Anonymous wrote:That house is in Falls Church, not McLean. It hasn't been torn down yet, just fenced off. Lots of new houses further up Westmoreland in McLean getting built and sold without arson.
Was this the first (or one of the first) new house in the neighborhood? That is enough to make certain kinds of neighbors unhinged. Certain neighbors feel threatened by change, progress, and the idea that they might very well be out priced from their own neighborhood sooner rather than later. Was the arsonist caught and prosecuted? I would imagine so - something about retaliation for his dead friend who lived there or close to there. That sounds pretty unhinged to me.
My friend lived next to a guy like this. The gun-toting Neighborhood Watch type, in a close in suburb mentioned here. It was just a matter of time for him - his inability to cope with change, his distorted perception of reality, combined with obvious frustration with his own life, and my friend left very quickly. He was and is a ticking time bomb. It is no fun to live next door to the unhinged type, you never know if you are next on his arbitrary, confused, unhinged list.