Exclusive: 'Landlord from Hell' Defends Terrorizing Apartment Tenants

Nov. 13, 2013— -- Kip Macy, 39, and his wife, Nicole Macy, also 39, were deemed "landlords of hell" by authorities for menacing the tenants of their San Francisco apartment building.

In what authorities called a 17-month lawless rampage, the couple burglarized apartments, sabotaged the building's structure, and even sawed up through a horrified tenant's apartment floor, according to district attorney George Gascon.

"Well, they were trying to terrorize the tenants so they would leave," Gascon told ABC News' "20/20". "There was absolutely no other way to explain what they were doing."

Kip Macy is serving a four-year sentence for two felony counts of residential burglary, one felony count of stalking and one felony count of attempted grand theft at the San Quentin State Prison in California.

Summoned from a jail cell where he was awaiting transfer to San Quentin, Macy sat down for an exclusive interview with ABC News' "20/20," and said it all began with his wife Nicole Macy's idea. They were going to buy a four unit apartment building in an up-and-coming neighborhood of San Francisco, get the tenants to move out, and sell the individual apartments for a profit.

"I was hesitant," said Kip Macy, who worked as a software consultant before buying the building. "But I mean, she assured me it wouldn't be that risky."

Nicole Macy declined to speak to "20/20."

From September 2005 to December 2007, Kip and Nicole Macy tried to make their tenants leave by any means necessary according to the DA, including asking a city inspector what beams to cut to make their building deemed unfit to live in -- and then actually doing it.

"They used a power saw and tried to compromise the structure of the building so the floor would actually collapse," DA Gascon said.

The two also cut phone lines, shut off power, and boarded up the windows of occupied apartments. Kip and Nicole Macy even removed tenants' belongings from their apartments.

"I regret, you know, having moved the Mexicans' stuff into the hallway," Kip Macy said. "I don't see how that was burglary, or theft, since I neither stole their stuff."

He said he moved his building manager, Ricardo Cartagena's things because it was "garbage."

"I mean, basically, if some homeless person leaves stuff in your garage and you [throw] it away, are you guilty of grand theft?" Kip Macy said.

One tenant, Scott Morrow, stubbornly would not move out, which frustrated Kip and Nicole Macy.

"Basically, Scott was sort of the ... one breaking point," Kip Macy said, claiming that Morrow made money off all the previous owners.

"There wasn't actually any legal way of doing it right, since we had done everything right legally, and it hadn't worked," Kip Macy said. "That's when we started making bad decisions."

Their "bad decisions" included cutting through the floorboards of Morrow's floor with a saw.

"We harassed him a bit because [we] no longer had anything to lose," Kip Macy explained, saying he and Nicole Macy felt abandoned by the law.

"He had parts of his floor cut out from underneath, also illegal, but whatever," Kip Macy said.