Hello everyone and welcome back to
ALLEGEDLY: the True Crime series here on
my channel.
For those of you who are new, hello my
name is Jake and I talk about a true
crime case
every Tuesday. So, if you're into some
scary sh*t. Then, sit back,
grab a drink, and let's talk about some
true crime.
This is gonna be crazy. So last week I
talked about the Tinder date gone
wrong: the murder of Saki Kondo. It was a
really creepy and scary case and
I feel like if we could take anything
away from that case it is to be like
careful when you use those online
dating apps. Yeah, I don't know. Like if
you are using them and you're meeting up
with people you haven't met before
maybe tell a friend where you're going
or who you're meeting or something like
that. And I definitely wouldn't recommend going to
their like hotel room alone on the first
date.. I won't talk about it too much. So
if you haven't seen that video I'm going
to link it in a card above
and I'm going to leave it in the
description below. So be sure to check
that video after this one.
This week I'm going to talk about
another scary, creepy case.
When I was doing the research on it
I was seriously like getting so scared
in my house and
I'm like super scared to even talk about
it right now because I feel like
someone's listening to me.
Today's case is: The Watcher of 657 Boulevard.
In June of 2004 Derek and Maria Broaddus
closed on a six-bedroom home in
Westfield, New Jersey.
They purchased the 1905 Dutch Colonial
revival home for 1.3 million dollars
from
John and Andrea Woods. It was also
reported that the Broaddus family put in
nearly $100,000
of renovations into this home.
But despite all of this, the Broaddus family
never actually moved in.
Maria Broaddus had
actually grown up in Westfield, New Jersey
and her childhood home was
actually a few blocks away from their
new dream home.
Her husband, Derek, was
originally from Maine and he recently
got a promotion at his insurance company
to senior vice president, which was how
they were able to afford this
expensive home. Maria and Derek had three 
children who were five,
eight and ten years old at the time. Just
three days after they purchased the home
Derek, who was at the new home doing minor
renovations by himself
went outside to check the mail at around
10 o'clock p.m. In the mailbox were a few
bills but there was also a card-shaped
letter addressed to the new owners.
And this letter would change their lives
forever. The letter said:
Dearest new neighbor at 657 Boulevard,
Allow me to welcome you to the
neighborhood. 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.
Bad move. You don't want to make 657
Boulevard unhappy.
I asked the Woods to bring me young
blood and it looks like they listened.
You have children. I have seen them. So
far I think there are three that I have
counted.
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 to me. Welcome my friends,
welcome. Let the party begin.
- The Watcher
Now as you can imagine Derek freaked out.
He ran back inside the house and
immediately turned off all the lights
and called the police.
He called the Westfield police
department and they came right away.
When Derek showed the police officer the
letter, the police officer reportedly
said,
"What the f^ck!?" The police officer said
because there was no direct threats to
him or his family
there was nothing he could really do. He
advised Derek to bring in all of the
tools from outside that could possibly
be dangerous.
And he also said Derek he should return
home to his family for the night.
When Derek returned home he showed the letter
to his wife who,
was initially scared but then she became
a little
angry. Because if you remember, in the
letter, it said, "I asked the Woods to
bring me young blood and it looks like
they have listened."
And the "Woods" that The Watcher is
referring to are the previous owners:
John and Andrea Woods.
So of course Maria was pissed right..
She's like okay..
The Woods knew about this "Watcher" or
something, like, what is this? She emails
Andrea and John and she asked them like,
"Do you know anything about these letters?
And if not, then why is The Watcher
saying that he had asked you to bring
young blood and all that stuff?" So the
next morning, Maria receives a reply from
Andrea.
and andrea tells maria that she had
received one letter during the whole 23
years they had been living at the house
and it was just a few days before they
actually sold the house
and it said similar things like they've
been watching the house but they didn't
really understand it so they just threw
it away and thought nothing of it the
next day derek and maria met the woods
at the westfield police station to give
their statements
the police officers told derek and maria
not to
discuss the letters with their neighbors
as they would all be possible suspects
at this time so the broadest family
tried to remain
calm but also they were on high alert
whenever they were at the new house
they also reported to the police that
one day when they were there doing some
other renovations
a couple came up to them to introduce
themselves and derek and maria almost
had a heart attack when the couple
coincidentally said it's going to be
nice to have some young blood back in
this neighborhood
can you imagine i would have died i
would be like you
about two weeks after that maria had
gone to the new house to meet with some
painters and look at some paint samples
and while she was there she went out to
the mailbox to check the mail
and when she opened the mailbox she
immediately recognized the same
handwriting from the first letter on
that card-shaped
envelope except this time the letter was
addressed to them by name
To Mr. and Mrs. Broddaus,
Welcome again to your new
home at 657 Boulevard.
