Credit: Netflix

The fourth and final episode of Worst Neighbor Ever on Netflix sheds light on an unimaginable fraud case from Los Angeles, involving the disappearance of a wealthy man, Charles Wilding, and a gruesome attempt at covering up a crime in a Breaking Bad way.

In the early 1960s, Wilding’s family moved into an affluent LA neighbourhood of Sherman Oaks, where Charles went on to live as an adult with his parents, having spent most of his childhood there. Even after his mother passed away in 2017, Wilding continued living there.

As revealed in the true-crime documentary Worst Neighbor Ever, the Wildings had formidable wealth to their name, which belonged to their only child, Charles, after their deaths. As a result, Charles lived an extremely reclusive life without having to work for a single day. In fact, he barely even left home, which means his routine supplies, like rations and other staff, were possibly brought by hired helpers.

Although Charles didn’t have any friends or family members left, and rarely left the four walls of his residence, neighbours could spot him through the windows, and even he would wave back at them. However, in 2020, neighbours decided to file an official complaint, suspecting that Charles had possibly gone missing after not seeing him for days. The authorities didn’t really actively step up right then, assuming that he had moved out somewhere else, citing his unusually reclusive nature.

But after 10 months, law enforcement decided to pay a visit to Charles’ house, hoping to conduct a thorough search, only to find the alleged trustee of the Wilding family, Caroline Herring, there. As per Herring, Charles had been living with a friend in Carpinteria, a coastal town in California. As the cops wanted to conduct a quick search, she even warned that the place was a mess and she was sorting things to sell it.

The very next day, Herring called the investigating officer and had him speak with an elderly man claiming to be Charles. However, once the police arrived on the spot, the ruse was up. The elderly man was not Charles and had been paid to pretend to be Wilding on the phone, making the cops highly suspicious of Herring by now.

It turns out that in 2020, Jason Kroth had been setting his sights on wealthy neighbourhoods to rob houses when he learned about the Wildings. But when he broke in, he discovered Charles already dead and decaying. Upon discovering that the legal documents for the estate were simply lying around, Kroth called his girlfriend, Herring, who then packed the body in plastic, transferring it to her apartment in Beverly Glen.

And what followed is simply harrowing as she attempted to completely decompose the body through chemical reactions. After this, the duo began an elaborate wire fraud, setting up fake trust accounts in the name of Charles’ mother, and had the funds transferred to her bank account. While this is not the first fraud by Herring, she and Kroth were both arrested eventually.

Caroline Herring pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison. Additionally, she was also required to pay $3.8millionas restitution to her victims. Meanwhile, Kroth pleaded guilty to possession with intent to distribute meth, earning a sentence of 16 years and 8 months and was sentenced to pay $1.8million to the victims.