#CRAFTS WITH ANASTASIA--THE INSPIRATION BEHIND SCRAPBOOK OF MURDER

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.)

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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