I am pleased to know your names now and
the names of the young blood you have
brought to me.
You certainly say their names often.
I see an easel inside the enclosed porch.
Is there an artist in the family?
The workers have been busy and I have been
watching you unload cart-fulls of personal
belongings.
Have they found what is in the walls yet?
In time they will.
657 Boulevard is anxious for you to move in.
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? 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'm 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. Who am I? I am The Watcher.
And I 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,
Broaddus 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'll
be watching.
The Watcher.
so of course derek and maria
stopped bringing their children to the
house because
someone is clearly watching their every
move they know their names they know how
many children
they were so scared and they didn't know
when or if they were actually going to
be moving into their new home
so of course derek and maria called the
police again and had them come over to
the house and derek maria showed the
police officers the easel that the
watcher had been writing about
which could only be seen from the window
from the back of the house or from the
side of the house because the front of
the house would be covered with trees
and bushes it meant that whoever wrote
the letter or whoever the watcher is
was in close proximity to the house or
at least had been so this was when derek
became suspicious of his next door
neighbors the langfords so the
langford's house was right next door to
their new home
and the house was close enough to where
the language could hear the names of
them and their children pretty easily
and derek also pointed out that
from the easel he could see straight
into the language house meaning that the
language could see the easel straight
from their house on top of that the
langfords were the only family in the
neighborhood who have been living in
their house since the 1960s which kind
of related to
the part where the watchers said that
he's watching it now and his father had
watched it in the 60s so derek offered
his suspicions to the police but the
police had actually already interviewed
mr langford um jr it was said that he
had been suffering from schizophrenia at
the time
but he obviously denied any involvement
in the letters and because of his mental
disease
the police officers didn't believe that
he was capable of writing letters
which have been sent to the broadest
family so at this point it kind of
seemed like the police officers weren't
taking this case as serious as the
broadest family was taking it
because to them there was no direct
threat it was probably just some
annoying neighbor that maybe wanted the
house maybe it was a family that tried
to bid on the house as well but
lost to the broadest family who
purchased it for 1.3 million dollars
so derek and maria decided to use their
own money to hire a private investigator
and a former fbi agent to dig into
the letters and the situation a little
further the private detective
looked into the langford family a little
further but he found nothing substantial
and the former fbi agent created a
psychological profile of what kind of
person he thought the watcher
could be so first he thought that
whoever wrote the letters the watcher
was a well-read person he thought that
the letters were pretty well written and
he also noted that the absence of vulgar
language
was very surprising for someone who's
trying to be threatening in this kind of
situation so he also felt that the
watcher would
not follow through on any threats he
also noted that the writer was a little
erratic due to the random spelling
errors in the letters he concluded by
saying that the person was probably in
their 50s to 60s
and they are less threatening and less
macho than one would expect so obviously
derek and maria felt really
uncomfortable moving to their new home
right away
so they ended up leaving their old home
but moving into maria's
mother's home but during the time they
started to pay insurance and mortgage on
their new house that they just bought
which is a lot of money
for a house that you're not even living
in so derek and marie are spending a lot
of money right on the mortgage of the
house that they're not living in
and as well as the private investigator
and the former fbi agent helping them
look into their case so in 2015 derek
and maria tried to sue
john and andrea woods for non-disclosure
of these threatening letters they also
had claims of fraudulent concealment and
intentional emotional distress however
all of these charges were
dropped by the judge so eventually the
investigators finally did a dna test
on the letters received and it was
determined that the dna found on the
envelope
was from a woman so it was either a
woman who wrote the letters or was a
woman who licked the envelope
to seal it so they took a second look at
the langford's family but they said
suddenly looked at mr langford's sister
who happened to be a realtor
so now they think that maybe the sister
was angry about
missing a commission opportunity on the
neighbor's house or something like that
right so the investigators followed her
and collected a bottle that she had been
drinking from and did a dna test
on that and it was determined that it
was not a match the dna found on the
letter but now the broadest family was
getting
desperate they spent their own money on
the private investigator and on the
former fbi agent
they even started going around to the
neighbors and showing them the letter
and asking if the handwriting looked
familiar from any
christmas cards or letters that they
have received in the past couple of
years
but they found nothing they even hired a
security company to analyze the
handwriting but they also found
nothing they then hired a forensic
linguist to look at the writing and the
