Monster House Suzy Brown gets off on technicality

We've covered the strange case of Casa Simpatica before. Since that post, former owner Suzy Brown was arrested for stealing the uber-expensive fixtures from the house while it was in foreclosure.

Happy news for Suzy today. The lazy prosecutors didn't bother to prove the bank owned the house when she took the fixtures:

A woman accused of stealing $1 million worth of fixtures, appliances and doors from a foreclosed home in Encinitas has won a legal victory, according to the North County Times.

Suzy Brown's neighbors dubbed it the “Monster House” after the 15-bedroom villa began construction. The house fell into foreclosure in February 2009 and was vacant for about three weeks. In March 2009, it was stripped of up to $1 million in imported fixtures, police said.

Brown was facing one charge of grand theft and one charge of felony vandalism, but a judge dismissed those charges Thursday on a technicality.

A judge ruled that the prosecutor failed to prove that the bank owned the house in 2009 when a real estate broker discovered the missing fixtures, according to the paper.

"The people did not provide any representative of the bank, unfortunately," Superior Court Judge Aaron Katz said.

Brown, who built the house in 2004, had planned to turn it into a "recovery house" for patients looking to escape the clutches of drugs and alcohol, but the city killed the plan after neighbors complained about the $13 million villa.

If you're interested, Casa Simpatica is still for sale at $2.5 million, a fraction of what the bank spent to build it, and a real comp-killer at $153/sqft.