AP Photo/Julio CortezIn an affluent New Jersey town, a couple sold their $1.4 million dream home at a roughly $440,640 loss after five years - and they never even lived in it, Bloomberg reported.
That's because, shortly after buying it, the couple started receiving increasingly creepy letters from someone who called themselves "The Watcher."
The house, now popularly known as "The Watcher" house, is in Westfield, a New Jersey town about 30 miles southwest of New York City. The town's median household income is $159,923.Maria and Derek Broaddus paid $1.4 million for the home in 2014, The Cut reported. Shortly thereafter, the threatening letters started showing up in the mailbox of the home, which they were renovating while they continued to live at their old house.
In November 2018, Reeves Wiedeman of The Cut published an in-depth investigation into the unsolved case. As Wiedeman reported, the letters were sent by someone who claimed to have been a sort of guardian of the Westfield house for years.
AP Photo/Julio CortezThe letters often referred to the couple's three children and included detailed observations of the family's renovation activities, as well as the time they had spent at the new house.
The family said one of the letters they received read: "Do you need to fill the house with the young blood I requested? Once I know their names I will call to them and draw them too (sic) me."
In another letter, the writer once again mentioned "young blood" in an apparent reference to the Broadduses' children.
"Will the young blood play in the basement?" the letter read. "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."
The case was investigated by Westfield police and the Union County prosecutor's office, but no one has been charged.
Six months after the first letter, the Broadduses put the house on the market, listing it for more than what they paid for it to account for the renovations they'd made. But rumors were swirling about a potential stalker, and they didn't find a buyer even after lowering the price.
A year after the Broadduses bought the house, they filed a legal complaint against the previous owners, the Woods, claiming they had received a letter from "the Watcher" and failed to disclose it.
The Woods said in a court filing that they received only one anonymous note days before the Broadduses closed on the house, but the Woods denied that the note was "disturbing or claimed an ownership right to the home," according to The Associated Press. The lawsuit was dismissed in 2017.The Broadduses tried unsuccessfully to have the house torn down, after which they received a letter from "The Watcher" threatening revenge, according to The Cut:
"Maybe a car accident. Maybe a fire. Maybe something as simple as a mild illness that never seems to go away but makes you fell sick day after day after day after day after day. Maybe the mysterious death of a pet. Loved ones suddenly die. Planes and cars and bicycles crash. Bones break."
The family ended up renting the house out in hopes that they could sell it after a few years.
In addition to the $440,640 loss on the home they never lived in, the Broaddus family had spent thousands on renovations, security, and private investigators.