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| The Watcher: "Is she the artist in the family?" |
Since we’ve been featuring posts on where authors get
their ideas, I thought I’d give you an update today on a real-life mystery in
the real-life town where I live. Lois Winston, she who writes about me, incorporated
this ongoing mystery as a subplot in Scrapbook
of Murder, the sixth book in the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries.
If you’re a frequent reader of this blog, you may
remember the posts about The Watcher House, which sits on a stately historic
street a short walk from where I live. The first post appeared in January, 2016 and the second in October 2017 (Note: even though my house
and The Watcher house are close in proximity, the comparison ends there. I live
in a 1950s era tract rancher. The Watcher House is a Dutch Colonial built in
1905 that last sold in 2014 for 1.35 million dollars.)
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| The Watcher House |
Shortly after the new owners took possession of the
house back then, they received a very disturbing anonymous letter from someone
who called himself The Watcher. Subsequent letters followed, threatening the
new owners’ children. The Watcher knew the children' nicknames and mentioned having seen their young daughter painting at an easel, asking, "Is she the artist in the family?" Fearful for their safety, the family never moved into the
house, although they continued to make extensive renovations to the property.
The story made international headlines, resulting in
media coverage, the likes of which we hadn’t seen in our quiet commuter town since
1971 when John List murdered his entire family and disappeared for eighteen
years.
Since the family received that first letter, they’ve sued
and been counter-sued by the former owners. They tried selling the house three
times, each time reducing the price. It’s currently on the market for under a
million dollars, but the home’s notoriety has kept buyers away. They’ve tried
to have the house demolished, but they failed to get zoning approval to divide
the property into two lots to build two smaller houses in order to recoup their
losses.
In a bizarre twist, the husband admitted to sending nasty
anonymous letters to some of their neighbors. The house became the inspiration
behind a Lifetime movie and toppled the Jersey Devil from the top of the
state’s creepiest horror myths.
Extensive investigations over the years have yet to
unmask the identity of The Watcher. Suspects include the family themselves, who
recently sold the rights to their story to Netflix after a bidding war that
included Universal, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Amazon, and Fox. This gives
credence to those who believe that the family concocted the entire story, and
there never was a Watcher.
Now in the latest chapter, BuzzFeed’s Ryan Bergara
and Shane Madej of “Unsolved” have profiled the Watcher House in the first
episode of their fifth season. Watch it here.
In Scrapbook of
Murder The Watcher becomes The Sentinel, and his first letter arrives
shortly after food editor Cloris McWerther and her husband sell their house.
Although the police haven’t been able to solve the mystery of The Watch after
five years, I solve the mystery of The Sentinel, thanks to an incident that
occurred years ago, involving my sons, which is based on a real-life incident
that happened to one of Lois’s sons.
Scrapbook of Murder
An Anastasia
Pollack Crafting Mystery, Book 6
Crafts and murder don’t
normally go hand-in-hand, but normal deserted
craft editor Anastasia Pollack’s world nearly a year ago. Now, tripping over
dead bodies seems to be the “new normal” for this reluctant amateur sleuth.
When the daughter of a
murdered neighbor asks Anastasia to create a family scrapbook from old
photographs and memorabilia discovered in a battered suitcase, she agrees—not
only out of friendship but also from a sense of guilt over the older woman’s
death. However, as Anastasia begins sorting through the contents of the
suitcase, she discovers a letter revealing a fifty-year-old secret, one that
unearths a long-buried scandal and unleashes a killer. Suddenly Anastasia is
back in sleuthing mode as she races to prevent a suitcase full of trouble from
leading to more deaths.
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I love tales involving historic houses. Good luck with this one!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Nancy!
ReplyDelete