letters
and to search for similarities in online
documents but this also turned up
nothing derek admitted that he even went
as far as to find a hacker to hack into
his neighbor's wifi
and emails to see if there was any
incriminating evidence but then of
course he was
told not to do this as it would be very
illegal so they decided to put the house
up for sale for the original
price that they had paid 1.3 million
dollars but of course all of this was
circulating and no one wanted to buy
this house
so then the broadest family decided that
maybe they could tear it down and build
a new house and build two new houses on
the land
um they took this to the basically like
the city board
but i guess like the street is known for
like these old like colonial houses and
but they basically said no you can't do
that so they were stuck with this 1.3
million dollar house they put a hundred
thousand dollars in it so it's like 1.4
million dollars but no one wanted to buy
it and they didn't want to live in there
either
it went from their dream home to like a
total nightmare but finally in 2019
the house was sold for 959 000
so they took almost a 500 000 loss on
this house so now i'm gonna talk about
some theories
as to who the watcher is and the first
theory
that i found interesting was that people
think that the watcher was the broadest
family themselves
and there are many reasons why people
think this the first one
is people think that the broadest family
had buyers remorse so
basically after they purchased this 1.3
million dollar house and they put a
hundred thousand dollars of renovations
into it
they started feeling like this house was
way too expensive for them and they
couldn't afford it they couldn't
live comfortably with the mortgage
payments and they wanted to return the
house but they couldn't and
instead of selling it to the next person
or something like that they just tried
to
get their money back and go back on the
deal basically
after this case went to the media people
started digging into the background of
the broadest family and they learned
that the broadest family went from a 300
000 home to a 1.3 million home which is
like a big jump right
so they're leaving the smaller house and
all of a sudden they can afford this 1.3
million dollar house
obviously they qualified for the loan
but it was a mistake purchasing this
super expensive home
compared to the life that they were
living before the second theory or
reason why people believe that the
broadest family
sent the letters themselves is because
of like a publicity stunt so basically
people believe that the broadest family
wanted
to create this scary story surrounding
their house
to get media attention and then maybe
eventually selling the rights to their
story
to tv companies or netflix or something
like that
so this would mean that the broadest
family would have had to have sent the
original letter to the woods family
themselves
to kind of like plant the seed for the
story and then when the woods didn't say
anything to them they could later
be like okay did you get a letter we
know he did because we sent it
people think this because it was very
strange that they were buying this super
expensive house that they probably
couldn't afford
and maybe the broadest family thought
that they could get money for paid
interviews or for information that only
they could provide
so the broadest family allegedly
received a few offers for movie deals
but they had turned them down
and it said that lifetime even put out a
movie called the watcher even after a
cease and desist letter from the
broadest family
it was also reported by dateline that
netflix won a rights deal to the story
so the third reason or theory
that people believe is the reason why
the broadest had did this themselves or
wrote the letters themselves
is due to some kind of insurance fraud
so
basically people think that kind of
relating to the buyers remorse the fact
the broadest family
realized that they were in over their
heads they couldn't afford it so
because they couldn't go back on the
sale they tried to
they tried to sue the family to get some
money back or maybe even the whole
house returned but obviously nothing
came of that maybe not even that but
maybe from the beginning they knew that
the house 1.3 million dollars was too
expensive
and they knew that if they planned this
letter send it allegedly right if they
planned this letter and send it to the
woods and then later on
say that the woods didn't disclose this
letter they could get back
some of the money that they knew that
was had because the woods now has 1.3
million dollars right and they knew that
so they were like
maybe if we sue them for non-disclosure
we can get like
300 000 back or 400 000 back or
something like that but obviously that
case was dropped
there's many more theories like it was a
neighbor who didn't want this new family
in the house it was someone else like i
said earlier where someone said i was
bidding on the house that
ended up losing to the broadest family
they were just angry and annoyed so they
sent these letters just to like
scare them and annoy them back who knows
right
so now i'm going to talk a little bit
about my opinions on this whole story
because i'm just like kind of like
creeped out the first thing that was
kind of strange to me was
the first letter that they received and
that was
when derek found it when he was at the
house by himself and he went to go check
them out at 10 o'clock at night
but that was just i don't know it just
seemed strange to me because it was
three days after they moved into the
house like would they be getting
mail and bills like i feel like maybe
it's just me but i didn't check my mail
for like months after moving to
apartment because i'm like so busy doing
all kinds of other stuff i
could care less about the stuff but
maybe they had more experience but three
days after they purchased the house
