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Mark and Patricia McCloskey, St. Louis Gun Couple, Evicted Tenants, Sued Neighborhood, Smashed Bee Colony

Mark and Patricia McCloskey made headlines for waving guns at protesters. It’s only the latest in a decades-long neighborhood feud.

Mark and Patricia McCloskey, a St. Louis couple who found national fame after they were filmed brandishing weapons at Black Lives Matter protesters who passed their mansion in a gated community, have a long history of telling people to get off their lawn, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

The couple have been in litigation with their gated neighborhood almost continually since they moved in in 1988 (after a lawsuit to buy the property, which had been in sales talks with someone else). The McCloskeys have repeatedly filed suits over small neighborhood issues, accusing neighbors of encroaching on their land or breaking neighborhood rules by allowing unmarried gay couples to live there. When a synagogue on a neighboring property set up beehives to harvest honey for Rosh Hashanah celebrations, Mark McCloskey reportedly threatened litigation and smashed the beehives, making children cry.

While filing two lawsuits at once (one against a neighborhood association, another in a dispute about documentation for a German shepherd), Mark McCloskey said that he was "saving gas" by filing twice in one trip. The couple also evicted two tenants in just over two years, including a family with three children, who had filed a single bounced check. An extended inheritance battle ended with Mark's siblings signing an agreement never to contact him again.

The Daily Beast previously reported that when a judge fined Mark for filing frivolous legal motions, Mark payed the $1,800 fine in dimes.