CLEVELAND, Ohio -- This was a neighborhood dispute that I just had to investigate.

On the one side, a deaf couple that cleans houses for a living. On the other, a guy whose credentials once included protecting U.S. presidents and the Cleveland Browns.

They fought over pets, trespassing, dirty looks and surveillance cameras in an otherwise peaceful cluster of townhouses in Beachwood, one of the region's more wealthy suburbs.

The dispute -- which played out over several years -- sparked numerous calls to the police, and ultimately criminal charges against both of the deaf people.

An advocate for the deaf alerted me to the story. The couple was initially apprehensive about the potential repercussions of speaking out against their neighbor. But, in the end, they say they decided to talk to offer insight into their world, one in which neither husband nor wife has ever heard a spoken word.

Here is the couple's story, based on interviews with the couple (conducted through interpreters) and their advocates as well as a review of court and police records. The other neighbor did not respond to numerous requests to talk about the dispute.

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Judy and Neal Arsham, who were born deaf, moved to Beachwood in 2004 to put their children, who have no hearing impairments, into the suburb's top-rated schools.

Getting there wasn't easy. The Arshams said their house-cleaning business is hardly lucrative. But with savings and profits from the sale of their previous home, they made it work. They decided on a new condominium so they could live without the burden of an aging home and yard work, they said.

Judy and Neal said they saw themselves fitting in. They had a pet cat named Dinosaur. They played badminton. The children's friends hung out at their house. They loved the Cleveland Browns and staying fit.

Advocates for Judy and Neal suggest that some of the problem could be that they are deaf. Deaf people can be misunderstood by the hearing world. The advocates say that because the deaf rely so heavily on their eyes, they constantly look around -- behavior that can be interpreted as paranoid.

Neal, 59, is more accustomed to interacting with the hearing world than Judy. His family not only pushed Neal to read and write at a young age, but fought to get him into the Shaker Heights school system alongside hearing children. His parents also fostered his interest in swimming. When he was young, Neal won three gold medals in swimming events at two Deaf Olympics, one in Serbia, and one in Sweden.

Neal also reads lips, so he locks on a person's face to try to catch their greeting. But even the best lip readers can miss a lot, and his own communications can be difficult to follow. He speaks in a raspy and hushed tone, pushing out incomplete sentences. He can't understand nuance or pick up on verbal cues.

Judy, 58, who is from New York, was sent as a child to a residential home for the deaf, which left her much more sheltered. She uses American Sign Language to communicate, which makes it nearly impossible for her to talk to people who don't sign. When Judy tries to speak, she can manage some words. When she gets excited, she delivers bursts of sounds and displays animated facial expressions and hand gestures - a reaction common among the deaf. Neal, who also learned to sign, is often her sole link to the hearing world.

**

The couple's neighbor, Lewis Merletti, spent nearly 25 years in the U.S. Secret Service, including three tours in the White House. President Bill Clinton appointed him director in June 1997.

Lewis, 66, left the Secret Service nearly a year and half later, when then-Browns owner Al Lerner asked him to head the team's security. The job came with a fancy title and an annual salary of more than $350,000, not including additional money he was paid for security duties with credit-card giant MBNA, which Lerner also owned. (He does not currently work for the Browns, and the team is now owned by businessman Jimmy Haslam.)

Lewis moved into his Beachwood condominium around 2005 with his wife, Josette. His condominium is separated from his deaf neighbors' by a small drive and landscaped common area. His garage faces the one side of Judy and Neal's condominium.

Initially, the two households appear to have coexisted.

But Judy and Neal's behavior began to concern Lewis, according to police reports he started to file. They leashed their cat to a stake in several areas around the complex's common areas. Neal would sometimes stand in and around the pine trees near the Lewis' condominium as his cat roamed in the common areas near Lewis' fence, which incited Lewis' dog.

