![]() ![]() In March 2019, five years after the Broadduses paid more than $1.35 million for 657 Boulevard, they put it back on the market at a steep discount: $999,000. In The Watcher’s third and final letter that summer, they knew the Broadduses were not moving into the home: “Where have you gone to? 657 Boulevard is missing you.” The envelope was addressed in a messy handwritten script, but the letters inside were typewritten with “The Watcher” sign-off in a different cursive font. The Watcher knew the Broadduses were coming and going from the house and that they drove a Mercedes and a Honda minivan.Įach message arrived in roughly similar fashion. They even suggested they had been inside the home decades earlier: “The 1960s were a good time for 657 Boulevard when I ran from room to room imagining the life with the rich occupants there.” The Watcher did not refer to the Broadduses by name in that letter, but two weeks later, a second message addressed them with a phonetic misspelling of their last name - “Braddus” - along with the names of their three young children, correctly spelled and in proper birth order. ![]() The Watcher knew details about the house - that it had six bedrooms and was approaching its 110th birthday - and expressed angst about the changes new money was bringing to the neighborhood and to the house. The house had not been listed for sale, yet within two days of the closing, The Watcher was aware that the Woods family had moved out and a new family was moving in. To recap: In June 2014, someone mailed a letter to the new owners of 657 Boulevard. But as Netflix prepares to release a limited series based on the story, here’s an update on what’s gone on since 2018. In the four years since the article was published, I’ve gotten a stream of questions - and tips - about the mystery. 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. 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 me.” 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 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. 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. ![]()
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