The Half Of It
The Half of It is what happens when two sisters who found each other later in life realize they have a lot more in common than DNA — including a love of crime, weird stories, family mysteries, dark humor, and asking way too many questions.
Chelsea and Kate share the same biological father, but grew up completely separate. Now they talk every day, usually about something bizarre, suspicious, hilarious, or all three.
Some episodes dig into cold cases and strange crimes. Some unravel stories from their own family. Some are just the two of them trying to understand how two people who barely knew the other existed can somehow sound alike, think alike, and have an alarming number of the same quirks.
They may not know the whole story.
But they’ve got The Half of It.
The Half Of It
The Watcher: There was no Dumbwaiter
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
You've probably seen the Netflix series. We're throwing it out. No cult, no tunnels, and no dumbwaiter — despite Chelsea being completely certain there was one, which she admits on mic. What's left is the real case: four letters, a detail about a child at an easel that tells you exactly how close the writer was standing, female DNA on an envelope that never matched anyone, a neighbor who was never ruled out, a door-to-door DNA canvass in 2018, and roughly half a million dollars lost on a house the family never lived in.
Nobody was ever identified. The case has never been closed. Whoever wrote those letters is very likely still living on that street.
Chelsea does the research. Kate goes in cold.
In this episode: all four letters read in full · why security cameras were never going to solve this · the female DNA and what it does and doesn't prove · Derek's Christmas Eve letters · the Robert Kaplow theory, and why it's a theory and not an accusation · everything Netflix invented
Content note: stalking, threats against children.
Sources: Reeves Wiedeman, "The Haunting of a Dream House," New York Magazine / The Cut, 2018 · NBC News · Patch · Union County court filings · Westfield Planning Board records. Full links in the show notes.
Written and produced by Chelsea & Kate for The Half of It.
Executive Produced by Lisa Sydney
Photos, documents, and references connected to all episodes can be found at PumpkinSparklesCreations.com.
The Half of It is hosted by half-sisters Chelsea and Kate, who found each other through DNA and are now making up for lost time — one unbelievable story at a time.
Do you know the history of the house? Why are you here? I will find out. Get your shit together, Josie. I know. I did have my shit together two weeks ago. But now it's like I've I don't have everything where I need it. Okay. I should have it now. Hold on. What's my zip code? Great. Thanks for that. Anyway, so we were supposed to be together. And we've been counting down for this trip for like seven months. And we're not together. So come on. It doesn't snow. Although Jack would love it. Jack would be so excited. Yeah. He'd be so excited if it snowed. Today we're going to be doing something a little different. Recently, I watched the Netflix miniseries The Watcher. And it was fine. I think it was a good show. It was mildly entertaining. And in the beginning, it said that it was based on a true story. So I found that very intriguing. And naturally, I went digging. What follows is just part of the trailer that Netflix put out. I highly suggest looking it up and watching the full trailer.
SPEAKER_02Allow me to welcome you to the neighborhood.
SPEAKER_03You know the history of the house.
SPEAKER_00This message will not be the last. I am the watcher. Your house. And now you are too.
SPEAKER_01Who am I? It might not frighten you yet, but it will.
SPEAKER_00Give the house what it wants. Young blood. Can you keep us safe?
SPEAKER_03So I went digging and I found the real recording that it's based on. And actually, the real story is just so much worse. It is so much more interesting than the show. So for the moment, forget the show. Here's what actually happened at 657 Boulevard. Almost everything I'm about to tell you traces back to Reeves Wiedman's 2018 piece for New York magazine, The Haunting of a Dream House, plus court filings and police documents. The links and information are all in the show notes. In June of 2014, Derek and Maria Broadis have just bought a six-bedroom house at 657 Boulevard in Westfield, New Jersey. When I saw Westfield, I was like, oh, weird. Maria grew up in Westfield, and the house was only a few blocks from her childhood home. And their children were five, eight, and ten years old. The house was built in 1905, and the Braddis paid 1.35 million for it. And they closed on June 2nd, 2014. And I actually fact-checked all of this. So with all of the sites that I belong to now to track down family members. So, okay, so this is when it starts to get really kind of strange. Three days after the closing, Derek is at the house and he's doing renovations, he's painting. Just they had they did not move in yet. They're they're trying to get it all set up. So it's after 10 at night, and he decides that he's gonna go check the mailbox. And he finds a white card-shape envelope addressed in thick handwriting to the new owner. So, Kate, are you gonna open up that letter? Of course. You're like, yeah, of course, right? It's I'm the new owner. Yeah. I'm gonna read this part exactly. Okay? Put yourself in this situation. You've opened up this letter. This is what it says.
