(#9) Who's Watching 657 Boulevard?
In 2014, the Broaddus family moved into their dream home. What happened in the following days would drive them to the brink of madness and change their lives forever.
"All of the windows and doors in 657 Boulevard allow me to watch you and track you as you move through the house." — An anonymous letter sent to the Broaddus family
657 Boulevard, the most infamous house in Westfield, New Jersey. Via zillow.com.
When I was in high school, I received an anonymous letter in the mail bearing no return address. It was a typed note written by someone who wanted me to stay away from a girl (let’s call her Claire) that I had been getting to know. Claire and I rolled with roughly the same friend group, and over the course of our sophomore year, we became good friends.
Well, unbeknownst to me, I had seriously ruffled some feathers by doing this. It was enough for a jealous person to send me a letter literally “begging” me [this word was used twice in the letter] to stay away from Claire. While the anonymous author didn’t threaten me or my family, I was still surprised that someone would react so bizarrely over me speaking to Claire, who wasn’t dating anyone at the time.
While I have a pretty good idea of who wrote the letter, I’ve never been able to prove anything. And I have no interest in doing so, either, as this happened seven years ago and was never repeated.
Snail mail, no matter how ancient of a concept it is, will always be a part of our lives. Come to think of it, it is one of the last forms of truly anonymous communication we have. Unless you lift fingerprints off the paper or test the DNA of the saliva on the envelope, you will never know who wrote a letter sent without a return address.
In my case, this isn’t that much of a problem. I, quite frankly, don’t care about who wrote that letter to 15-year-old me. I’m flattered that I was seen as a threat, but I didn’t need to find that out in such an outlandish way. For others, however, not knowing who sent a piece of mail can be a source of much anxiety.
This is especially so if you’re the Broaddus family.
In the suburb of Westfield, New Jersey, four anonymous letters sent to the Broaddus family over the course of two years would sow panic and discord in their family and throughout their community. But these weren’t any run-of-the-mill death threats. No, sir. The author of these letters had a generational mission, a self-imposed duty to “watch” the house in which the Broaddus family lived. Despite multiple investigations conducted by the Westfield Police Department, Union County prosecutors, and private investigators, no one could figure out who was sending the letters.
This is the story of “The Watcher” and his (or her?) obsession with 657 Boulevard and the Broaddus family.
Who sent these letters? What did the author want? That is what I will be exploring in this week’s newsletter.
♫ I’m Just an Average Man with an Average Life ♫
When the Broaddus family purchased 657 Boulevard in the summer of 2014, it was a dream come true. Their $1.3 million investment was well worth it. Maria Broaddus had grown up in Westfield. Derek Broaddus was born into a working-class family and grew his career in the insurance industry enough to afford one of the most sought-after homes in town.
The Broadduses’ children had fun choosing their bedrooms and imagining Santa Claus sliding down one of the house’s multiple chimneys. Renovations were underway on the interior of the house, preparing the home for the arrival of a young family overjoyed at the realization of a big dream.
However, the lively mood would cool with the arrival of an anonymous letter in the mailbox of 657 Boulevard.
One evening in June of that year, Derek Broaddus retrieved the mail after doing some painting on the inside of the house. Expecting nothing out of the ordinary, Derek was met with a surprise. He found an envelope with no return address that was written to “The New Owner.”
Intrigued, Derek opened the letter, thinking it was perhaps one of many welcoming gestures to come.
Well, he was wrong.
Inside the envelope was a typed letter from “The Watcher.”
Dearest new neighbor at 657 Boulevard,
Allow me to welcome you to the neighborhood. How did you end up here? Did 657 Boulevard call to you with its force within? 657 Boulevard has been the subject of my family for decades now and as it approaches its 110th birthday, I have been put in charge of watching and waiting for its second coming. My grandfather watched the house in the 1920s and my father watched in the 1960s. It is now my time. Do you know the history of the house? Do you know what lies within the walls of 657 Boulevard? Why are you here? I will find out. I see already that you have flooded 657 Boulevard with contractors so that you can destroy the house as it was supposed to be…Tsk, tsk, tsk … bad move. You don’t want to make 657 Boulevard unhappy. You have children. I have seen them. So far I think there are three that I have counted. Do you need to fill the house with the young blood I requested? Better for me. Was your old house too small for the growing family? Or was it greed to bring me your children? Once I know their names I will call to them and draw them too [sic] me. Who am I? There are hundreds and hundreds of cars that drive by 657 Boulevard each day. Maybe I am in one. Look at all the windows you can see from 657 Boulevard. Maybe I am in one. Look out any of the many windows in 657 Boulevard at all the people who stroll by each day. Maybe I am one. Welcome my friends, welcome. Let the party begin.
