Squatters: Get the F*** Out of My House (2026) s01e03 Episode Script

[news reporter] Homeowners all across
the country have run into issues
with squatters.
[person] Squatters are ready
to make your house their home.
[person 2] Happening right
under our noses, and nobody knew.
[person 3] Get the fuck out of my house.
This is the time to speak her story.
And to make people understand that
there are very dangerous people out there.
And they're very smart at what they do.
[person 4]
The police can be helpless about it.
[person 5] Wendy and I lived
two houses away from each other.
She became a really good friend of mine.
We were in the Stetson Hills neighborhood
on the east side of Colorado Springs.
It was a newer neighborhood,
highly desired
by a lot of people
just because it was safe.
We hung out every Friday night.
She would laugh and giggle
and when [laughs] she walks around,
you can't help but to look at her.
She's just so vibrant.
Wendy has two daughters
that she raised as a single mom.
[Taylor Clark] My mama is a force
to be reckoned with,
but the sweetest person at the same time,
if you need anything, she's going to
be the first person to be there for you.
She originally bought the house for her,
my sister and I.
She wanted it just to be the perfect
place for us to grow up.
We had amazing memories there.
She built an amazing home.
She should have been
an interior decorator.
The house was immaculate.
It was beautiful.
In 2015, I moved to Fargo, North Dakota,
and then my little sister
moved up there shortly after.
So, at that point,
then my mom was at the house by herself.
[dramatic music plays]
It was hard for her
because she was a homemaker.
My sister and I were her world.
My mom and I talked daily.
[Wendy Clark cries]
[Michelle Clark] Once the girls moved out,
my sister was very lonely.
She struggled with that a lot,
and she had gone into a dating app.
And that's where she met Jack Cole.
Jack was polite. He was in good shape.
He's from Texas, so he had, like,
the southern drawl.
But as soon as Wendy met Jack
she knew there was no attraction,
and she knew
there was nothing between them.
It would just be a friendship.
Jack had told Wendy
that he needed somewhere to stay,
and because Wendy was in between jobs
at the time and struggling financially,
she agreed to rent him a room.
[dogs barking]
[Taylor Clark] After a month,
Jack wasn't paying any rent.
I told her, you know [sighs]
"You have to get rid of this guy.
You have to get him out of there."
And she wanted him gone.
And then he started becoming weird
is what she would say all the time.
Wendy was a neat freak,
and she says anything he touches,
whether it's her cupboard or a doorknob,
it's just got this film or grease on it.
She
She couldn't stand that.
[Cobern] The first time I saw this man,
right away my stomach,
it it just wasn't right.
Like, I couldn't figure it out.
He just seemed kinda off.
[Taylor Clark] She asked him
multiple times to leave.
She told him that she was going
to go through the legal eviction process.
And that's when
everything kind of went downhill.
[Michelle Clark] Around that time,
her health started declining.
She was just not the same.
She was very witty and sharp,
and she seemed kind of out of it.
I honestly didn't know what was going on.
The hospital called me on a Sunday morning
and said, "Are you Wendy Clark's mother?"
And I said, "Yes, I am." And they said,
"Well, you need to come
to the hospital right away."
And she was in a coma.
[machine beeps]
I didn't realize
that Wendy had been so sick
'cause she kept everything to herself.
She didn't want to worry people.
So it was just
everything was just a shock.
I just remember getting into the ICU
and coming in the room [sobbing]
and my beautiful friend was laying there.
And I was shocked to find
that she was brain dead.
And all I could do
was pray for her. [sobbing]
[Michelle Clark] It seemed like
she had been sick for quite a while.
Basically, her pancreas, they said,
"was mush" and then she had gotten septic.
Taylor, her oldest daughter,
was the next of kin,
so we had kept Wendy alive on life support
until the girls got here.
[Taylor Clark]
Seeing my mom on life support,
I had to make the decision
to take her off of it.
[crying] That was my person.
That's something that'll never
It never, like, leaves you.
[sobs, sniffles]
[Cobern] I was shattered inside.
I had so many emotions going on.
I felt like I
I didn't do enough for my friend.
We had no idea
that it was just the beginning
of a horrible, horrible story.
[tense music plays]
[Taylor Clark] I had to make the decision
to take my mom off of life support.
After my mom passed away,
I went straight to the house.
Jack wouldn't let us in.
[sirens wailing]
The police were called,
and Jack had told them
that him and my mom
were common-law married.
And that he was part owner of the house
and that she had signed it over to him.
