A conversation with Reeves Wiedeman about what the Netflix series gets right and wrong.
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(You know, normal stuff.)
Their story, with many creative flourishes from Ryan Murphy, is now the subjectof the Netflix miniseriesThe Watcher.
They dont want a lot about their lives out there, he says.
The family buys and moves into 657 Boulevard quicklyin the premiere.
They were doing some little projects.
I dont believe a new kitchen island was part of the renovations.
I know they were installing a French drain, for instance, in the basement.
They were heading over to 657 Boulevard, dropping stuff off.
They werent planning to start living there immediately.
They got the first letter two days or so after the closing.
No Carrara marble wasbeing replaced with woodin the kitchen?Pasta sauce and stained marble is that a thing?
As far as I know, there was no marble countertop being replaced with a butcher block.
Did the houses architectural quirks and secrets mirror 657 Boulevard?
Was there an underground labyrinth of tunnels or stair passageways?Not as far as I know.
There was also no dumbwaiter.
There was nothing in the walls, as far as they were able to find.
But no, there were no people randomly showing up inside the house.
Why is that?That would be a question for Netflix.
I dont know what the balance was between fictionalizing the story.
The Broadduses requested they not use their name, so the series honored that.
I think there was some desire to be connected to the real story, at least in certain ways.
It arrived shortly before the sale was closed.
It wasnt threatening or spooky in the way of the letters the Broadduses received.
That family threw it away and didnt think anything of it until this happened.
I dont know very many details about it because the family didnt want to talk to me about it.
But it was a letter from The Watcher to a different house on that block.
That family had been there for a while; their kids were older.
How many letters in total did the Broadduses receive?There were three letters originally.
Then a fourth arrived at the house about three years later.
It was during this period when the Broadduses were going through this whole thing with the town zoning board.
They were trying to get a variance to subdivide the property to sell it to a developer.
They were having trouble selling the house because they were choosing to tell people about the letters.
The Broadduses could then make the numbers work and recoup some of their monetary losses.
This was a big deal in Westfield.
That fourth letter is different than the other ones its angrier, and it was focused on that.
Lets talk about suspects.
Were introduced to neighbors, a real-estate agent,an English teacher,and a surveillance-company-owning gamer.
How many of these characters are rooted in reality?Pretty close.
Initial theories focused on them for some reasons that are understandable and others that are a little unfair.
They were kind of quirky, and one of the sons was diagnosed as schizophrenic.
People in the neighborhood knew him as an odd guy who was ultimately harmless.
A version of that family is played by Mia Farrow and Terry Kinney.
There was another older couple, who are paralleled by Richard Kind and Margo Martindale.
The security-guard kid is a creation.
The Broadduses did talk to a security person about ways to protect the house.
Separately, there was a police officer who was observing the house to see if anyone suspicious came by.
He saw a young couple parked in front of the house.
Eventually, some officers pulled them over to find out what they were doing.
According to the girlfriend, her boyfriend apparently played video games, and his screen name was The Watcher.
The society only got involved when the Broadduses attempted to tear down the house.
They were trying to fight that.
He is much more out of NYPD central casting than the shows Theodora Birch.
This is one of those instances where you have to bring a little extra menace to the screen.
There were no phone calls or no serious phone calls.
It was restricted to really creepy and threatening letters.
But theres no way List and his family actually lived in that house, right?Not at all.
They lived in a different house in Westfield.
I mean, people live in that house now.
He was a fugitive for a long time before he was eventually caught.
And then we had to deal with poor Richard Kind and Margo Martindalegetting reverse murdered.That was weird.
This is not a place where that sort of thing happens.
Charles Addams ofAddams Familyfame is from there.
When I was reporting the story, people were complaining about the police enforcing parking violations in downtown Westfield.
Thats the level of criminality leaving your car too long in the nice little downtown area.
Forensically, has the biggest breakthrough been that a woman licked the envelopes?Yes.
There were no fingerprints on the envelope that were useful in any way.
The handwriting which people finally got to see inthe story update is not very easy to read into.
Its messy, and the person maybe even intentionally used their nondominant hand.
Was anything gleaned from The Watchers handwriting?Their handwriting was very neat, obviously.
The letters themselves were typewritten.
Did you ever get threats or letters while reporting the story?No, I didnt.
I wondered if I was going to at some point.
But I never got anything through email, over the phone, or at my address.
An immediate neighbor to the house.
Everyone is intrigued by the ideas of Was it a jilted buyer?
Was it a real-estate agent who wanted the house?
Was it someone with a vendetta?
The shows conclusion also does not give a definitive answer as to who The Watcher is.
Where does the case now stand?The prosecutors office told me the case is not active.
They want to solve it the same way amateur detectives want to figure this out.
Which is to say its not active, but its also not closed.
A hope of mine is we put the handwriting out there and somebody notices something.
Maybe theres enough pressure to do the forensic-genealogy idea that we talked about in the update to the story.
Would you say thats true?No.
Like, I live right next door to the house, and they didnt talk to me.
To be clear, that was from the very beginning of the investigation.
There have been, since then, a lot of attempts to give a shot to solve it.
So I thinkthe investigation wasnt exhaustive.Its a tricky crime to prove.
Im sympathetic to that and to the fact that horrendous crimes go unsolved all the time.
If this culprit is ever apprehended, what would they be charged with?Its unclear.
There are stalking statutes in New Jersey.
Theres harassment as a crime.
At one point, the Broadduses talked to someone who suggested terrorism statutes could apply.
But these were letters, and it wasnt more than that.
I think, for a lot of people the Broadduses included theyve tried to just move on.
The legal punishment would always have been pretty minimal.
Thats partly what led the police to not throw other resources into what was ultimately a minor crime.
When was the last time you spoke with the Broaddus family?
Are they still hopeful they can catch this person?The priority for them is to move on.
This sucked up so much of their time and energy and money in a lot of ways.
Maybe theres a small chance it gets solved because ofThe Watcher.
There was a huge bidding war from studios to adapt your story.
How did Netflix and Ryan Murphy come out on top?Very quickly, there was tons of interest.
I was getting emails from producers, and people were reaching out to the Broadduses.
And so Netflix purchased the rights, and only later did it become a Ryan Murphy project.
The Broadduses didnt get very involved.
They were not on any of these calls.
They didnt really want to be they didnt care about the creative vision for this.
All three of their kids, at the time this was happening, were under 10 years old.
The onscreen daughter is in high school.
Ill admit that I would have liked some resolution.
It felt like there were a lot of loose ends left.
Like that girl in the bedroom, was she a ghost?
Was it some weirdo who snuck in?
Why was Mia Farrow harboring a guy who murdered three people across the street from her?
But I dont want to be too critical because I dont make TV shows.
Yeah, the ending felt veryHot Fuzzto me.
All of these historical society people were a collective Watcher, I guess?Right.
I did like that it sucked in Bobby Cannavales character to become obsessed with it.
And then his wife watches him.
Its like a non-virtuous circle of people watching each other and becoming obsessed with the house.
