As insane as it sounds, the most crucial elements of The Watcher are true. The Broadduses, renamed The Braddocks in the Netflix true-crime series (streaming now), received scary letters, had creepy neighbours, and never caught the person who was terrorising their lives. Everything else? Well, that's showbiz, baby. In reality, Derek and Maria Broaddus never even moved into the house after receiving the most horrifying anonymous letters of all time. Only in Hollywood do characters do brazenly dumb things like not selling the house immediately. In real life, you get the hell out.
Before the new Netflix series, their story was made famous after it was published in The Cut. It all started back in 2014, when the Broadduses closed on a $1.3 million, six-bedroom house at 657 Boulevard in Westfield, New Jersey. Maria Broaddus grew up in the neighbourhood, and the family was moving out of New York to raise their three children. Derek Broaddus was a senior vice president at an insurance company who just celebrated his 40th birthday. The family planned to do renovations on the house before moving in, and they would only drive in from the city to meet with contractors and decide on paint samples.
It was during this time that the Broadduses started to receive threatening letters. One night, at around 10 p.m., Derek was reading a letter addressed anonymously from a "new neighbour" signed "The Watcher." The letter stated that the Watcher was waiting for the "second coming" of their house, which belonged to their family for generations. They also asked "Do you know what lies within the walls of 657 Boulevard? Why are you here?" stating that they would "find out." The Watcher chided them about how the renovations would make the house "unhappy," revealed that they were watching them and their children every day, and thanked them for bringing "young blood" to the house. "Once I know their names I will call to them and draw them to me," the letter read. Bone-chilling stuff. And real!
While there were some leads—including a neighbour who married someone who used to live at 657 Boulevard—the Watcher's identity was never uncovered. Of course, many events in Netflix's The Watcher such as discovering secret tunnels and a neighbour hiding in your house were completely fabricated for the series. There also was never any murder that took place in a house across the street. The Broadduses simply stopped bringing their children to the house and tried to sell as quickly as possible. It took five years, but the family eventually sold the house in 2019. "After reading everything, there's no way I'm going in that house,'" a prospective buyer once told them, according to EW. The new family who moved into 657 Boulevard never received a single letter from the Watcher. The Broadduses also still live in Westfield... just in a non-scary house.
Josh Rosenberg is an Assistant Editor at Esquire, keeping a steady diet of one movie a day. His past work can be found at Spin, CBR, and on his personal blog at Roseandblog.com.