That's asinine.
He wasn't even at the hospital
on the day of her death.
I'm sorry, but for any man
who loves his wife
he wouldn't let go of her hand
in a time like that.
I think what he was doing was trying
to put his finger on her property
and create ownership of it
through the marriage
and through the deed transfer
of the home to him.
I didn't really have anything to say.
I didn't even have a chance
to grieve losing my mom
before I, uh, had to deal
with Jack squatting in the house.
The cops told me that
because he stayed there
for more than three days,
that he was a legal resident.
[Michelle Clark]
They said this was a civil matter.
We would have to take him to court.
And police said that we had no rights
to the home, and we could not go in it.
It's just hard to believe.
How can that be true?
These girls grew up in the house,
this is my sister's home,
so how does he get to stay in that house,
and we can't go into it.
I mean [chuckles]
make that make sense. [chuckles]
It doesn't.
My name was on the utilities.
His name wasn't on anything.
They still couldn't let me in the house.
I had to hire an attorney and go
through the whole legal eviction process.
[Michelle Clark] And so,
the court process dragged on for weeks,
months, and during that time,
Jack sends me a message saying,
"If you're going to see the police,
you better hurry
before everything's gone."
Jack is in Wendy's house,
throwing stuff out,
letting people move in.
Women are coming
and going and taking her clothes.
One of them took a picture
of herself wearing my sister's clothes
and jewelry in my sister's bathroom,
posted that on Facebook.
[woman chuckles]
He's taunting us the entire time,
and we've just got to sit back
and do nothing
because if we go on that property,
we're in trouble.
[keypad beeps]
I was calling the police
and calling the police and being like,
"There's an active theft
going on right now in this house
two doors down from me,
and they're stealing her things."
[Gerry Clark] We begged the police
to help us, and they said,
"It's not criminal,
it's just a civil matter."
[Cobern] I couldn't tell you
how many times I just wanted
to run out there and be like,
"Put her things back.
Put her things back.
They're not yours.
Who are these people that are coming
around the neighborhood?"
We went from "happy neighborhood" to
We were all uncomfortable.
We were watching what was going on.
You literally,
as a person in your community,
wanna go back to a normal state of living
and you want this family to be able
to have some sense of closure.
It was time to get Jack Cole out
of her house and out of that neighborhood.
[Michelle Clark] It's been three months
after Wendy passed.
Jack is in Wendy's home.
[Gerry Clark] And nobody would help us.
I've reached out to several news stations,
and I got a hold of Eric Ross.
Our investigation uncovered
police did nothing
to help a grieving mother
after squatters invaded her daughter's
home just days after she died.
Eric Ross, News5 Investigates.
Gerry Clark is just a mother
who was trying
to mourn the loss of her daughter,
and she couldn't do that
because she was so focused
on how can she keep her daughter's house
and belongings from going to squatters.
I recognized we had a big issue
on our hand,
and we needed
to do something quick about it.
She died October 16th,
and we're going into February.
He's been living there
for free all these months.
[Ross] We reached out to the police
department to get their side of the story.
Colorado Springs police said
they conducted an investigation,
but ultimately the DA decided
no charges were warranted.
I asked the DA's office,
"Why is this happening?"
They're saying, "It's a civil matter."
Based on the evidence
we've been given on this case,
there's insufficient evidence for charges.
This family just wanted
to get some type of action.
It's pathetic. We pay taxes.
We're citizens of the state of Colorado.
Why can't somebody help us?
[echoing] Help us. Help us.
Jack Cole was claiming he was married
to Wendy Clark.
[Gerry Clark] On her death certificate,
it states that she's single.
On the medical records from the hospital,
it said single.
She's never been married.
Let me tell you something,
it's easy to claim something
when the other person is dead
and can't speak for themselves.
We did our research.
[Ross] News5 Investigates, one of Jack's
multiple Facebook pages says he's single.
Another shows he's in a relationship
with another woman.
[Gerry Clark] He fought for us.
He tried to do everything
in his power to help us.
Because Eric did a news story on it,
it got a lot of the public's attention.
And the judge's attention.
[Ross] The judge ultimately sided with
Gerry and ordered the squatters to leave.
We finally were able to get him evicted.
[Michelle Clark] It's been three months,
but it felt like such a win.
Someone listened. Someone heard our story.
We've won.
We've got Wendy's house back.
And we thought we could finally
maybe exhale and start grieving.
Then we went back in Wendy's house
and saw the aftermath.
[Cobern] Oh, my God. What the fuck?