Judy and Neal disliked the dog, which they told police they feared would harm their cat. But what really bothered them were the security cameras Lewis installed on his house. They said they believed Lewis used the cameras to specifically watch them, which amplified their already elevated distrust toward the hearing world.

The Arshams and Merlettis kept a close eye on each other. And it was hard to avoid each other during daily routines in such a small complex.

On the morning of Oct. 11, 2011, when Judy walked to the side of her condominium to cover the air conditioner, she noticed Lewis in his garage. Believing that he signaled to her, she headed over.

But Lewis had not called her -- and was taken aback by her intrusion, according to what Lewis told police. He told her to leave. Judy said she was unable to read the situation, became nervous, animated and shouted before finally returning home.

Lewis wanted to press charges. He said in a signed complaint filed nearly two weeks later that Judy yelled profanities at him for unknown reasons and that he had to yell at her several times before she would leave. He said that he "had multiple incidents of similar contact" with Judy during the past four years -- though the encounters were not detailed in the report -- and that he and his wife "experience significant mental distress every time they come and go from their home due to the actions by Judy Arsham."

A lawyer for Judy and Neal later tried to explain to prosecutors that a misunderstanding triggered the encounter and that Judy, who can't easily modulate the volume of her speech because of her inability to hear, was only reacting to Lewis' agitated state.

The city prosecutor charged Judy with trespassing and menacing by stalking.

**

The charges against Judy inspired more fear of Lewis, according to the couple. In the months that followed, conflicts continued.

Lewis repeatedly contacted the police to complain about his neighbors' cat and other issues, court records and more than a dozen police reports show.

Once, Lewis stopped at the Beachwood Police Department, which is less than a mile from the condominium complex, to provide photographs and video footage taken from his surveillance cameras that showed the cat roaming in the complex's common areas.

Reports show that Lewis contacted police several times to complain that Neal was standing in the trees near Lewis' house or by his fence, "spying" and "peeping" into his windows and looking at his wife.

Police officers warned Neal to keep his cat on a hand-held leash.

The condominium association warned the couple about tying their cat to a stake and ordered them to remove an Ohio State University banner from the window facing Lewis's house, stating that it violated bylaws prohibiting window displays. The letter included photos of the stakes, the banner and their cat sitting next to a pine tree.

Judy and Neal Arsham's house is on the left. Lewis Merletti's house is on the right.

Neal also called police. He reported that Lewis's dog was loose but later admitted he only worried it would get loose, reports show. (Lewis told police his dog had not been loose.) Neal also complained that Lewis was taking pictures of their property and that he believed Lewis was turning the neighbors against him and his wife. The couple's son told Judy and Neal about Lewis's government service, which they said fed their worry that no one would believe them.

The couple said that the frequent conflicts and the pending charges against Judy weighed heavily on Judy and Neal. The couple said they sought counseling to deal with the stress. They told a psychologist at the time that they feared Lewis and worried about his cameras, according to a psychological report later ordered by the court.

Neal said he asked Lewis to drop the charges but that Lewis declined.

Tensions spiked Aug. 1, 2012, when Lewis called police to complain that Neal swore at his wife, Josette, and his mother-in-law during an encounter at the Giant Eagle at Legacy Village in Lyndhurst.

Lewis and Josette told police that about an hour earlier, as Josette and her mother were leaving the store, Neal shook his head, called Josette a "bitch" and "stared at her in a threatening manner as if he wanted to fight her," according to the police report. Josette also complained that Judy was "giving her dirty looks, shaking her head and mumbling words."

Neal told police that Josette cursed him. The police advised the deaf couple to stay away from their neighbors.

Less than two weeks later, Lewis contacted the police again to complain that Neal had made threatening gestures toward him. Lewis said that as Neal drove by, he pointed his finger, made a fist and used his finger to simulate a slash across his throat, according to a signed complaint filed days later by Lewis.

The city prosecutor subsequently charged Neal with intimidation.

