Squatters: Get the F*** Out of My House

Homeowners all across the country run into issues

with squatters.

Squatters are ready to make your house their home.

Happening right under our noses, and nobody knew.

Get the fuck out of my house.

I've been a reporter for the Los Angeles Times for 11 years,

and this is one of the most bizarre cases I've worked on.

It's scary, very complex, definitely a lot of twists and turns.

Why is it that none of us knew what was going on up there?

What's upstairs?

Bodies were dismembered and disposed of...

Sherman Oaks, it's a pretty affluent neighborhood

in Los Angeles.

Multimillion-dollar homes.

But we never really know what's happening behind closed doors.

Kingswood Road is a one-block street,

small enough that the neighbors, they're familiar with each other.

A lot of people who lived on that street,

they watched Charles Wilding Jr. growing up.

He had lived there since he was born in 1951.

He was a shy boy. His dad died when he was a teenager.

He was very, very close to his mom.

June Wilding was more friendly, more outgoing,

chatted more with the neighbors.

Charles really wasn't. He kept to himself.

And then his mom passed away in 2017.

After his mother June died, the home had fallen into disrepair.

Charles Wilding was living his life without his mom, without anyone.

The neighbors on that street would see him

walking in his puffy jacket and his knit cap getting groceries.

I live just down the street and around the corner from Charles Wilding's house.

We knew he was old and alone.

Um, he became kind of a recluse.

Fall of 2020, during the pandemic,

Charles puts up signs outside his house and says, "Stay away."

Charles boarded up the driveway.

He was afraid of anyone coming near him.

People didn't see him anymore,

and they started wondering, "Where's Charles Wilding?"

Months passed, and then all of a sudden,

there started to be activity that was happening at the house.

They seemed to be doing construction on the house,

which just didn't fit with him being the guy who'd put the sign up saying,

"Leave me alone. Don't come near."

There was a woman that started showing up.

That's when this woman ended up circulating a letter

and sending it to the neighbors.

You know, the letter was addressed to all the residents of Kingswood Road.

"I wanted to reach out and formally introduce myself.

I appreciate everyone's patience and cooperation

with all the noise and congestion.

Great changes are underway with the goal of bringing the property to code.

While the property is being restored,

Charles has relocated to the beach house in Carpinteria,

where he has spent summers since childhood.

We are happy to provide updates or answer any questions.

If there ever comes a time that the noise would interfere,

please don't hesitate to reach out.

Sincerely, Caroline Herrling, trustee of the Wilding Estate."

Charles never had any family members who are close

since his mom had passed away years prior.

Who is this Caroline Herrling?

I'm Charles Wilding Jr.'s attorney. At least I thought I was.

Four, five years ago, I met a Caroline Herrling.

You know, she's a very all-American girl,

very bubbly, very go-go-go,

and, um, she was dressed in a Chanel suit.

So put together.

She said that she had gone to law school and she was waiting for her bar results.

And she submitted a will for Charles's mother,

June Wilding, that she wanted to have probated.

A probate is the court-supervised distribution of a decedent's estate.

Caroline said she was power of attorney acting on behalf of an older person

named Charles Wilding Jr.

And she put him on the phone.

I remember speaking to Charles, and he said that,

"Caroline kind of takes care of everything for me."

He said, "I was older." And she was running stuff for him.

So, that's not unusual.

In December 2020,

renovations were happening on the property,

but neighbors were questioning, at that point,

you know, "Charles never left in all the years he's lived here."

Something seems weird here.

So days before Christmas, neighbors decided to call the police.

- -

Suspect...

No, I'm looking for a Charles Wilding.

- You live here? -

I'm a detective supervisor. December of 2020,

the officers, they met with a woman named Caroline Herrling.

Because, uh, a neighbor had called

with their concerns about Charles's whereabouts.

We just wanna make sure he's okay

'cause somebody's concerned about his welfare.

How long has he been out there?

We gotta make sure he's not here.

They were in work outfits, which wasn't unusual

for properties that are being abated.

Full respirators?

Trust me when I tell you we've dealt with worse.

Okay.

Oh. This one... Whose is this-this one?

- It's all right. -

We'll go this way.

There's... Sorry, rotting food everywhere.

It was like a house of someone who had lived there for years, was a shut-in.

Charles had hoarded basically over time,

and had accumulated all of these items, all of these things.

The officers, uh, did a search of the property.

It was pretty systematic. They went into every room,

every closet, every bathroom.

There was an odor inside the house, a musty odor.

Couldn't pinpoint whatever it was,

and it smelled like a musty old house.

It was dingy and it was in disarray.

Look.

Ultimately, uh, Mr. Wilding was not at the property.

There was no obvious signs of foul play.

There was no evidence to suggest that the house itself was a crime scene.

And according to Caroline, Mr. Wilding was staying at this property

in Carpinteria for the past month or so.

Caroline had all the right answers.

She had all the requisite paperwork that documented her as the trustee,

and their story seemed to match what was actually occurring in the property.

So what's the plan for the house?

Yeah.

-All right, guys. - Thank you.

After the officers showed up on the scene,

the LAPD ended up closing the case.

But it's such a small street that, for neighbors,

it was very clear to them that something was amiss here.

So they were like, "We're gonna report every weird thing,

every goings-on that happens."

In October of 2021,

I received an anonymous call from a woman.

There's no sign of Charles Wilding.

There's no sense of what happened to him.

Neighbors suspected Caroline was squatting at Charles Wilding's home.

Where is Charles Wilding? Is he in danger?

It's been about a year since Charles has been missing.

And neighbors on the street suspected something was wrong.

They were like, "Okay, we haven't seen Charles. Where is he?

Like, what are we supposed to do? Or what can we do?"

I really had no evidence to support

that she was up to anything nefarious.

I guess you can call it, you know, 30 years of police officer intuition.

There was something nagging at me that I had to dig a little deeper.

So I obtained Caroline's phone number.

Told Caroline that I needed to speak with Charles.

Caroline explained to me

that Charles had recently changed his phone number without her knowledge

and promised to get back to me the following day.

The day after that, I received a phone call

and spoke with a man, elderly-sounding,

telling me that he was, in fact, Charles Wilding.

But assured me that he was alive and well.

I wanted to verify if this was, in fact, Charles.

So I asked what his social security number was,

or his driver's license.

This individual could not provide either, uh, of those numbers to me.

That's when the alarm bells started going off in my head.