The letter was signed, “The Watcher.”
Like an instant chemical reaction, this letter transformed whatever joy and enthusiasm the Broadduses had felt into confusion and fear. Derek called the Westfield PD, who couldn’t do much besides tell Derek to move a piece of construction equipment away from the windows lest The Watcher try to throw it and hit someone in the house.
Derek spent the night at the Broadduses’ old house with his family, but 657 Boulevard was now in the family’s possession, and they couldn’t neglect preparing the house for move-in day.
They didn’t tell anyone about the letter. Instead, the continued like any incoming family in a new neighborhood would, albeit on high alert. They were especially watchful over their children, whose names they would call out anytime they went out of sight.
Despite The Watcher not following up on any veiled threats, strange things began to happen to the Broadduses. Derek was particularly alarmed when giving a tour of the house to his new neighbors, as one woman remarked that it would be refreshing to have “young blood” in the neighborhood. One morning, one of the contractors working on the home found a sign ripped up that he had hammered into the front yard. Still, these may have been mundane occurrences whose significance was amplified by the Broadduses’ anxiety.
Nonetheless, just a couple of weeks after the first letter arrived, The Watcher mailed another “greeting” to 657 Boulevard. This time, it contained more specific information about the Broadduses, thereby confirming that this was no prank but rather the effort of someone who had been…well…watching the house.
♫ I Work from Nine to Five / Hey, I Pay the Price ♫
After visiting the house to check out some paint samples, Maria found a familiar piece of mail in her mailbox. She read the letter before summoning the police to her house once more.
This time, The Watcher addressed Derek and Maria as “Mr. and Mrs. Braddus.” He/she seemed unhappy with the pace of their move, writing that “657 Boulevard is anxious for you to move in.” He/she continued, writing,
“It has been years and years since the young blood ruled the hallways of the house. Have you found all of the secrets it holds yet? Will the young blood play in the basement? Or are they too afraid to go down there alone. I would [be] very afraid if I were them. It is far away from the rest of the house. If you were upstairs you would never hear them scream.
Will they sleep in the attic? Or will you all sleep on the second floor? Who has the bedrooms facing the street? I’ll know as soon as you move in. It will help me to know who is in which bedroom. Then I can plan better.
All of the windows and doors in 657 Boulevard allow me to watch you and track you as you move through the house. Who am I? I am the Watcher and have been in control of 657 Boulevard for the better part of two decades now. The Woods family turned it over to you. It was their time to move on and kindly sold it when I asked them to.
I pass by many times a day. 657 Boulevard is my job, my life, my obsession. And now you are too Braddus family. Welcome to the product of your greed! Greed is what brought the past three families to 657 Boulevard and now it has brought you to me.
Have a happy moving in day. You know I will be watching.”
At least they won’t need to pay for a Ring camera. The Watcher’s got them covered. You know, come to think of it, The Watcher sounds like a better neighbor than most. Porch thieves will never get far with him/her providing overwatch. I would have tried luring The Watcher out of hiding with an invitation to dinner. I imagine some unforgettable conversations would result from such an encounter.
Back to reality.
After receiving the first letter, the Broadduses contacted the previous owner, the Woods family, to inquire if they had ever received a letter from The Watcher. Despite living in 657 Boulevard for 23 years, the Woodses never heard from The Watcher until a few days before they moved out. Although they found the letter odd, they didn’t think much of it and threw it out.
The Woodses’ experience aside, The Watcher seemed to take a rather keen interest in the Broadduses’ children. This proved to be too much, and Derek and Maria stopped taking their children to the new house.
Reeves Wiedeman, who wrote an investigative piece on the 657 Boulevard case, mentions that a third letter was sent a few weeks after that, which asked the Broadduses where they had gone and mentioned that 657 Boulevard “missed” them.
