There is no doubt that Netflix’s strategy with the sudden promotion of the Ryan Murphy series it is working and ‘Vigilante’ (The Watcher) is the new example of a platform phenomenon after, precisely, ‘Dahmer – Monster’.
Something that not only shares both creators and platform, but also the fact that the fiction starring Bobby Cannavale and Naomi Watts is based on real events. But what exactly happened at 657 Westfield Boulevard?what is true in the series?
The answer is less than we would like, since Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan have applied layers and layers of inventiveness (and a roll season 1 of ‘American Horror Story’) to an already disturbing story: the reception by a family of sinister letters signed by someone with the pseudonym of Vigilante.
sinister correspondence
Like the series, the story begins with a family buying their dream house: an imposing home located at 657 Westfield Boulevard, New Jersey. A golden opportunity for a New York family to raise their (three instead of two) children. These are the Broaddus (Braddock in the series).
After paying for the house and before moving in, Derek and Maria received a mysterious anonymous letter:
«[La casa] It has been a family affair for decades and is approaching its 110th anniversary, I have been put in charge of watching and waiting for its second coming. My grandfather watched over the house in the 1920s and my father in the 1960s. It’s my turn now. (…) Do you know what is between the walls of Boulevard 657? Why are you here? I will find out.”
The anonymous stalker was on the one hand curious to know what the Broaddus knew about that house as he was threatening with the children (“Once I know their names I will call them and draw them too [sic] towards me») and worried about renewals in later letters. In addition, he challenged the family to find out who could be one of their neighbors.
The Broadduses never moved
Perhaps the most fundamental difference from the series is that the family never moved. And, in fact, with the second letter they received, where he started using the expression “young blood” asking if they played in the basement, they decided not to take their children there anymore:
Are they too scared to go down there alone? I would be if I were them. It is far from the rest of the house. If you were upstairs you’d never hear them scream.”
The police couldn’t do anything. Warned by the family, they did a search of the house and found nothing between the walls (not even tunnels). After that second letter, they went to that house less and less, something that did not go unnoticed by the security guard («Boulevard 657 misses you»).
Six months after purchase, lThe Broaddus made the decision to sell the house. Bad business when the subject of the threatening letters became known. In addition, they decided to sue the previous owners, for not advising that they had received the same letters when they lived in the house.
In 2016 they were able to rent the housemoment in which they received the fourth and aggressive letter from the security guard in which he even “lucubrated” the death of the family:
Have you found out who The Watcher is? Look around you idiots. Perhaps you have spoken to me, one of your so-called neighbors who have no idea who El Vigilante could be. Or maybe you know and are too scared to tell anyone. Well done. (…)
Maybe a car accident. Maybe a fire. Maybe something as simple as a minor illness that never seems to go away but makes you feel sick. [sic] day after day after day after day after day.”
The letter ended with a victory song seeing that “The house had despised them”. It was never known who this anonymous security guard was and, in fact, even the neighbors themselves suspected that they must be themselves as a strategy so as not to keep the house (for not being able to pay for it) and not lose money.
Even the The police came to ask for a DNA sample from Maria Broaddus, since one of the envelopes contained a female hair. Although the investigation is inactive, it has not yet been closed, with a profile that corresponds to a somewhat elderly neighbor.