A few days later, on the day Neal was headed to court, Lewis stopped at the police station to report that he saw Neal the day before shadow boxing outside and that Neal was "throwing warm-up punches" in his direction.

Lewis told police he couldn't understand why Neal was "demonstrating elevated threatening behavior." Lewis also wanted it noted in the report that he worried Neal "may become violent to himself or others." Neal disputes that he ever posed a threat of violence.

**

Throughout the dispute, according to advocates for Judy and Neal, the couple struggled to defend themselves and, at times, to fully understand what was happening. And police reports show that during most of the their interaction with police, they had no interpreter to help them tell their side of the story.

Judy and Neal relied on the Cleveland Hearing Center's Maria O'Neil Ruddock for guidance. She stepped in after criminal charges were filed against Judy and tried to ensure that Beachwood was following protocol for dealing with the deaf.

Meanwhile, Neal's family helped the couple hire attorney Alan Kraus, who tried to refute the narrative that Judy and Neal were potentially dangerous neighbors. He asked Beachwood's prosecutor, Thomas Greve, to consider mediation after Lewis pressed charges against Judy. Kraus argued that the root of the problems was miscommunication and a lack of understanding about the deaf.

"They are very nice people but it is often frustrating and frightening being deaf in a hearing world," he wrote in a November 2011 letter to Greve. "I believe that this neighborhood dispute can be easily resolved with some sort of mediation that would not require further court action. Mrs. Arsham is very concerned about this case and she does not want to be on bad terms with any of her neighbors."

Kraus also challenged the condominium association, arguing its bylaws don't prohibit leashing a cat to a stake or using an OSU banner as a drape, which Neal and Judy said they hung to obstruct the view of Lewis's security camera. Kraus, nonetheless, instructed his clients to stop leashing the cat to a stake and remove the banner in an effort to keep peace with Lewis.

But problems worsened. In mid December 2012, Neal was arrested and put in jail for a night, after Lewis accused Neal of shaking his head at him and approaching him several times near his car, which he said violated the terms of a protection order.

A court had ordered Neal to leave his home and undergo a mental health evaluation. Neal moved into a motel. While Neal was there, Lewis called the police to report that Neal's car was parked in the Arsham's driveway, records show. Police discovered that Neal wasn't there. Neal's son had driven to the condo to pick up belongings for his father.

A clinical psychologist who had been counseling the Arshams after Judy's arrest conducted the court-ordered evaluation. The report, which Judy and Neal gave me, states that Neal's love of his family, pet and fitness provides stability and balance in his life and that Neal is well adjusted for someone who can't hear.

The evaluation also noted the couple had stated in earlier counseling sessions that they felt "misunderstood and harassed" by Lewis and that they had little support or understanding from the police.

Neal "showed no intent of malice" toward Lewis and just wanted to be left alone and "not subjected to surveillance," the psychologist concluded.

Neal was eventually allowed to return home under court orders that required him to drive directly into his garage, remain inside the house at all times -- and not look at the condo of Lewis and Josette.

"I am a prisoner in my own condo," he later complained.

With consultation from Kraus and O'Neil, Judy and Neal decided against fighting the charges at trial, which they said they believed would be too stressful and confusing. They agreed to plead no contest and enter the court's "First Offender's Program," which would erase the charges from their records if they abided by a new set of conditions imposed by the court. The conditions included having no contact with Lewis and Josette for a year - and moving out of their home for two years.

Greve told me he couldn't immediately recall details of the case but believed the plea deal was a fair resolution because both parties got what they wanted.

Judy and Neal say they are not at peace.

Today, the Arshams' condominium is rented. The couple rents a place in Richmond Heights. They want to stay out of Beachwood, but they worry they might have to move back if they lose their tenant or if they can't sell the condominium.

Recently, Neal returned to Beachwood to clean his condominium, which he is allowed to do after completing his probation. While there, he said, Lewis drove by, slowed down and copied his license plate.