At this point, the Broadduses weren’t sure as to when or even if they would move in. But parting ways with a $1.3 million dream home without having lived a day inside of it would have been a historic waste of money. Determined to discover the identity of The Watcher, the Broadduses enlisted the help of Westfield PD and a group of private investigators. Detective Leonard Lugo led the investigation. He informed the Broadduses to not talk about the letters with anyone, especially their neighbors, all of whom were now suspects.
♫ All I Want Is to be Left Alone in My Average Home ♫
Something else to mention is that The Watcher had apparently learned the nicknames of the children and even their birth order. He also knew that one of the Broaddus children used to paint on an easel in the house’s enclosed porch. This kind of preternatural knowledge meant that The Watcher was someone very close by.
One of the first people that Westfield PD investigated was Michael Langford, one of the Broadduses’ neighbors. He was a man in his 60s who lived with his mother and his siblings. He was unemployed, and neighbors described him as being “odd” but nonetheless “harmless.” Still, the police thought that Michael was a likely suspect.
They summoned Michael for an interview, but he denied having written the letters. Despite mentioning things during the interview that matched what The Watcher had written, Westfield PD determined that they didn’t really have any evidence that Michael did anything. Despite not being able to prove that Michael was The Watcher, the cops nevertheless concluded that it was most likely him.
Westfield PD had a point, as a private investigator hired by Derek and Maria concluded that the letters were most likely written by someone around Michael’s age. The reason? According to the private investigator, the letters contained old-fashioned writing conventions like the “M/M Braddus” greeting, salutations mentioning the day’s weather, and double spaces after periods.
In the face of this evidence, the Langfords maintained their innocence. And there was reason to believe that The Watcher wasn’t a Langford. For starters, Michael was interviewed by police before the second letter arrived at 657 Boulevard. Unless Michael was extra confident that the police would never discover that it was him, sending more letters would have been extremely risky. Additionally, Westfield police organized a scheme where the Broadduses would send a notice to the Langfords indicating that they planned to tear down 657 Boulevard. Something like this would have infuriated The Watcher, but the Broadduses didn’t receive a response.
The police ended up conducting DNA testing on the letters and actually found unknown female DNA all over them. I don’t really know anything about forensic testing, but I wonder how they were able to distinguish The Watcher’s supposed DNA from the DNA of the various people who handled the letter during the collection, sorting, and delivery processes. Nevertheless, the discovery of female DNA led the police to surreptitiously collect DNA from a discarded water bottle used by Michael’s sister, Abby. However, it wasn’t a match. Although Abby wasn’t the only female living in the Langford’s house, the police stopped looking into them and began to look for new suspects.
At the point, Derek began to take matters into his own hands. He would stay up at night to observe the street in front of his house to see if anyone came by to surveil his family. No one ever did. He composed a map of the community with an overlay indicating which houses were within earshot of his wife, who often called out the names of their children as they played outside. This, too, yielded no new breakthroughs.
Still, there were some suspects that seemed to be likely candidates for being The Watcher. The neighbors behind 657 Boulevard, an older couple that had lived in their house for a long time, had a pair of lawn chairs facing the Broadduses’ house at a very close distance from the fence dividing their properties. Despite finding out that the couple’s son-in-law had grown up in 657 Boulevard, none of the investigators helping Derek and Maria seemed to take an interest in them.
At this point, the Broadduses were desperate. Rumors had begun to circulate about why the Broadduses had not yet moved into their new home. Derek and Maria hired investigators to find handwriting matches to what was on the envelope, but to no avail. Derek even tried to persuade a friend in the tech world to hack into local WiFi networks to see whether someone had the “Watcher letters” saved on their computer. He ended up not following through with the plan due to its illegality.
Out of options and still fearful for their children’s safety, the Broadduses decided to sell the home. This move would end up being a big mistake for them.
♫ Why Do I Always Feel Like I’m in The Twilight Zone? ♫
Rockwell’s 1984 hit would end up being oddly prophetic for the Broadduses. Not only were they literally being watched, but their situation ended up turning neighbor against neighbor throughout Westfield.
