For many people, having a roommate is a great living situation. It prevents loneliness, and it is an affordable option. Although most roommates become firm friends, living with another person can sometimes take a dark turn.
In this list, you will learn about 10 people who turned out to be roommates from hell. From a nightmare landlady to a sleepwalking killer, here are 10 roommates who will make you want to live alone.
10 Elderly Lady’s Boarding House of Horror
In 1988 in Sacramento, California, Dorothea Puente welcomed 52-year-old Alvaro Montoya into her boarding house. He had been suffering from mental health problems and was referred to Puente because she was known for looking after her elderly and disabled tenants.
But, unlike her other tenants who had no friends or family, Montoya’s outreach counselor Judy Moise became suspicious when Montoya suddenly disappeared. Puente said he had gone on vacation, but Moise did not believe her.
She called the police, who visited the boarding house, but Puente repeated the same story to them. The police searched the residence but did not find anything and asked Puente’s permission to dig up the backyard. Puente agreed to this and asked if she could go and buy coffee. The police said she could leave, and they started digging. There they discovered the bodies of seven of Puente’s tenants.
Puente went on the lam, but she was arrested and escorted back to Sacramento five days later. She had been drugging her tenants with sleeping pills, suffocating them, and then hiring convicts to bury the bodies in her yard.
In 1993, Puente was finally convicted and given multiple life sentences. She died from natural causes in prison on March 27, 2011, at the age of 82.[1]
9 Roommate’s Disapproval of Heavy Drinking Leads to Murder
Fifty-nine-year-old Thomas Holifield was best friends with his 64-year-old roommate, Pamela Keltz. But they frequently argued about his heavy drinking because Keltz did not drink.
Allegedly, Holifield planned to kill Keltz because she did not like him drinking heavily. Holifield went into Keltz’s bedroom and discovered a bottle of windshield washer, which he used to poison his roommate. He apparently put some of the liquid in Keltz’s soda bottle, which hospitalized her.
When she returned home, he continued poisoning her drinks to kill her. Holifield then allegedly called the police on May 30, 2021, to confess while Keltz was in intensive care. After finding out Keltz had been poisoned, doctors tried to save her, but on June 1, she was declared brain-dead and taken off life support.
Holifield was set to appear in court on January 20, 2022, but details of the case have not been made public.[2]
8 An argument Over Music Volume Ends in Group Brawl
In a Bronx apartment in March 2022, 29-year-old Jonathon Hutcherson asked his roommates, 20-year-old Meana Torigoe and her 21-year-old boyfriend, John Delgado, to quiet down, but they ignored him. In retaliation, he turned his music up loud.
This angered the couple, and they apparently burst into Hutcherson’s room. Torigoe attacked him with mace, and Delgado punched him with brass knuckles. The fighting trio ended up in the living room, where one of the duo stabbed Hutcherson in the chest and neck, killing him.
When the first responders arrived at the apartment, they discovered the victim deceased at the scene. Both Torigoe and Delgado are facing manslaughter, weapons, and murder charges.[3]
7 Missing Food Stamps Ends in Disaster
Tracy Russell had allowed 30-year-old Jessica McBride and her boyfriend to live in her home in Tulsa, Oklahoma. But, for unknown reasons, she asked the two tenants to leave in March 2019.
When McBride returned to Russell’s home to collect some belongings, she accused Russell of taking her purse and stealing her food stamps. This caused an argument, and McBride put Russell in a rear chokehold, killing her. McBride left Russell for dead, picked up her belongings, and left.
She asked a friend to return to the house and help her set it on fire, but the friend contacted the authorities to report it. An undercover police officer was used to catch McBride red-handed. On March 20, 2019, the friend and the undercover cop picked up McBride and went to Russell’s residence. McBride got out of the car carrying a plastic bag that contained lighter fluid and gas camp fuel.
She then went through one of the windows, intending to set the place alight, but she was arrested instead. It is unclear when McBride will be sentenced, but she faces 15 years in federal prison, supervised release, and a $250,000 fine.[4]
6 Killed During Prayer
In November 2021, Gloria Farmer was living with her daughter, Gloria Ann Jordan, and another roommate. Farmer was sitting in an office chair when Jordan approached her, put her hand on Farmer’s forehead, and pushed her until the chair fell over backward, all while muttering a prayer. Jordan, who weighed 170 pounds, then sat on her mother’s chest in a prayer position.
Farmer and her other roommate tried and failed to move Jordan, who sat on her mother until she stopped breathing. Her cause of death was mechanical asphyxiation.
When police responded to a call about the deceased woman, they initially thought her death was due to medical problems. But, a friend of Farmer’s expressed their concerns about her death, and they reinterviewed the roommate who told them what happened. She did not mention this during the first interview because she was scared of Jordan.