SPEAKER_02Dearest 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 approached its 110th birthday, I've been put in charge of watching and waiting for its second coming. My grandfather watched the house in the 1920s, and my father watched it 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.
SPEAKER_03What? Come on. What? Like, what are you doing? What do you do? I oh my god. I would probably honestly, I'd probably like call the police. I feel like that would be the very first reaction that I would have. The writer of this letter is paying attention because the first letter identified the family's Honda minivan, and it knew that contractors had started working at 657. And the sale wasn't public yet. So there had been no for sale sign, and the first letter was postmarked June 4th, only a day after the contractors arrived. So this person's obviously like in the woods or something, right? He's obviously stalking the house in some way. Yeah. Here's more of the letter.
SPEAKER_02I see already that you have flooded 657 Boulevard with contractors so that you can destroy the house as it was supposed to be. Tisk, tisk, tisk. Bad move. You don't want to make 657 Boulevard unhappy. You have children. I have seen them. So far, I so far I think there are three that I have counted. Do you need to fill the house with the young blood I requested? Better for me. Was your old house too small for your 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.
SPEAKER_03Uh sorry. But I'm leaving. If you just spent up Oh my god, I would uh be sure to put as few fingerprints on that paper as possible and put it back in the envelope and take it to the police. Right. So are you still gonna move in? No. Are your kids going back to the house tomorrow? No. The envelope has no return address. The writer plays with the fact that Derek has no idea where the person is. He finishes the letter. Who am I?
SPEAKER_02There 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.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah. That's so the letter, the letter keeps pushing Derek. It's a beautiful house, but it's not like it's in the center of anything. It's obvious that somebody would have to be, in my opinion, not in a car, not in a house, probably in the woods. That's my opinion of it. Just look it up, 657 Boulevard, Westfield. It looks like the Amity V Hill Horror House. I know. Stop it. I have no proof that I said that, but I really did. So when he receives this letter, this is all in one letter. Derek is alone in the house, and he rushes around the house and he turns off all the lights so nobody can see him inside, and he calls the Westfield police. The officer comes to the house and he reads the letter, and he's like, dude, do you have any enemies? What they do is they contact John and Andrea Woods, the couple who just sold them 657 Boulevard. And what is the one answer from the previous owners that you absolutely do not want to hear right now? That, oh, he's back. Yeah. Andrea Woods replies the next morning, a few days before the Woods families moved out, they had also received a letter from somebody calling themselves The Watcher. Just a few days before they moved out? Yeah. Yeah. Oh. The Woods had lived at 657 for 23 years and said nothing like that had happened before. But they remembered their letter as odd rather than overly threatening, and they threw it away. Um you have the police there, and you contact the other owners, and they're like, oh yeah, we got a letter too, but we threw it away. And the the police are just like, Wow, that sucks for you, that you don't have anything to corroborate what you're saying. About two weeks later, after the first letter, Maria stops at 657 to look at paint samples and she checks the mail and she recognizes another envelope with the same thick handwriting.
SPEAKER_02The second letter reads 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? I am the watcher, and have been in control of 657 Boulevard for the better part of two decades now. 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. 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.
SPEAKER_03Well they are now.
SPEAKER_02It is far away from the rest of the house. If you were upstairs, you would never hear them scream. You've changed it. It made it so fancy. You are stealing its history. The house was full of life and young blood. Then it got old, and so did my father. But he kept watching until the day he died. And now I watch and wait for the day when the young blood will be mine again.
SPEAKER_03How did they learn the nicknames, Kate? Like how'd they do that? Oh, that's creepy. It continues.
SPEAKER_02Will 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? I am the watcher and 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 passed by many times a day. 657 Boulevard is my job, my life, my obsession. And now you are too broadest 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 will be watching.
SPEAKER_03Okay. I I probably would have burned the house down at this point. Yeah. So a little gasoline, a match or two. Yeah. Yeah. So there's one line in that second letter I need to point out. Because it's the part that actually scares me and actually scared the family to the point where they're like, absolutely not, we're not moving yet. The watcher mentions their daughter, not by name, but what she was doing. She'd set up an easel and she was painting.
SPEAKER_02And he asks, Is she the artist of the family?
unknownNo.