In June of 2015, the Broadduses sued the Woods family for not disclosing to them the Watcher letter they had received before moving out. A local reporter ended up finding the case through public court records and wrote a story on what was happening to the Broadduses. Neighbors of Derek and Maria soon found out and were upset that they had not been informed that a police investigation had been underway in their community. They also began to speculate wildly as to who The Watcher was. Some even accused the Broadduses of staging an elaborate hoax to quickly sell a house they had regretted buying. Keyboard warriors on local online forums called Derek and Maria cowards for being scared out of their own home by a few anonymous letters.
The grievances didn’t stop there. Residents of “the Boulevard” and Westfield in general worried that the value of their homes would drop. Derek and Maria found it difficult to convince potential buyers to purchase a house that was under the constant surveillance of an obsessed stalker.
Running out of options and still having to pay the mortgage and property taxes on the expensive home they weren’t even living in, the Broadduses attempted to demolish 657 Boulevard and build two smaller homes on the lot. They would need to approval of the City of Westfield, but after multiple contentious hearings in January 2017, the city rejected the Broadduses’ proposal.
Despite this setback, the Broadduses found a tenant. A family with grown children and a couple of big dogs decided to move in, fully aware of the specter of The Watcher hanging over their heads. The new family ended up signing an agreement allowing them to back out of their lease if they received a letter from The Watcher…which they did just two weeks after moving in.
However, the letter wasn’t addressed to the new family. It was directed at the Broadduses. After not sending any letters for two-and-a-half years, The Watcher finally wrote again, this time with a lot more anger in her [?] tone. The Watcher addressed the letter to “the vile and spiteful Derek and his wife Maria.” [S]he went on to write,
“You wonder who The Watcher is? Turn around idiots. Maybe you even spoke to me, one of the so called neighbors who has no idea who The Watcher could be. Or maybe you do know and are too scared to tell anyone. Good move…I walked by the news trucks when they took over my neighborhood and mocked me…I watched as you watched from the dark house in an attempt to find me…Telescopes and binoculars are wonderful inventions…657 Boulevard survived your attempted assault and stood strong with its army of supporters barricading its gates…All hail The Watcher!!!”
Although the new tenants were frightened, they agreed to stay. The Watcher apparently had no interest in who was living in the home. [S]he had a personal vendetta against the Broadduses, especially after they attempted to tear it down. Derek was apparently unsuccessful at spotting The Watcher during his nighttime recon missions, as his nemesis was able to observe his actions without getting caught. The Watcher seemed to have been gloating at his/her victory over the Broaddus family, having successfully protected his charge from demolition.
In 2019, The Watcher would end up getting the last laugh, as the Broaddus family was finally able to sell 657 Boulevard, albeit at a loss. It remains to be seen if The Watcher will terrorize the home’s new occupants. Regardless, Derek and Maria’s years-long nightmare is now over.
So, what should we make of all this? Who is The Watcher? Let’s weigh our options. While we could pick out any person within a close radius to 657 Boulevard and call them a suspect, I’m going to stick to a few of the most plausible explanations. Let’s consider our first suspects, the Langfords.
Was Every Langford Investigated?
The police cleared Michael Langford early on in the investigation. Abby Langford was also cleared when they found that her DNA didn’t match what they collected from the letters. I wonder, however, if Michael and Abby’s mother was ever investigated.
It could have been the case that Michael typed the letters, but his mother was the one slipping them in the envelopes and mailing them out. Perhaps Michael was being extra careful, knowing that the DNA on the letters would end up being tested and that he would likely be named a suspect. This seems plausible, but I don’t see why a small-town criminal mastermind would get others involved with his conspiracy. What if his accomplice[s] disapproved of what he was doing and ended up ratting him out? If he was that concerned about leaving fingerprints, then why not wear gloves while handling the letters?
No matter how you answer the above questions, you would have to account for the fact that The Watcher didn’t react after the Broadduses sent the bogus demolition notice to the Langfords’ home. It could have been that The Watcher suspected that the notice was fake and part of a police investigation aiming to incriminate the Langford (aka The Watcher’s) family. While that remains a possibility that I am open to believing, I don’t think we should settle on any of the Langfords being our Watcher.
Alright then, what about the possibility that the Broadduses did this to themselves?
The Inside Job Hypothesis
Some residents of Westfield immediately suspected the Broadduses of engaging in some type of scheme using The Watcher letters. This may look like a kneejerk reaction from anxious neighbors, but it has some merit to it.
