John Lenarczak’s much-ballyhooed Halloween display has created some petty crime and made-for-TV drama.

The Education Hill resident said he wanted to create a frightening, but fun front-yard display, which features dolls hung on wooden crosses. However, some people say the decor is distasteful and inappropriate in a neighborhood full of schools and churches.

“First of all, there’s no motivation,” said Lenarczak, who has decorated his yard at the corner of 166th Avenue Northeast and Northeast 89th Street each Halloween for the last 10 years. “It’s Halloween. It’s fun. I don’t even know why people are reading so much into this stuff. It’s ludicrous. It’s just Halloween.”

Lenarczak said he gets into the Halloween spirit more than others because his birthday falls on Oct. 31. He got the idea for this year’s display after seeing a similar display in Seattle. Late last week, Lenarczak, along with his 7- and 10-year sons, constructed the wooden crosses by hand, attaching dolls – most of them female babies — to almost all of them.

The unique display doesn’t violate any city code, according to Redmond Mayor John Marchione, who is not a big fan of Halloween displays in general.

“There’s a lot of Halloween decorations out right now,” Marchione said. “I just tune them out.”

Some neighbors, including Paige Norman, felt that decor crossed the line.

Norman, who has lived on Education Hill for two decades, said she usually chuckles when she sees Lenarczak’s extravagant Halloween displays.

“This year he just went too far. The baby dolls on crosses were just too much,” said Norman, who tipped off several media outlets, including KOMO 4 News and the Redmond Reporter, about what she thought was a distasteful display.

KOMO 4 came out to Redmond and interviewed Lenarczak and his neighbors for Friday’s nightly news report, which can be seen at http://redmond.komonews.com/content/halloween-display-raises-eyebrows. On Saturday morning, Norman went to Lenarczak’s house, told him face-to-face it was she who called the news channel and then asked him to take the baby dolls off the crosses.

On Monday morning, Norman saw that the babies had been taken down and replaced with Barbie dolls.

“I thought, ‘wow that is really nice of him to take it down,'” Norman said.

But it wasn’t Lenarczak who took the baby dolls down, instead it was someone else who did not have permission.

Lenarczak called police around 9 a.m. Monday morning to report that 18 dolls and 24 crosses — valued at around $50 — were stolen from his front yard. Later that afternoon, Lenarczak went back to the thrift store, bought some more dolls — mostly Barbie dolls and action figures — and attached them to crosses. He also put up a sign that reads, “It’s only Halloween,” a response to neighbors who feel the display is offensive.

The Redmond Reporter contacted several of Lenarczak’s neighbors on Northeast 89th Street and all of them said they did not have a problem with the display.

“I didn’t really jump to any conclusions, personally,” said Nathan Fuelling, 27, who grew up in Redmond. “I walked by it and saw it and said, ‘that’s kind of weird.’ Actually, it looked kind of cool. … You can’t take it seriously. It’s not like they want to kill babies.”

In fact, Lenarczak said his neighbor across the street wants him to put up a similar display on her yard, but “I don’t have the time for that,” he said.

City Councilmember Kim Allen, who is the Council Ombudsman for the month of October, said she got about five complaints from Education Hill neighbors about the display.

“While the display is not one I would have put in my front yard and I agree it is in poor taste, it is on private property and the city has no code which would permit us to step in and require that it be taken down,” Allen said. “At the end of the day, deciding whose Halloween displays are appropriate is not a function of the government.”

Lenarczak said he wasn’t seeking this much publicity when he put the display up and he plans to take the display down after Halloween.

Norman agreed that the whole situation got a bit overblown.

“It will be over in a couple of days and life will move on,” she said.