Worst Roommate Ever: The real-life cases behind Netflix’s latest true-crime series

Five-part series arrived on Netflix on Tuesday

Netflix viewers are already fascinated by the housemate horror stories on Worst Roommate Ever, a new true-crime anthology series from Netflix.

Arriving on the streaming service on Tuesday (1 February), the series tells the stories of people that moved in with strangers, only for them to end up being the co-habitors from hell.

The five-part documentary series covers four cases, all of which took place in North and South America.

Find out more about the real-life stories below…

Dorothea Puente

Episode one of Worst Roommate Ever focuses on Dorothea Puente, the so-called “Death House Landlady” who killed at least nine people in the Eighties.

Puente, then in her fifties, lived in Sacramento, California, where she ran a boarding house from 1982 to 1988.

Her first victim was 61-year-old Ruth Monroe, a lodger who died of a drug overdose, which Puente told the police was a suicide.

She then spent three years in prison from 1982 after being accused of drugging and stealing from an elderly man.

Puente on trial in 1988 (Kpa/Zuma/Shutterstock)

When she got out of jail, she went back to running the boarding house. Puente worked in conjunction with local social workers, as she was known for taking on “tough cases”..

Most of the boarders at her home were elderly or mentally disabled, with Puente cashing their social security cheques following their deaths.

Following the disappearance of one of her tenants, who had developmental disabilities and schizophrenia, in 1988, police discovered seven bodies buried on the property.

Puente was charged with nine murders and convicted of three, with the jury unable to reach a deliberation on the remaining six.

She died in prison in March 2011, still insisting her innocence.

KC Joy

Another story covered in Worst Roommate Ever is that of 36-year-old college student Maribel Ramos.

Ramos, who had previously served in the Iraq war, went missing in May 2013 in Santa Ana, California. She was reported missing by her family, with a friend starting a Yelp thread hoping to track her down.

One user asked if Ramos’s roommate KC Joy had been questioned by the police. On the website, Joy shared details of the police’s investigation, but kept referring to Ramos in the past tense.

Her friends were left suspicious, but Joy insisted it was simply a mistake as English wasn’t his first language.

Joy was put under surveillance in the days after Ramos went missing and was soon discovered searching on a library computer how long bodies take to decompose. He also looked up where the police were in relation to a certain location, with her body discovered in a canyon in that area.

During the trial, authorities said that Joy and Ramos had argued about rent the night before she died. Prosecutors alleged that he was in love with her and the feelings were not reciprocated.

Joy was found guilty and sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.

Youssef Khater

Youssef Khater was a conman who attacked Callie Quinn, a college graduate he lived in a large house share in Santiago, Chile with, in 2011.

Khater had borrowed money from a number of their housemates and needed to pay up, then one night lured Quinn to visit a condo he had promised to rent to her and a friend.

Khater hit Quinn around the head with a piece of metal and strangled her, before wrapping her in a tarpaulin and attempting to bury her alive beneath a pile of ash.

She suffered a concussion, corneal abrasions, and a lesion in her larynx and received nine stitches in her head.

Khater claimed that he needed to return to Denmark after his mother had died, but he instead waited at his girlfriend’s house before going off the grid.

Youssef Khater (Netflix)

Quinn’s case was taken on by lawyer Rocío Berríos, who learnt that Khater wasn’t actually a marathon runner, but rather a scammer.

Quinn’s story ended up gaining national attention, with a man getting in contact who claimed that they had raised $8,000 to sponsor Khater in a race, only for him to drop out at the last minute.

He then stopped returning their texts and vanished when a doctor’s report said that he was medically fine to run and later claimed that the man actually owed him money. It also turned out that he had previously attacked a British athlete called Dominic Rayner and had a history of stealing and scamming.

Khater was arrested in August and gave a statement saying that he was not responsible for attacking Quinn. He would later admit that he did hit her over the head, but had never intended to kill her.

Khater was found guilty of attempted murder and fraud, amounting to a 602 days in total in jail. However, he had already served more than half of those while awaiting trial.

Jamison Bachman

The case of Jamison Bachman is so troubling, two episodes of Worst Roommate Ever are dedicated to it.

The story begins in Philadelphia in 2017, when Alex Miller posted an advert online to rent her spare bedroom.

The man who took it was “Jed Creek”, who said he was a lawyer in New York but needed somewhere to stay nearby while his family members were sick.

Miller rented the room to the man even though the cheque he signed for her didn’t include an address or name, but things quickly got worse as he argued with her about his pets and paying the bills, stole items and withheld rent.

She soon discovered that “Creek” was actually Jamison Bachman, a serial squatter. Rather than working as a lawyer, he would spend his days hanging around the surrounding area while slowly taking over their homes.

At least four former roommates reported Bachman refusing to pay rent and eventually becoming violent with them.

Miller attempted to get rid of Bachman by holding a large party while he was doing online tutoring to show that he was unwelcome.

However, the next day he attacked Miller in the bathroom, choking her and stabbing her in the thigh.

He was arrested but bailed out by his brother. When his sister-in-law said that she didn’t want him in the house anymore, he beat his brother to death, stealing his credit card and his sister’s car.

Bachman hid in a hotel, where he was arrested and charged with murder in December 2017. However, he died by suicide in prison before the trial could begin.

Worst Roommate Ever is on Netflix now.