SPEAKER_03Here's why that's freaky. The easel was on the enclosed back porch. According to the New York magazine reporting, the porch was screened off from the street by large trees and bushes. You could not see it driving by. You couldn't see it from a car, and you couldn't see it from the sidewalk. To see a kid painting on that porch, you'd have to be in the backyard or standing in the house, right next to the door. And remember, they don't live there yet. The kids are only at the house sometimes in the daytime for a couple of hours while their parents were working on it. So this person wasn't just watching the house, they were watching very closely enough to catch a little girl painting during a window of time where she was barely ever there. Oh, like they stopped bringing the children to 657 Boulevard, obviously. Several weeks later, a third letter is in the mailbox.
SPEAKER_02657 Boulevard is turning on me. It is coming after me. I don't understand why. What spell did you cast on it? It used to be my friend and now it is my enemy. I am in charge of 657 Boulevard. It is not in charge of me. I will fend off its bad things and wait for it to become good again. It will not punish me. I will rise again. I will be patient and wait for this to pass and for you to bring the young blood back to me. Come back. Let the young blood play again like I once did. Let the young blood sleep in 657 Boulevard. Stop changing it and let it alone.
SPEAKER_03Nope. And they would back out. Which I don't blame them. 100%. And I'm thinking, why they lost around $400,000. Wow. They sold it in 2019 for $959,000, but the financial hit was because of all of the renovations. They just put about like $100,000 in with property taxes and insurance and fees and investigators and upkeep and all of that. So they lost a shit ton of money and never moved in because of this person. Yeah, yeah. That is crazy. So that's I just did the calculation. That's over $565,000 today. Oh my god. $565,000. Yeah. And you're you don't have a house now. That's like over half over half a million dollars and you don't have a house. I don't blame them at all. At all for not moving in. According to the documents, the renovations were complete, the new alarm system, but they they could not bring themselves to move in. They had already sold their old house, so they had to move in with Maria's parents. While still paying the mortgage and property tax on a house that they had never lived in. Oh, that's painful. Once they made the story public, a lot of people in Westfield they started to wonder whether Derek and Maria had done it to themselves. Buyer buyer's remorse, financial trouble, an insurance scheme, or a movie deal. And none of those theories were proven. So imagine that. They lost half a million dollars. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that they had that much control over the situation. That is infuriating. By 2016, the broadest still could not sell the house. So that's just great, isn't it? Their real estate lawyer proposed selling it to a developer who could tear down 657 and divide the large lot into two properties. The two proposed lots were just under Westfield's required width, so the plan needed an exception from the planning board. Does that make sense? I just dealt with this with the redevelopment that we were doing at my old job. So a lot of times they'll have a required-sized lot that they have to be because it has to be so much property between each building and between each sewer line and things like that. Spoiler alert, they denied it. That doesn't surprise me.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03It said at 11:30 p.m. the board unanimously rejected the proposal. And a New Jersey judge later denied the Broadest's appeal of the decision. So they were distracted. They were completely screwed. Not long after that decision, the Broadist got some good news. A family with grown children and two big dogs had agreed to rent 657 Boulevard. And when people interviewed the person who's who was renting it, they were like, aren't you worried about the watcher? And they had a clause in the lease that let him out in case of another letter. Oh my god. Yeah. Oh my god. I mean and guess what happened? What? Did you get they get another letter? Yeah. Oh my god. Um two weeks later, Derek went to the house and to deal with some maintenance stuff having to do with squirrels, because now I guess they're he's a landlord, right? Right. Um and the house has been sitting vacant, so squirrels are not moved in. The renter handed him an envelope that had just arrived.
SPEAKER_02It says, violent winds and bitter cold to the vile and spiteful Derek and his wench of a wife, Maria.
unknownOh my god.
SPEAKER_03This letter appears two and a half years after the first letter. And it was dated February 13th, and it was the day that the Broadasses had given depositions in their lawsuit against the Woods. The Broadasses sued John and Andrea Woods in 2015, arguing that the Woods had received their own strange watcher letter shortly before closing and failed to disclose that fact during the sale. Their claims included fraudulent concealment and related emotional distress allegations. And the Woods then filed counterclaims. They said that the Broadass's lawsuit and public accusations had harmed their reputation. And in October of 2017, they dismissed the remaining Broadass's claims and dismissed the Woods' counterclaims. So neither side ultimately won damages from the other. The renter stayed, even after the letter was there, and they installed additional cameras.
SPEAKER_02You wonder who the watcher is? Turn around, idiots. Maybe you even spoke to me. One of the so-called neighbors who has no idea who the watcher could be. Or maybe you do know and are too scared to tell anyone. Good move. I watched as you watched from the dark house in an attempt to find me. Telescopes and binoculars are wonderful inventions. And 657 Boulevard survived your attempted assault and stood strong with its army of supporters barricading its gates.
