True Story Behind ‘The Watcher'

True Story Behind ‘The Watcher

Netflix's 'The Watcher' is based on a 2018 article from New York Magazine called ‘The Haunting of a Dream House’. It was written by Reeves Wiedeman, and was later republished in The Cut.

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The show is about the Broaddus family who was terrorized by a stalker after they move to 657 Boulevard in Westfield, New Jersey.

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In 2014, Derek and Maria Broaddus bought a $1.3 million house in Westfield, New Jersey, to raise their three children. Derek was the vice president of an insurance company in Manhattan.

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They started receiving threatening letters even before they moved in. However, the culprit behind these letters wasn’t caught.

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Right after the article was published, the prosecutor’s office tried to solve the case one last time. They took DNA samples from the neighbors to match them to the saliva found on one of the envelopes. The DNA confirmed that the letter was licked by a woman, but the neighbors’ swabs didn’t match the sample.

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