[Ross] That house was destroyed.
Our local news coverage revealed
drug paraphernalia, to include needles.
There were cigarette butts,
appliances were missing,
furniture was missing,
wall switches had been ripped off.
It-It was like nothing I've ever seen.
There was just a bunch of hangers.
All Wendy's clothes were gone.
Going in Wendy's house
and seeing that nothing is left,
it was like losing Wendy all over again.
She's my little sister,
so I'm always supposed to protect her.
And now she's gone,
and this is the last thing I can do
to try to protect her,
and now that's all gone too.
Her kids are going to have nothing left.
There were no clothes left.
There's nothing left that said,
"Wendy was here."
[sobbing] I couldn't I could
I could never go back there.
It's not the home that my mom made
for us anymore.
At that point, I sold the house
two months later as a fixer-upper
because he had done over $40,000 worth
of damage to the house.
[Michelle Clark] I wish I could say
there was accountability,
but he didn't get charged with anything.
We could take him to court
for restitution,
but, I mean, he's
he [chuckles] he doesn't have a job,
so there's no point in wasting our time.
We've seen how the court works.
It was just us that were left to
pick up the pieces and deal with the loss.
A year after Jack was evicted is
when I found out that he was arrested
for an unrelated case for sexual assault
and sentenced to five years in prison.
It felt like a tiny bit of justice.
It's unrelated,
it has nothing to do with us,
but at least he's off the streets.
But I had no idea what was ahead of us.
He won't go away. [echoes]
It had been two years.
Just when you feel like you can breathe.
I come home, check my mail, and I see
I have something from El Paso County.
The letter was a lawsuit.
It stated that I had lost a lawsuit
to Jack Cole and owed him $400,000.
My hands started shaking
and I spilled coffee all over myself.
[Ross] Fast forward to today, Wendy's
family is dealing with another nightmare.
The squatter, evicted,
sues the victim's family.
[Michelle Clark] After everything
that Jack had put my family through.
Now he's suing me
for almost half a million dollars
for: mental anguish, injured feelings.
Hurting his feelings,
and causing him pain?
The audacity of it.
He won't go away.
And coming back
and trying to get more from us.
I guess as a convicted felon,
he was suing for his feelings being,
quote, unquote, "injured."
It was a bunch of garbage.
The courts had paperwork showing Jack Cole
had the lawsuit served to Michelle Clark,
but a closer look at the paperwork
has some irregularities
the court did not catch.
Jack is a master manipulator.
He is a criminal, he is a felon,
he is a sex offender,
and his rap sheet, quite frankly,
is longer than my résumé.
This guy could sell toys
to Santa Claus and ice to Eskimos.
But our investigative work revealed
he made a few key mistakes
that ultimately unraveled his plan.
[Ross] Jack Cole was behind
bars when the paperwork
was allegedly served to the Clark family.
Cole allegedly had a man named
Travis Rickard serve the papers,
but Travis Rickard,
he's also a convicted felon serving time
in prison on multiple charges.
I reported on the story
that there was no way that fellow inmate,
Rickard, served paperwork
in person to Michelle Clark.
[Ross] The original judge granted
a new hearing based on this new evidence,
but now not even the courts can get Cole
and his accomplice
to leave their prison cells
and make an appearance
to explain what they did.
Jack proved himself to be a coward,
never even showing up to court.
Fortunately, at the end of the day,
in calling out the discrepancies
in this bogus paperwork,
the judge reversed his decision,
and the Clark family was not
on the hook for that default judgment.
When my lawsuit was dismissed,
the relief doesn't last.
Because it's hard to let down your guard
because you don't know what's next.
I've had to move,
so he can't find my address.
I'm always waiting
for the other shoe to fall.
I don't want to see this happen
to any other family
because I will never be the same,
and I'd hate to see someone else
have to deal with this as well.
It destroys parts of you.
[Ross] Mr. Cole is no longer in jail.
He has since disappeared and hopefully
he stays far away from the Clark family.
[Cobern] It is very hard to know
that Jack Cole is a free man.
He was able to destroy
and affect so many people's lives.
You need to look at his face.
And if you see him, do not go near him.
[Taylor Clark] I hope that he doesn't have
any more victims.
Because nobody should have
to go through what we've gone through.
Not only did I lose my mother,
and my best friend,
I got robbed of [stammers]
literally every piece of her.
Because of Jack.
Be careful who you let into your lives,
into your home.
Don't let it happen to you.
The pain is unbelievable.