Four Years Later (Four Doors Down)

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In 2020, the Broadduses asked the prosecutor to close the case and return the letters and DNA evidence to them, so that they could hand it over to the forensic genealogists themselves. The office declined to do so. The Broadduses say their offer to pay for the forensic genealogy in their case, and several others, still stands. Read More

Selling the rights offered a modicum of control, although the Broadduses wanted little involvement. They made only two requests and a suggestion to the production team: that the show not use their name, that the onscreen family look as little like theirs as possible (Naomi Watts and Bobby Cannavale have two kids rather than three), and that they wouldn’t mind it if the fictional house burned to the ground.

Four years later

Mr. Barton … is warned of danger. He will do wisely to avoid —— Street … if he walks there as usual, he will meet with something bad. Let him take warning, once for all, for he has good reason to dread. New Yorkers Should Line Up Behind the City’s Janitors New Yorkers Should Line Up Behind the City’s Janitors The prosecutor’s office declined to comment on the case, saying that while the investigation isn’t active, it isn’t closed. The article detailed Derek and Maria Broaddus’s agonizing decisions over what to do about the stalker and the house and their desperate attempts to figure out The Watcher’s identity to no avail. In the four years since the article was published, I’ve gotten a stream of questions — and tips — about the mystery. Spoiler alert: It remains unsolved. But as Netflix prepares to release a limited series based on the story, here’s an update on what’s gone on since 2018.

But unlike the Addams family, this case was real, and unlike List’s victims, the Broadduses still live in Westfield. As I surveyed locals, I found plenty of sympathy for the family and what they had been through, but a surprising number of people seemed to harbor resentment about all of the attention the case had brought to the town or still believed the Broadduses had done this to themselves. “The Charles Addams thing — all that haunted-house bullshit — it’s used to bring people together,” Gagliardi, from the prosecutor’s office, told me. “With The Watcher, there is nothing I’ve ever seen in this town as polarized as this. Everybody’s got an opinion.” The closest literary connection anyone could draw was a short story from the 19th century by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, an Irish author of Gothic mysteries. The story follows a Mr. Barton who goes mad after receiving a series of threatening letters at his home sent by a writer using the same pen name: Most people in Westfield told me they have moved on. The Watcher is a story they get asked about when people find out where they live or a house where teens can dare each other to run up and take a selfie on the doorstep at Halloween. Soon, it will be something to binge. Eight years later, The Watcher still has a way of infecting their lives; there are reminders of the situation all around town. (The Broadduses still live in Westfield in a lovely, albeit smaller, house.) Derek admits to having had a difficult time getting beyond his obsession with the case and what it did to their lives. “I had just turned 40 when we bought the house,” he joked to me a few years ago. “I am now 93 years old.” But the Broadduses try to avoid thinking or talking about The Watcher, which only adds stress. They prefer to move on and have turned down offers to go on just about every television network and declined interest from documentarians hoping to try and solve the case, not wanting to put their lives on-camera. In 2018, a number of major film and TV producers expressed interest in acquiring the rights to adapt our article and their life story — one horror producer offered to buy 657 Boulevard, hoping to use the house as a set. The Broadduses had little interest in giving someone the right to make a piece of entertainment out of the worst years of their life, but they had prior experience with Hollywood telling their story even without their permission: In 2016, Lifetime released a movie called The Watcher with enough artistic license — the film’s couple is biracial, and the letters come from “The Raven” — that the Broadduses couldn’t halt its release.

Four years after

A month later, the Broadduses were called to a meeting at the prosecutor’s office in Elizabeth, New Jersey. The Broadduses were told that, by and large, the neighbors were cooperative. No one was eager to appear suspicious. But none of the swabs matched the sample from the envelope. One of the questions I’ve gotten most was a version of this one: Did the family do it? Even people who recognize the theory’s implausibility still seem titillated by the notion. But it makes no logical sense. If this was a nefarious plot, it was ill-conceived in a spectacular way, to no clear practical end, with the only result being the self-sabotage of years of the Broadduses’ lives. “Maria was distraught every time I saw her. She was shaking,” Vince Gagliardi, who investigated the case for the prosecutor’s office, told me. “I can tell you this: If Maria Broaddus was faking, she should play herself in the movie.” When the sale closed, the Broadduses asked their real-estate attorney to give a note to the new owners. “We wish you nothing but the peace and quiet that we once dreamed of in this house,” they wrote. They attached a photograph of The Watcher’s handwriting in case any new letters showed up. In November 2018, I published a story in this magazine called “ The Haunting of a Dream House” about a mysterious stalker who sent creepy and threatening letters to the new owners of a home in Westfield, New Jersey. The anonymous notes were signed by someone calling themselves “The Watcher.” They thanked the Broaddus family for bringing “the young blood” — their three small children — to 657 Boulevard, a home the writer claimed to have been watching for years. The Watcher included details about the Broaddus family and what they were doing at the house: In one letter, The Watcher said they could see the family’s youngest child drawing on an easel in a room on the side of the house. The Watcher suggested they would be keeping tabs on the family and possibly worse: “Once I know their names I will call to them and draw them [to] me.” Most of the professional detectives who have looked at the case agree on a few things: The Watcher most likely lived near 657 Boulevard, and they were probably an older person. Much of the initial investigation focused on members of two families who lived immediately around 657 Boulevard and fit the profile. The Broadduses were told that DNA samples obtained from several of these suspects weren’t a match. Of course, DNA evidence isn’t foolproof. But short of a match, there isn’t much hope for a resolution other than a confession. In the past few years, several of the early suspects have died.