Couple accused of stealing from their foreclosed home

WALTON COUNTY, Ga. — A Walton County couple said they were wrongfully arrested for stealing custom cabinets out of their home that went into foreclosure.

One year ago, Jeremy Brown admitted to Channel 2's Craig Lucie that he went into his wife's home and stripped out the cabinets, granite counter-tops and appliances.

"I had went and got the items," Brown told Lucie at the time, with his wife, Dawn Nolan, by his side.

Lucie met Nolan at her attorney's office Wednesday where she started to cry when talking about their daughter.

"Jeremy and I have a 22-month-old daughter that hasn't had any contact with the dad for eight months," Nolan said.

Brown is facing a long list of charges including burglary. Walton County deputies charged Nolan with burglary as well. But since that day Nolan's maintained one story.

"We still own the home. You can't burglarize yourself. We have receipts where we paid for these outright. We thought it was ours," Nolan explained.

Nolan and Brown have hired three criminal attorneys and one civil attorney.

Well-known foreclosure attorney, Robert Thompson, is representing her in the foreclosure case.

Nolan thinks Thompson can help free her husband and have their charges dropped by proving laws were broken by multiple financial institutions when foreclosing on their Monroe home.

"There are so many reasons this foreclosure was bad that you could write a book on it," Thompson told Lucie.

Thompson practically has written a book about the case. He showed Lucie a notebook filled with hundreds of pages of evidence.

"Well, I don't think you can steal from yourself. That's sort of difficult. If she owns the house, she can't steal from herself nor can her husband and that's the whole premise," Thompson explained.

Lucie called the Walton County Sheriff's Office and they said the charges are still pending. They referred Lucie to the assistant district attorney on the case.

Erle Newton sent Lucie a statement saying, "I cannot ethically comment on an open case, but suffice it to say Mr. Brown is in custody for a subsequent arrest while out on bond."

That arrest was for family violence. Lucie asked Dawn about those charges and she told him after her husband was caught taking the cabinets from their home by a realtor, they got into an argument.

She says her son heard them arguing and called 911.

When police arrived, she says she told officers that nothing physical happened between them, but they arrested Jeremy Brown anyway.

WSBTV