I don't know if this counts more as frightening than interesting, but my wife just had a conversation with the guy two houses down. His whole clan has been living in that house for three generations, all The-Hills-Have-Eyes style, and he told her a couple of days ago he once caught one of the local thieves stealing his golf clubs out of the back of his truck.
He chased the thief down and gave him a rather severe beating (my neighbor is 5'8 and 110lbs soaking wet), the whole time yelling "don't come back, Crow!" Crow being the thief's nickname. As a result of the thrashing, Crow fell backwards and bashed his head on the concrete sidewalk, and went to the hospital in a coma. He eventually awoke, was released, then five days later, he died. My neighbor was up on manslaughter charges, but they were dropped, since Crow was released from the hospital when he passed on. "All I had to do was pay the lawyer and that was it," was what my neighbor said to my wife.
I don't know what's more disturbing, the fact that my neighbor knows all the local scumbags by nickname, or that he essentially beat one of them to death and got away with it. I take comfort in the fact that it may not be true, since he strikes me as the consummate BS artist, but we won't be having them over for coffee and cookies any time soon.