because they weren't even moving in he's
like checking the mail at 10 o'clock at
night and
it was just really strange to me so like
did they put it into themselves i don't
know
what do you guys think a part of me
thinks that it wasn't the broadest
family themselves because if they were
sending themselves the letters
then they wouldn't have just moved into
the house knowing that they were
technically safe because it's them
sending the letters but i guess if they
moved in then they would think like
oh we don't it's not as real we don't
look as scared if we're in the house so
we have to like live in your mom's house
so people
think that we're really scared i don't
know
so i only write two of the letters but
there's actually like four or five
letters that was sent from the watcher
and they were getting progressively more
and more threatening and i don't know if
this was because like the police were
saying like oh
you know the watcher's not technically
threatening you so then they started
adding and threatening messages like
someone's gonna die the house is gonna
burn down someone's gonna die in a car
crash like those are the things that the
watcher had actually wrote
so i don't know if that had any relation
to it i don't know the letters and
copies of the letters weren't officially
like released i think they're like
saving them for like
probably like some movie deals or
something book deals but um
just bits and pieces of it were put
online so obviously what i read might be
a little different from things that you
see online because i've seen so many
variations
but that's basically the gist of it is
these messages sent by the watcher
what if it was that couple what was also
weird was that when i finally went to
the media and they were talking about
how this new family was moving to this
house and they were getting these
letters from someone calling itself the
watcher
everyone in the neighborhood was kind of
like what like this sounds like a big
deal but no one came and asked us about
it no one interviewed us
wouldn't you think the place would
interview at least all the neighbors
around the house or you know question
them a little bit or get
try to get some samples or like
handwriting samples or dna samples so
they thought that was really weird and
it felt like the police
weren't helping the family as much as
you think they would
but i mean like the police said like the
letters weren't really threatening they
were just kind of like a little scary
and creepy but
we see this a lot in soccer cases like
people will be stuck they're getting
harassed online or by mail
and the priest says well unless they do
anything we can't really
do anything too you know what i mean
it's always too late and then
someone's gonna die and they're like oh
well now we can try to help you know
what i mean it's
nice i don't know what to think about
this case but when i was reading the
letters i was getting so creeped out can
you imagine just like
someone watching you and driving by your
house and
oh my god i also heard something about
like the letters were
coming locally mail was delivered from
like the local
post office in westfield so it's coming
from someone close obviously um
so they weren't at first i thought they
were putting the letters in the mailbox
and i was like how did no one not see
them put it in the mailbox even if it
was at night like wouldn't people be on
watch but
i guess they were actually mailing them
with like stamps and stuff i guess they
took the dna from like the stamp and
from like the sealed envelope and that's
what they found to be a woman
um i don't know i mean it could be like
a parent being like kid like this stamp
like this envelope you know what i mean
i don't know
if it was like a super crazy cycle they
would go to like fast food russian and
get some random ladies cup and use like
the rim of her cup and rub it to like
seal the envelope and then they'd be
like oh yeah no it's not my
evidence they have some random ladies
dna on it and this old lady probably
never came into the crowd so they'll
never find her
and use a different cup every time throw
the place off
anyway i'm so curious to hear what you
guys think about this case
please let me know in the comments down
below if you think it was i don't know
anything you think about it let me know
because i'm like with all these cases i
don't know i'm so like confused and
i don't know what to believe but um yeah
something about soccer just creeped me
out and i do have like some stalker
stories of my own i posted one last year
maybe i'll link it above and in the
description below yeah that one's kind
of creepy
i wonder where he is no i don't i don't
care and i also have posted a second
soccer story where i talk about how i
think my neighbors talking me but that
one's on my patreon so those are for my
patreons only
thanks again to you guys who are
subscribed to my patreon it means so
much to me and i'm gonna be posting more
videos exclusively for you guys on there
i think the next one's gonna be the real
reason why i quit my job
um but i have to like talk to my lawyer
before that one before i
get in trouble if you made it to the end
of this video thank you so much please
give it a thumbs up if you enjoyed it
and don't forget to subscribe to my
channel if you haven't already i would
really appreciate it
and you can also find me on all my
social media instagram twitter
any social media i probably have it and
it would be under jake allegedly so you
guys can connect with me off of youtube
have a good night stay safe and i'll see
you in the next video
goodbye oh yeah and there's one more
letter received by the family who bought
the house from the broadest
but they wanted like nothing to do with
it so they basically just handed the
letter back over to derek
when he opened it and read it he felt
like it was over but he also felt like
it kind of just begun again
that's cause the letter said the watcher
has won
you