Farmer’s death was deemed a homicide, and Jordan was arrested and charged with assault causing bodily injury in a domestic incident. She remains in Wichita County Jail, although further details about her case are unknown.[5]
5 A Fight Between Student Roommates Turns into Homicide
In 2019, Alexis Crawford was a student at Clark Atlanta University and shared a room with a woman named Jordyn Jones. On October 26, 2019, Crawford told police she had been sexually assaulted by Jones’s boyfriend, Barron Brantley. The trio were drinking when Crawford passed out and suspected that Brantley had assaulted her.
On October 30, Crawford and Jones went to a liquor store. Despite not speaking to each other because of the alleged assault, Crawford asked her roommate to accompany her to the store. Two days later, Crawford’s family realized she was missing and reported it to the police.
Just after their late-night liquor run, Crawford and Jones got into a physical confrontation inside their apartment. Brantley then got involved, and he choked Crawford until she stopped breathing. Jones and Brantley put Crawford’s body in a plastic bin and disposed of it in a park in Decatur, Georgia.
A week later, Jones and Brantley were arrested and charged with felony murder. Although both of them confessed to the murder, no trial date has been set.[6]
4 Former Actor’s Argument over Girlfriend Ends Badly
Ricardo Medina Jr is a former actor known for his role on the TV series Power Rangers. But, in 2015, an argument between him and his roommate escalated and ended in disaster. Medina had been arguing with 38-year-old Joshua Sutter in the kitchen of their Los Angeles home over Medina’s girlfriend.
It then developed into a serious altercation, so Medina and his girlfriend retreated to Medina’s bedroom and locked the door. But Sutter broke the door down, and Medina grabbed a sword, stabbing him to death.
Medina was initially charged with murder, but he maintained that it was self-defense. In March 2017, he pled guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to six years in prison.[7]
3 A Man’s Sleepwalking Turns Deadly
Randy Herman Jr lived in West Palm Beach with his best friend, Brooke Preston. In the beginning, everything was going well. But after quitting his job, Herman spiraled back into his old habits of drinking heavily and taking drugs.
After moving to Buffalo, New York, to live with her boyfriend, Preston met up with Herman again in March 2017, and they spent the day together. But Herman became so drunk he started becoming aggressive, annoying Preston. She texted a friend to come and pick her up, and she left for the night.
The next morning, she returned to Herman’s residence to ask about a T-shirt she was supposed to take with her. He pointed to his dresser and fell back to sleep. Less than 30 minutes later, Herman woke up and found himself holding his hunting knife, with Preston stabbed to death on the floor. He had stabbed her over 20 times and slashed her throat.
He called 911 and told the operator that he had killed his friend. He was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. He pleaded not guilty and claimed he was sleepwalking when he killed Preston. However, this argument was rejected, and in May 2019, Herman was sentenced to life in prison.[8]
2 Serial Squatter Terrified Roommates
Jamison Bachman studied at Georgetown University and the University of Miami, where he was a gifted student. But he failed his bar exam and instead used his legal talents to con and terrorize numerous roommates. He would move in with his victim and either make life hard by refusing to pay rent or attempting to have them evicted.
In 2017, Alex Miller advertised for a roommate on Craigslist and received a reply from a man named Jed Creek, who was actually Bachman. At first, their living situation was fine, but Bachman began refusing to pay the bills and started stealing Miller’s belongings.
Miller eventually discovered who “Jed Creek” was and the crimes he had committed and called the police. She wrote him a letter stating that the police were aware of his actions and that he needed to leave. Bachman returned the next morning and attacked Miller, stabbing her. She called the police, and he was arrested, but his brother, Harry, bailed him out.
In a shocking turn of events, Bachman then beat his brother to death and stole his credit card and his wife’s car. He was found by police and charged with first and third-degree murder. But, before he stood trial, Bachman committed suicide by hanging himself in his cell.[9]
1 Famous Star’s Ex Suffers a Downward Spiral
Johnny Lewis was a promising actor, appearing in major American TV shows, including the biker drama Sons of Anarchy. He also dated pop star Katy Perry, and it’s rumored that Lewis was the inspiration for two of her songs. But he quit Sons of Anarchy in 2009 when he felt the storylines were becoming too violent.
In April 2009, he moved into “The Writer’s Villa,” a house in Los Angeles designed for creative people. The house was run by 81-year-old Kathy Davis, who Lewis got on very well with.
Unfortunately, he had a serious motorcycle accident, after which his behavior became increasingly strange and erratic. He was arrested for various crimes and spent time in a psychiatric unit.
After moving back in with his parents, Lewis decided to move back into The Writer’s Villa. But, on September 26, 2012, Lewis brutally killed his landlady, Kathy Davis, by beating and strangling her to death. He then climbed to either the roof or the top patio and fell to his death. It is not clear whether he jumped or slipped, but his death was ruled an accident.
Drugs were suspected, but a toxicology report came back negative. Others say that his dangerous behavior was caused by an undetected brain injury he sustained in his motorcycle crash.
Although the Writer’s Villa is still maintained, it is no longer rented out. It is owned by Kathy Davis’s daughter, Margaret Leslie Davis.[10]