SPEAKER_03Wait, hold on a second. I'm dying. Because I just had got into my head the TLC strange like addiction when they have relationships with their car and stuff. I'm like, this person is obsessed with this house. That was an intrusive thought that happened as I was reading. I'm like, I feel like this is a jealous person.
SPEAKER_02So 657 Boulevard survived your attempted assault and stood strong with this army of supporters barricading its gates. My soldiers of the Boulevard followed my orders to a T. They carried out their mission and saved the soul of 657 Boulevard with my orders. All hail the watcher.
SPEAKER_03And then, and then, just to make sure that they got the point, it ends with Maybe a car accident.
SPEAKER_02Maybe a fire. Maybe something as simple as a mild illness that never seems to go away, but makes you feel sick day after 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.
SPEAKER_03Oh my god. So let me back up for a second. Because I've been telling you the story from the family side. I want to tell you what law enforcement was doing this whole time. The Westville police were involved from that very first letter. And one of the first things that they told Derek and Maria was don't talk about this. Don't tell the neighbors, because at that point, Everyone on the block was a suspect. Think about what that would do to you. You just moved into a town, your wife grew up in, and the police are telling you you can't trust anybody on your street at all. Then they worked outward from there. Neighbors, mail carriers, contractors, delivery people, anybody with a reason to be near the house was investigated. The case eventually went up to the Union County prosecutor's office, and the Brownasses also hired their own people. They hired private investigators and former FBI agents. And really, they didn't get anywhere. There was no handwriting to compare beyond the envelope. There was no usable fingerprints, no email, no phone calls, no digital trail at all. This person left almost nothing. And before someone comments on this, yes, they had cameras. They had a lot of cameras. They put in a security system during the renovation. The renter added more cameras later. It didn't matter. And here's why. Everybody assumed there's some grainy doorbell footage out there of the sticker creeping up to the mailbox at you in the morning. But there isn't. Because these letters came through as a mail, stamped, postmarked, dropped in a box somewhere else entirely. There was never anyone at the house for a camera to catch. Meanwhile, this person is watching them set all of it up. Go back and listen to the fourth letter.
SPEAKER_02I watched you as you watch from the dark house. Telescopes and binoculars are wonderful inventions.
SPEAKER_03Derek is out there staking out his own house in the dark, trying to catch this guy and getting a letter about it. So this person left almost nothing. The police look closely at a longtime neighboring family whose home was next to 657. The timing sounded eerie because that family had lived there since the 1960s. So the same decade that the watcher claimed a father had begun watching the house. And we know from the police documents that one member of the family was interviewed more than once. Unfortunately, suspicion is not evidence, and the investigation never established that he was the one writing the letter. And then they were able to get DNA from the envelope. And this is odd. It was from a female. Really? The DNA was never linked to anybody in the neighborhood. And the detective took another look at the case, and he discovered that around the same time that the broadists received their first letter, another family on Boulevard had received a similar note from the watcher. When they received the letter, they threw it away. And after the story became public, one of their adult children mentioned it on Facebook, and the investigators later spoke to the family, and they confirmed that their letter had been similar. But there's limitations because the physical letter was no longer available for testing. It feels very intentional. This person is just trying to elicit a reaction and think about what they've accomplished. By 2017, Derek was furious at people in town who publicly accused his family of faking the whole thing, obviously. And on Christmas Eve, several of the family's most vocal critics received anonymous letters signed Friends of the Broadest Family. Uh-huh. And when Reeves Wilderman later asked Derek directly whether he had written those letters, Derek admitted that he had. Those letters, not the ones that were threatening his children. He said that he had not told Maria and said those were the only anonymous letters he had written. What do you think? Well, that was dumb. That was extremely dumb. That was really dumb. Yeah, that was not a man thinking very straight at all. No. In 2018, investigators went door to door through the neighborhood asking for voluntary DNA swabs. Some people said yes, some people weren't home, and some people just flat out said no, including reportedly a close neighbor who'd already been looked at. And a refusal isn't evidence of anything. It's a right, but it does mean four years in that the person still hadn't been ruled out. Nothing they collected matched. The case has never been closed. It just isn't active anymore. The reality is, Derek and Maria, they are the only ones suffering here. They are the only ones that lost all this money, that lost their peace of mind, that they they're the only ones. We still have the Woods' letter and the other Boulevard family's letter and the female DNA that did not match Maria. And this entire thing, like we've said, is financially drained them. Just catastrophically. And the first letters came before they bought the house. And they went and sued him for not disclosing it. So that would just be so much effort to appear innocent when nothing went anywhere. I don't know. Right. Well, I guess if he couldn't afford the house, there would have been easier ways