a check is just basically an IOU with a promise that
there's enough money in your banking account to cover it. Especially in a
rental situation, I'm not sure that the lack of an address is a huge red flag
--after all, the person is probably between addresses. But a complete blank
check without even a name on it? Yeah, that's a red flag given that, even if
you've just opened up a new account, today you can get personalized checks
within a few days if not on the spot.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _But a complete blank check without even a name on it? Yeah, that 's a red
> flag_

At the very least, it’s a reminder to check ID and run a background check.

------
EdgarVerona
Imagine being his brother. Yikes. I can't even imagine what it must have been
like to feel a sense of familial duty toward such a person. Those tenants were
entrapped for sure, but I get the feeling none of them were as trapped as his
brother was.

------
ghthor
The resentment of Cain leads to him murdering Abel. Very sad story here =(

------
aje403
I housed a guy temporarily who was eerily similar to this. Reading this
article rings too many bells. Very good looking. Mysterious past, including
pretending to have a law degree (he had taken a bunch of law classes and
rambled as if he were an expert). He was being chased by the Columbians and
the Jews with a truly absurd story behind it. Used encrypted phone apps.
Stalking his ex girlfriend at an expensive nightclub once a week. I could go
on. Things got a little old after awhile but we had quite a few fun adventures
together and he wasn't (at least then) violent. I would be highly unsurprised
if he eventually turns violent when he gets older and he questions his own
delusions of grandeur.

Moral of the story: be very careful of who you let into your home and personal
life. It sounds easy until you find out the hard way for yourself. Trust your
instinct if it's good, if not, always make sure close friends and family are
aware of any strangers you're bringing into your life, even if they seem
innocuous at first.

------
QML
Maybe the United States does have a mental health issue — maybe we should pay
attention more to how college-aged men and women mature.

------
creep
"... they handed him the Rubbermaid bins and Abigail. But Bachman was enraged
when they declined to give back Zachary — they had sent him to live with a
woman in the suburbs, and the judge had permitted her to keep him. "

God, that hurt. I actually do feel sorry for this man.

------
js2
Wow, he's like Michael Keaton's character in Pacific Heights, but worse.

------
dannylandau
What an incredible riveting story! One of the best I've read in the NYT
magazine.

~~~
rweba
This is New York Magazine not the New York Times magazine (which I think still
appears in print every Sunday).

------
LearnerHerzog
I couldn't help but imagine an older version of Erlich Bachman from _Silicon
Valley_ while reading the name throughout the story.

[https://i.imgur.com/qXUq2eX.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/qXUq2eX.jpg)

~~~
imjk
Except in the show, it's Bachman who's the landlord taken advantage of by a
menacing tenant:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhZACkzuZeE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhZACkzuZeE)

------
bvod
This article does not belong on HN.

~~~
3131s
Actually it does revolve around a guy who essentially hacked the laws around
tenancy through extreme cleverness, and social engineered his way through a
very peculiar life. This story is really wild and it looks like you and many
others didn't actually read it before commenting. It's one of the best
longform pieces that I've read in a while.

~~~
bvod
Actually I read the whole thing - it was written really well. But it's far
from extremely clever what he did. Anyone who's studied tenancy law for more
than a few days could do the same. The only difference he had was being
sociopathic enough to do so - a point which the article makes in the end when
he turns out to be a murderer. Furthermore, none of the above are in any way
related to engineering or hackernews, and it's completely off topic for this
site.

~~~
3131s
Eh, I've been on HN a long time and you are definitely on the wrong side of
the consensus on this issue.

------
youdontknowtho
This is one of those extreme pieces that illustrate a libertarian trope about
property rights.

"Due to some crazy librul laws about renting apartments this psycho stabbed me
and ate my cat..."

Landlord laws are there to protect people from property owners that are often
unfair and discriminatory. It is the VAST-99.999%-almost-always-few-
exceptions-case that landlords are unfair to tenants rather than psycho's like
this or other scenarios.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
Also, usually the tenancy laws are much less strict when the landlord is
sharing the dwelling with the tenant. There is pretty much zero chance that
they wouldn't have been able to evict him quickly if they had good legal
representation. This is more of an example of how the legal system is unfair
to people without good legal representation than it is of how tenancy laws are
unfair.

