Netflixs Worst Roommate Ever tells the story of Jamison Bachman, a shocking serial squatter

In 2017, the bizarre saga of a serial squatter ended in two shocking deaths in Montgomery County, in the US state of Pennsylvania. Now, the story is available for streaming via a new five-part Netflix series.

Based on New York Magazine’s viral 2018 article “Worst Roommate Ever”, two episodes of the series of the same title tell the story of Jamison Bachman. Or, as his Philadelphia roommate, Alex Miller, came to know him, Jed Creek – a name Bachman had used to respond to a fateful Craigslist ad that Miller had posted seeking a roomie.

As Jed, Bachman contacted Miller about the room, saying that he was a lawyer from New York who had grown up outside Philadelphia, and that he needed a place to stay in the area to deal with some family issues.

After meeting up, the two became roommates; Bachman wrote a cheque for Miller immediately and moved in the same evening.

It started to get weird almost instantly. Bachman showed up with six plastic bins, which contained all of his worldly possessions – as well as a cat, which Miller was allergic to, and unaware that Bachman had.

Bachman removed light bulbs from shared living spaces, took kitchen chairs to build a desk in his room, moved Miller’s personal items around, and refused to pay for his portion of the utility bills.

After finding a cigarette butt in the toilet bowl, Bachman refused to pay the next month’s rent, insinuating that Miller had broken the “warranty of habitability” and “covenant of quiet enjoyment”.

Miller’s mother ran a search on Bachman’s phone number, revealing that he wasn’t Jed Creek at all. Instead, they found that as his true identity, Bachman, he was a “serial squatter who had terrorised roommates up and down the [US] east coast”, as Miller says in the series.

Bachman, Miller found, knew just enough about tenancy laws to take advantage of roommates by not paying rent, refusing to leave, and, eventually, forcing them to move out of their own houses.

Friends interviewed in the series described Bachman as smart, charming, and good-looking, and said most people thought he had a bright future, despite a tumultuous family background. He went on to attend Tulane University in New Orleans, but it was there that one friend, identified as Bob F, says Bachman witnessed a brutal murder that changed him forever.

After learning Bachman’s true identity, Miller threw a lengthy party at her home with drinking, smoking, and rap music (three of Bachman’s apparent pet peeves) as a way to get him to want to leave. That escalated into assault: Bachman choked Miller, slamming her leg in a door, and slashing at her with a knife. He was arrested, and Miller filed for a Protection From Abuse order that included Bachman’s eviction.

Bachman’s brother Harry ended up bailing him out of jail twice, which ultimately would result in both of their deaths. In November 2017, Bachman killed Harry in his brother’s home, with the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office saying that Harry “suffered blunt force trauma to the head and body”.

After the murder, Bachman fled in his brother’s car, and used his credit card to check into a hotel nearby.

There, a Swat team served an arrest warrant on Bachman. However, he would never go to trial for Harry’s murder. On December 8, 2017, he hanged himself in his cell at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility. He was 60.

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