A heavily pregnant teenager was left terrified when her landlord removed the windows and door of her Fife property as she cowered inside.
Ms Landless had agreed to rent the flat from Simpson at a rate of £500 per month. She had hoped the council would meet the cost but subsequently discovered they would pay just half of the rent.
Giving evidence at his own trial, Simpson said: “When she realised she could not pay the rent I just thought she would do the decent thing and leave. I felt like I had been taken for a mug.”
Nevertheless, Simpson said he thought Ms Landless had already left when he turned up on the day in question.
“She had sent me a text message saying she was going to leave so I assumed she had gone,” he insisted. “We knocked on the door but there was no answer.
“I wanted to get the flat ready so I could rent it out again … but we did not have the keys so we had to take the door off its hinges. I never set out to hurt or upset anybody I did not expect that girl to be in the flat.”
When asked by his solicitor Douglas Williams if he had intended to unlawfully deprive Ms Landless of her right to occupy the flat, Simpson replied: “No. I believed she had ceased to live there.”
When asked why he not gone through the proper channels if he wished to evict the tenant, Simpson said: “I am not that good at paperwork that is my weakness.”
Depute fiscal Susannah Hutchison then asked Simpson if he had intended to “bully Michaela Landless, effectively forcing her out”.
“No. That is not the way I operate,” Simpson replied.
Sheriff Charles Macnair said ignorance of the law was no excuse for criminal conduct.
“The purpose of the accused’s visit to the flat was not just to carry out repairs,” he continued. “The accused’s actions were likely to cause a pregnant 18-year-old girl to leave.”
Sentence was deferred until October 6.
Michaela Landless from Cupar had been struggling to pay the rent when Steven Simpson turned up on the doorstep.
The 18-year-old was left in tears as Simpson ordered a number of workmen to rip out the windows and front door of the flat at Cupar Mills.
Ms Landless, who has subsequently given birth, said she had no idea what was going on but awoke to hear “someone drilling and kicking at the door” of the two-bedroom property.
Simpson had not denied ordering the removal of the windows and door but insisted he was only trying to repair them.
However, on Monday he was found guilty after trial of acting in a manner likely to interfere with the peace and comfort of Ms Landless, removing windows and doors in the knowledge it was likely to cause her to give up occupation of the premises and her right to reside within.
Ms Landless said she was more than eight months pregnant when Simpson and his three sons appeared at the door on October 19 last year.
“It was early in the morning and I was in my pyjamas … when I heard a drilling and kicking at the door,” she said. “Steven Simpson was shouting through and asked me to come to the door.”
The witness described how she instead made a panic-stricken phone call to police.
“I was terrified,” she said. “I was such a mess and could not stop crying and shaking.”
Ms Landless said the door was eventually ripped from its hinges by one of Simpson’s sons, while the two others began to scale ladders outside the first-floor flat to remove the windows.
Meanwhile, she told the court, Simpson removed fuses from the electricity box.
“When the police arrived I wanted to make a cup of tea so I could calm myself down but there was no power left,” she said.
“I just could not calm down I was heavily pregnant and with the hormones and everything that was going on I was just really scared.”
Continued…