for him to do this than writing some creepy letters. Because And like who would even think to do that? There would have been easier ways for him to do this where he would not have lost half a million dollars. Half a million dollars. Yeah. A young family eventually bought the house, and that like we said, they lost nearly half a million dollars. And a few days before the sale closed, Derek made his 60th mortgage payment on the house that his family had never lived in. My God. 60th? 60th. Yeah. That's horrific. I mean. Well, right, there's $480,000. Although they did sell the adaptation rights of their ordeal to Netflix for a seven-figure sum. Well, that maybe they were able to like get out of the hole for a little bit then. Yeah. Maybe they were. Although it it they said it helped, but it did not even fully cover all of their massive financial and legal losses from the house. And now think about the fact that they sold it to Netflix. They now they now do not own the rights to their story. So that's the real story. Here's what they got right. And I'll go fast because you've heard all of this. The address is real. The family is real, except for the children. In the show, they have two, and in real life, they have three. The letters are real. When you hear them read on the screen, that's the actual text. The multi-generational claim, the young blood, the fixation on three specific children, the nicknames, the birth order, and the easel is very real. The Woods letter, the people that lived there before, and the DNA. The failed sale, the subdivision fight, and the fact that nobody was ever identified. It's still an open, it's still considered an open case, too. They really in the beginning of the show, it says that the story is based on true events, which is, in my opinion, pretty misleading because really the only events that are true are the letters and the DNA. We need to talk about the dumbwaiter. The show does not shut up about this dumbwaiter. It's in the walls, it's a passage. There's a neighbor named Jasper who uses it to move around inside the house. This grown man riding through the walls of a family home while they're sleeping in it. It becomes one of the central creepy set pieces of the entire series. And the way that they talk about this dumb waiter and focus on it, I was 100% certain, but of course the house had one. No, the real life house does not have a dumbwaiter. So weird. Anytime that there was people entering the house, that was all fictionalized. The blood cult, the baby blood or satanic cult material is obviously fiction. So as we know, the case never gets solved. But years later, one name starts circulating. He was never charged with anything, and there's no evidence that he did it. It's just a really creepy, I guess, coincidence. His name is Robert Kaplow. He is a published author, and for years he taught high school English in Summit, New Jersey, which is just a couple towns over from Westfield. Former students told Reeves, Wideman, that Kaplow used to talk in class about being fascinated by a particular house in Westfield and about how he would write letters to it. One student remembered him saying he'd written dozens of them. Writing love letters to a house. Like just a little creepy. He retired in June of 2014, and that's the same month that The Watcher's Letters began. He grew up in Westfield and had strong interests in old houses, and his brother lived about half a block from 657 Boulevard. There's no evidence proving Robert Kapla was the Watcher. He acknowledged that he had written letters to a house, but he said it was a completely different Victorian house in Westfield. That is an issue, I feel, sir, that you are writing letters to a house at all. You shouldn't be admitting to that, because that's weird, in my opinion. And that his letters were affectionate rather than threatening. That's still not better. That's not better. That they were harmless love letters to a different building. He said he eventually became friendly with the owners and even housed that there. Gross. And honestly, that's why I think that the real story beats the show. Netflix gave you a cult and a dumb waiter because Netflix needs something to be behind the door. But the actual scary part of this case is that there's nothing behind the door. There's no reveal. The suspense never resolves into anything. That's the thing, is they still live in this town and they don't know who was watching them this whole time. So they don't know if someone's still watching them and just not getting these letters. And that's the part that I can't get over. It's really not the letters. It's that whoever wrote them is probably still there. Still getting the mail, still sending mail, still saying hi at the grocery store. And the broadest is walk past that person and have no idea. Somebody in Westfield knows exactly what they did, and they've had 11 years to just be a normal person. Everything in this episode comes from Reeves Winman's reporting for New York magazine, plus court records, police documents, and local coverage. It's all linked in the show notes, and I really do recommend reading the original piece. It's long and it's worth it. You know the movie version, the meme version, the version you got taught in second grade. Then you go and read the actual reporting and look up factual documents and court records, and it turns out you only know the half of it. And next time, we are gonna be staying in Westfield because there's one character in that Netflix show who isn't invented. John Graff. The man who murdered his family in the house, and then he just walks around the edges of the story like a ghost. He's real. His name was John List, and he lived about two miles from 657 Boulevard. Netflix used him as a prop, but the real case is one of the strangest things that ever happened in this country. He killed five people in a 19-room mansion, and nobody noticed for almost a month, and then he was gone for 18 years. So that's next. Same town, same show, and they got him wrong too.