The series Worst Neighbor Ever immerses its audience into an unnerving tale of neighborhood conflict. Yet, despite the eventual chaos, the woman at the heart of this story didn’t initially set off any alarm bells, according to one participant.
This participant appears in the newest installment of Netflix’s true crime anthology, where she shared insights exclusively with Oxygen. She recalled that upon her first encounter with Caroline Herrling—also known as Carrie Phenix—there was nothing particularly memorable about her. Caroline was friendly, blending comfortably into the neighborhood’s fabric. However, this perception dramatically altered in 2020.
“She was very innocent,” the participant, Baskin, noted. “She seemed very normal, very sweet. We would always walk our dogs at the same time. Nothing was suspicious about her.”
But the year 2020 marked a turning point.
“And then around (the) COVID (pandemic) in 2020 is when there was a major shift in her,” Baskin stated. “We believe that she started using methamphetamines.”
The episode follows Herrling’s shocking criminal case. Prosecutors say she discovered wealthy Sherman Oaks, Calif. property owner Charles Wilding dead inside his home, then moved his body to her West Los Angeles apartment instead of contacting authorities. According to federal prosecutors, Herrling and her co-conspirators attempted to dissolve Wilding’s body with chemicals before dismembering it and set out to steal his estate as part of a scheme targeting “vulnerable victims.”
Looking back, Baskin said there were dots she didn’t initially connect.
“We started to notice her hanging out with a suspicious crowd,” she said, recalling people with ankle monitors and “prison” style tattoos gathering outside the apartment building. Baskin also noticed Herrling stopped making eye contact, changed the way she dressed and fell behind on rent.
Soon afterward, packages began disappearing from residents’ doorsteps, and a neighbor’s bicycle was stolen from the garage, Baskin said.
“So things like that started happening,” Baskin said.
Still, she never imagined the crimes authorities would later accuse Herrling of committing.
Baskin said she first learned about the allegations from a news article sent to her by a friend. Suddenly, nights she had dismissed as strange but harmless took on a chilling new meaning.
“I thought she was doing normal meth activities, like rearranging furniture,” Baskin said, explaining she had mistaken loud sawing noises for furniture being dragged across the floor. “Not chopping up bodies or doing millions in wire fraud.”
Watching Worst Neighbor Ever brought back even more disturbing details.
“I didn’t know that she pulled (Wilding’s) teeth out and crushed them,” Baskin said. “It gives me chills just thinking about it. It’s horrifying that that was going on like 50 feet away from me.”
Herrling pleaded guilty in March 2023 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and was later sentenced to 240 months in federal prison. Looking back, Baskin said she is grateful her former neighbor is no longer living in the apartment complex.
“We were all so relieved to have her gone,” she said. “Even though we didn’t know what we know now, we still were being terrorized.”