For starters, residents soon learned that the Broadduses had jumped from a $300,000 home to a $1.3 million home in ten years. Derek defended his family’s fortunes by saying that their success was the result of hard work and not any kind of subterfuge. Still, neighbors thought it was curious that the Broadduses purchased one of the nicest homes in Westfield, renovated the interior, then put the house on the market without ever having moved into it.
Some thought the Broadduses may have realized that they could no longer afford the home and wanted to offload the property as soon as possible. Another possibility is that the Broadduses may have been trying to flip their house and make some quick cash off their investment.
While this is probably the most scandalous and interesting of the explanations, I don’t think it has any footing. If the whole point was to flip or just sell the house for whatever reason, then why deliberately create an urban legend about the home that would surely tank its value? Isn’t turning a profit the whole point of flipping a house? Who renovates a home then says “oh, by the way, there’s a demon in the en suite bathroom” to the potential buyers?
Do inside jobs and insurance fraud schemes happen? Yes, but as far as I’m aware, staging a stalker hoax is not a common way that people commit insurance fraud. Besides, the cops tested Maria’s DNA and found that it didn’t match the DNA on the letters, so there’s that.
Next.
There has to be another explanation. It has to be one of the neighbors given the knowledge that [s]he demonstrates of the Broadduses’ personal lives.
What about the Backyard Neighbors?
It’s unclear as to whether the police or any private investigators looked into the “lawn chair couple” behind 657 Boulevard. They had familial ties to the home and seemed to have enjoyed looking at the house given the placement of their backyard furniture. To me, the lawn chair couple seems like a dark horse in this whodunit of Westfield. They live in close proximity to 657 Boulevard. There could be some shared jealousy of the Broadduses between them and their son-in-law. Maybe the son-in-law wanted to live in his childhood home as an adult but realized it was too expensive. Perhaps he wanted to scare the Broadduses away and hope that they would sell the house at a discount or at least ask for tenants to move in.
And this is where I run into some problems with this explanation.
As far as I know, the son-in-law didn’t move in when the Broadduses decided to rent out the place. Neither did he end up buying the house. This may not necessarily exclude him as a suspect, but it casts some doubt over the lawn chair couple being The Watcher of 657 Boulevard.
Something else to consider is that it doesn’t seem like The Watcher wanted the Broaddus family to move away. [S]he wanted them to stay, albeit for rather sinister reasons. Now, it doesn’t seem like The Watcher is a reliable narrator, so [s]he could have been writing threats that [s]he didn’t actually mean. Nonetheless, there’s no hard evidence linking the lawn chair couple to the letters, but it’s unknown if the police made any attempt to investigate these neighbors. There could still be more to the lawn chair couple than meets the eye, but for now, we don’t have anything pointing to them.
So, where does this leave us? It wasn’t the Langfords. It wasn’t an inside job. It probably wasn’t the neighbors behind 657 Boulevard. Who, then, could it have been?
Maybe The Watcher Is…Everyone in Westfield
Well, no, not really, but hear me out.
The Watcher’s fourth letter gives us the most clues about his/her identity. I honestly think that The Watcher is the person that the Broadduses would least suspect, someone that they trust and would never think had the capacity to write those disjointed, threatening ramblings.
Let’s face it, The Watcher has some issues. [S]he has no problem with threatening children and terrorizing a new neighbor. This person may also have no problem with making it seem as though the letter was written by an unstable narrator so as to draw the attention of investigators to other suspects like Michael Langford. I don’t think that The Watcher has inherited this mission from his/her father. The Woodses didn’t receive any “welcome cards” when they first moved in. I don’t think The Watcher can be trusted as a narrator. But to be honest with you, at this point, I’m not as focused on The Watcher’s identity so much as I am on something else.
I think the more pressing issue here is Westfield’s lack of empathy for the Broadduses and their fixation on how The Watcher would impact housing prices in the area. Never mind the fact that a possible child predator was lurking in the neighborhood and threatening a family with young kids.
The community didn’t seem to rally around their new neighbors. Instead, they banded together and served as The Watcher’s “army of supporters” as [s]he so rightly put it.
And The Watcher won.