“The Watcher,” Ryan Murphy’s latest true-crime-inspired Netflix hit, is prompting fans to search for a real home in Westfield, New Jersey, where the Broaddus family was sent threatening letters in 2014 by someone who who claimed to have seen them and went home.
Resident Trish Dulinsky told Saturday nj.com“We are all concerned for the family and their neighbors living there now. I can’t imagine how long it will take for people’s interest to wane so that neighborhoods can get back to normal, nor can I imagine how much reconciliation the poor current owners will get from crackpots around the world.
Another resident Sabina Schutt, who lives around the corner from the infamous home, told NJ.com that she doesn’t appreciate traffic, or morbid onlookers. “I think the show doesn’t do wonders for putting our small, but wonderful town in a negative light,” she said.
Murphy’s other Netflix series, “Dahmer,” topped the list for streamer’s most-watched series this week, with 657 Boulevard, a six-bedroom Dutch colonial, clocked 125 million hours and in the top 10 in 90 countries . According to Netflix.
Luki-Louce from around the world has been dying to see the house, including a United Kingdom resident, Louise Evans, who was visiting friends in nearby New Providence, adding, “It’s a really interesting story,” she said. Told. “I used to live in New Providence when all this was happening, so now that I’m going out here to visit friends, I thought, ‘Let’s see the house.'”
As nj.com reports, police have stationed officers outside the home and put up yellow tape and barricades in driveways to prevent trespassing.
Although the real street address of the house was used in the show, it was filmed not in Westfield, but in a house in Rye, New York.
The series, which changed the family name to “Brannox”, featured Naomi Watts and Bobby Cannavale as the terrified homeowners. Murphy also brings up a fictionalized version of a different infamous case from Westfield, the 1971 John List murders, in which the accountant killed his entire family and was caught only about 18 years later. Since then that house has been demolished.
